Homilies 1 part 11/11

And this soul, having received the power of discernment from mind and reason, and having discovered the difference between things good and things not such, recognizes God as maker and creator both of the things at hand, perceptible to sense, and moreover of the invisible things also — whatsoever the incorporeal mind, forming images of them, beholds.

And practicing righteousness and virtue, as being dear to God, it aspires to philosophy, and, obeying its laws and precepts, withdraws itself as far as possible from fleshly desires, and draws near to God, striving, as far as it is able, to be made familiar with the Good.

...admitting no defilements, the mind possesses unhindered activity, together with the contemplation of the heavenly things akin to it.

Therefore, as many as are nurtured by philosophy, and lovers of lofty things, and disciples of reason, love the present season, and receive the holy Forty Days with joy, as teacher of temperance, and mother of virtue, and nurse of the sons of God, and tutor of the disorderly, and calm of souls, and steadfastness of life, and peace inviolable and untroubled.

For its austerity and gravity lulls the passions to sleep, quenches anger and wrath, and cools and calms every surge that seethes up from gluttony.

And just as in summer, when the sun blazes its fiery heat upon the earth, the north wind benefits those who are scorched, driving off the stifling heat with its gentle breezes, so too does fasting bestow its benefit, driving away from the bodies the burning heat that comes from gluttony.

And while it benefits the soul in so many ways, it no less benefits the body also.

For it thins the grossness of the humors, casts off the bulk of the body, relaxes the veins that are bursting from the abundance of blood, and gives their narrowness a little more room, so that they may not suffer the affliction of burst pipes.

For indeed those pipes, when much and immoderate water is channeled into them beyond their capacity, burst, unable to contain the mass forced in by the pressure.

The head has a gentle and calm condition, with neither the arteries throbbing nor the brain being clouded by the rising of vapors.

And self-control is freedom for the stomach.

For then it is released from its enforced servitude, and from boiling like a cauldron, laboring at digestion.

The eyes see clearly and without dimming, once all the mist that satiety is wont to pour over them has been removed; the footing of the feet is firm, and the action of the hands is unshaken.

The breath is regular and moderate, pressed by none of the troublesome vapors from within.

The speech of the one who fasts is clear and well-articulated; the mind is pure, and only then truly possesses its God-like character, when, as though in flesh made incorporeal, it performs its own activity free from pain and disturbance.

Sleep is untroubled and free from disturbing visions:

and, to pass over much and speak briefly, fasting is the common peace of soul and body, an untroubled life, a stable manner of life, a life that gladdens God and grieves the enemy.

For just as an enemy, when he sees his opponent alert and sober, arming himself diligently and practicing courage, regards that man's diligent preparation as his own defeat, so too the plotter against our salvation hates all our precision in virtue as though it were his own calamity.

And therefore know that of the fasting man's house, angels are guardians and attendant watchmen; but of the man who revels in indulgences against the Forty Days, demons are the intimates — friends of the savor of roasted meat, and lovers of blood, and companions of drunkenness.

For indeed, of the spirits also, whether holy or unclean, each draws near to its own kindred and friends, just as one may also observe among the birds.

For the dove loves to dwell in clean places, and busies itself about the fields, gathering seed for herself and for her young:

and the turtledove gladly perches among the leaves of the trees, cooing something sweet and soft.

But the gluttonous raven perches at the meat-markets, croaking something harsh and unpleasant at those who cut up the meat.

Therefore let us love self-control, that we may be loved by the angels; and let us hate unbridled luxury, that together with it we may cast out our fellowship with demons.

No one who lived in luxury ever became excellent; nor did anyone given over to feasting become a disciple of virtue; nor is a lover of pleasure holy; nor does one who lives after the flesh share in the kingdom.

Come in memory to the beginning of our race, and you will find experience as witness to what we blame.

For the law of fasting would not have been laid upon us, had not the law of the first self-restraint been transgressed:

nor would the adversary have prevailed, had not the pretext of pleasure introduced sin.

There was no need of plow, and plowing oxen, and the cutting of a furrow, nor indeed of seed, and irrigating water, and the cycle of the seasons, and winter thickening the soil and summer loosening it, and all this cyclical toil, had we not, on account of our forefather's ready indulgence, been condemned to this cycle of labors:

but we were destined to spend our life in some other condition than the one now seen — which we hope again to attain, when we have put off this life of passion through the resurrection.

