Homily in Time of Famine and Drought

1A lion roars, and who will not be afraid? The Lord God has spoken, and who will not prophesy? (Amos 3:8). Let us make the opening of this discourse prophetic, and let us take the God-inspired Amos as our partner for the need before us, since he healed sufferings like the evils now troubling us. We set out his counsel and judgment about what is beneficial. For this same prophet, in the course of the times above, when the people had abandoned their ancestral piety, trampled the exactness of the laws, and slipped away into the worship of idols, became a herald of repentance: urging them to turn back, and holding before them the threat of punishments.

For my part, let it be granted by prayer that I may draw on the old history as an example up to a point—but may I no longer see the outcome of what happened then follow in the same way. For the people disobeyed, and like a hard and unbridled colt biting the bit, they were not drawn toward what was beneficial. They turned aside from the straight road and ran so wildly, and snorted against the charioteer, until they fell into pits and over cliffs and endured total destruction as the worthy reward of their disobedience. May that not happen now among us, my children, whom I have begotten through the Gospel, whom I have swaddled through the blessing of my hands.

But let there be a receptive ear, a compliant soul, receiving the exhortations softly, yielding to the speaker, as wax to the one sealing—so that through this one effort I may receive a fruit that gladdens my labors, and you may praise the exhortation given when the time of deliverance from these terrors comes.

What then is it that the discourse points to, but still holds your souls suspended in hope of hearing, delaying to make public what is expected? We see the sky, brothers: impervious, bare, and cloudless, producing this gloomy clear weather, and grieving us by the very clarity that we once desired so much, when it was covered for a long time with clouds and made us dark and sunless. The earth, dried up to the extreme, is unpleasant to look at, barren for farming and unfruitful, split into cracks and receiving the blazing ray into its depths. The rich and ever-flowing springs have failed us, and the streams of great rivers have been used up. The smallest children trample them underfoot, and women pass over with their loads. For most of us even drinking water has failed, and we stand in perplexity about how to live.

Young Israelites seek a new Moses and a rod that works wonders, so that rocks may be struck again and heal the need of the thirsty people, and marvelous clouds may rain down unaccustomed food—manna—upon human beings. Let us beware lest we become a new story for later generations about famine and punishment.

I saw the fields, and I wept much over their barrenness. I poured out lamentation, because no rain was poured out upon us. Some of the seeds dried up before they sprouted, remaining in the clods just as the plow had hidden them. Others, after peeping out a little and sprouting, were pitifully withered by the burning heat. So now one might fittingly reverse the Gospel saying: The workers are many, but the harvest is not even a little (Matthew 9:37).

2The farmers sit on their fields, clasping their hands over their knees—the very posture of mourners—and weep over their useless labors. They look at their little children and lament; they gaze at their wives and grieve; they touch and feel the dry stalks of their crops and cry out loudly, like fathers who have lost sons in the flower of youth. Let the same prophet I mentioned a moment ago in the introduction speak to us as well: “I withheld the rain from you three months before the harvest. I will send rain on one city, and on another city I will send no rain. One field will be soaked, and the field on which I send no rain will wither. Two or three cities will gather to one city to drink water, and they will not be satisfied, because you did not turn back to me, says the Lord” (Amos 4:7-8). Let us learn, then, that God sends these blows upon us because of our turning away and neglect—not seeking to destroy us, but eager to set us right, like good fathers with careless children, who grow angry with the young and rise up against them, not because they are eager to do them harm, but to lead them from childish indifference and the sins of youth into careful living. You see, then, how the multitude of our sins has driven the seasons out of their own natures and changed the character of the times into strange mixtures. Winter did not have its usual moisture alongside the dry cold; instead the frost bound up and dried out every trace of dampness, and the season passed without snow or rain. Spring, in turn, displayed one part of its proper qualities—the warmth, I mean—but had no share of moisture. Scorching heat and biting cold, strangely overstepping the boundaries of creation and wickedly conspiring together for our harm, drive human beings from their livelihood and their very life. What, then, is the cause of this disorder and confusion? What is this innovation in the seasons? Let us search it out, as people with understanding; let us reason it through, as rational beings. Is there no one steering the universe? Has God the master-craftsman forgotten his governance? Has he been stripped of authority and power? Or does he still hold the same strength and has not lost his might, but has been carried away into harshness, and has turned his great goodness and care for us into hatred of humanity? No one in his right mind would say that. Rather, the causes are plain and clear, and they explain why we are not governed in the usual way. We receive, but we do not give to others. We praise generosity, and we rob the needy of it. We are slaves, and we are set free, yet we do not pity our fellow slaves. We are hungry, and we are fed, yet we pass by the one in want. We have God as a provider and steward who lacks nothing, yet we have become stingy and selfish toward the poor. Our sheep bear many young, and the naked are more numerous than the sheep. Our storehouses are cramped by the abundance of what is stored in them, and we do not pity the one in distress. This is why the righteous judgment threatens us. This is why God does not open his hand: because we have shut the door on love for one another.

