ACC ~ Hebrews 13 v5

HE FORBADE NOT POSSESSIONS. THEODORET OF CYR: He forbade not possessions but the love of money, from which greed springs. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 13.

SEEK NOT SUPERFLUITIES. CHRYSOSTOM: And having first set down, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled,” he shows that he rightly added what follows. For if marriage has been conceded, justly is the fornicator punished, justly does the adulterer suffer recompense. . . .

He did not say again, “Let no one be a fornicator”; but, having said it once for all, he then went on as with a general exhortation, and not as directing himself against them. “Be content with what you have,” he says. He did not say, “Possess nothing,” but “be content with what you have”; that is, let it show forth the philosophical character of your mind. And it will show it, if we do not seek superfluities, if we keep only to what is necessary. For he says above also, “you joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods.” He gives these exhortations that they might not be covetous. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 33.2.

RELEASE YOUR HEART FROM MONEY. AUGUSTINE: So keep a moderate amount of money for temporal uses; treat it as journey money, with the end in view stated in the text. Notice above all what he put first: “Free from love of money,” he says, put your hand in the purse in such a way that you release your heart from it. SERMON 177.3.

SELF-DISCIPLINE IS GOD’S GREATEST GIFT. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: We must join in disciplining ourselves to beware of all that is subject to the passions. We must, like true philosophers, escape from any foods that arouse sexual desire, from a dissolute relaxation in bed, from luxury and all the passions that make for luxury. We realize that others find this a grievous struggle. It is no longer so for us, since self-discipline is God’s greatest gift. He has said, “I will never forsake you or abandon you,”who have judged you worthy by a decision that is wholly genuine. In this way, as we carefully strive to go to him, the Lord’s “easy yoke” will receive us. … There is, according to Hippocrates of Cos, a discipline of the soul as well as of the body, “a state of health which does not shrink from hardship and cannot have enough nourishment.” STROMATEIS 2.20.126.

Heb