On Almsgiving
Help your neighbour in whatever way you can. If you cannot heal the infirmities of men by a wonder-working word, encourage and comfort the afflicted with a kind word! And if you help your neighbour, then — O wonder! — our Lord Jesus Christ Himself will become your servant… When you help and stand up for your neighbour, you yourself take possession of the divine treasure, the Kingdom of Christ; he who clothes and feeds his neighbour will himself taste immortality and be clothed in royal purple…
If any Christian does not give alms, he will remain outside the Lord’s wedding chamber and will perish. Therefore stretch out your hands not only toward heaven, but also to help the poor and needy!
A merciless soul departs from wisdom, but a merciful soul receives wisdom from the Holy Spirit.
The poor man is your door, and you yourself are a poor man standing before the doors of God. As you treat the one who asks of you, so God will treat you.
Thinking of Christ, you give a piece of bread, and you are given the right to the Kingdom; you clothe the naked in a perishable garment, and the grace of God grants you the imperishable garment of righteousness; you go out to meet a stranger, to visit a sick man or a prisoner, and by those same steps you are to walk on the right hand of Jesus Christ coming in glory, into the company blessed by the Heavenly Father. If you comfort a poor man with love and do him good, however small and slight, at the same time you are following the Lord for the saving of the poor man. See how the good you do to the poor passes into what is the Lord’s: saved by the great Saviour, you yourself become an instrument of salvation — a little saviour, so to speak, for the little ones — and, if it is not too bold to say it, in a certain way a benefactor of your Saviour, for He said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
One of the chief aims of human life should be to give joy to another, to gladden another. You too have probably known the great joy that helping someone in need makes us feel. At that moment joy reigns in the heart, because we feel that in return for the material help we have given we have gained a treasure so great that what we gave cannot even be compared with it. This is exactly that full joy which joins a man to God. Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia
God has shared out to each of us a mind and a heart, the ability to do good — to some, it is true, a little, to some much; but of those who have much, much will be asked, and of those who have little, little. He did not share them out so that, like that lazy servant, we should hide them in a chest or in the ground, but so that — since there are many in need in the world — we should give, in order to gain something; otherwise we shall be left empty-handed when God asks us for it. That is why these words ring so true: “What you give away is yours; what you do not is lost.” The grace of God that was planted in every one of us from the beginning is lost for us if we do not make it bear good.
When… you turn your face away from a person, it is as though you had turned your face away from Christ God. Jesus said: on the Day of Judgement I will say to you, I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink; I was hungry, and you gave Me no food; I was naked, and you did not clothe Me; I was sick, and you did not visit Me. When they say to Me: Lord! Where did we see You and not help You? I will tell them: every person in need whom you did not visit was I… Another for you, and you for another — there is the road of life, there is the bridge of salvation, there is the key of paradise!..
