The Measure You Give

Most of us keep two ledgers without noticing. One records what we know: the arguments we’ve won, the points on which we are simply right. The other records what people owe us: the slight that was never apologized for, the loan that never came back, the relative who still hasn’t called. Today’s readings take both ledgers out of your hands. Paul tells a Corinthian who is correct about idol meat that being correct is worth nothing if it wounds a brother, and he swears off meat for life to prove it. Jesus, preaching on a level place in Galilee, tells his disciples to love the people who hate them and to lend without expecting the money back. Then he adds the line that explains everything: “the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38).

That’s the real tension of this Thursday. You measure love by what returns to you. God measures it by what it cost you, and then he pours his own measure into your lap: pressed down, shaken together, running over. Today’s saint, Thomas of Villanova, an archbishop who fed several hundred poor at his door every morning and refused to ask whether they deserved it, took that promise literally. The readings ask whether you will.

The Readings

First Reading: 1 Corinthians 8:1b-7, 11-13

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” “Knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If any one imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by him.

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through being hitherto accustomed to idols, eat food as really offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.

And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother’s falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall.

Gospel: Luke 6:27-38

“But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your cloak do not withhold your coat as well. Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Scriptural Analysis

Corinth in the 50s was, in George Montague’s phrase, awash with temples, altars, and idols. The Acrocorinth rose 1,800 feet over the city with its temple of Aphrodite, and a second-century travel writer, Pausanias, could list Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis, Isis, Dionysus, Asclepius, and a dozen more gods with shrines in the town. Most Gentile converts had belonged to trade guilds, each with its patron god and its festival banquets, and the temples had dining rooms for exactly that purpose. A new Christian who wanted to keep his job and his friends could hardly avoid the question, so the Corinthians wrote to Paul about it, and some of them already had their answer ready. They had “knowledge.” An idol is nothing. There is one God. Meat is meat. Paul quotes their slogans back to them in verses 1 and 4, and he agrees with each one.^[1]

Then he turns the knife. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Montague notes that the Greek verb for “puffs up,” physioi, takes an inflating breath to pronounce, and that knowledge without love is like a balloon bobbing in the wind, useless for building anything. Raymond Collins counts four critiques packed into three verses: all Christians have knowledge, so the elite are nothing special; knowledge and love are two different things; the know-it-all does not yet know as he ought; and knowledge of God runs in both directions. That last one is the turn Saint John Chrysostom loved. After “if one loves God,” you expect Paul to write “one knows him.” Instead he writes “one is known by him” (1 Corinthians 8:3). In the Bible, for God to know someone is to choose him: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5), “You only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2). Collins says Paul turns the tables twice, moving the discussion from conduct to love and from knowing to being known. Nobody, Chrysostom adds, be it Peter or Paul, knows God with exactness; what matters is that God has laid hold of us first.^[2]

Saint Thomas Aquinas sharpens the point with a distinction. There are two kinds of knowing, just as there are two kinds of seeing: having sight, and using it. The Corinthian strong man has the knowledge; what he lacks is the measure of using it, which is charity. Aquinas cites a gloss of Saint Bernard worth memorizing. Some want to know in order to know, and that is curiosity. Some, in order to be known, and that is vanity. Some, in order to sell what they know, and that is shameful profit. Some, in order to be built up, and that is prudence. Some, in order to build others up, and that is charity.^[3]

Verses 4 through 6 are one of the earliest creedal statements in the New Testament, and probably one Paul learned rather than composed. He takes the Shema, “the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4), and opens it up from the inside: one God, the Father, from whom are all things; one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. Montague calls this the earliest written affirmation of Christ’s preexistence and his role in creation, the very thing the councils would later define. Collins points out that “Lord” is the title the Greek Bible used for God himself, so a Pharisee trained under Gamaliel has just placed Jesus inside Israel’s confession of the one God, and he writes it as if everyone already agrees.^[4]

