70. Беседа на сырной неделе против невоздержания 385

Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness and the sorrows of life, and that day suddenly come upon you. (Luke 21:34). The approaching time of Lent calls us to abstinence: and the Holy Church has arranged these preparatory days for it as degrees, so that little by little we take away the fatness of food, and increasing the work of prayer, to lead us to the perfection of fasting and to extended feats of repentance and prayer. But on this eve of Holy Lent, which we are passing through, the reckless custom introduces so much that is contrary to abstinence and sobriety, bodily and spiritual! It seems to me that this should arouse in us pity and jealousy, similar to the jealousy of the House of God, according to which our Lord, with a scourge from the ropes, drove out from the vestibule of the church 386 those who were selling and buying, turning it into a house of buying and a den of robbers. Oh, if He would help us with a small scourge, woven from the words of truth and chastity, if not completely banish, then at least somewhat tame intemperance, which is especially rampant at the entrance to the sanctuary of Lent, and besides this often oppresses the body, devastates the soul, depletes the acquisition, plunders the virtues, absorbs the abilities! “Take heed to yourselves,” says the Lord, “lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness.” Wouldn't this warning now seem unnecessary to some, and wouldn't the suspicion it suggests of such gross vices be offensive? – We do not want to suspect or offend anyone, but we remind you, people who, in their own opinion, are quite moderate and sober, that the above warning was originally given by the Lord to His chosen disciples. The instruction that Peter, James, John, and Andrew were not offended to hear cannot be offensive or unnecessary for any of us. Is it just gluttony when the body cannot accommodate food? Is it just drunkenness, when the mind is drowned in wine, and the body cannot bear a burdened head? If, as is not difficult to verify, the real purpose of food and drink is the maintenance and renewal of the bodily composition, which in an inconspicuous way constantly consumes 388 decay; and the taste of food and the pleasantness of drinking are given as means for this purpose: then every piece of food, in addition to satisfying hunger, consumed for taste, is a share of gluttony: every sip of drink, after quenching thirst and after invigorating strength, consumed for pleasantness, belongs to the cup of drunkenness. What is the essence of our tables, on which it is difficult to count the different types of food, difficult to guess their composition, difficult to remember the names of the different types of drink? Are they not intricately woven nets that we lay for each other in order to catch us in gluttony, although sometimes subtle, and in drunkenness, although apparently sober? And you won’t notice how you will move from eating to overeating, how simple drinking will turn into drunkenness. You need to look after yourself diligently. "Take heed to yourself." How many different arts and substances and tools does a reasonable person use in order to fill his small and senseless belly! How the mind is humiliated when it is exhausted in inventions, so that the tribute daily demanded by the belly, as an inexorable ruler, is brought to it as gracefully as possible, and is acceptable to it in as large a quantity as possible! And how the womb curses at this servile mind, placing the end of all its worries about grace in uncleanness and stench! Rise up, unfortunate worshiper of the womb, and if you cannot suddenly lift your eyes above yourself, stand right in front of the mirror and see if the law against servility to the womb is not written on you? “Don’t you see that above your womb there is a chest in which lives a heart that desires good, feels love; that above it still rises a head in which reigns the mind contemplating truth, the mind thinking about probabilities; that under one and the other, as if under heaven and earth hell, a dark womb has been cast down, unable to think or desire? How much insight is needed to notice that it should not rule over the higher regions, but be in service, in contempt? If, on the contrary, you try more and more to please the belly in what it blindly demands, desires for it, imagines for it: then beware that it does not become stronger and higher than your head, and with its ugly weight does not begin to constrain and suppress the noblest actions of the mind and heart. “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness.” By the name “heart,” the Lord generally means the “inside” of a person, which can be seen from His own other saying, in which He connects these words, explaining one another: “from within,” he says, “from the heart of man come evil thoughts” (Mark 7:21). So, under the name of the heart, as the insides in general, in the saying of the Lord we must understand the spiritual powers of man with their actions and perfections, especially the mind 389, the power to will, and the ability to know. See what the overwhelming weight of a satiated womb can finally fall upon. “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be heavy.” We don’t notice, they might say, that people who are less abstinent in food and drink than others are therefore less likely to use the ability of reason and willpower. I do not argue that some of them 390 even better than others use the ability of reason to understand and invent the subtleties of pleasures 391 for the senses and imagination, and are more strongly attracted to these desires than others. The spirit of such people floats like steam over warm dishes, or a little higher. But when it is necessary to elevate the thought and heart to the mountain, above these visible heavens, which, although subtle, are corporeal, and therefore even lower than the region characteristic of the pure spirit; when it is necessary to direct desire towards God: then it turns out that the belly, weighed down by satiety, hangs like a weight under the wings of the spirit, and pulls it towards the ground, so that, with all its efforts, it beats on the ground rather than flies towards the sky. Animals with plenty of food and fat cannot run 392 as fast as a tree with little food; likewise, a glutton cannot be as active and successful in his exploits as an abstinent one. You know that man has fallen: but how? Was it not his womb weighed down with the forbidden fruit that cast him from the blissful paradise to the miserable earth? Aggravate it more, and it will bring you down from earth into the depths of hell. Really, what overthrew Sodom in such a terrible way? “Pride,” answers the Prophet, “is in the abundance of bread, and in the abundance of wine; and that woman of voluptuousness and her daughters; this was hers and her daughters” (Ezek.16:49). The Lord threatens gluttons with a similar, but even more terrible, disaster 393. “He will find it,” he says, “on that day.” What