By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
(Address of His Eminence to the Educators of the Metropolis, delivered at the event of the Metropolis for the Feast of the Three Hierarchs in 2011.)
Saint Basil the Great was a great personality and exercised a profound influence not only on his contemporaries but also on later generations, down to our own time. Many people, when they wish to engage with theological, pastoral, ascetical, as well as scientific matters — namely medical, astronomical, and educational issues — turn to Saint Basil and refer to his texts, which are remarkable and possess a timeless relevance.
From an ecclesiastical perspective, Saint Basil was truly great. The title “the Great” was first bestowed upon him by his friend Saint Gregory the Theologian, with whom he studied in Athens and with whom he maintained a friendship and shared path in the years that followed. It is significant that this lofty eagle of theology — Saint Gregory the Theologian — recognized Saint Basil and called him “Great.” One can imagine what an extraordinary personality St. Basil was.
Examining his theological work, we must note that he dealt with the Triune God, and to a great extent the Second Ecumenical Synod, which defined the teaching concerning the Holy Spirit and the Holy Trinity, relied on his teachings. He was concerned with the organization of monastic life, which influenced not only the eastern part of the Roman Empire but also the western. He concerned himself with the ordering of divine worship and composed the Divine Liturgy that bears his name. He showed significant interest in the pastoral issues of his flock and also dealt with the problems that occupied the entire Orthodox Church of his time. He was a leader endowed with many gifts and appears as a Moses who guided the entire Orthodox people. All the bishops and theologians of his era referred to Saint Basil and wished to have his opinion on the issues troubling the Church. And one should consider that all this great ecclesiastical work was accomplished within a short period of time, since, as is well known, he reposed at the age of forty-nine.
In today’s address, however, we shall set aside all the above and examine, as has already been announced, the issue of the hunger of the poor and the greediness and mercilessness of the rich in his time. That is, we shall consider one aspect of the social teaching of Saint Basil the Great, since it is a contemporary issue that concerns our country as well.
1. His Personal Example
After his brilliant studies, Saint Basil devoted himself to pastoral ministry, having been ordained first a Presbyter and subsequently Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Thus, he was not a theologian who merely wrote theoretical works at his desk, but a shepherd who cared for a specific flock and confronted all the difficulties faced by the people of his time. It is through this prism that we must also view his social and philanthropic work.
Before becoming a Presbyter and Bishop, however, he became a hesychast monk. He abandoned everything and withdrew to a deserted place near the River Iris, where he practiced sacred stillness, demonstrating that in order to accomplish a great work one must first prepare oneself. Pastoral guidance of people is not carried out through theories and empty words, nor in a merely verbalistic manner, but through an illumined personal example.
He came from a wealthy family and himself possessed considerable property. Yet when he chose the monastic path, he abandoned everything and distributed the greater part of his possessions to the poor, to such an extent that later, as he himself writes, while serving in Caesarea he did not even have the means for his own sustenance and was supported by a family to whom he had given his house and land. This is a significant detail, because it shows that although he had been raised in wealth, later he lived on assistance from the very family he had benefited by giving them his ancestral property. In this way, he set a powerful personal example.
This fact is of great importance, because it shows that Saint Basil, like all the Fathers of the Church, was not a clever man who devised sociological theories in order to attract attention and the praise of scholars, but someone who offered a personal example — choosing to live in poverty and to manifest abundant love toward the poor. He made a personal sacrifice in his life, and this caused the poor to listen to him with interest, and often moved the rich to open their storehouses and distribute goods to those in need.
The social and philanthropic work of Saint Basil was immense. The Basileiada — that great work of charity and love — is well known, and Saint Gregory the Theologian refers to it in his funeral oration for Saint Basil. Moreover, anyone who studies his writings is familiar with his references to the conditions of his time and with his exhortations to the rich to offer what they possessed to the poor who were suffering and afflicted. Here, however, we shall make only brief reference to three of his homilies, delivered while he was still a Presbyter — before becoming a Bishop — in Caesarea, which addressed the hunger of the poor and the mercilessness or greed of the rich. We shall provide a broad summary of these three homilies in order to see Saint Basil’s thought concerning the poor and the rich.