For this is the benefit of God's condescension toward us: that we may be restored to our former dignity:

of which, though we partook through his love for mankind, we did not keep the grace with due watchfulness.

Let us then be made radiant at the fast that is coming:

fasting is an image of the life to come, an imitation of the incorruptible way of life.

There, there are no drinking-bouts, nor indulgences.

Let the first man be set aside; go on in order and reckon those who came after him.

What was it that made righteous Noah act shamefully, stripped in his insensibility of those members which the law requires to be covered, and prepared the rash Ham to laugh at his father's drunkenness, so that two evils arose from a single transgression? For a single drunkenness stripped the father of decent covering, and the son of his freedom.

And when again I look to the sons of Eli the priest, and turn my mind to that narrative, I find a chain of calamities bound one to another from a single origin — that which comes through the belly and satiety.

For they too, making their father's priesthood a pretext for sensual indulgence and pleasure, profaned the sacrifices, and gave the firstfruits of the victims to the belly before giving them to God.

And fornication followed too, sin the sister of luxury; and upon all these came the judgment from God, bringing a harsh and severe penalty.

For because of them a hostile nation marched against Jerusalem.

And, that my discourse may cut short a multitude of grim narratives: the licentious young men fell in battle, and the fatherland was imperiled together with those who had sinned, and the ark of God was carried off captive by the enemy, and the aged priest died at the tidings of these evils, and so great a swarm of evils was brought upon the city on account of the pleasure of the throat.

Let us all, then, fast:

But the members of a priest's household — who indeed possess all the more, as a housemate, the school of self-restraint, and, from the very hearth, the philosophic precepts —

For it is absurd that the sons of money-changers should become assayers of silver, and the household servants of smiths should be occupied about the fire and the anvil, while those close to priests — whether kinsmen or otherwise members of the household — should be unruly toward that very goal which the master and head of the hearth was allotted to live by.

Isaac's elder son too suffered the greatest harm on account of the belly.

For since he practiced hunting as his trade, and once, after a long chase, having returned home, in uncontrollable hunger he gulped down greedily the food that appeared before him, he sold his birthright to his brother for a mess of lentils;

and from that point on, his father's blessing too was stolen from him; and thus, being estranged little by little from virtue and from God, he lost the patriarchal glory, and, cut off in kinship from Israel, he himself became a barbarian and a foreigner, and he begot from himself a people of the same kind.

This disease also led the people of the Old Testament into transgression of the divine and sacred laws.

For while Moses was delayed with the promised giving of the law, the people, straying from their right way of living, turned to luxury and to dancing; and as they slipped bit by bit and trampled upon the good order of life, the devil dragged them on into impiety.

I wish also to set before you another story, later in time than the one just told, but equal in force as regards the deed.

King Saul was drawing up his battle-line and was conducting the war with much care;

he forbade the people to partake of food on that day, sealing the judgment with an oath, and death was the penalty for the one who disobeyed.

While the whole army obediently received the order, only Jonathan, the king's son, having come upon a hive, and being overcome by desire for the honey, plunged his staff into the honeycombs and tasted of the sweetness.

And he came close to peril, had not the whole multitude together withstood the impulse of his father and king, who had resolved to carry the threat into execution.

And besides what has been said, it is possible, by gathering countless such examples from the Scriptures, to see clearly that self-control is a good thing, and, on the contrary, that the unrestrained enjoyment of drinking-bouts and delicacies is a grievous thing.

Fasting is the companion reared together with the saints; fasting is the leader of every good deed.

And just as craftsmen do not exercise their arts without tools, so too the earnest ones, even when helped by spiritual gifts, never once wrought any of their wonders and marvels without self-control.

Fasting, Elisha raised the dead man and restored him to life;

fasting, Moses saw God;

fasting, Daniel overcame the sorcery and delusion of the Assyrians;

fasting, the Lord too withstood the devil's temptations;

fasting, the apostles too performed their prayers on behalf of weighty matters;

by fasting the Ninevites overcame the threat of death;

and, generally speaking, this is an advocate before God, worthy of reverence, and a trustworthy ambassador, swiftly winning God over on behalf of those for whom it brings the supplication to him.

Therefore every pious man, and whoever is a lover of God rather than a lover of pleasure — rejoicing with me and being of good cheer, come forward to the days of self-control.

For no one who looks gloomy at the start of the contests is a noble contestant.

