ACC ~ Acts 8 v20

A GIFT TO BE RECEIVED WITH SIMPLICITY. CHRYSOSTOM: Therefore Peter does well to call it a gift. “You thought,” he says, “you could obtain the gift of God with money.” Do you see how they are always free from money? “For your heart,” he says, “is not right before God.” Do you see how Simon does everything out of malice? In fact, simplicity was the thing needed. … For if it had been done with simplicity, they would even have accepted his eagerness. Do you see how having mean conceptions of great things is to sin doubly? Two things, accordingly, he urges him to do, “Repent and pray that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you.” HOMILIES ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 18.

EVEN SIMON WAS OFFERED REPENTANCE. AMBROSE: Then, when Simon, depraved by long practice of magic, had thought he could gain by money the power of conferring the grace of Christ and the infusion of the Holy Spirit, Peter said, “You have no part in this faith, for your heart is not right with God. Repent therefore of your wickedness, and pray to the Lord, if perhaps this thought of your heart may be forgiven, for I see that you are in the bond of iniquity and in the bitterness of gall.” We see that Peter by his apostolic authority condemns him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit through vain magic, and all the more because he had no clear consciousness of faith. And yet he did not exclude him from the hope of forgiveness, for he called him to repentance. CONCERNING REPENTANCE 2.4.23.

THE POWER OF AN APOSTOLIC SENTENCE. BEDE: [Gregory says,] “When holy people deliver a curse as a sentence, they pronounce it not out of a desire for vengeance but out of a just consideration of the case. For they interiorly perceive God’s unerring judgment and recognize that they must smite with a curse the evils that arise exteriorly. And in the curse they do not sin insofar as they do not depart from their interior judgment. Since the one who pronounces the curse remains innocent, and at the same time the curse swallows up to the point of destruction the one who is cursed, we conclude from what happens to both parties that the sentence that has been delivered is hurled at the offender by the sole judge of that which is within.” So it is that in the present passage Simon, who received a curse from Peter, perished in eternal damnation, and below[we read that] Bar-Jesus, when he had been rebuked by Paul, was presently deprived of the light of day. COMMENTARY ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 8.20.

SOME OF SIMON’S SUBSEQUENT CAREER. EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA: Immediately, the above-mentioned sorcerer, as if struck in the eyes of his mind by a divine and marvelous flash when formerly in Judea he had been detected for his evil deeds by the apostle Peter, set out on a very long journey overseas from east to west and went off in flight, thinking that only in this way could he live according to his wish. And when he came to the city of the Romans, the power that obsessed him cooperated with him greatly, and in short time he was so successful in his undertakings that he was honored as a god by the erection of a statue by those in this city. However, his affairs did not prosper for long. Close on him in the same reign of Claudius, the all-good and kindly providence of the universe guided Peter, the great and mighty one of the apostles, because of his virtue the spokesman for all the others to Rome, as if against a great corrupter of life. And he, like a noble general of God, clad in divine armor, conveys the costly merchandise of the light from the east to those in the west, preaching the light itself and the Word that saves souls, the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 2.14.

GREED FOR POWER. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: He offered money to people without possessions, and that too after seeing people bring the price of what they sold and lay it at the feet of the apostles. He did not realize that they who trod underfoot the wealth offered for the sustenance of the poor would surely never sell him the power of the Holy Spirit for a price. CATECHETICAL LECTURE 16.10.

THE SPIRIT’S POWER IS NOT A BUSINESS TRANSACTION. BASIL THE GREAT: He who through ignorance wishes to buy is less guilty than he who sells the gift of God, making it a business transaction. And, if you sell what you have received as a gift, you will be deprived of its grace, as if you had been sold to Satan. Furthermore, you are introducing into the church, where we have been entrusted with the body and blood of Christ, the bartering of material for spiritual things. LETTER 53.

Acts