2. Three Social Homilies
In the year 368 A.D., Caesarea of Cappadocia experienced a prolonged drought, resulting in severe famine among the people. At the same time, the wealthy of that era — landowners and merchants — were hoarding material goods in large storehouses and found the opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the populace. Then Saint Basil, who was thirty-eight years old at the time, undertook the task of helping the people, encouraging and teaching them, while at the same time persuading the rich not to be merciless but to offer the products locked away in their storehouses, so that the people of Caesarea might be saved from famine and certain death.
For this purpose he delivered three homilies. The first is titled “In Time of Famine and Drought,” the second, which continues the first, is titled “To the Rich,” and the third, which continues both, is titled “On the Saying ‘I will tear down my barns and build larger ones,’ and on Greed.” In these three homilies we see the condition of the people of that time — both the hunger of the poor and the hardheartedness of the rich; we observe the habits of the people of the era; and we also perceive the intelligence, courage, and greatness of Saint Basil, who speaks in a powerful and astonishing manner.
Certainly, anyone who reads all three of these homilies — whether in the original text or in translation — admires the argumentation and eloquence of Saint Basil. However, within the limited time available for addressing this subject, it is not possible to read the entire text of these homilies and engage directly with Saint Basil’s own discourse. Therefore, we shall necessarily present summaries of the thought of this great Father on these issues. At certain points we shall also insert excerpts from his words in order to see the power and effectiveness of his speech.
3. Central Points of the Content of the Three Homilies
A) THE CONDITION OF THE POOR
At the outset, he describes the dire situation in the region caused by the drought. His descriptions are striking. The sky is hermetically closed; the earth has dried up and become barren and unproductive; once-abundant and rich springs have failed; rivers have dried up so that even small children can cross them; drinking water has vanished and people are in danger of dying from thirst; and the people seek a new Moses to pray to God to bring water and food. Saint Basil himself says that when he saw the fields he wept bitterly over their barrenness and burst into lamentation because rain did not fall. The land yields no fruit, and farmers sit in their fields and mourn.
He speaks of hunger through images he witnessed daily. Hunger is a terrible disease — a dreadful and slow death — worse than sudden bodily death. People may die suddenly by the sword, fire, or the teeth of wild beasts, and such deaths have no duration, whereas hunger prolongs the evil and extends the pain. As a physician, Saint Basil describes the symptoms and condition of starvation: hunger consumes the moisture in the body, suppresses warmth, diminishes weight, gradually withers strength; the flesh clings like a spider’s web to the bones; the complexion loses its bloom; the skin darkens, the body turns sallow; the knees give way; the voice weakens; the eyes sink in their sockets; the stomach is empty and shriveled. Hunger often forced people to violate even the laws of nature, to eat the bodies of their relatives, and even mothers reached the point of eating the child they had borne — bringing it forth from their womb and then placing it back within it.
Saint Basil describes with unparalleled vividness the sufferings of the people of his time. Hunger threatens the most pitiful death, and parents reach the point of considering selling their children in order to survive, even though natural affection resists. Parents agonize over which child to sell — the older or the younger, the one who bears their own features or the one who excels in learning. Seeing this — something that evidently occurred in his time — Saint Basil rebukes the greedy rich man who remains unmoved and unfeeling at such a sight, whom neither tears nor the sighs of the heart can soften, but who remains rigid and hard. Just as a madman sees everywhere what his passion dictates, so too the greedy man sees gold everywhere, and gold gives him more pleasure than the sun.
He does not stop at describing the condition of the poor, but also identifies the causes of the drought from which the famine arose. As a shepherd of the Church, he does not merely describe the event, but also makes a correct diagnosis. God allows such blows because people have departed from His law and do not keep His commandments, just as parents discipline their children. The sins of human beings have thrown the seasons out of rhythm and have altered nature into strange disorder. Thus, winter lacks moisture, spring has lost its characteristic flowering, and heat and cold have exceeded their natural limits. All these are not merely natural phenomena, but the result of humanity’s apostasy from the law of God.
