St. Anthony of Padua, Sunday Sermons, Sexagesima Sunday: “(A sermon against the avaricious and usurers: And some fell among thorns.) ... The accursed race of usurers has multiplied upon the earth, with teeth like the teeth of a lion. The lion has two characteristics- a stiff neck containing only one bone, and stinking teeth. The usurer likewise is inflexible, neither fearing God nor regarding man. His teeth stink because the dirt of money and the dung of usury are always in his mouth. His cheek teeth, the molars, are like a lion-cub’s because he seizes the goods of the poor, of orphans and widows, chews them up and swallows them. He makes the vineyard, God’s Church, a desert when he holds onto its possessions as pledges of usury. He barks, strips and despoils the Lord’s fig tree (any religious house) when he appropriates to himself the goods given to that community by the faithful. Its branches are made white, as the monks or canons professed in it are afflicted with hunger and thirst. See the hands that purport to bestow alms, but are stained with the blood of the poor! No wonder the Psalmist speaks of creeping things without number in the world! We may observe three kinds of usurer: those who lend money privately, who may be described as creeping things without number; those who do so openly, but only in a small way, so as to seem merciful- these are the small beasts; and the faithless, hopeless and open usurers who, as openly as in a market place, take interest from all and sundry. These are the great beasts, crueller than all the rest. They will be pursued by the demon huntsmen and slain with an eternal death, unless they restore their ill-gotten gains and do penance. To give them the opportunity to do so, there go the ships among them, the preachers of the Church who pass among them and sow the seed of God’s word. Yet, though our sins need it, the thorns of riches and the wild beasts of usury choke the word sown so devotedly, so that it does not produce the fruit of penance.”