Three things must be briefly explained concerning almsgiving: its necessity, its fruit, and the manner of it. And indeed, that there is some precept commanding the giving of alms, no one has ever called into doubt. For even if we had nothing else, the sentence of the most just and supreme Judge would suffice abundantly — He who at the last judgment will say to the wicked: "Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me not in; naked, and you covered me not; sick and in prison, and you did not visit me." And a little after He added: "As long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me" (Matt. 25). From this passage we can understand that only those are bound to give alms who are able to do so. For even the Lord Himself is not read to have done those works, but only to have ordered that some portion of the money given to Him be distributed to the poor; as can be understood from that passage of the Gospel where, when the Lord had said to Judas, "That which thou dost, do quickly" (John 13), the disciples supposed that the Lord had commanded Judas to give something to the needy out of the purse which he carried. Theologians, however, hold that this precept is contained in that precept of the Decalogue, "Honor thy parents"; others, in this one, "Thou shalt not kill." But it is not necessary that this precept be contained in the Decalogue, since almsgiving pertains to charity, whereas the precepts of the Decalogue are precepts of justice. But if all moral precepts are to be referred to the Decalogue, the opinion of Albert the Great is probable (in the Sentences, dist. 15, art. 16): he refers the precept of giving alms to this, "Thou shalt not steal," since not to give the poor what we owe them seems to be a kind of theft. But the opinion of St. Thomas seems more probable, who reduces this precept to the first of the second table, "Honor thy parents" (II-II, q. 32, art. 5). For the honor of parents is not understood in that place as reverence alone, but chiefly as the provision of things necessary for life, which is a kind of alms that we owe to our principal neighbor, as St. Jerome explains in his commentary on the fifteenth chapter of St. Matthew. From this it is understood that alms are owed also to our other neighbors who are in need. Add to this that the precept of almsgiving is not negative but affirmative; and among the precepts of the second table there is no affirmative one except the first, which is "Honor thy parents." But to dispute these matters more fully is not the purpose of this place. And so much for the necessity of almsgiving.
Now indeed the fruit of almsgiving is most abundant. For first, almsgiving delivers from everlasting death, whether this be by way of satisfaction, or by way of disposition to grace, or in some other way. For divine Scripture teaches this clearly. In the book of Tobit we read thus: "Alms deliver from all sin and from death, and will not suffer the soul to go into darkness" (Tob. 4); and in the same book the Angel Raphael says in express words: "Alms deliver from death; and the same is that which purgeth away sins, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting" (Tob. 12). And Daniel says to King Nebuchadnezzar: "Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to thee, and redeem thou thy sins with alms, and thy iniquities with works of mercy to the poor" (Dan. 4).
Secondly, almsgiving, if it be done by a just man and out of true charity, has the merit of eternal life; of which truth Christ, the judge of the living and the dead, will be witness, when in the judgment He shall say: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat," etc.; and below: "As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me" (Matt. 25).
Thirdly, almsgiving has the force of a kind of baptism — namely, of blotting out sins both as to guilt and as to punishment at once — as Ecclesiasticus says: "Water quencheth a flaming fire, and alms resisteth sins" (Sir. 3). For water extinguishes fire utterly, so that not even smoke remains; and the holy Fathers teach this very thing: Cyprian, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Leo. St. Cyprian in his sermon on almsgiving says thus: "As by the laver of saving water the fire of hell is extinguished, so by almsgiving and works of righteousness the flame of sins is quenched."
St. Ambrose in his thirty-first sermon: "Almsgiving," he says, "is in a certain way a second laver for souls, as the Lord says: 'Give alms, and all things are clean unto you'; except that — if we may say so without prejudice to the faith — almsgiving is more generous than the laver: for the laver is given once and promises pardon once, but as often as you give alms, so often do you obtain pardon." St. John Chrysostom in the twenty-fifth homily on the Acts of the Apostles: "There is no sin," he says, "which almsgiving cannot purge, or which it cannot extinguish." St. Leo in the fifth sermon On the Collections: "Alms," he says, "blot out sins, put an end to death, and extinguish the punishment of everlasting fire." This, truly, is a great prerogative of almsgiving, and it ought to inflame all men with a love of almsgiving. But this seems to be understood not of just any almsgiving, but only of that which proceeds from great contrition and a great ardor of charity; such as was that of St. Mary Magdalene, who bedewed the feet of the Lord with tears of contrition, and with the alms of most precious ointment anointed those same feet.
