The true meaning of poverty and the example of Lazarus

The poor man passes by sighing, having learned through his companions the blessed enjoyment of your fellow-sufferer. For you will find a precise judgment-court of the righteous Judge, in which the one who enjoyed pleasure sighs, and the one who lived in luxury is distressed; and each is carried to what is due to him.

And it happened that the poor man died and was carried by the angels into the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16:22). Do you see the ministers of the righteous and the poor, and the servants of the transfer? For angels were bearing him, looking at him calmly and gently, and by their appearance foretelling the healing and relief awaiting him. And he was placed, having been carried to the bosoms of the patriarch, which provides a starting point for the pleasureless to torture the depths of the Scriptures.

For if every dying person were carried to the same place, someone great would be a boundless bosom, capable of containing the multitude of the holy ones. But if this is utterly impossible, for a bosom, having been hollowed out, barely contains one man or with difficulty two, some divine vision receives us by the image of the sensible bosom, guiding us toward some intelligible reality.

What is being said? Abraham receives those who have lived a prosperous life. Tell me then, O law-giver Luke, as if to one present and visible, I will discourse with you: why, being among many righteous ones and elders of Abraham, did you allot this honor to the drunkard, remaining silent about Enoch, Noah, and if anyone else who was not following these during his life? But perhaps I understand you, and what I consider does not cast you out from your purpose.

Since Abraham is a servant of Christ, and this man received the manifestations of Christ differently from men, and the mystery of the Trinity was sufficiently expressed to us in the tent of this old man, when he welcomed the three angels as traveling companions; and simply, from many mystical enigmas, this man has become a familiar man of God, having later clothed himself in flesh and having clearly spoken to men through this human veil, therefore his bosom is like a pleasant harbor and an unshakeable rest.

He says it is the portion of the righteous. For in Christ is the salvation and the hope and the expectation of the coming age of all of us, through him having sprung from the flesh of Abraham according to the human lineage. And it seems to me that the honor concerning the old man has a reference to the Savior, who is also judge and rewarder of virtue, and with the therapeutic voice calling the righteous and saying: 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you' (Matt 25:34).

And the poor man came to die. There is a double significance concerning the poor man: one declaring the need of the necessary things, the other the moderation and the humility of character. Therefore, let him who lacks the things of the material world and labors for silver, being clothed in the garment of pity, claim the praise of virtue, and let him not consider the lack to be sufficient for salvation. For he who labors by necessity is not praised, but he who moderates his will freely is marveled at. Since for those who are destitute, if they have a way of life that is uneducated or uncontrolled, necessity becomes a supply for many and wicked daring acts. And I myself, all the wall-scrapers and men who walk on toes, and moreover looters and thieves and even murderers, if they ever passed by an official judgment, I have seen them as poor, unknown, destitute, and unhospitable.

From this it is evident that the Scripture now blesses that poor man who bears the hardships with a philosophical soul, enduring bravely toward the circumstances of life and doing no evil deed, so that he might be granted the enjoyment of luxury in the flesh. Whom the Lord also describes more clearly in the first of the beatitudes, saying: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit' (Matt 5:3). Therefore, not every poor man is righteous, but he who is like Lazarus; nor is every rich man rejected, but he who lives with such a choice of will as he who was contemporary with Lazarus; and of this, those who are witnesses through the trial of life are evident. For what is wealthier than the divine Job? And yet the extreme poverty did not alienate the man from righteousness, nor can one say it isolated him from virtue. What of the...