The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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in eight elegant sermons, t. 4, p. 615. In the first, he congratulates
with the people for the great joy and holy eagerness for penance with
which they received the publication of the Lent fast, this being the
most favorable season for obtaining the pardon of sins, and reaping the
most abundant heavenly blessings and graces; a season in which the
heavens are in a particular manner open, through the joint prayers,
fasts, and alms of the whole church. These are usually called sermons on
Genesis, in order to be distinguished from the foregoing homilies, which
were posterior to them in time. Five sermons On Anna, the mother of
Samuel, (t. 4, p. 6{}9,) were preached at Antioch in 387, after the
emperor had granted his gracious pardon for the sedition. The saint
treats in them on fasting, the honor due to martyrs and their relics, on
purity, the education of children, the spiritual advantages of poverty,
and on perpetual earnest prayer, which he recommends to be joined with
every ordinary action, and practised at all times, by persons while they
spun, walked, sat, lay down, &c. Invectives against stage-entertainments
occur both in those, and in the following three discourses On David, in
which he says many excellent things also on patience, and on forgiving
injuries. (T. 4, p. 747.)
The fifth tome presents us with fifty-eight sermons on the Psalms. He
explained the whole Psalter; but the rest of the discourses are lost; a
misfortune much to be regretted, these being ranked among the most
elegant and beautiful of his works. In them notice is taken of several
differences in the Greek translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and
Theodotion; also in the Hebrew text, though written in Greek letters, as
in Origen s Hexapla. The critics find the like supply for restoring
parts of these ancient versions also in the spurious homilies in the
appendix of this volume, compiled by some other ancient Greek preacher.
In this admired work of St. Chrysostom the moral instructions are most
beautiful, on prayer, especially that of the morning, meekness,
compunction, careful self-examination every evening, fasting, humility,
alms, &c. In Pa. 43, p. 146, he thus apostrophizes the rich: "Hear this,
you all who are slack in giving alms: hear this, you who, by hoarding up
your treasures, lose them yourselves: hear me you, who, by perverting
the end of your riches, are no better by them than those who are rich
only in a dream; nay, your condition is fair worse," &c. He says that
the poor, though they seem so weak, have arms more powerful and more
terrible than the greatest magistrates and princes; for the sighs and
groans which they send forth in their distresses, pierce the heavens,
and draw down vengeance without thinking to demand it, upon the rich,
upon cities, upon whole nations. In Ps. 11, p. 120, he will have prayer
to be made effectual by the exercise of all virtues and good works,
especially by a pure love of God, hunger after his justice alone, and
disengagement of the heart from all love of earthly things. In P. 41, p.
190, this prayer by aspirations, which may be borrowed from the psalms,