Then the weak brother. Some converts, Paul says, are “hitherto accustomed to idols” (1 Corinthians 8:7). Montague compares them to fresh converts at the Franciscan missions who would slip off to celebrate the feasts of their tribal gods; they were, in his words, not yet out of the woods of idolatry. When such a man sees a “knowledgeable” Christian reclining at a temple banquet, he goes back in too, but with the old mind, and his conscience is defiled. The word Paul uses for “stumbling block” is the word Exodus uses for a snare (Exodus 34:12), and the word translated “liberty” in verse 9 is exousia, a right, which Montague says shows the strong acting with complete disregard for the effect on anyone else. Then the four charges Chrysostom counted: the man is weak, he is a brother, Christ died for him, and you are ruining him for a plate of meat. Montague draws the conclusion Paul wants: Christ did not die for humanity in the abstract but for each person, so to wound a brother’s conscience is to despise what Christ did for him.^[5] Aquinas adds that to sin against the brethren is to sin against Christ because they are his members; strike the hinge of a man’s conscience and the whole house shakes.^[6] The Catechism draws its rule straight from this verse: charity always proceeds by way of respect for one’s neighbor and his conscience. The very same paragraph quotes the Golden Rule from today’s Gospel (Luke 6:31). The Church read these two passages together long before the lectionary paired them.^[7]

Notice how Paul ends with his own resolution rather than a rule. “I will never eat meat” (1 Corinthians 8:13). Chrysostom calls this the mark of the best teacher, one who teaches in his own person, and Aquinas notes the scope of it: if a man will surrender something close to a necessity for his brother’s sake, how much more the luxuries. Montague puts the whole chapter in one sentence: “In the Christian community it is not sufficient to be right: one must also be loving.”^[8]

Luke’s Gospel picks up exactly where Paul leaves off. Jesus has come down from the mountain where he prayed all night and chose the Twelve, and he is standing “on a level place” (Luke 6:17) with a crowd from Judea, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Sidon. Luke Timothy Johnson reads the scene as a prophet laying down the norms of life for God’s restored people, and the commands are for people who are hated, cursed, and reviled. Pablo Gadenz spells out what the first command sounded like in Galilee under occupation. To those hoping Jesus would lead a revolt against Rome, “love your enemies” meant “love the Romans.” It also meant loving enemies inside the community; the Twelve included a tax collector and a zealot. Jesus will set the standard himself from the Cross (Luke 23:34). Saint Ambrose saw why this section comes last in Luke’s sequence: of faith, hope, and charity, the greatest is charity, and charity is commanded here in its hardest form.^[9]

Chrysostom is exact about the verbs. The command is love, a whole step past refraining from hate, and then three more verbs past love: do good, bless, pray. Chrysostom also warns about prayer, and it lands hard. Many people, he says, throw themselves on the ground, stretch out their hands, and pray to God against their enemies. They come to the king asking pardon for their own sins with their mouths full of bitterness. It is a time of forgiveness, he says, and of mourning, and rage has no place in it.^[10]

The turned cheek and the surrendered coat, Gadenz says, are how a disciple refuses to be conquered by evil and conquers it with good (Romans 12:21); he trusts God to settle accounts and stops guarding his own honor. Saint Cyril of Alexandria explains the progression. The old law restrained vengeance to the measure of the injury, an eye for an eye and no more (Exodus 21:24); Christ fulfills the law by removing vengeance altogether. Chrysostom compares the disciple to a physician attacked by a madman: the doctor’s compassion grows with the violence, because the patient is the one most in need. Then Chrysostom asks the question everyone is thinking: how is this possible? His answer is the Cross. When you have seen God made man, bound, scourged, spat on, and killed for you, do you still ask whether you can pardon a fellow servant?^[11]

