On Marriage and Family Life (Popular Patristics Series)

by St. John Chrysostom (Author)

Now I'll add one more thing: none of you should look for a rich woman to marry, but a poor one instead. You'll get no satisfaction from her money, since if she is rich she will annoy you with her taunts and demands. She'll be disrespectful and extravagant, and will frustrate you by saying things like, “Don't complain about all my clothes! I haven't spent anything of yours; I'm still wearing my own clothes bought with the inheritance my parents gave me.” What are you saying, woman? Still wearing your own clothes? What can be worse than this sort of language? You no longer have a body of your own (since you gave it away in marriage), yet you have money of your own? After marriage, you are no longer two, but one flesh, and are your possessions still divided? Love of money! You have both become one person, one organism, and can you still say, “my own”? This cursed and abominable phrase comes from the devil. Things far nearer and dearer to us than material possessions God has made common to all: we can't say “my own light, my own sun, my own water.” If all our greater blessings are held in common, why should money not be? Let the riches be lost ten thousand times over! Or rather let not the riches be lost, but that frame of mind that doesn't know how to use money, but holds it higher in esteem than all other things.