Almsgiving

Saint Basil the Great:

 

The bread that you store up belongs to the hungry;
the cloak that lies in your closet belongs to the naked;
and the gold that you have hidden in the ground
belongs to the poor.

 

 

St. Basil the Great:

"We receive but never give; we extol charity but never practice it towards those in need.  Slaves we were, but we have been given freedom and yet we do not have sympathy for those who, like ourselves, are slaves of the Lord.  When we are hungry, we eat and yet we close our eyes to those in need.  We have God as our unfailing provider and dispenser, and yet we have ourselves stingy and mean towards the poor.  Our ewes have produced numerous sucklings and yet the poor are more numerous than the ewes.  Our barns and granaries are stuffed tight with produce, and yet we fail in our compassion for those in tight circumstances.  For all these things we are threatened with a just sentence....  Now, what punishment, do you think, should be inflicted on one who thoughtlessly passes by the hungry?  What cruely can surpass that?  Can we not see such a thoughtless person as a cruel beast and a murderer.  Indeed the person who can relieve such an infirmity and out of avarice refuses, deserves condemnation as a murderer."

(found in the book __Wealth and Poverty in the Teachings of the Church Fathers__ by Fr. James Thornton)

 

 

St. John of Kronstadt:

 

Alms-giving is good and salutary when to it is united the amendment of
the heart from pride, malice, envy, slothfulness, indolence, gluttony,
fornication, falsehood, deceitfulness, and other sins. But if the man is
not careful to amend his heart, trusting only to his alms, then he will
obtain but little benefit from them, for he builds with one hand and
destroys with the other.

From the Book "My Life in Christ"

St. John Chrysostom:

"Let us now be abased at His love, let us be ashamed at the excess of His loving-kindness, since He for our sakes spared not His Only-begotten Son, yet we spare our wealth to our own injury; He for us gave His own Son, but we for Him do not so much as despise money, nor even for ourselves.  And how can these things deserve pardon?  If we see a man submitting to sufferings and death for us, we set him before all others, count him among our chief friends, place in his hands all that is ours, and deem it rather his than ours, and even so do not think that we give him the return that he deserves.  But towards Christ we do not preserve even this degree of right feeling.  He laid down His life for us, and poured forth His precious Blood for our sakes, who were neither well-disposed nor good, while we do not pour out even our money for our own sakes and neglect Him who died for us, when He is naked and a stranger; and who shall deliver us from the punishment that is to come?"

 

 

St. John Chrysostom:

 

Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead.