Prologue in Sermons: December 7

Against Those Who Reject God's Providence

December 7
 
(About Almsgiving, For He Who Gives Alms to the Poor, Gives to Christ and Will Receive a Hundredfold)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

There are people who, no matter how they receive miraculous help from God, always try to attribute it not to God, but to chance alone. "I was in a desperate situation," says someone, "misfortune threatened me, but then such an extraordinary chance came along and saved me." What can we say about such people? I think the same as the word of God says about them: a sinner, when he reaches the depths of evil, is negligent. Indeed, negligent! For he does not notice how unbelief has overtaken him, how much ingratitude to God, coldness, and, perhaps, hard-heartedness lie within him. Should Christians have this attitude toward God's acts of mercy? No; not only should we ourselves always firmly believe that all help to us comes from the Lord, who created heaven and earth, but we must also constantly instill in others that the Lord is the constant helper and protector of all who believe in Him, and through this, he should also bring unbelievers to their senses.

There was a Christian woman whose husband was a pagan. They were both poor, and their entire fortune consisted of only fifty pieces of silver. One day, the husband said to his wife, "Let's lend our money at interest; otherwise, we will never see it grow." The wife replied, "I agree: just give it to the Christian God." "And where is He?" asked the husband. "In time, you will come to know Him," said the wife, "and don't worry about the money you give Him; He will return it to you with interest." The husband agreed, and the pious wife brought him to church. There, pointing to the beggars, she said to him, "Through these people, give the money to the Christian God; these people are sent from Him, and He will take it from them." The husband distributed the silver pieces and, believing his wife's promise, joyfully returned home. But three months later, poverty befell him. Where could he get money? He turned to his wife, "Isn't it time to ask the Christian God for my debt?" She said, "Well then? Where you gave it, you'll receive it. Go to church." The husband arrived. Seeing only beggars there, he was perplexed: who should he ask for money? Walking around the church in thought, he suddenly saw a silver coin lying on the floor. He took it, brought it home, and sadly said to his wife, "I didn't see any Christian God in the church, I didn't collect my debt, and yet, right where I gave the money, I picked up this one piece of silver." His wife replied, "The Christian God gave you this piece of silver, and the fact that you haven't seen Him is because He is invisible and governs the world by an invisible power. Go, buy us food for today, and tomorrow the Lord will give you money again." He fulfilled his wife's wish and brought her bread, wine, and fish. While cleaning the latter, she suddenly found an unusual stone and showed it to her husband. He took it to a silver merchant and offered to buy it. The silver merchant set a price of five pieces of silver. Not knowing the stone's value and thinking it insignificant, the merchant thought the buyer was mocking him by offering what he considered such a high price, and said, "Are you really going to give me that much?" The merchant, seeing that the stone was precious, also took the seller's words as mockery and offered ten pieces of silver. The seller, meanwhile, remained silent, and the merchant kept raising the price, finally reaching fifty pieces of silver. When he reached that sum, the merchant thought, "So my stone really is precious, when people are offering so much for it," and then began to significantly increase the price himself. After much wrangling, they finally settled on three hundred pieces of silver, and the seller, taking them, joyfully returned to his wife. When he showed her such a large sum, she said to him, "Do you see how good the Christian God is? Know then that there is no other God in heaven or on earth, but He alone." Her husband then became a Christian.

Awake, hardened hearts, who dare to attribute both God's very blessings and everything that happens in the world to some blind chance, and emerge from the terrible state of unbelief. Oh, how unforgivable is your ingratitude to God, and how disastrous is your spiritual blindness, when, hearing, you do not hear of God's providence, and seeing, you do not see it! If you do not believe, then learn to believe, at least from pagans, like the one we just spoke of. If you do not believe them, then inquire about God's providence even from the animals themselves, and they will tell you about it. "Ask the beasts," says Job, "and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; speak to the earth, and it will instruct you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?" (Job 12:7–9). Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.