Do not be sullen, like an infant being dragged to school; do not grumble against the purity of these days; do not seek the end of the week as one longs for the coming of spring after a bitter winter; do not, like a Jew, long for the Sabbath for the sake of drunkenness; do not count the days of the Forty Days like an idle hired hand awaiting the end of his paid term; do not be grieved that your house does not send up smoke from the first hour, nor does the cook stand by the fire.

Grant something to the soul too, not everything to the body.

The one is nourished by abstinence from food, the other by satiety.

But since the two have been yoked to one another, and things widely separated by nature have been bound together by the providence and skill of the Creator, let us take counsel how both might continue to exist, each not deprived of its appropriate needs.

You are constituted of the two, O man, and for now I pass over in silence the fact that the soul is far more honorable, and that it is fitting to allot to it the greater share of goodwill.

But judge between the two as a rational and fair-minded man.

Bear with me a little, and, if you are willing, I will make the case on behalf of the soul, as one entrusted with advocacy for a woman, concerning the things in which she says she is being wronged and insulted.

She, then, is sacred and incorporeal, immortal and indestructible, having her kinship not with earth and the things here, but with God.

And being pure, she rejoices in pure things, and, having an immaterial origin, she flees material things.

Yet since she was ordered to manage the vessel formed from earth, as an obedient slave of the Master she attends upon the clay, and holds fast to its guarding and to the care over it, until a command comes permitting their separation.

This one, then, who gives life to the body, is benefited by abstinence from food; but for the earthly instrument, the enjoyment of food is necessary.

She seeks nothing more, being the better part.

"Divide for me," it says, "the time of the year: give the six months for enjoyment to the one that is governed, and the rest to the governor."

But I will make an even greater concession; I do not insist upon an equal share.

I condescend to the weakness of the body.

I give up the ten months to the body, and a little more besides.

Let it grant me the Forty Days unmolested, that I may be freed a little from the mire, the clay being cooled through self-control.

These things, O Christians, are just and incontrovertible, whether God judges or man.

And you too, O judge, cast your vote for me; for you have arrived at just the right moment, while the soul is disputing with the body.

Take away for me, then, O Christian, self-indulgent pleasure, as being childish.

You are a man; do not think the thoughts of infants.

Those infants, if they do not get honey, wail;

if you do not offer them meat or wine, falling down they gasp convulsively, and by their whimpering they wear everyone out for as long as they can.

I blush at the dejection of the gluttonous, at how they mourn over their want of food;

they yawn continually, they lie down a little, they get up again, they sleep only when forced to.

They struggle to pass the days in a stupor, they are vexed at the sun for being slow to set.

They pronounce the days longer than usual.

And moreover they feign pains of the stomach, and distensions of wind, and heaviness of the head, and an upset of their constitution.

And yet ... these are the marks of overeating, not of fasting.

They come to the modest table with distaste; they grumble against the vegetables; they revile the legumes as though they had been introduced into creation to no purpose;

for the pleasure-lovers even turn into natural philosophers against the fare of self-control.

They gulp down the water without pausing to breathe, as though it were an unpleasant medicine received from physicians to drink.

And many even sophisticate the wine with counterfeit preparations, thereby indulging their love of pleasure.

And others, accordingly, make an elaborate craft of their needs even with vegetables, and become various sophists of enjoyment.

But this is exceedingly foolish and senseless.

For self-control is the achievement of a self-governing and free mind; it is not some servile contrivance which, in seeking to carry out the task set before it, fails to accomplish it as is fitting, but instead manages it in a slavish, cunning manner.

You demand a wage for the very things by which you live according to the law of virtue.

But a wage and recompense are promised to guileless workers, not to evildoers.

Do not adulterate your fasting, lest you suffer the fate of the wine-hucksters.

For if those men are punished for mixing water into the wine, how will you pass unpunished, when you introduce cleverly-contrived pleasures into the austerity of the fast? Do not imitate feigned illnesses; do not falsely accuse the Forty Days as though it produced disease, for on the contrary it is productive of health.

Do not make excuses for excuses in sins, along with men who practise the love of pleasure.

Because of a bad habit, self-control is reckoned by you an enemy;

yet by nature it is not oppressive.

Proof of this statement lies in all the barbarians who neither plant vines nor drink wine, but draw to themselves the spontaneous, unfarmed drink, water, and are known to be noble and the finest in wars; and, as is likely, the sober naturally overpower those heavy with wine, who are drunk.

And their bodies are light and hardy, and such men are quick to mount a horse, well-formed by nature, and daring, and accurate in archery.