This prevailing condition does not mean that God, as Governor of the universe, does not exist, nor that He has forgotten His providence or lost His authority and power. Rather, it is because we are merciless: we do not give thanks to God for His gifts, we do not show compassion to our fellow servants, we despise the poor, our storehouses are full of goods, and those who groan are not shown mercy. This is why God does not bless, and why the prayers offered in litanies — by which the people of that time sought rain — are not heard. The men, apart from a few, are occupied with commerce, and their wives assist them in serving mammon; very few participate in the worship of the Church, and even those who attend do not pay attention, yawn, and wish for the chanters to finish the psalms. People commit sins and wander about the city, and only little children (infants) go to confession. Therefore, he urges the people to proclaim repentance, as the Ninevites did and were saved from destruction, for just as God then heard their prayer, so He will do in this case as well.
B) GREED AND THE LACK OF COMPASSION OF THE RICH
In these homilies Saint Basil the Great gives vivid descriptions of the way the rich of his time lived. It is an important moral portrait through which we can understand the spiritual condition of the people of that era — a condition that is almost identical to our own time, differing only in the objects involved. Let us look at Saint Basil’s descriptions.
He speaks of the lifestyle of the rich of his day: the carriages and horses they possessed and the ornaments with which they adorned them; the drivers of the carriages, the servants, the cooks, bakers, wine-pourers, hunters, sculptors, painters, and inventors of every kind of entertainment, all to make their lives comfortable and pleasurable. The rich had herds of camels, horses, oxen, flocks, droves, swine, shepherds, and grazing lands. They also possessed baths in the city and baths in the countryside, splendid houses made of marble, Phrygian stone, Laconian or Thessalian slabs. Some of these warmed them in winter, others cooled them in summer. They even took care that their floors be decorated with mosaics and their ceilings embroidered with gold. The portions of the walls not covered with marble were adorned with painted flowers.
Whatever the rich could not consume, they buried in the earth or stored away in secret places. And a strange paradox occurs: gold, which is mined from the earth, once discovered is hidden again in the earth. What is striking is that a person buries his wealth and together with it buries his heart as well, for, as Christ said, where a man’s treasure is, there his heart will be also. Worst of all, there are Christians who fast, pray, groan, and display all the outward signs of effortless piety, yet do not leave a single coin for those who are in distress. In truth, the use of wealth ought to be prudent and economical, not hedonistic, so that when people part with it they rejoice as though parting with something foreign, and not grieve as though it were their own.
Saint Basil does not accept this mentality of the rich. He reproaches those who clothe walls instead of people, who adorn horses and despise their naked brother, who bury gold and scorn the oppressed human being. He goes on to say that when a rich man lives with a wife who likewise loves wealth, then the disease is doubled. Such coexistence inflames pleasures, increases indulgence, and provokes restless desires — desires for various stones, pearls, emeralds, sapphires, gold, jewelry, fabrics — thus increasing every kind of luxury. He describes how those afflicted with this disease occupy themselves day and night with wealth and surround themselves with flatterers who satisfy their desires, gathering dyers, goldsmiths, perfumers, weavers, decorators. He observes that no amount of wealth is sufficient to satisfy female desire, and such women leave no room for their husbands to breathe because of their constant demands. He speaks of golden ornaments set with precious stones placed on various parts of the body — the forehead, neck, belt, hands, and feet. Those who love gold ornaments seem bound as though with handcuffs. Thus, one who serves such desires cannot care for his soul.
With eloquence he contrasts the greed of the rich with the needs of the poor. Unfortunately, it is not possible to present all of Saint Basil’s thought here, so only the main points will be given. Beautiful walls were built only to collapse later, while at that time many poor people in the city were ignored. The house of the rich is adorned with many kinds of flowers, beautifying lifeless things while his soul remains unadorned. Inside the rich man’s house one sees silver beds and tables, ivory seats and ivory carriages, yet many poor sit outside that house and weep bitterly. The rings worn by the rich could have freed the poor from debt. One wardrobe of the rich could clothe an entire people shivering from the cold. But if one does not show mercy to the poor, he will not receive mercy; if he does not open his door to the stranger, he will not enter the Kingdom of God; if he does not give bread to the hungry, he will not receive eternal life.
