S. Raymundi Nonnati Confessoris ~ III. classis — Feria Secunda infra Hebdomadam XIV post Octavam Pentecostes
Lectio: Ecclesiasticus 31:8-11 | Evangelium: Lucam 12:35-40
On this last day of August, the traditional calendar sets before us Raymond Nonnatus — non natus, “not born,” drawn from his mother’s womb after her death — a man whose entire life was a meditation on the two readings the Church assigns him. The Epistle praises the rich man “found without blemish, who hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money nor in treasures” (Eccli. 31:8). The Gospel commands: “Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands” (Luc. 12:35). Between these two texts stands the Mercedarian who did not merely refuse to go after gold, but spent it lavishly — on the ransom of slaves — and when the gold ran out, offered his own body as the final coin.
The Rich Man Who Could Have Transgressed
The Wisdom of Sirach asks a pointed question: “Who is he, and we will praise him? for he hath done wonderful things in his life. Who hath been tried thereby, and made perfect, he shall have glory everlasting: he that could have transgressed, and hath not transgressed: and could do evil things, and hath not done them” (Eccli. 31:9-10).
The Fathers are unanimous that the praise here is not for poverty as such, but for victory over the seduction of possession. St. Ambrose, in his treatise De Nabuthae, thunders against the rich who hoard, yet he is careful: the fault is not in the having but in the clinging. “Not all poverty is holy, nor all riches criminal,” he teaches; it is use that condemns or crowns. St. Basil the Great, in his homily on the rich fool of Luke 12, makes the same distinction — the barns are not evil; the refusal to open them is. The man Sirach blesses is the man who holds wealth the way a steward holds his master’s goods: with open hands, ready to render an account.
St. Gregory the Great, in the Moralia, observes that temptation resisted is more glorious than temptation never encountered. The man “who could have transgressed and hath not” has passed through the fire and come out gold himself — “he hath been tried thereby, and made perfect.” This is why the Church applies this text to her Confessors: sanctity is not the absence of the occasion of sin but the triumph over it. Raymond, entrusted with the ransom-funds of his Order, carried purses of silver into the slave markets of Algiers. Every coin was an occasion. He could have transgressed; he did not. And when the money was exhausted and captives still remained in chains — captives in danger of apostasy — he did what Sirach’s rich man in his final perfection must do: he ceased to distinguish between his treasure and himself. He gave himself as hostage.
Therefore, says the text, “his goods are established in the Lord, and all the church of the saints shall declare his alms” (Eccli. 31:11). The Church declares them still, seven centuries on. Alms given in God are the only wealth that survives the giver.
Loins Girt, Lamps Burning
The Gospel turns from the use of goods to the posture of the soul: “Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands, and you yourselves like to men who wait for their lord, when he shall return from the wedding” (Luc. 12:35-36).
Here St. Gregory the Great’s thirteenth homily on the Gospels is the indispensable guide. We gird the loins, he says, when we restrain the flesh through continence; but restraint alone is a dark and joyless thing, and so the Lord adds the lamps — the burning lamps of good works shining before men. It is not enough to be innocent; we must be luminous. Gregory presses further: some men do good works but without purity of intention, and some keep themselves pure but shut their light away. The servant the Lord blesses does both — girt and burning, mortified and merciful. Raymond in his Algerian captivity is almost an icon of the verse: his captors, the tradition tells us, bored through his lips and fastened them with a padlock to silence his preaching. The loins girt to the point of chains; and yet the lamp burned on, for his very silence converted.
On the watches of the night — “and if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch” (Luc. 12:38) — Gregory reads the stages of human life: the first watch is childhood, the second youth and maturity, the third old age. He who has slumbered through the first watch may yet rise in the second; he who has wasted two may still be found waking in the third. This is a text of tremendous mercy. The Lord does not tell us when He comes; He tells us only that whenever He comes, blessed are those He finds watching. St. Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on this passage of Luke, adds that the “wedding” from which the Master returns is Christ’s union with His Church accomplished in His Ascension; He returns from that wedding at the hour of each man’s death and at the end of the age, and He asks of us not achievement but readiness — the door opened “immediately,” without the fumbling delay of a soul that must first be roused.
Then comes the astonishing reversal, which the Fathers never cease to marvel at: “Amen I say to you, that he will gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and passing will minister unto them” (Luc. 12:37). The Master serves the servants. St. Augustine sees here the eternal banquet in which Christ, who once girded Himself with a towel to wash the feet of the Twelve, will “pass” among His elect — transiens ministrabit — communicating to them the vision of Himself. All our watching, all our girding, is repaid not with wages but with a seat at the table where God Himself waits upon His household.
The Thief in the Night
The Lord closes with the figure of the thief: “if the householder did know at what hour the thief would come, he would surely watch” (Luc. 12:39). Gregory remarks that death comes like a thief precisely because it comes unseen, and the house of the body is broken open while the soul sleeps in the torpor of sin. The remedy is not anxiety but vigilance — the calm, ready wakefulness of a servant who loves the master he awaits.
Raymond Nonnatus received his warning. Returning to Spain, created Cardinal, summoned to Rome, he made it only as far as Cardona when the fever took him — he was about thirty-six. The thief came in the second watch. But there was nothing to break into and steal: the gold had long since been spent on captives, the body long since offered in ransom, the lips already sealed for Christ. He was found exactly as the Gospel commands — loins girt, lamp in hand, the door already open.
“Who is he, and we will praise him?” The liturgy answers today with a name. May we, who still possess our goods and our unpierced lips and our unspent hours, learn from him to hold all three loosely — so that at whatever watch the Lord arrives, He may find in us not owners defending a house, but servants opening a door.
Sancte Raymunde Nonnate, ora pro nobis.