3That is why the fields lie dry, because love has grown cold (Matthew 24:12). The voice of those pleading with God cries out for nothing and scatters on the air. For we ourselves did not listen to those who asked us.

What kind of prayer and pleading is ours? You men, except for a few, give your time to business, and you women serve them in working for mammon. Few are left with me in prayer, and even they are dizzy and yawning and constantly turning about, watching for when the singer will finish the verses, for when they will be released from the church and from the demand of prayer as if from a prison.

These smallest schoolboys have laid aside their tablets in the classrooms and are shouting with us, but they treat the matter as a break and a delight and make a holiday of our grief, since they are freed for a little while from the burden of the teacher and the care of lessons. Meanwhile the crowd of grown men and the people entangled in sins stroll through the city at ease and free and cheerful. They carry in their souls the cause of our evils. They set this disaster in motion and brought it about.

But senseless and blameless babies are hurried in and gathered for confession, though they have no grasp of the reason for our grief and no knowledge or strength to pray as we usually do. Come forward into the midst, you who are smeared with sins. Fall down and weep and groan. Let the baby act in ways that fit its age. Why do you hide when you stand accused and put forward one who cannot answer as your defense? Is the judge not mocked, that you should bring in a substituted face? That baby should be here with you in any case, not by itself.

You see how the Ninevites, seeking to win God over by remorse and mourning for the sins that Jonah proclaimed after the sea and the sea monster, did not put the babies alone forward to repentance while they themselves went on living in luxury and feasting. Fasting first tamed the fathers who had sinned, and punishment first afflicted the fathers, and the babies mourned under constraint as an addition, so that gloom prevailed through every age, the sentient and the insentient, the one by choice and the other by necessity. When God saw them humbled, condemning themselves wholly as if for a misery beyond themselves, he pitied their suffering and released them from punishment and gave joy to those who had mourned with true feeling. O harmonious repentance! O wise and concentrated affliction! They did not even leave the animals without reason without a share in punishment, but contrived by necessity to make them also cry out.

The calf was separated from the cow, and the lamb was driven from its mother's teat, and no nursing child was in its mother's arms. The mothers were in their own pens and the young in their own, and pitiful cries from all sides answered and echoed one another. The young, starving, sought the sources of milk, and the mothers, torn by natural feeling, called back their offspring with cries of fellow suffering. The babies, starving in the same way, burst open with the most violent weeping and writhed, and the mothers were pierced to the inward parts by natural pangs.