The newly rich resemble drunkards: no matter how much they acquire, they want more, and with it they feed their disease. The passion of greed is insatiable, for it compares what one has with what one’s neighbors have and seeks to acquire that as well. Thus, the greedy person is a bad neighbor in the city and a bad neighbor in the countryside. He respects no time, knows no boundaries, does not wait his turn of succession, but imitates the violence of fire that consumes everything. He also imitates the force of rivers, since nothing can resist his power.
Saint Basil addresses many personal questions to the rich that reveal the vanity of accumulating material goods, since when the rich man departs from this world he will take nothing with him, but will face the future judgment. Then he will not be able to pay advocates; there will be no lawyers, no defense witnesses, and he will not be able to deceive the judges. He will be alone, without friends, without helpers — utterly alone and fearful. Not only will he have no witnesses in his defense, but he will have witnesses for the prosecution. Turning his eyes, he will see the images of his evil deeds: the tears of the orphan, the groans of the widow, of the poor who had been beaten by the greedy man himself, the sighs of servants whose flesh he had oppressed, of neighbors whom he had enraged. And all will rise up against him. In this description the tragic condition of society in Saint Basil’s time becomes evident, since the lower classes suffered at the hands of the rich and endured even physical abuse.
“The nature of wealth cannot make a person proud, for gold, silver, and pearls are stones. Some of these he stores up, some he buries, covers, and hides, and others he carries about, wearing them and even boasting of their shine. Yet none of these add a single day to life; death does not spare a person because of them, nor do they deliver him from illness. Even more, gold is the gallows of souls, the hook of death, and the bait of sin. Because of gold wars are waged, relatives quarrel, passions of lying and perjury arise, and thus money becomes the cause of a person’s destruction.”
It appears that in response to this striking rebuke by Saint Basil, the rich offered various arguments to justify their accumulation of material goods. One of these was that wealth is necessary for the children they have begotten. To this Saint Basil replies that the Gospel was written also for the married, and therefore when the rich man asked God for children, he did not do so in order to transgress God’s commandments. Moreover, the wealth inherited by children may become a cause of licentiousness and many sins.
Another argument raised by the rich was that a person accumulates wealth in order to enjoy it while alive and, when he dies, will bequeath it to the poor by wills. Saint Basil considers this argument foolish, since one cannot call someone philanthropic when he is no longer among the living, nor brother-loving when one encounters him dead. It cannot be considered generosity when one becomes magnanimous at the moment he lies in the grave and his body has already decayed in the earth. Saint Basil wants the rich to show their love while they are alive, not to live luxuriously throughout life, remain unmoved by the condition of the poor, and only then benefit them when they themselves no longer need the wealth. He adds that no one trades after the end of the festival, nor competes as an athlete after the contests are finished. He also asks: who can guarantee the time and manner of death, and who can guarantee that wealth will not be seized after death? To plan to keep wealth for personal enjoyment while alive and give it to charity after death — when one will no longer be its master — is deceitful.
All that Saint Basil says aims at urging the rich to distribute their wealth and material goods to those who are in need — to offer them as a living sacrifice, for the dead do not offer sacrifice. One cannot do good with the leftovers of an entire lifetime, just as no one entertains honored guests with the scraps of a table. He exhorts the rich not to be enslaved by wealth, but to offer it to suffering brethren, so that they may always be spiritually rich. It is better to adorn living people than to carry one’s dead body to burial with luxury. It is better to give wealth to the poor while alive than to use it for a grand tomb, a lavish funeral, and expenses without spiritual profit. The best burial garment is piety. Clothed with this wealth, a person should depart from life. We must obey Christ, who loved us and became poor for our sake, so that we might become rich through His poverty.
4. The Pastoral Response to the Situation
Just as a physician, after diagnosing an illness, proceeds to its treatment, so too those who deal with the addressing of social problems must, beyond making a sound diagnosis, also arrive at correct ways of healing. The same is observed in the sermons of Saint Basil the Great.
