Famine's unnatural horrors and the call to seize the time for mercy

The suffering of famine has often compelled many to violate the very boundaries of nature: for a human being to touch the bodies of his own kind, and for a mother to receive back into her womb the child she brought forth from it. Jewish history acted out this tragedy, which the diligent Josephus recorded for us, when the terrible sufferings overtook the people of Jerusalem as they paid the just penalty for their impiety against the Lord. You see that our God himself often passes over other sufferings, yet is moved with compassion for the hungry. For I am moved with compassion, he says, for the crowd. Therefore in the final judgment, where the Lord summons the righteous, the generous person holds the first rank. The one who feeds others stands at the head of those who are honored. The one who supplied bread is called before all others. The good and open-handed person is escorted into life ahead of the rest of the righteous. The selfish and stingy person is handed over to the fire before all other sinners. The season calls you to the mother of the commandments. Be very careful, so that the season of the festal assembly and of reconciliations does not pass you by. For time flows on, and does not wait for the one who delays. The days press forward and pass by the sluggard. And just as it is impossible to stop the current of a river unless someone takes hold of it at its first approach and onset and puts the water to proper use, so too it is impossible to hold back time as it is driven on by its necessary cycles, or to bring back what has passed, unless someone seizes it as it comes. For this reason, grasp the commandment as though it were fleeing, and fulfill it; seize it from every side and hold it fast in your arms. Give a little, and gain much. Undo the first-formed sin by sharing food. For just as Adam, by eating wrongly, passed sin on, so we wipe out that treacherous eating if we heal a brother's need and famine. Peoples, hear! Christians, give ear! For thus says the Lord—not addressing the people in his own voice, but sounding through the mouths of his servants as through instruments. Let us not appear more savage than the brute beasts. For they use the things that grow from the earth as common property by nature. Flocks of sheep graze on one and the same mountain. Horses in great numbers feed on one and the same plain. And all creatures in their own way yield to one another the enjoyment of their necessary needs. But we hoard in our bosom what is common; we alone possess what belongs to the many. Let us be ashamed before the humane stories of the Greeks. Among some of them, a humane law makes one table and common food, one hearth for a whole populous people. But let us leave the outsiders and turn to the example of the three thousand. Let us imitate the first community of Christians: how everything was common among them—their life, their soul, their harmony, their table shared, their brotherhood undivided, their love unhypocritical, making the many bodies one and joining the different souls into a single concord. You have many examples of love for one another from the Old Testament and from the New. If you see an old man famishing, take him in and feed him, as Joseph fed Jacob. If you find an enemy in distress, do not let the anger that holds vengeance take hold of you; rather, feed him, as Joseph fed the brothers who had sold him.