Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 37 part 2/2

For tell me, the sorcerers—whence come they? Is it not from this source? That they may excite a populace idly at leisure, and cause the dancers to reap the profit of much uproar, and set harlot women as a rampart against the chaste, they resort to such enchantments as not even to shrink from disturbing the bones of the departed.

Is it not from this source, when men are compelled to squander countless sums upon that wicked chorus of the devil? And whence comes licentiousness and the ten thousand evils? Do you see that you overturn life by dragging men to these things, while I build it up by tearing them down?

'Let us then pull down the orchestra,' one says.

Would that it were possible to pull it down!

Or rather, if you are willing, our part of it has already been pulled down and razed to the ground.

Yet I command none of these things.

Render inoperative the things that still stand—which is a greater praise than to pull them down.

If you will imitate no one else, at least emulate the barbarians;

for they too keep themselves pure from every such spectacle.

What defense, then, shall be left to us, when we—citizens of the heavens, fellow dancers with the Cherubim, companions of the angels—become in this respect worse even than the barbarians, and that when it is possible to find ten thousand other delights far better than these? For if you wish to refresh your soul, walk out into the gardens, to a flowing river and to pools;

study the gardens, listen to the cicadas singing, frequent the shrines of the martyrs, where there is health of body and profit of soul, and no harm at all, nor repentance after the pleasure, as there is in those other places.

You have a wife, you have children;

what pleasure is equal to this? You have a home, you have friends—these are the delights that, together with self-control, yield great gain as well.

For what is sweeter than children, tell me? What sweeter than a wife, to the man who wishes to live chastely? The barbarians, indeed, are said once to have uttered a saying full of wisdom.

For hearing about these lawless theaters and their unseasonable delight, they said: 'The Romans, as though they had no children and no wives, have devised for themselves such pleasures as these';

thereby showing that nothing is sweeter than children and a wife, if you are willing to live honorably.

'What then,' he says, 'if I show that men take no harm from spending time there?' Above all, this very thing is harmful—to waste one's time idly and to no purpose, and to become a stumbling block to others.

For even though you yourself take no harm, you make another more eager for this.

And how shall you yourself escape harm, providing occasions for the things that are done? For the sorcerer, and the prostituted boy, and the harlot woman, and all those diabolical choruses lay upon your head the responsibility for the things that are done.

For just as, if there were no spectators, there would be none who pursued these practices,

so, since there are spectators, they too share in the fire of the things that are done.

So that even if you took no harm at all as to your chastity—which is impossible—yet you will render a grievous account for the destruction of others, both of the spectators and of those who gather them together.

And you would have gained the more in chastity, had you not gone there.

For even if you are now chaste, you would have become more chaste by fleeing such spectacles.

Let us not, then, contend over superfluous things, nor devise useless defenses.

For there is but one defense: to flee the Babylonian furnace, to get far away from the Egyptian harlot, even though one must escape her hands naked.

For thus shall we also enjoy much pleasure, our conscience not accusing us, and

we shall live the present life with self-control, and shall attain the good things to come, by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.