Fourthly, almsgiving increases confidence with God and produces spiritual joy. For although this is common to almsgiving with every good work, yet it belongs in a special way to almsgiving, since by it we render a service pleasing both to God and to our neighbor at once; and it is a work which is recognized as good not obscurely, but most plainly. Hence that word of Tobit: "Alms shall be a great confidence before the most high God, to all them that give it" (Tob. 4); and that of the Apostle: "You had compassion on them that were in bands; do not therefore lose your confidence" (Heb. 10). Finally, St. Cyprian in his sermon on almsgiving calls it the great comfort of believers.
Fifthly, almsgiving wins the good will of many, who pray to God for their benefactors and obtain for them either the grace of conversion, or the gift of perseverance, or an increase of grace and glory. For in all these ways the word of the Lord can be understood: "Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that, when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings" (Luke 16).
Sixthly, almsgiving is a disposition to justifying grace. Of this fruit Solomon speaks in Proverbs, where he says: "By alms and by faith sins are purged away" (Prov. 15). And the Lord, when He had heard the liberality of Zacchaeus — "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man of anything, I restore him fourfold" — said: "This day is salvation come to this house" (Luke 19). Lastly, in the Acts of the Apostles we read that it was said to Cornelius, who was not yet a Christian but was a generous giver of alms: "Thy alms are ascended for a memorial in the sight of God" (Acts 10). From which passage St. Augustine proves (On the Predestination of the Saints, bk. 1, ch. 7) that Cornelius by his alms obtained from God the grace of Christian faith and of perfect justification.
Seventhly and lastly, almsgiving is often a cause for the increase of temporal goods. This the Wise Man affirms when he says: "He that hath mercy on the poor, lendeth to the Lord"; and again: "He that giveth to the poor shall not want" (Prov. 19; Prov. 28; John 6). The same the Lord taught by His own example, when He bade His disciples distribute to the crowds the five loaves and the two fishes which alone they had, and brought it about that they received twelve baskets full of fragments of bread and of fish, which could have sufficed them for many days. Tobias also, who generously shared his goods with the poor, soon acquired great riches. The widow of Zarephath also (1 Kings 17), who gave the little flour and oil she had to the Prophet Elijah as alms, obtained by the blessing of God that for a long time neither flour nor oil failed her. There are besides a great many examples, most worthy of being read, in Gregory of Tours, in the fifth book of his History of the Franks; in Leontius, in his Life of St. John the Almsgiver; and in Sophronius, in the Spiritual Meadow, chapters 185 and 201. St. Cyprian confirms the same in his sermon on almsgiving, and St. Basil in his homily to the rich, where by an elegant comparison he likens riches to the water of wells, which, if they are drawn frequently, are wont to spring up ever better and more copious, but if they are left standing they stagnate. Avaricious rich men will not gladly hear these things, and will scarcely believe them; but after this life they will understand and believe them to be true, when to understand or to believe will profit them nothing. It remains for us to write something on the manner of giving alms, for this above all other things is necessary, that we may live piously and holily and die most happily. First, then, it is necessary that we give alms with a most upright intention of pleasing God, not to court popular favor. For our Lord teaches this in express words when He says: When you give alms, do not sound a trumpet; and let not your left hand know what your right hand does (Matt. 6). St. Augustine explains this passage (Tract. 6) in his exposition of the Epistle of St. John, where by the left hand he understands the intention of giving alms for temporal honor, or for any other temporal advantage; by the right hand, he says, is signified the intention of giving alms to gain eternal life, for the glory of God, and out of charity toward one's neighbor. Secondly, alms must be given promptly and readily, so that they may not seem extorted by entreaties, nor deferred from day to day, if they can be given at once: Say not, says the Wise Man, Go, and come again tomorrow, and I will give to you, when you can give at once (Prov. 3:28). Abraham (Gen. 18), the friend of God, asks his guests to turn aside to him; he does not wait to be asked by them. His nephew, the just Lot, did the same (Gen. 19). So also Tobias (Tob. 2) did not wait for the poor to come to him, but sought them out himself.
Thirdly, it is required that alms be given cheerfully, not with sadness; In every gift, says
Ecclesiasticus, show a cheerful countenance (Sir. 35). And the Apostle: not with sadness, or of necessity: for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9).
