Luke 1:53
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
Open Luke 1:53 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Esurientes implevit bonis : et divites dimisit inanes.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- πεινῶντας ἐνέπλησεν ἀγαθῶν καὶ πλουτοῦντας ἐξαπέστειλεν κενούς.
Haydock's commentary
The Jews were rich in the possession of the law, and the doctrines of the prophets; but, as they would not humbly unite themselves to the incarnate word [Jesus Christ], they were sent away empty, without faith, without knowledge, deprived of all hopes of temporal goods, excluded from the terrestrial Jerusalem, and also from that which is in heaven. But the Gentiles, oppressed with hunger and thirst, by adhering to their Lord, were filled with all spiritual gifts. (St. Basil in Ps. xxxiii.)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Gloss Catena Aurea
Because human prosperity seems to consist chiefly in the honors of the mighty and the abundance of their riches, after speaking of the casting down of the mighty, and the exalting of the humble, he goes on to tell of the impoverishing of the rich and the filling of the poor, He has filled the hungry, &c.
St Basil the Great Catena Aurea
These words regulate our conduct even with respect to sensible things, teaching the uncertainty of all worldly possessions, which are as short lived as the wave which is dashed about to and fro by the violence of the wind. But spiritually all mankind suffered hunger except the Jews; for they possessed the treasures of legal tradition and the teachings of the holy prophets. But because they did not rest humbly on the Incarnate Word they were sent away empty, carrying nothing with them neither faith nor knowledge, and were bereft of the hope of good things, being shut out both of the earthly Jerusalem and the life to come. But those of the Gentiles, who were roughs low by hunger and thirst, because they clung to the Lord, were filled with spiritual goods.
Gloss Catena Aurea
They also who desire eternal life with their whole soul, as it were hungering after it, shall be filled when Christ shall appear in glory; but they who rejoice in earthly things, shall at the end be sent away emptied of all happiness.
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm XXXIV
14. Therefore understand it not so.…When thou art filled with spiritual riches, canst thou be poor? And was he therefore rich, because he had a bed of ivory; and art thou poor who hast the chamber of thy heart filled with such jewelry of virtues, justice, truth, charity, faith, endurance? Unfold thy riches, if thou hast them, and compare them with the riches of the rich. But such an one has found in the market mules of great value, and has bought them. …
Eusebius The Church History of Eusebius, Panegyric on the Splendor of Affairs
8. And let us not only one by one, but all together, with one spirit and one soul, honor him and cry aloud, saying, ‘Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in his holy mountain.’ For he is truly great, and great is his house, lofty and spacious and ‘comely in beauty above the sons of men.’ ‘Great is the Lord who alone doeth wonderful things’; ‘great is he who doeth great things and things past finding out, glorious and marvelous things which cannot be numbered’; great is he ‘who changeth times and seasons, who exalteth and debaseth kings’; ‘who raiseth up the poor from the earth and lifteth up the needy from the dunghill.’ ‘He hath put down princes from their thrones and hath exalted them of low degree from the earth. The hungry he hath filled with good things and the arms of the proud he hath broken.’
St Gregory Nazianzen Funeral Oration on the Great S. Basil, Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia
35. He indeed could neither rain bread from heaven by prayer, to nourish an escaped people in the wilderness, nor supply fountains of food without cost from the depth of vessels which are filled by being emptied, and so, by an amazing return for her hospitality, support one who supported him; nor feed thousands of men with five loaves whose very fragments were a further supply for many tables. These were the works of Moses and Elijah, and my God, from Whom they too derived their power. Perhaps also they were characteristic of their time and its circumstances: since signs are for unbelievers not for those who believe. But he did devise and execute with the same faith things which correspond to them, and tend in the same direction. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).