4And for this reason the God-inspired word preserved their repentance in writing as a common teaching for life. The old man among them mourned, and tore and scattered his gray hair. The young man, in his prime, wailed all the more violently. The poor man groaned. The rich man, forgetting his luxury, practiced hardship like a man of self-control. Their king turned his splendor and glory into shame. He laid aside his crown and poured dust over his head. He threw off his purple robe and put on sackcloth instead. He left his high and lofty throne and was dragged pitiably along the ground. Abandoning his private royal comfort, he mourned together with the people. He became one of the many when he saw the common Master of all angry. This is the mindset of sensitive servants. Such is the repentance of those entangled in sins. But we carry out sin intensely, and carelessly and idly we take up the repentance. Who has prayed and shed a tear, so as to receive rain and timely drops? Who, wiping away sins in imitation of the blessed David, has wet his bed with lamentations? Who has washed the feet of strangers and rinsed off the dust of their journey, so as to move God at the right time, seeking release from the drought? Who has fed a child bereft of its father, so that now God may feed our crops, which are being battered like an orphan by the violence of the winds? Who has cared for a widow afflicted by the hardships of life, so that now the necessary food may be measured out to us? Tear up the unjust contract, so that in this way the sin may be dissolved. Erase the record of the heaviest interest, so that the earth may give birth to its usual produce. For while bronze and gold, things sterile by nature, are producing unnaturally, the earth that gives birth according to nature becomes barren, and has been condemned to fruitlessness for the punishment of its inhabitants. Let those who honor greed, then, those who gather wealth to excess, show what the power of their hoarded things is, or what the benefit is, if God in anger prolongs the punishment further. Those who heap up gold will perhaps become paler than the gold itself, unless they have bread—the bread that until yesterday and the day before was despised because of the ready abundance at hand. Suppose there is no one selling, and no grain in the storehouses: what is the use of the most oppressive money-bags? Tell me. Will you not be buried with them? Is not gold earth? Will not useless clay lie beside clay, the body? You acquired everything, and you do not have the one necessary thing: the power to feed yourself. With all your wealth you have not produced a single cloud. Devise a channel for a few drops. Urge the earth to bear fruit. Loose the disaster from your proud and swaggering wealth. Perhaps you will call upon one of the devout, so that by his prayers, like Elijah the Tishbite, he may grant you relief from these terrors—a man without possessions, pale, barefoot, without house, without hearth, without resources, covered by a single tunic, as Elijah was by his sheepskin, having prayer as his constant companion and self-control as his housemate. And if you obtain help from such a man when you ask, will you not soon laugh at your many-cared-for possessions? Will you not spit upon gold? Will you not throw away silver like dung—silver which you formerly called all-powerful and dearest, but which you have now recognized as a helpless ally in time of need? For your sake he also condemned this disaster, since you had and did not give; since you passed by the hungry; since you did not turn toward those who were weeping; since you were honored and did not show mercy.

5Evils also come upon a whole people because of a few, and a people suffers from someone's wickedness. Achan committed sacrilege, and the whole army was scourged. Zimri in turn committed fornication with the Midianite women, and Israel fell under punishment. Let us all therefore examine our lives, both privately and together, so that we may attend to the drought as to a tutor, reminding each of us of his own sin. Let us also say with feeling the words of the noble Job: “The hand of the Lord has touched me” (Job 19:21). And above all, let us reckon the disaster as primarily due to our own sins. But if we must add another point, such hardships of life are sometimes brought upon people as a test for their souls, so that in difficulty the approved may be proved, whether poor or rich; for both are tested precisely through endurance. And especially at this time it is revealed whether one is generous and loving toward others, or whether he is thankful and not, on the contrary, blasphemous, quickly changing his mind along with life's reversals. I know many people—not from hearsay, but from knowing them by experience—who, as long as their life is measured out toward prosperity and runs, as the saying goes, with a fair wind, at least moderately, if not perfectly, acknowledge the grace of their benefactor. But if their affairs are turned around by the opposite condition, and the rich man becomes poor, and bodily strength becomes sickness, and glory and distinction become shame and dishonor, then they are ungrateful, uttering blasphemies, shrinking from prayer; complaining against God as against a creditor who is slow, not as people should feel toward a Master who is angry. But away with such a thought from your minds! Whenever you see God not granting the usual things, reason thus within yourself: Is God unable to supply food? And how could that be? He is Lord of heaven and of all its order, a wise steward of hours and seasons, the pilot of all things, who has ordained that the hours and the turns of the year yield to one another like a well-ordered chorus, so that by their variety they may supply our different needs; and now in season the moisture comes, and again the heat takes its turn, and the cold is blended into the year, and we do not lack the service of the dry season. Therefore God is able. And since the able is present and acknowledged, has the good then failed? This argument does not stand either. For what necessity persuaded him who was not good to create man in the beginning? Who compelled the Creator, though unwilling, to take dust and fashion such beauty from clay? Who compelled him by necessity to grant the Word to man according to his own image, so that setting out from there he might receive the learning of arts, and learn to philosophize about the highest things, which he does not grasp by sense? And if you reason thus, you will find that goodness is with God, and even now has not departed. For tell me, what prevented what we see from being not a drought but a complete conflagration? What prevented him from slightly shifting the sun from its customary course, bringing it near to the bodies on earth, and in an instant burning up everything visible? Or from raining fire from heaven, in the likeness of the punishments already inflicted on sinners? Come to yourself and your own thoughts, man; do not act like foolish children, who, when rebuked by their teacher, tear up his tablets; and when their father delays their food for their benefit, they rip their clothing, or scratch their mother's face with their nails.