Fourthly, it is necessary that alms be given humbly, so that the rich man understands that he receives more than he gives: on this matter St. Gregory speaks thus: "It avails much for taming the pride of a rich man if, when he bestows earthly goods, he carefully ponders the words of the heavenly Master, who says: 'Make friends for yourselves of the mammon of iniquity, so that when you fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.' For if by their friendship we acquire everlasting dwellings, those who give must surely reflect that they offer gifts to patrons rather than bestow donations on the needy" (Morals, Book 21).
Fifthly, alms must be bestowed abundantly according to the measure of one's means, for so teaches Tobias, that illustrious almsgiver: According to your means, he says, be merciful; if you have much, give abundantly; if you have little, strive to bestow even that little willingly (Tob. 4). And the Apostle (2 Cor. 9) teaches that alms are to be given as a blessing, not as covetousness; and St. John Chrysostom adds: "Not to give, but to give copiously, is almsgiving." And in the same sermon he adds that those who wish to be heard when they say to Him, Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy, ought also to have mercy on the poor according to the greatness of their own alms (Sermon 31 to the people of Antioch).
Finally, it is necessary above all other things that he who wishes to be saved, and so to die well, diligently inquire — either by himself through reading and meditation, or through men truly learned and pious — whether superfluous riches can be kept without sin, or must necessarily be given to the poor; and again, which are necessary. For it can happen that to one man moderate wealth is superfluous, while to another a great abundance of riches seems plainly necessary. And since this little work of mine neither requires nor permits a lengthy treatment of scholastic questions, I will here briefly note the passages of Sacred Scripture and of the Doctors, both ancient and more recent, and so bring this part of the subject to a close. The passages of Scripture are these: Matthew 6, You cannot serve God and mammon; Luke 3, He who has two coats, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise; in Luke 12 it is said to the rich man who had so many goods that he hardly knew where to store them: Fool, this night do they require your soul of you. These words St. Augustine so expounds in the fiftieth book of the Homilies, the seventh homily, that that rich man perished forever because he kept superfluous riches.
The chief passages of the holy Fathers are these. St. Basil in his homily to the rich: "But you, he says, are you not a robber, you who count as your own what you received to dispense?" and a little further on: "Therefore, he says, you injure as many poor men as you are able to give to." St. Ambrose in his eighty-first sermon: "What injustice is it, he says, if, while I do not seize the goods of others, I diligently keep what is my own? O shameless saying! Your own, you say? Which?" and below: "It is no less a crime to refuse the needy when you are able and have abundance, than to take from one who has." St. Jerome in his letter to Hedibia, question one: "If you have more, he says, than is necessary for your food and clothing, know that you are a debtor for the surplus." St. John Chrysostom in his thirty-fourth homily to the people of Antioch: "For is it your own that you possess? he says. The goods of the poor have been entrusted to you, whether you possess them from just labors or from a paternal inheritance." St. Augustine in his treatise on Psalm 147: "The superfluities of the rich, he says, are the necessities of the poor; other men's goods are possessed when superfluities are possessed." St. Leo in his fifth sermon On the Collections speaks thus: "Earthly and bodily means come from the bounty of God, who will deservedly demand an account of them, since He entrusted them to be dispensed no less than to be possessed." St. Gregory in the third part of the Pastoral Care, the twenty-second admonition: "They are to be admonished, he says, who neither covet the goods of others nor give away their own, that they may know well that the earth from which we are taken is common to all men, and therefore also brings forth nourishment for all in common; and they think themselves innocent in vain who claim the common gift of God for themselves privately." St. Bernard in his letter to Henry, Archbishop of Sens, speaks thus: "It is ours, the poor cry out, what you squander; that is cruelly taken from us which you spend so vainly." St. Thomas in the Secunda Secundae, question sixty-six, article seven: "The goods, he says, which some have in superabundance belong by natural right to the support of the poor"; and in question eighty-seven, article one: "The Lord, he says, commands that not only a tenth part but all that is superfluous be given to the poor." Finally, the same author, writing on the fourth book of the Sentences at the fifteenth distinction, testifies that this very doctrine is the common teaching of all theologians. I add at this point that even if someone should wish to contend that, by the strict rigor of the law, superfluous goods need not be given to the poor, yet he will not be able to deny that this must at least be done out of charity. It matters little, however, whether one descends into hell from a defect of justice or from a defect of charity.