When the Lord came among his elect and the catholic teachers and saw the towers and roofs which once gleamed but now lay razed to the ground by the firebrand of heretical talk, he first moved his father with his prayers that the church be restored (as was fitting for him to do) and then he immediately attended to the undertaking of restoring it. The teachers lament the churches and souls entrusted to them, which they had begotten for God and nourished by the help but which had become corrupted from the simplicity of their faith when Christ’s help was delayed for a time. This corresponds to how David’s wives and children were led away captive, when his arrival was delayed for a time. But if his grace and aid had been present, they would not have been able to seize everything.

The poor and the feeble, the blind and the lame, are called and come because the weak and the despised in this world are often quicker to hear the voice of God, as in this world they have nothing to delight them.

The Egyptian servant of the Amalekites is a good example of this. When the Amalekites were plundering and moving about, he was left behind on the road sick and fainting from hunger and thirst. When David found him, he provided him with food and drink, and as soon as he revived he became David’s guide, found the celebrating Amalekites, and with great bravery overthrew the people who had left him behind sick.

Amalekite means a people that laps. What does a people that laps signify but the hearts of the worldly? Going about after the things of earth, it is as if they are lapping them up when they take delight in temporal things alone. A lapping people takes plunder, so to speak, when out of its love for earthly things it heaps up profit from others’ losses. The Egyptian servant is left behind on the road sick, because all sinners, once they begin to grow weak from the situation of this world, soon come to be despised by worldly minds. David found him and provided him with food and drink, because the Lord, who is brave in hand (if we attribute to him the meaning of David’s name), does not despise what the world has cast aside. Often he directs to the grace of his love those who are not strong enough to follow the world, and who are, so to speak, left behind on the road, holding out to them the food and drink of his word. It is as if he chooses them as guides for himself on the road when he makes them his preachers. When they bring Christ to the hearts of sinners, it is as if they are leading David upon the enemy, and, like David, they strike the celebrating Amalekites with the sword, because by the Lord’s power they overthrow all the proud who had despised them in the world.

Let there be no special food for anyone working in the kneading room. Let the food be the same for everyone, for those who bake and those who are appointed to any task, in accordance with what was established from the beginning by the father of the koinōnia, Apa, to whom God entrusted this great calling. If other fathers who have succeeded him have made canons granting special food to the bakers, they did so after Moses’ manner, as we have learned in the Gospel that says, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses has allowed you to repudiate your wives, but in the beginning it was not like this.^[1] If, for some light fatigue, a man separates himself from his brother and differs from him in his food more than do those who are to leave for the harvest or for any other task at which they will have to endure the heat, let us not allow the brothers who have been appointed for any other task in the community to eat with these, since they have not set out to endure the heat and to work strenuously.

On the contrary, the unity of the koinōnia consists in a like measure for all, according to the saints’ way of doing; thus David approached those who had not gone to war and spoke to them peacefully, giving them a share of the spoils equal to that received by those who had gone to war with him. He did not listen to those who were wicked and said, We will not share with them. The Lord taught us likewise in the Gospel by the parable, when those who had borne the weight of the day and the heat murmured, saying, ‘Why have you treated us like those who have worked only an hour?’ ^[2] They, too, heard the reproach, Is your eye evil because I am good?^[3]