On Wealth and Poverty, St. John Chrysostom
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Throughout On Wealth and Poverty, St. John Chrysostom gives us an understanding of what morality is by analyzing the passage Luke 16: 19-31. While Chrysostom never directly defines morality in his sermons, we are able to understand what it means to be a moral person through them. Also, how to have a conscious that rewards us for the good we have done and isnt a chamber of punishment (34-35). His sermons discuss the matter of how to treat another human, helping the poor, slavery, and expecting our faults and sufferings.
As children of God we must treat each person the same. In Luke, the rich man shows no sensitivity to Lazarus, the poor man, and day after day the rich man ignores him and watches him suffer. Chrysostom believed that eventually a moral person would not only show sympathy to the poor man but also help him. “Again, it is not the same thing to see a poor man once or twice and pass him by, as to look at him every day and not be aroused by the persistent sight to mercy and generosity. (22)” He goes a step further and says that it is not the decision of the moral person to help, but their duty to the poor and God. That it is theft not to share ones possessions (49), regardless of the morality of those in need (12).
According to Chrysostom a moral person would never keep salves. “For me the person of high rank belongs to the lowest class if he has a slavish soul. (112)” Slavery is considered evil because it was formed from sin, in the story of Noah (115). So, Chrysostom believes that for humans to have slaves is evil, a sin, and immoral.
Chrysostom makes the point that for one to get through the narrow gate to eternal glory or to heaven, we must suffer first in this life. His argument for this is that God tests the ones he loves (36). While Lazaruss suffering is made clear through his poverty and soars, the rich man needed to look for other ways to suffer in this life. A person must self examine themselves in this life, to avoid punishment in the afterlife: they must be fair and honest with themself, resist unneeded luxuries (66), look for ways to bring correction to this life, repair debts that need forgiven by God, and repent (71). Only through tribulation, not only by the sinner but by the righteous too, can God truly love us all.
A final point that Chrysostom makes regarding morality is that for a person to truly be moral and live without sin, they must always remember the end of their life. “While we are here, we have good hopes; when we depart to that place, we have no longer the option of repentance, nor of washing away our misdeeds. For this reason we must continuously make ourselves ready for departure from here.
(45)” If we prepare ourselves to be in front of Gods judgment at any given moment, Chrysostom believes then the only possible way to act is moral.
When I look at Chrysostom and how he discusses morality I would say that