you give during these days of Lent. How, I mean to say, can you more justly
SERMON 208 113 sort of food you decide to give up, remember to keep your resolution with devoted self-restraint, and without making the sacrilegious mistake of condemn¬ ing as impure any of God's creatures.8
Those of you, too, who are married, take care at this time especially not to ignore the apostle's advice; but abstain from each other for a time, in order to have more leisure for prayer.9 Since it is profitable, after all, to do this at other times, it would be too shameless of you not to do it now. I don't think married couples should find it too burdensome to do this during these solemn days as a yearly observance, seeing that widows have promised to do it for the rest of their lives, and that holy virgins have undertaken it for the whole of their lives.
What self-restraint withdraws from pleasure, mercy may deposit with charity
2. Now again, it's really, in a sense, a duty to increase the amount of alms you give during these days of Lent. How, I mean to say, can you more justly spend what you save by denying yourselves this and that, than by showing kindness and generosity? And what could be more iniquitous than that what self-denial avoids spending should be hoarded by unabated avarice, or eaten up by spendthrift luxury? And so just think about to whom you owe what you deny to yourselves; so that what self-restraint withdraws from pleasure, mercy may deposit with charity.
What can I now say about that work of mercy, where nothing is doled out from your storerooms, nothing from your purses, but where something is let go from the heart, something which becomes more of a liability to you when it stays with you than when it leaves you? I'm talking about anger against somebody, stored up in the heart. Now what could be sillier than to avoid your enemy outwardly, and retain a much worse one in the depths of your heart? That's why the apostle says, Do not let the sun go down upon your anger, and immediately adds, nor give the devil a foothold (Eph 4:26-27). As much as to say that that is precisely what you do do, if you don't very quickly thrust anger out of your mind, because the devil can gain access through it, as through a door. So the very first thing to be done is to see that the sun does not go down upon your anger; otherwise the sun of justice (Mai 4:2) may abandon your mind.
But if anger has remained locked up in the breasts of any of you, at least let the approaching day of the Lord's passion thrust it out, because he, after all, was not angry with his killers, but as he hung on the cross poured out for them both his prayers and his blood.10 So if anger has boldly and shamelessly persisted in the breasts of any of you up to these holy days, at least now let it beat a retreat from there,11 so that your prayer may proceed without any anxiety or worry, and not stumble or stammer or grow dumb under the prickings of conscience, when it comes to the place where it has to say Forgive us our debts, as we too forgive our debtors (Mt 6:12). You are going to ask for something not to be paid back to you, and for something to be paid to you. So forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you (Lk 6:37-38).