A) AN EXHORTATION TO REPENTANCE
We saw earlier his view that the condition of drought in his time was due, among other things, to humanity’s estrangement from God; therefore, he urged people to repent.
However, when he speaks of repentance, he does not mean merely a feeling of remorse, but a state that is expressed in practice. It consists in washing the feet of strangers — that is, offering them hospitality, with the washing of the feet being the first sign of hospitality according to the custom of that time — feeding the orphan who has lost his father, caring for the widow who is afflicted, tearing up unjust promissory notes, abolishing the acknowledgement of exorbitant interest, tearing down storehouses and offering material goods to the poor who suffer, and opening one’s purses. Otherwise, he says, they themselves will die and be buried together with their gold, since gold is earth and will cover them. He even makes the important observation that because of the sins of a few, calamities break out upon the people as a whole, and thus the people are punished for the wickedness of some.
B) HE RECOMMENDS FAITH IN GOD AND PATIENCE IN TRIALS
A person must believe that God is the Lord of heaven and earth; He is the regulator of the seasons, He is powerful and good. People must acquire self-control and not resemble foolish children who, when their teachers rebuke them for their own good, tear up their books, or when their fathers delay giving them food for their benefit, tear their father’s clothes or scratch their mother’s face with their nails.
A person must realize that the storm tests the ship’s pilot, the arena tests the athlete, the camp tests the general, misfortune tests the courageous, and trial tests the Christian. Thus sorrows test the soul, just as fire tests and refines gold. Christians must hope in God. Within this perspective he mentions various figures from the Old Testament, such as Elijah, Daniel in the lions’ den, Habakkuk who was fed by an angel, the Israelites who journeyed through the desert under the guidance of Moses, and Job who endured calamity with patience.
C) THE AVOIDANCE OF GREED
He teaches his listeners to avoid greed, which creates many problems for a person. Greed is a great passion, similar to gluttony, since gluttons prefer to burst rather than give something from their excess to the poor. The same is true of greed. A person must become a servant of the good God and a steward of his fellow human beings, and must imitate Joseph by giving from what God has given him, as from a common source.
The greedy rich man, however, does not think of God or his poor brothers, but only of himself, imagining many years of enjoyment, while that very night he will die. A person should imitate the inanimate earth, which receives the seed, bears fruit, nurtures the produce, not for itself but to serve human beings. Just as the seed that falls into the earth becomes gain for the sower, so too the one who gives bread to the hungry receives benefit, because the end of agriculture becomes the beginning of the heavenly sowing.
When one offers to those who suffer, one becomes their father and will receive the corresponding reward. There are people who donate their wealth to theaters — that is, to pankration athletes, jesters, and beast-fighters — in order to receive the cheers and applause of the crowd. The rich man, however, should give material goods not for such acclaim, but to enjoy great glory from God. If this happens, God Himself will receive him, the angels will applaud him, all people will call him blessed, he will obtain eternal glory, be crowned with the crown of righteousness, and receive the rewards of the Kingdom of God.
He urges people not to wait for famine in order to profit, not to become merchants of human misfortunes, not to aggravate the wounds of those afflicted by calamity.
D) THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY AMONG HUMAN BEINGS
No one may appropriate for himself the goods given by God. In such a case, he resembles a person who enters a theater, occupies a seat, and prevents others from entering, thinking the theater belongs to him, when it is common to all. Unfortunately, this is the mentality of the rich, who appropriate common goods.
If everyone kept only what they needed, there would be neither poor nor rich. No one brought goods with him at birth, since we came naked from our mother’s womb and will return naked to the earth. If the rich think they acquired material goods by chance, they are atheists, because they neither know the Creator nor thank the Giver. If they believe they received them from God, then they must understand the purpose, so as to manage them well. God is not unjust to distribute unequally what is necessary for life. But the one who hoards material goods is greedy and deprives others of them. He is a robber, because he appropriates what he received in order to manage well. He is a thief, because he does not clothe the naked person, even though he could.
The bread the rich man keeps belongs to the hungry; the garment stored in wardrobes belongs to the naked; the shoes rotting in storehouses belong to the barefoot; the silver buried away belongs to the one who needs it. Thus, the rich man wrongs as many people as he could have benefited.