6A storm puts the pilot to the proof, the stadium puts the athlete to the proof, the battle line puts the general to the proof, hardship puts the great souled man to the proof, and a trial tests and examines the Christian. Sorrows prove the soul the way fire proves gold.

Are you poor? Do not lose heart. Excessive dejection leads to sin. Sorrow drowns the mind and brings on the dizziness of helplessness, and the failure of reason gives birth to ingratitude. Keep your hope in God. Does he not look upon your groaning? The food is in his hands, and he holds back the gift to test your steadfastness and to learn your resolve, whether it does not resemble that of the dissolute and ungrateful. Those people praise and flatter and marvel while the food is still in their mouths, but when the table is delayed a little they hurl blasphemies like stones at those they worshipped for pleasure as equals of God just before.

Go through the Old Testament and the New, and you will find many in each who were fed in different ways. Mount Carmel held Elijah, a high and uninhabited mountain, a desert place holding a desert man. To the righteous man the soul was everything, and hope in God was his provision for life. Though he lived in this way, famine did not take his life. The most rapacious and gluttonous of birds carried him food and became servants of his nourishment, though by habit they snatched food belonging to others. By the Master's command they changed their nature and became faithful guardians of the loaves and the meat. We learn from the spiritual history that ravens brought these things to the man.

The lions' den in Babylon held the Israelite young man, captive in calamity but free in soul and purpose. What happened there? The lions fasted against nature, while Habakkuk, his feeder, was carried through the air, as the angel bore the man along with the dishes. So that the righteous man would not be crushed by famine, the prophet was lifted over as much land and sea as stretches from Judea to Babylon, in a small moment of time. Consider again the people in the desert whom Moses guided. How were they sustained in life for forty years? No man sowed there, no ox drew a plow, no threshing floor, no winepress, no storehouse, yet they had food that was neither sown nor plowed, and rock supplied springs that had not existed before but burst forth in their need. I will not count one by one the acts of God's providence that he has shown to human beings many times with a father's care.

Endure the calamity a little, as noble Job did, and do not let the wave overturn you, and do not throw overboard any of the cargo of virtue you carry. Preserve thanksgiving in your soul like a costly treasure chest, and you too will receive twice the luxury in return for your thanksgiving. Remember the apostle's saying: Give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Are you poor? You surely have someone poorer than yourself. You have food for ten days, and he has food for one. As a good and grateful man, share your excess equally with the needy.