“Give to every one who begs from you” (Luke 6:30) is sharper in Luke than in Matthew. Johnson notes that Luke adds “everyone,” and that the present imperative means “keep on giving.” Joseph Fitzmyer says the absolute form rules out any consideration of the beggar’s background, condition, or purpose. Augustine reads the command as giving what you justly can, and refusing, when you must, with a reason. Chrysostom is less patient with our excuses. Why does he not work, we ask. Why feed the idle? For one loaf and one coat you call a man a freeloader, and you give nothing anyway. Abraham fed everyone, and so he fed angels. Even a robber deserves bread. Do not be a severe censor of others, he says, lest you be judged yourself strictly.^[12]

Verses 32 through 34 ask the same question three times: what credit is that to you? Luke’s word is charis, grace, and Johnson says it carries the sense of gift; one is almost tempted to translate, “what sort of gift is that?” The whole passage rejects the ancient logic of do ut des, I give so that you will give. Gadenz adds an irony: the Pharisees who look down on “sinners” (Luke 5:30) and refuse this command end up at exactly the sinners’ level. Then the reward: “you will be sons of the Most High” (Luke 6:35), the title Gabriel gave Jesus himself (Luke 1:32). Ambrose reads this as the reward of mercy, adoption into the family of God. Fitzmyer makes a point that is easy to miss. The Old Testament never calls God perfect, but it calls him merciful again and again (Exodus 34:6; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2), so “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36) is Luke’s version of “Be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 19:2), with holiness defined as mercy.^[13]

And then the measure. Johnson describes the picture: a grain basket, pressed down to make room, shaken so the grain settles, and still overflowing, poured into the fold of a man’s robe. The verbs are passive, which in biblical speech means God is the one acting. Johnson calls it a truly radical notion that God uses the standard we use on each other to judge us, and Gadenz points to the Lord’s Prayer as the same teaching in another form (Luke 11:4). Theophylact answered the obvious objection long ago. How can the return be both “running over” and “the same measure”? The kind is the same while the quantity is not. Show mercy, and you receive mercy; God shows it a thousandfold. The frightening side holds too: judge harshly, and you will be judged by the standard you used, running over.^[14]

Put the two readings side by side, and the shape is the same. Paul gives up his rights over a plate of meat because a brother’s soul is worth more than his liberty. Jesus tells the disciple to give up his right to retaliate, his right to a repaid loan, his right to render a verdict, because the enemy is a man God is kind to. In both cases, the reason is Christ: “the brother for whom Christ died,” and the Father whose mercy makes us his sons.

Daily Application

The Corinthian strong man is easy to recognize because most of us have been him. You know the Church’s teaching on some point, you are right about it, and you say so in a way that leaves someone weaker than you feeling crushed rather than built up. Or you exercise a liberty that is perfectly licit, a drink, a joke, a political opinion, in front of someone for whom it is a stumbling block, and you tell yourself their weakness is their problem. Paul says it is your problem. The brother for whom Christ died is standing behind the argument, and if you cannot see him, then, in Aquinas’s words, you have knowledge without the measure of using it.

So the first interior movement today’s readings ask for is a kind of holy demotion. Take the thing you know, the thing you are right about, and ask what it is for. Curiosity, vanity, profit, your own growth, or your neighbor’s? Only the last is charity. That question, asked before you speak, will change more conversations in your home and parish than any amount of additional knowledge.

The second movement is harder, and Jesus does not soften it. Somewhere in your life, you have been measuring a person. You know exactly what they owe you. Chrysostom’s image of the man praying against his enemy while asking God for pardon is uncomfortable because we do a quieter version of it every day: we bring our sins to God with the ledger of someone else’s sins still open in the other hand. The Lord’s own measure is the answer, and it cuts both ways. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Condemn, and you will be condemned. Anyone who says the Our Father has already agreed to those terms.