E) HARSH REBUKE OF THE MERCILESS RICH
Saint Basil faces a great social problem: on the one hand the entire city is hungry and suffering, and on the other hand the rich have gathered the goods of the earth into storehouses, waiting to enrich themselves through profiteering. Therefore, his words are very severe. He says that whoever does not care for those who are hungry, who sees them wasting away daily, must be counted among the beasts and considered a murderer. For this reason, at the Last Judgment God will honor the one who fed the hungry and gave water to the thirsty, while He will send the miser to Hell.
Thus, famine provides the opportunity to practice the foremost commandment of love. One must therefore offer the necessities to the hungry in order to receive much in return. To move those who have to give to the starving poor, he uses various examples from nature, the life of the pagans, and the Old and New Testaments.
Irrational animals graze on the same mountain, on the same pastures, and yield various parts of the land to one another. All eat the same food from the same field. But people who appropriate common goods and possess for themselves alone what belongs to all become harsher than irrational animals. Pagans — here he essentially alludes to the Spartan state — had instituted common meals, not out of philanthropy, and he urges Christians to imitate them.
He cites examples from the Old Testament and also recalls the early Church in Jerusalem, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, where everything was held in common: life, soul, unity, the common table, undivided brotherhood, sincere love that united all bodies into one and harmonized diverse souls into concord. Through all this, Christians are urged to help those who suffer and hunger.
He then sharply rebukes the hard-heartedness of the greedy person, who seeks to turn everything into gold and is never satisfied, multiplying it through loans. When wealth is kept locked in storehouses, it stagnates; eventually barriers break, storehouses collapse, and vaults are destroyed. Thus, he urges the rich man to open the doors of his vaults himself and give an outlet to wealth, which like a river, through various channels, will flow through the many paths of poor people’s lives. Praise from those benefited is great. Wealth must be offered to the poor, because when it stands idle it is useless. Wells, when drawn from, give more abundant water.
The thought of the foolish rich man who said, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; rest, eat, drink, and be merry” — a thought also expressed by the greedy in Saint Basil’s time — provokes him, and he rebukes this mentality with harsh words, saying:
“Oh, what madness! If you had the soul of a pig, what better message could you proclaim to it? How bestial you are, how senseless toward the goods of the soul, to greet it with the foods of the flesh. What ends up in the latrine — these are what you commend to the soul? If the soul possesses virtue, if it is full of good things, if it has made God its own, then it truly has many goods and should rejoice in the true joy of the soul. But since you think of earthly things, make your belly your god, and are wholly flesh, enslaved to passions, hear the name that befits you, given not by any human being but by the Lord Himself: ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared — whose will they be?’”
He urges the rich man not to build storehouses to gather material goods, but to make the homes of the poor his storehouses, to practice almsgiving without delay, lest death come. His words are characteristic:
“Tear down with your own hands what you have wrongly built. Break open the granaries from which no one has ever departed comforted. Destroy every building that guards greed. Remove the roof, demolish the walls, expose the moldy wealth to the sun, shatter the dark dens of Mammon.”
For the hungry waste away, the naked freeze from the cold, the debtor is suffocated by debts, and the rich man postpones almsgiving. When someone claims he has nothing to give because he is poor, in reality he is poor in charity, poor in faith in God, poor in eternal hope.
Finally, he urges his listeners to think of the present and the future, and not to betray their future through profiteering. A time will come when the body will leave the person and disappear in the grave, but a time will also come when bodies will rise, the soul will dwell again in the body, and an exact examination of the deeds of life will take place — not by others, but by one’s own conscience, which will then testify against him. He emphasizes that he does not say these things as some mother or nurse who frightens children with imaginary bogeymen to quiet them. What he says about eternal life is not a fairy tale, but has been proclaimed by the infallible voice of Christ. Thus, the day will come when to each person will be rendered by the righteous Judge according to his worth.