And they are secure in their boldness, and capable of finding a resolution in difficulties.

Do not, then, accuse water of making those who use it wasted and weak.

For experience refutes your slander.

What am I saying about wine? The nomadic Scythians—those who dwell near the Bosporus and those who settle by the river Rhine—are without houses and without hearths;

they live as tent-dwellers, pitching for themselves a shelter out of felts and hides and whatever coverings come to hand.

They know no plough, nor do they cut open the earth;

therefore they do not partake of bread;

for how could they, who have not learned the cultivation of wheat and the grains that follow it? Yet living their lives without bread and wine, they are courageous and a match in war for whole nations, and they prevail over and surpass the many;

the absence of bread and wine has not harmed them, but ancestral custom has become second nature to these men.

Why has my discourse called these things to mind? So that we may learn how upbringing and discipline shape a man toward whatever we wish and toward whatever we practice.

Accustom yourself to self-control, and in time it will become for you an untroublesome housemate.

But if, on the contrary, you keep pleasures and feastings as your foster-companions and friends, you will never love fasting, but it will seem to you burdensome, as something foreign and unfamiliar.

A life of self-control is an image of the life to come, the incorruptible life.

For just as then, having stripped off this passion-ridden flesh, we shall live free, having no compulsion to serve the belly and be enslaved to the other passions, so also now, if we cast off from ourselves the great compulsion and its matter, we shall be near to the incorruption we await.

And to put it briefly, let us flee love of pleasure to the utmost of our power;

for it is impossible for the same person to be both a lover of pleasure and a lover of God.

For the lover of the body will of necessity also be a lover of money, and the lover of money is unjust, and the one who has fallen into injustice will readily transgress the ordinances of piety and trample the laws of the wise, and will easily lay hands on what is forbidden, thereby gathering for himself the materials of enjoyment and offering all the spoils of injustice as gifts to pleasure, as to a mistress.

Do not flee the hardship of self-control; rather, set your hopes against the present toil, and you will pass lightly through this abstinence from partaking.

Say to yourself words of piety:

'Fasting is bitter, but paradise is sweet;'

'thirst is burdensome, but near is the fountain, from which he who drinks will never thirst, forever.'

'The body is enfeebled, but the soul, being incorporeal, is the stronger.'

'Strength is dead, but the resurrection is near.'

Say also to your pressing belly the word of the Lord:

'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'

It is not famine, but a small delay;

not an inescapable punishment, but a voluntary abstinence;

not a slavish compulsion, but a free philosophy.

Call upon him, and the Helper stands ready at your side.

Call to mind an ancient story, and you will learn how those who, for piety's sake, discipline the body are neither weaker in strength than those who live luxuriously and pour down much unmixed wine, nor do they appear gloomier in aspect or faded in complexion.

For that king of the Assyrians, who lived wholly for the flesh and was tethered to a life of luxury as to a manger, when he commanded that his cupbearers and stewards of the table, and in short all the attendants of his pleasure, be chosen for excellence of body and be seen to be graceful—so that not only his mouth and taste, but even his eye might luxuriate over what was seen—it was then that the three young men from among the captives of Israel, being enrolled among the list of attendants, abstained from the delicacies of the royal table, as defiled by their admixture with food sacrificed to idols, and ate only pulse.

Wine, too, was to be shunned because of the libation [poured to idols], and all meat for the reason already stated.

When they were being compelled by the overseer to partake of what was set before them, lest ever their beauty be changed into disfigurement through their self-control, and the unsightly, incurable state of the young men become a charge and a punishment against him, [Daniel] said, 'Allow it, and grant permission: we shall not appear to the king less honorable than those who live luxuriously, nor will our faces wither, nor need you be anxious about presenting him with disfigured attendants.'

'For the artificer of our formation will grant the grace, and you will learn from experience that God is the guardian of our beauty, and fasting the adorner of the comeliness you desire.'

And indeed the young men flourished exceedingly and surpassed in repute all the meat-eaters.

[...] to keep himself untasting of wine and free from all luxury? And who was strong as he was? What champion was so renowned? He alone was a match for every battle-line of enemies, and by his own power he routed a countless multitude;

he who, once lacking sword or spear, took up the jawbone of a donkey and struck down warrior men, using that bone alone.

So then, do you too hope, and you will be strong;

be eager, and you will be empowered;

give your ear to the learning of hidden things, and you will forget your food, as did the crowd that followed Jesus, who taught them by word and deed.

