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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
"The husbandman that laboreth must be first partaker of the fruits." He had first spoken from his own example as a teacher. He now speaks from those that are more common, as wrestlers and soldiers, and in their case he sets before him the rewards. First, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier; secondly, that he may be crowned; now he proposes a third example that more particularly suits himself. …
Theophylact of Ohrid
He brings yet a third example, which is especially close to a teacher. For the examples of the soldier and the athlete apply also to subordinates; the farmer does not care for himself, but for the land, and receives no small reward from its fruitfulness. So too the teacher, the pastor, does not labor in vain, but is himself the first to taste the fruit of his labors. For God will repay him most abundantly. …
Oecumenius
The hardworking farmer. Not careless: but one who works. For indeed, the teacher who also works with the students will receive rewards from God for the benefit and advantage of the students. — [GREGORY OF NYSSA]1 As teachers must first be perfected in themselves in what they teach. For this is necessary, to partake first of the fruits, which they cultivate in themselves through virtues before others. …
Western Saints
Thomas Aquinas
For the office of preachers and teachers is a military office, inasmuch as they do battle against enemies and vices; it is also a farmer's office, inasmuch as they bear fruit by exhorting men to do good. The field is the Church, and the chief husbandman is God working from without and from within: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman (John 15:1). But men work from the outside by offering their service: I planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase (1 Cor 3:6). …
Bonaventure
It belongs to those having principal authority to receive support authoritatively, as the Gloss says on Second Timothy 2: The laboring farmer ought to be the first to partake of the fruits: there the Gloss says: "To take for himself what is necessary from those among whom he serves God and whom he tends as a cultivator of the vineyard, or feeds as a flock, is not begging but authority": so to those to whom sub-principal authority belongs, it belongs to them to receive by way of supplication. …
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