Augustine of Hippo: Show mercy

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Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Matthew 5:7

“Although the haughty rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day, died and was tormented in hell, but if he had shown mercy to the poor man [Lazarus] covered with sores who lay at his door and was treated with scorn, he himself would have received mercy [Luke 16:19-31]. And if the poor man’s merit had simply been his poverty, not his goodness, he surely would not have been carried by angels into the bosom of Abraham who had been rich in this life. This is intended to show us that on the one hand it was not poverty in itself that was divinely honored, nor on the other, was it that riches were condemned, but that the godliness of the one and the ungodliness of the other had their own consequences…”

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Letter 157: To Hilarius based on the translation by Peter C. Phan in Social Thought (Wilmington: Glazier, 1984), revised and expanded by Helen Rhee in Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017) 120-121.

As I near the end of this two-week journey of exploring wealth and poverty in early Christianity, I again am struck by the parable of the rich man and Lazarus yet again. It’s becoming more clear to me. With it, Jesus seems to illustrate a core beatitude: Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 

Taking hold of life in the kingdom of heaven is not about doing works that win salvation. It’s about knowing Christ and those who know Him show mercy even as they have received mercy. They exhibit godliness. Many say we cannot be more like Christ when we give. I think an even stronger act of generosity is showing mercy, because showing mercy inverts everything the world celebrates.

Rhee adds a helpful note along these lines (xli): “In the classical Greco-Roman understanding, the rich person, the person with possessions and status, was considered to be the good person, the virtuous one; the one without possessions or social status was, therefore, considered to be not virtuous. Augustine inverts the paradigm. People do not become virtuous by their possessions, but the goods (e.g. riches, positions, honor, etc.) become good in the hands of the virtuous only as the latter make good use of the former for the sake of the true (heavenly) life…”

I was recently having coffee with a Denver Seminary student who was struck by the candor of his professor. In a class discussion about justice and the inequities in this world, the student ask the professor, “Why don’t so many Christians show mercy to the poor?” The professor, without flinching, replied, “They simply don’t know God. They may think they are a Christian, but their actions show otherwise.”

So the question each of us needs to ask ourselves is this: Do my actions show I know Christ?