Letter 1550: If you are unwilling to heal anything, and actually deepen the wounds of the poor — what more terrible battle are...
To Zosimus the Presbyter. On how one ought to care for the poor. If you do not wish to heal anything and instead intensify the wounds of the poor, why do you make the struggle harder for those fighting the intractable and unconquerable beast of poverty, by appropriating the contribution given to them for food by the merciful? What enjoyment do you think you get from such gains, filling your insatiable belly? Look up a little, recovering from such madness. Say to yourself: if the one who does not give his own possessions as alms is sent to the river of fire, to be tormented unbearably, what will the one who appropriates the possessions of the poor suffer? If the one who does not give his own will not be forgiven, where will the one who robs what has been given go?
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
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