Let us, the intemperate and pleasure-loving, be ashamed before the Greeks and Jews who fast—vainly, indeed, and to no purpose;

for in vain do they deprive themselves of what they do not eat, though pursuing the practice as something to be emulated and befitting the earnest.

For Christians, exactness of conduct and dignity of philosophy are fitting, since to them belongs the pure and true doctrine of piety.

But those who labor at moral discipline apart from this seem to me to be doing something like those who build a house without a foundation, or construct a ship without laying down the keel.

Such are the slow-to-learn Hebrews.

And laughter falls upon me violently whenever I behold them wandering the streets barefoot in white cloaks—a reproach to Moses, a shame to the prophets, miscarried offspring of Abraham, slaves of folly though they are sons of freedom, ignorant and lawless though would-be disciples of the law, having lost the hope of the outcome, because they did not intelligently receive the types of what was to come.

For everything Moses did, he prefigured as images of what was to come afterward;

whether you speak of the fast, or the feast of tabernacles, or the memorial of the trumpets, likewise circumcision, the unleavened bread, and the bitter herbs.

All those things were tokens of the polity in Christ, images sketched beforehand for those being led step by step, through initiation, toward perfection.

For I, the Christian and slave of the Crucified One, fast rightly, whether purifying myself beforehand in view of the hope of the resurrection, or grieving, as a master-loving slave, over the sufferings of my Lord.

But you, son of murderers, descendant of those who slaughtered the Lamb, who have received from the voice of the fathers the inheritance of the shed blood—of those who called down such a curse upon themselves and their children—for whom, tell me, do you fast?

If it is as one repenting of what you have sinned, I heartily embrace you for this resolve; then leave behind the synagogue of evildoers and hasten to the church of the pious.

Come to the blood of the Lamb and be sprinkled.

For from that very source whence you incurred the sin, from there too your purification shall come.

But if even now you are still bound to the same practices, what does your abstinence from food mean but an imitation of the crocodiles of the Nile, who are said to wail over the heads of the men they have devoured and to weep for the killing—not from any repentance for what has happened (for how could irrational beasts, and water-creatures at that, feel such a thing?), but, as it seems to me, lamenting only the fleshless part of the head, as unfit for eating? Such indeed is the pretense you display in your fasting.

Dances and dancing-choruses are the interludes and episodes amid this fasting—things that war against the outward appearance being displayed;

for fasting is understood to be a tutor unto self-restraint and orderly composure, while the dance expresses a soul dissolved in unrestrained and abundant self-indulgences.

Recall here the Mosaic precept that says one must fast on the tenth day of the seventh month.

For the seventh month signifies the seventh day, and the tenth day signifies the tenth hour, in which the Lord gave up his spirit on the cross.

And for each matter there are distinctive forms as well, which, from their sensible surface, disclose the invisible disposition of the soul.

But why do you mix things that should not be mixed, and confound in the same act things meant to be kept apart? They have, besides, other festivals attended by the whole populace.

They do not realize that they are celebrating the mysteries of the Christians, since the construction of the Tabernacle is an enacted prophecy of this very Church which our Logos has established.

For this reason they adorn the Tabernacle with leaves and beautify the forecourts with fruits, as a type of the fact that the new, fruitful Church was destined to spring up beneath the Law.

And the festival of the trumpets rouses souls to make ready for the resurrection, as Paul says:

'For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised.'

And our God and Savior himself also teaches this in the Gospels, saying:

'And he will send his angels with a trumpet of great sound, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.'

But upon hearing these words, they will perhaps raise against us an objection of this sort:

that, calling to mind the ancient wonders and God's benefactions, they offer these thank-offerings on account of Mount Sinai and the trumpet that sounded at the giving of the Law.

But these vain-minded people do not know that even then the trumpet was employed typologically at the giving of the Law.

For since one who receives a law as a rule of life and orderly conduct must fear the punishment that comes from disobedience, for this reason God, in sending forth to men the written precepts of our life, immediately added also the sound of the trumpet, a symbol of the resurrection from the dead, so that the disciples of these commandments, foreseeing the judgment through the resurrection, might keep the decrees of the divine legislation inviolable.

So then, the fast also, and the feast of tabernacles, and the trumpets, were long ago mysteries obscurely foreshadowing our religion, but received their fulfillment at the fitting time, when the manifestations of God in the flesh of our Savior were accomplished;

to whom belongs glory and honor and worship, now and always, and unto the ages of ages.