But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother have need, and shuts up his heart of compassion from him, how dwells the love of God in him?
All Commentaries on 1 John 3:17 Go To 1 John 3
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
But whoso hath this world"s goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? He deduces this as a consequence from the former verse. It is an argument from the less to the greater. If the love of Christ obliges us to lay down our lives for the brethren (which is most difficult), much more does it oblige us to give alms to the needy, which is most easy. And again, our laying down our lives for the brethren is a case which seldom happens, the duty of relieving the needy frequently occurs. So Å’cumenius and S. Augustine.
Many doctors argue from this passage that the precept of alms-giving is binding not only in extreme but even in grave cases of necessity, so that a rich man is obliged to give up, not only superfluities, but even things necessary for his station, if he can avert in this way a grave loss to his neighbour. (See Gregory, de Valent. Tom. iii. Disput. iii.; and Bellarmine, de bonis Oper. lib. iii. See Eccles. iv1 , S. Ambrose, Deuteronomy 0ff. iii31; S. Gregory Nazianzen, de cura pauper; and S. Chrysostom, de Eleemos.)
And shutteth up his bowels from him. The bowels being the seat of compassion and pity. See Lamentations 2:11; Colossians 3:12. They are the symbols of paternal as well as of maternal love. See Philemon 7 , and Je. Iviii7. This teaches that alms should be given with much kindness and affection. As S. Gregory says (Moral xx16), "Let the hard and merciless hear the thundering words of the wise man." Proverbs 21:13
Salvian, lib. iv, exhorts the faithful to put on these bowels of mercy, when teaching that Christ, in the persons of the poor, is a mendicant and in need of everything, and that they are cruel who squander their goods on their relations who are in no need, and suffer Christ in the person of the poor to be in want. . . . He shows that they have no faith, and that they do not believe in Christ, who promised abundant rewards to His almoners. . . . And next he shows that they greatly sin, not only because they do not relieve the poor, but also bestow those goods which they have laboriously acquired, on those who misapply them for purposes of display, gluttony, and luxury. "If thou wishest to have eternal life" (he continues), "and to see good days, leave thy substance to the saints that are in want, to the lame, the blind, the sick; let thy means be sustenance to the wretched, thy wealth the life of the poor, and may the refreshment thou givest them be thy own reward, that their refreshment may thus refresh thee." He concludes by severely inveighing against them, and more especially against ecclesiastics, who are particularly bound to relieve the poor, and not to enrich their kinsfolk out of the funds of the Church, which Prosper calls the patrimony of the poor. See S. Bernard (Epist. xxiv.), who says that a bishop must not indulge in luxuries, but merely live on the funds of the Church: everything more which thou takest out of them is robbery and sacrilege. See, too, S. Basil on Luke xii18. The Stoics thought, on the contrary, that pity was no virtue, but rather the mark of a weak mind. See Seneca (de Clem. ii5) and Plautus, as quoted by Lactantius, xi11 , who condemns any giving of alms as being a waste, and an injury to the recipient. Valerius (Max. iv8), on the other hand, records with approval the bountifulness of a certain Silicus.