5. The Response of the Rich to His Exhortations
These exhortations of Saint Basil the Great did not remain fruitless. Saint Gregory the Theologian, in his "Funeral Oration for Saint Basil the Great," informs us that a famine struck Caesarea, “the most grievous of all those ever remembered,” that is, the most severe famine preserved in human memory. The entire city suffered, and there appeared to be no help from anywhere, no remedy for the affliction. In such hardships, as Saint Gregory writes, merchants and grain suppliers neither pity their relatives nor seek to please God.
Then Saint Basil the Great acted effectively. He could not make bread rain down from heaven through prayer, as Moses did; nor could he bring forth food from the bottom of a jar, as the Prophet Elijah did; nor could he feed thousands of people with five loaves, as Christ did. But through his word and his exhortations he opened the storehouses of the rich, and thus distributed food to those who were hungry, satisfied the poor with bread, nourished the people during the time of famine, and filled the hungry with good things.
He did this by gathering in one place those who were barely breathing, who were worthy of compassion, and he organized a collection of every kind of food, even providing meals of porridge and salted fish. He himself ministered to the poor and healed their souls, intertwining honor with necessity and bringing relief to them both in soul and in body. Therefore, Saint Gregory says of Saint Basil the Great: “Such was our new grain-provider and a second Joseph,” indeed accomplishing a far greater work than the former.
Beloved brethren,
I have tried to present the central ideas of the three social homilies of Saint Basil the Great, occasioned by the famine that then struck Caesarea, during which two opposing conditions became evident. On the one hand, there were people who were hungry and suffering, even dying of hunger; and on the other hand, there were greedy rich people who locked away in their storehouses the produce of God’s blessing, and kept their money hidden for the sake of their own comfort and with an eye toward greater enrichment — that is, profiteering. The Fathers of the Church, as we saw in Saint Basil, denounced such mentalities. They believed that the owner of the world is God: He created all things and all things belong to Him. Human beings are God’s creatures, His children, and they have equal rights upon the earth. We are brothers, and we ought to share material goods, each caring for his brother.
The social teaching of the Fathers of the Church does not begin from some philosophy or sociology, but from the theology of the fatherhood of God and of brotherhood in Christ.
We live in a difficult period, about which much is said. Certainly there is inequality in our society, which is due to human greed and love of money, and this is connected with hedonism. In reality, the State ought to enact laws according to the principle of justice. Unfortunately, however, laws are often unjust, and even those that exist are violated through lack of transparency and corruption. Everyone wants to drain the State, but also their brothers. Even in this case, here in our country, the State continually increases taxes, both indirect and direct, especially on wage earners, while it essentially leaves untouched those who have and possess much. Yet the problem is not solved in this way; rather, it becomes even greater. From the homilies of Saint Basil the Great that we examined earlier, it is clear what our duty is.
First, we clergy must be poor, or at least have only what is necessary for our sustenance. This applies especially to us monks. It is not possible for monks, who at their tonsure vowed to be without possessions, to be wealthy — with bank accounts and commercial companies — while people who have families and belong to our flock suffer in various ways and go hungry. Nor can we justify ourselves by appealing to paternal inheritance from wealthy parents, for we saw that Saint Basil sold his inheritance and donated it. With this perspective, we can rebuke the greedy and the usurers, and help, in our own way, to heal them from this dreadful disease.
Second, all Christians should live with simplicity and moderation, as the commandments of Christ recommend and as we see in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. We should connect the value of a human being with the fact that he or she is a creature of God, and not with material goods.
Third, all must assist those who truly lack the necessities to sustain themselves and their families. If we want to rid ourselves of greed, then every family should, from its surplus — or even from its lack — undertake to care for another family that is suffering; thus we will reduce poverty. Let us not expect everything from the State, because this is maximalism — that is, expecting the State first to be fully organized and then to satisfy all human needs. Would that this were possible, but unfortunately it is a utopia. Therefore, each one of us must assume his responsibilities. Since many of us consider that the problems afflicting our society are matters of lack of education, we must understand that callousness, indifference, and injustice in our society are indeed a lack of education — something for which we ourselves must find appropriate ways to be healed.
May the Three Hierarchs enlighten us to be sensitive to human pain, from wherever it comes, and to help in the solution of social problems.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