7Do not hesitate to give from the little you have. Do not put your own advantage ahead of the common danger. Even if your food is reduced to a single loaf, and a beggar stands at your door, bring out that one loaf from the storeroom, place it in your hands, raise them toward heaven, and say a prayer that is both pitiful and gracious: “One loaf, Lord, as you see, and the danger is plain. But I set your commandment before my own need, and from the little I have I give to my starving brother. Give, then, to your servant in danger. I know your goodness; I trust also in your power. You do not postpone your favors to a later time, but you scatter your gifts whenever you will.” If you speak and act in this way, the loaf you give from your straitened circumstances becomes seed for a harvest; it brings forth abundant fruit, a pledge of food, a means of obtaining mercy. Say also the words of the widow of Zarephath in similar circumstances, remembering the story at the right moment: “As the Lord lives, this is all I have in my house for food for myself and my children” (1 Kings 17:12). If you give from what is lacking, you too will have the oil jar overflowing by grace, and the flour jar never empty. For toward the faithful, God’s grace is generous and imitates wells that are always being emptied and never drawn dry, bringing back double in return. Lend, you who are poor, to the rich God. Trust the one who always receives on his own account on behalf of the afflicted, and who repays the favor from his own resources. He is a trustworthy guarantor, with hoarded wealth spread out over every land and sea. Even if you demand repayment while sailing, you will receive the principal with interest in the middle of the ocean. For he is generous in his additions.

The sickness of the starving is famine, a pitiful suffering. Famine is the chief of human disasters; it is an end more wretched than every death. In other dangers, either the edge of a sword brings death swiftly, or the rush of fire quickly extinguishes life, or wild beasts tear apart the vital members with their teeth and do not let their victim be tormented by lingering pain. But famine holds its evil inert, with lingering agony, a disease that sits within and nests there, a death always present and always slowing. It consumes the natural moisture; it chills the heat; it shrinks the body’s bulk; it gradually withers the strength. The flesh lies around the bones like a spider’s web. The skin has no bloom. The redness flees as the blood wastes away; the whiteness is gone, since the surface darkens with leanness. The body is livid, pitifully mixed from the suffering with pallor and blackness. The knees cannot bear weight but are dragged along by force. The voice is thin and weak. The eyes grow feeble in their hollows, lying uselessly in their sockets like acorns dried in their husks. The belly is empty, collapsed, and shapeless, with no bulk, no natural tension of the inward parts, plastered to the bones of the back. The one who passes by such a body—how many punishments does he deserve? What excess of cruelty will he leave undone? How is he not worthy to be numbered among the savage beasts, and to be seen as accursed and a murderer? For the one who has the cure for the evil in his power, but willingly postpones it out of greed, would rightly be condemned on the same terms as those who kill with their own hands.

8The suffering of famine has often compelled many to violate the very boundaries of nature: for a human being to touch the bodies of his own kind, and for a mother to receive back into her womb the child she brought forth from it. Jewish history acted out this tragedy, which the diligent Josephus recorded for us, when the terrible sufferings overtook the people of Jerusalem as they paid the just penalty for their impiety against the Lord. You see that our God himself often passes over other sufferings, yet is moved with compassion for the hungry. For I am moved with compassion, he says, for the crowd. Therefore in the final judgment, where the Lord summons the righteous, the generous person holds the first rank. The one who feeds others stands at the head of those who are honored. The one who supplied bread is called before all others. The good and open-handed person is escorted into life ahead of the rest of the righteous. The selfish and stingy person is handed over to the fire before all other sinners. The season calls you to the mother of the commandments. Be very careful, so that the season of the festal assembly and of reconciliations does not pass you by. For time flows on, and does not wait for the one who delays. The days press forward and pass by the sluggard. And just as it is impossible to stop the current of a river unless someone takes hold of it at its first approach and onset and puts the water to proper use, so too it is impossible to hold back time as it is driven on by its necessary cycles, or to bring back what has passed, unless someone seizes it as it comes. For this reason, grasp the commandment as though it were fleeing, and fulfill it; seize it from every side and hold it fast in your arms. Give a little, and gain much. Undo the first-formed sin by sharing food. For just as Adam, by eating wrongly, passed sin on, so we wipe out that treacherous eating if we heal a brother's need and famine. Peoples, hear! Christians, give ear! For thus says the Lord—not addressing the people in his own voice, but sounding through the mouths of his servants as through instruments. Let us not appear more savage than the brute beasts. For they use the things that grow from the earth as common property by nature. Flocks of sheep graze on one and the same mountain. Horses in great numbers feed on one and the same plain. And all creatures in their own way yield to one another the enjoyment of their necessary needs. But we hoard in our bosom what is common; we alone possess what belongs to the many. Let us be ashamed before the humane stories of the Greeks. Among some of them, a humane law makes one table and common food, one hearth for a whole populous people. But let us leave the outsiders and turn to the example of the three thousand. Let us imitate the first community of Christians: how everything was common among them—their life, their soul, their harmony, their table shared, their brotherhood undivided, their love unhypocritical, making the many bodies one and joining the different souls into a single concord. You have many examples of love for one another from the Old Testament and from the New. If you see an old man famishing, take him in and feed him, as Joseph fed Jacob. If you find an enemy in distress, do not let the anger that holds vengeance take hold of you; rather, feed him, as Joseph fed the brothers who had sold him.

