By His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos
of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
Among the Holy Fathers who railed
against those who are unjustly rich, who are grounded in their material
assets, and who were indifferent towards injustice and the hunger
prevailing in society, was Basil the Great. It should be noted that
Basil the Great spoke about the hot social issues of his day, since
previously he himself had given an example. He had distributed to the
poor his large fortune and then became a Priest and then the Bishop of
Caesarea in Cappadocia. So he did not voice his concerns in his writings
merely theoretically. He first lived it and then taught it, which is
why his words were like thunder, since previously his life was
lightning.
Basil the Great worked
pastorally. He did not try to switch the resentment of the poor against
the rich to create hatred, but he tried to heal both the poor and the
rich to see things differently. When issues are addressed at the surface
they create bigger problems. So when talking about the uncertainty of
riches and how easily it changes when certain societal changes take
place, he then stresses that we should despise material goods. As I have
written previously, he did this to do pastoral work for the people. The
easiest thing is for one to deceive the people and throw out slogans
that only touch the surface. It is most difficult to treat the passions
of the people. By teaching contempt for material goods he wants to shift
the thinking of both the rich and the poor away from material goods, so
that they would cease thinking these are the only goods of the earth.
His words of contempt for material goods are not Manichean, but he makes
an effort to bring balance to society. Indeed there are two possible
situations on how one can handle material goods: the first is Idolatry
(to deify it) and the other is Manichean (to reject it). The Fathers of
the Church accepted neither the one nor the other, but they accepted
that material possessions are gifts from God, which must be offered back
as gifts to God and our fellow man.
When he needed to be fiery he
was. When he saw the rich boast about the power of their wealth, then he
was not silent. In one of his works he says that he considers the
perfect society to be that which banishes the acquisition of property
and the opposition of opinion (quarrels). However, when one studies the
entire teaching of Basil the Great, we see that he did not criticize
property ownership as much as he did the ownership of material goods. He
wanted to make the rich have a love for honor and give freely to those
who had need, and thus allow sharing to prevail upon the earth. He tries
to illustrate such sharing with many examples.
He uses the case of animals. The
sheep graze upon the mountains and the numerous horses enjoy the grass
of the earth from the same plain without quarrels between them. But we
grab onto what is to be common and appropriate that which belongs to
many.
He also uses physical arguments.
He says that the one who appropriates material goods is like a
spectator who is first to enter a theater and occupies the entire space
without allowing others to enter, because he considers it entirely his
own. Also, since a person is born naked and returns to the earth naked,
it is absurd to appropriate material goods because one rushed to acquire
it.
He even uses the argument of the
societal destination of material goods and wealth. Bread, he says,
belongs to the hungry, a robe to the naked, shoes to the barefoot,
silver to the poor. He who hides his goods and avoids clothing the naked
or feeding the hungry is no better than the thief who strips the hungry
of food and clothing. The Saint said these things in his day because it
was a time of hunger and the rich had full warehouses.
He also uses the example of the
early Church, in which everything was commonly shared: life, soul,
harmony, a table, a brotherhood and love that changed many people and
harmonized various souls to be in concord. This joint ownership should
be interpreted as sharing.
Beyond these things in the works
of Basil the Great, he also very much stressed the value of true
wealth, which is the Grace of Christ. A rich person without Christ is
destitute and a poor person with Christ is fabulously rich. Material
pleasures, he said, have more pain than physical pleasure. Riches have
their threats, sweets, satisfactions, and unremitting delights have
various illnesses and other passions. The Apostles had Christ and so
they had everything. The same happens with the Saints.
The Fathers of the Church tried
to solve the problems of their times based on God and the salvation of
man, and continuously sought to elevate people's minds to the true good,
which is God.
Source: Ekklesiastiki Paremvasi, "Ο ΜΕΓΑΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ Η ΚΟΙΝΟΧΡΗΣΙΑ", December 2007. Translated by John Sanidopoulos
.johnsanidopoulos.com
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