to help them with suitable supports, let us also be more fervent in distributing
116 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS
We should add to alms what we subtract from ourselves by fasting and abstaining from our usual diet
2. But during these days our prayers should be more than usually fervent; so to help them with suitable supports, let us also be more fervent in distributing alms; we should add to them what we subtract from ourselves by fasting and abstaining from our usual diet. Though as a matter of fact, those of you who are prevented by some needs of your bodies or the requirements of a special diet from abstaining, and so adding to the poor person's dish what you subtract from your own, should be even more generous in your alms, and give more to the poor precisely because you don't take anything away from yourselves.4 At least in this way, since you are less able to give a boost to your prayers by chastising the body, you will ensure, by enclosing more abundant alms in the heart of the poor, that it can pray for you. That is the salutary advice of the holy scriptures, eminently well worth following: Enclose your alms, it says, in the heart of a poor man, and there it will pray for you effectively (Sir 29:12, Vulg).
Nobody should take such pleasure in the goodness of being generous, as to forfeit the goodness of being humble
3. I must also remind those of you who abstain from meat, not to shun the pots in which it has been cooked as though they were impure.5 The apostle, after all, speaking about this sort of thing, says, To the pure all things are pure (Ti
1:15). You see, the point of such observances, according to sound doctrine, is not to shun ritual impurities, but to curb our appetites. So it is too, that those people who refrain from eating meat in order to hunt up other kinds of food that are both more expensive and more difficult to prepare, have got the wrong end of the stick entirely. I mean, that isn't undertaking self-denial, but just changing your kind of self-indulgence. How am I going to tell these people to give to the poor what they deprive themselves of, when they give up their usual diet, only to spend more than ever on obtaining another sort? So during these days, please, be more regular in fasting, more sparing in what you spend on yourselves, more generous in what you bestow on the poor.
These days also require abstinence from marital relations. For a time, says the apostle, so that you may have more leisure for prayer; and then come together again, in case Satan should tempt you on account of your lack of self control (1 Cor 7:5).6 This, surely, is not very taxing or difficult for faithful married couples just for a few days, seeing that widows have undertaken it from a certain point in their lives to the very end, and that the holy virgins manage it for the whole of life.
And in all these things be fervent and devoted, while suppressing every inclination to be proud of yourselves. Nobody should take such pleasure in the goodness of being generous, as to forfeit the goodness of being humble. None of God s other gifts make anything have the slightest value, unless they are tied together with the bond of love.