9If you meet a younger man who is worn down, weep for him as Joseph wept for Benjamin, the son of his old age. Perhaps greed is testing you too, as the mistress tested Joseph. It pulls at your clothes, so that you will despise the commandment and love that gold-loving, ornament-loving woman more than the Master's order. So when a thought comes to fight against that commandment, drawing your chaste mind toward love of money, forcing you to neglect love for one another and holding you toward it, throw off your clothes too, and leave in anger. Keep faith with the Lord, as Joseph kept faith with Pentephres, the Egyptian master. Manage the want in one year, as he managed it in seven. Do not give everything to pleasure; give something to the soul as well. Consider that you have two daughters: the luxury here, and the life in the heavens. If you are not willing to give everything to the better one, at least divide equally between the licentious girl and the chaste one. Do not make your life here extravagantly rich while the other is naked and dressed in rags, when you must stand before Christ and come into the sight of the Judge, having the form of a bride and the name of a life according to virtue. Do not present the bride to the bridegroom shapeless and unadorned, so that when he sees her he does not turn his face away, and when he looks he does not hate her and refuse the union. Instead, dress her in fitting adornment and keep her beautiful for the appointed time of the wedding, so that she too may light her lamp with the wise virgins, having the unquenchable fire of knowledge and not lacking the oil of good deeds. So that the God-inspired prophecy may be confirmed by deeds, and what was said may apply to your soul: “The queen stood at your right hand, clothed in gold-woven garments, richly adorned. Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and the king will desire your beauty” (Psalm 45:9-11). For the Psalmist proclaimed these things in general, announcing beforehand the beauty of the whole body; but it will apply properly to each individual soul, since the Church is made up of individuals. Provide for me rationally for the present and the future, which you should not betray for shameful gain. A body will leave you, your distinguishing mark in life. At the appearing of the expected Judge, who will certainly come, you will shut yourself out from the granting of rewards and the heavenly glory, and you will open unquenchable fire, and Gehenna, and punishments, and bitter ages in anguish, instead of long and blessed life. Do not think that I am shaking false bogeymen at you, as some mother or nurse does; they are accustomed to do this with infant children when they cry without order and without end, silencing them with made-up stories. But these things are not a myth, but a word proclaimed beforehand by a voice that does not lie. And know precisely, according to the Gospel prediction, not one iota or one stroke will pass away (Matthew 5:18). But the body that has vanished in the tombs will rise, and the same soul that was confined by death will dwell in the body again. And an exact examination of what has been lived will be presented, with no others testifying, but the conscience itself testifying. To each one, what is deserved will be measured out by the just Judge. To him belong glory, power, and worship, to the ages of ages. Amen.