Saint Thomas of Villanova shows what this looks like in practice. He was an Augustinian friar, an absent-minded professor with a poor memory, pushed into the archbishopric of Valencia against his will. His cathedral chapter gave him money to furnish the archbishop’s house; he gave it to the hospital and asked what a poor friar wanted with furniture. Several hundred poor came to his door every morning and left with a meal, wine, and money. When he was told some of them were taking advantage of him, he answered that if people refused to work, that was a matter for the governor and the police; his duty was to assist whoever came to his door. That is Luke 6:30, lived without a footnote. And when he was criticized for refusing to be harsh with sinners, he asked whether Augustine and Chrysostom had used anathemas to stop the drunkenness and blasphemy in their own flocks. He knew the Fathers you have been reading in this post, and he drew the same conclusion they did: the merciful man disarms the sinner, and the harsh man only adds to his own account.^[15]

Thomas died in 1555 with all his money already distributed to the poor, reciting “Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit” after receiving Communion. He had spent a lifetime lending and expecting nothing in return, and he went to collect from the only debtor who pays running over.

Here is today’s practice, in two halves. Choose one person you have been keeping a ledger on, and do for them one concrete good: a call, a favor, a prayer said for them by name and with real intention. Then choose one place where your rightness has been wounding someone weaker, and lay the argument down for their sake. Neither act will feel like it comes back to you. Give anyway, and let God choose the measure.

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Notes

1. George T. Montague, First Corinthians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 140-142, 144; Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians, Sacra Pagina 7 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 314, 322. ↩
2. Montague, First Corinthians, 142-143; Collins, First Corinthians, 309-311; John Chrysostom, Homily 20 on First Corinthians, secs. 1-3, trans. Talbot W. Chambers, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 12, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889), rev. Kevin Knight, New Advent, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/220120.htm. ↩
3. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P., chap. 8, lect. 1, nos. 423-425, Aquinas Institute, https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~1Cor.C8.L1. ↩
4. Montague, First Corinthians, 144; Collins, First Corinthians, 313-320; Chrysostom, Homily 20 on First Corinthians, secs. 5-7. ↩
5. Montague, First Corinthians, 145-147; Chrysostom, Homily 20 on First Corinthians, secs. 8-11. ↩
6. Aquinas, Commentary on First Corinthians, chap. 8, lect. 2, nos. 437-438, https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~1Cor.C8.L2. ↩
7. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 1789. ↩
8. Chrysostom, Homily 20 on First Corinthians, sec. 11; Aquinas, Commentary on First Corinthians, chap. 8, lect. 2, no. 439; Montague, First Corinthians, 148. ↩
9. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 110-112; Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 133; Ambrose of Milan, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 6:27-31, https://www.bibliaplus.org/en/commentaries/242/catena-aurea-commentary/luke/6/27-31. ↩
10. John Chrysostom, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, on Luke 6:27-31. ↩
11. Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 133; Cyril of Alexandria and John Chrysostom, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, on Luke 6:27-31. ↩
12. Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 109; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX, Anchor Bible 28 (Doubleday, 1981), 639; Augustine of Hippo and John Chrysostom, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, on Luke 6:27-31. ↩
13. Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 109, 112; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 133-134; Fitzmyer, Luke I-IX, 640-641; Ambrose of Milan, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, on Luke 6:32-36, https://www.bibliaplus.org/en/commentaries/242/catena-aurea-commentary/luke/6/32-36. ↩
14. Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 113-114; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 134; Fitzmyer, Luke I-IX, 641; Theophylact, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, on Luke 6:37-38, https://www.bibliaplus.org/en/commentaries/242/catena-aurea-commentary/luke/6/37-38. ↩
15. Franciscan Media, “Saint Thomas of Villanova,” Saint of the Day for September 10, https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/. ↩

Books Cited

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• George T. Montague, SM, First Corinthians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2011)
• Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians, Sacra Pagina 7 (Liturgical Press)
• Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, 14-volume set (Hendrickson)
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, Latin-English Opera Omnia vol. 38, trans. Fabian Larcher, OP (The Aquinas Institute / Emmaus Academic, 2012)
• Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, (Doubleday / Image, 2003)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, 4-volume set (Baronius Press)
• Joseph A. Fitzmyer, SJ, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX, Anchor Bible 28 (Doubleday, 1981)