Basil's Response To Temptation In Like Job

Like Job, Basil’s sermon on the rich man of Luke 12 focuses on faithful responses to temptation. According to Basil, “[i]t is equally difficult” to face Job-like trials of impoverishment and suffering as it is to confront trials of prosperous circumstances. The rich man from Luke’s passage occasions the homily’s subject on the latter form of temptation, which, we learn, has to do with a distorted vision of creation’s abundance that consolidates instead of disburses possessions.

Unlike Job, the rich man embodies a negative example for how not to respond to the temptations accompanying abundance. “Not only did he possess wealth,” Basil writes, “but he hoped to obtain even more” (59). God persistently invites him into another relationship to his possessions by increasing his land’s resources, providing more occasions to share with the impoverished. Yet his greed is only further entrenched (61).

Section three and four (62-5) transition from Basil’s consideration of the rich man’s failures to an exhortation to how his listeners might do otherwise. The disease that infected the rich man is a threat common to all human beings in relation to their possessions. Diagnosing this Midas malady, Basil writes, “[i]n everything you see gold, you imagine everything as gold…You would
Basil gives acute and programmatic expression to this glory near the end of his homily: “For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need” (69). Basil’s view is that creation has provided enough for the flourishing of all life, and therefore that scarcity and poverty are structural marks of consolidating—or stronger, stealing (62)—resources which “rightfully [belong] to everyone”