The Made-up Tale of a Beggar by St John Chrysostom

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The Church Fathers love the poor and have a deep compassion for them. They will stand with the destitute in their defense. St John Chrysostom writes:
"It is folly, it is madness, to fill our wardrobes full of clothes and to regard with indifference a human being, a being made in the image and likeness of God, who is naked, trembling with cold and almost unable to stand.

You say: 'But that fellow there is pretending to tremble and not to have any strength.' So what? If that poor fellow is putting it on, he is doing it because he is trapped between his own wretchedness and your cruelty. Yes, you are cruel and guilty of inhumanity. You would not have opened your heart to his destitution without his play-acting.

If it were not necessity compelling him, why should he behave in such a humiliating way just to get a bit of bread?

The made-up tale of a beggar is evidence of your inhumanity. His prayers, his begging, his complaints, his tears, his wandering all day long round the city did not secure for him the smallest amount to live on. That perhaps is the reason why he thought of acting a part.But the shame and the blame for his made-up tale falls less on him than on you.

He has in fact a right to be pitied, finding himself in such an abyss of destitution. You, on the other hand, deserve a thousand punishments for having brought him to such humiliation." 

St John Chrysostom's Commentary On the First Letter to the Corinthians

Reliquary of St John Chrysostom in the Monastery of Vatopaidi, Mount Athos