day? – A day of which only a small image, only a foreshadowing was shown on the terrible day of Sodom, - a day that threatens not one or several luxurious and voluptuous cities, but the whole universe, which will make “men faint from the fear and hope of those who are coming upon the world” (Luke 21:26), on which “the Lord will come in the darkness of His holy angels, to execute judgment on everyone, and to expose all the wicked about all the deeds of their wickedness, in the image of your wickedness" (Jude 1:14,15). The Lord repeatedly inspires us that this terrible day will especially accidentally befall those who are devoted to intemperance, luxury, and worries about the benefits and pleasures of life. “For as,” he says, “I ran in the days before the flood, eating and drinking, marrying and committing violence, until that day Noah went into the ark, and was not taken away until the water came and was all taken away: so will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:38-39). And he also says: “As it was in the days of Lot: yadyahu, piyahu, kupovahu, sellahu, sazhdahu, zdahu: on the same day Lot went out from the Sodomites, rained down the burning Kamyk and fire from heaven, and destroyed everything. Accordingly it will be the same on the day in which the Son of man will appear” (Luke 17:28–30). Truly, to people whose throat is opened not in order to sing the glory of God, or to utter the desires of the heart before God, but in order, like a tomb, to absorb and turn into corruption everything that is best that lives and grows on earth; who spend half their lives in the labor of burdening their belly, and the other half in the labor of carrying 394 this burden; for whom wine stirs the blood and clouds the head: - where can they think about the affairs of heaven, look into the hidden destinies of God, delve into the words of the Prophets, notice the signs of the times, stand on guard 395 in anticipation of the coming kingdom of God, which is not at all according to them, since it “is not meat and drink” (Rom. 14:17)? But here’s what’s still especially scary: this prevailing luxury, this intemperance that does not remember God and itself, can not only be suddenly comprehended by judgment and struck by the justice of God, but also constitute, according to the Lord, one of the preliminary circumstances, and, as it were, the threshold of this terrible judgment. “Your hearts will be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness, and that day will suddenly come upon you.” What should we think when we see that both rich and poor, at home and in the inn, early and late, are vying with their stomachs; that the womb swallows vast acquisitions and inheritances; that people who with difficulty acquire their daily bread, waste the poor fruits of their labor and sweat on excesses and intemperance, coarse or refined, on whims not required and unknown by nature; that the proclamation of a holiday, even the anticipation of fasting, these, according to the intention of the Church, are tools for exalting reverence, turn into tools for enhancing luxury, like sacred vessels used to decorate the Babylonian feast? - Oh, how dangerous, so that “that day does not suddenly come upon us” 397. Let us take care, brethren, how we may eat and drink for the glory of God, and not to our own detriment and to the insult of the Giver of good things, God. Yield to hunger and thirst: but do not take up arms against abstinence and fasting. Let daily bread strengthen the heart of man; let wine, in moderation, cheer the heart of the sad, or encourage the weak; “Eat,” let’s say, if you wish, and this with Nehemiah and Ezra, “eat the fat and drink the sweet,” but as a sign of this, “for holy is the day of our Lord” (Nehemiah 7:10), and not untimely and without measure, in the image of those “whose God is their belly” (Phil. 3:19). At all times, heed the word of the Lord and “take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness, and the day” of judgment suddenly come upon you, but let our hearts be lamps of wise virgins, full of the oil of grace, burning with love, bright with faith, so that we may be ready to meet the Judge like a bridegroom, and celebrate with Him in His heavenly chamber in eyelids! Amen. According to Jew. collection: Sermon on the day of Metropolitan Alexy, on cheese week on Saturday, spoken in the Cathedral Chudov Monastery, February 12, 1827. According to Jew. collection: And the approaching time of fasting calls us to abstinence: and this, in silence edifying, Teacher and example of both every other virtue and abstinence, did not call us to his holiday in order to eat fat, drink wine, fill the flesh, but to feast with uncorrupted words and sober prayer, and through this be filled with the spirit: and this is the threshold of holy fasting, which we we pass through, and into which the insane custom introduces so much that is contrary to abstinence and sobriety, bodily and spiritual, should, it seems to me, arouse in us pity and jealousy, similar to the jealousy of the House of God. Oh, if only He, who with a scourge from the ropes drove out from the vestibule of the church... According to Jew. collection: But is it necessary to repeat this? Many of those who hear will probably say; This warning is not superfluous for others; and we might not be offended by suspicion of such gross vices. – And we don’t want to suspect or offend anyone: however, we remind you... According to Jew. compilation: gnaws and sucks... According to Jew. collection: will and reason... According to Jew. team: Yes! They often... According to Jew. collection: pleasures... According to Jew. collection: An insatiable pig cannot run... According to Jew. collection: to today's gluttons... According to Jew. collection: carry... According to Jew. collection: to stand, so to speak, on guard... According to Jew. collection: most... According to Jew. collection: according to the words of the Lord, they constitute one of the signs of the proximity of this terrible judgment. Therefore, when I see that both the rich man at the feast and the poor man in the inn are vying with each other for their stomachs; that people who have put vast acquisitions and the inheritance of their ancestors in their bellies still lay out long tables and fill them with dishes seasoned with the hunger and thirst of the lenders; that people, who through their own labor and then must acquire their bread, waste the blessed fruits of their labor and sweat on senseless drunkenness, on whims completely incongruous with the requirements of nature, on the invention of foreign luxury; that the thought of a holiday, even of fasting, these, according to the intention of the Church, instruments of reverence, turn into instruments for enhancing luxury, like the sacred vessels used at Belshazzar’s feast: looking at all this, I am forced everywhere, as at Belshazzar’s feast, to look around with fear, whether the hand writing the judgment of destruction is already there. 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