Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or, What shall we drink, or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?.... seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
The words of the Lord in Matthew 6:31-33
During the exalted Pentecost season, the fifty days from Pascha to Pentecost, we read in Church from the Gospel according to St. John, which pre-eminently teaches the loftiest mysteries of the Faith: the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the true meaning of receiving grace through the Holy Spirit and entering into most intimate union with God. Starting during the week after Pentecost, however, we return to St. Matthew’s Gospel, and we begin with the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5,6, and 7 of Matthew), which teaches how we are to take the grace we have received and put it to work; in other words, how we are to live the Christian life.
Christ’s words are daunting of course; anyone who reads the Sermon on the Mount realizes that he does not, and probably feels he cannot, live according to these words. Even the greatest of the saints is imperfect compared to the commandments of the Gospel. Yet because we are Christians, we must admit that these teachings are the blueprint, the charter, for our life on earth, and therefore we must constantly strive to conform to them and simultaneously abide in constant humility for our failure to do so. Nowhere is the difficulty of Christ’s teachings more apparent than in His teaching on our attitude towards material goods: to take no thought for the morrow, not to lay up treasures on earth, to give whenever we are asked, not to demand re-payment of loans, etc. It seems to our earthly minds that this is a blueprint for financial ruin and that we would be irresponsible towards our families if we practiced it.
It is true that only monks are free to practice complete non-acquisitiveness literally; the Church, however, has always interpreted the Lord’s words as applying to people in the world at least to this extent:
- That the profit motive in itself is not a moral justification for anything we wish to do.
- That we must never charge interest on loans, especially to fellow Christians – in Orthodox Christian societies, money-lending as a source of income was completely forbidden, and usurers were denied Holy Communion.
- That employers must pay a genuine living wage, and that workers must give their employers a just amount of work willingly.
- That every Christian should give 10% of his income to the Church and in addition should give alms according to his ability.
- That every Christian should refrain from work for gain on Sunday and give the day to God.
- That skimping on tithes and alms in order to buy luxuries is sinful.
- That a Christian should accept financial losses with gratitude to God and trust in Him, for God allows these things for our salvation.
If we practice these things, or at least try, the Lord will reward us with unshakable hope and inner, spiritual peace which the world cannot take away.
The Sin of Usury
Canon 44 of the Holy Apostles says that whatever hierarch or priest or deacon who loans money to someone and then demands interest, must cease from this exploitation or be deposed. The same thing is commanded by Canon 10 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and Canon 4 of Laodicea, prohibiting anyone ordained from demanding 1% or even .5% a year on their loan…
… Laypeople as well must not demand interest, for as the divine Chrysostom says, if the Jews did not take interest from other Jews…what excuse do we Christians have who take interest, becoming even more savage than the Jews even after the grace of the Gospel and the Incarnate Economy of Christ? And Basil the Great, explaining the passage, “He hath not lent his money on usury (Psalm 14:5),” says that it is truly inhuman when a poor man borrows from a rich man…and then the rich man is not content with his assets but seeks to gather profit and interest from the misfortune of the poor man…
… For this reason the Novella of Emperor Leo decrees the following: “….we…have deemed it just for [the taking of interest] to be forever absent among the Christian polity, as unbecoming to such a life and forbidden by the divine Laws. Therefore Our Gentleness orders that no one for any reason has permission to take interest, lest in keeping the law of man, we transgress the Law of God…” Let the seal upon what has been said be Canon 29 of St. Nikiforos the Confessor, which prescribes that priests not commune those clergy and laity who do not cease from taking interest, and that no one eats with such persons.
-from the Exomologitarion of S. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain
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