Омилия XXVII 118 .

And this omilia was pronounced during the harvest; it also speaks of the spiritual harvest that is to come for us “The word that speaks judges him,” says the Lord in the Gospels (John 12:48). This is the word we proclaim to you, brothers. Therefore, let no one accept it in hearing as if it were something melting in the air, but let him accept it as something that abides and has the ability to grant salvation to those who testify to their faith by their deeds; for those who reject (this word) and who by their actions demonstrate the opposite of this, it will serve to convict them at that future judgment. So, just as each of us has a house and relatives, and, perhaps, grapes, also a herd, as well as money and various property, so God, in His love for mankind, considers us in relation to Himself to be all of the above 119. “We are the house of God,” says the Apostle, “if we hold the boldness and praise of our hope even to the end” (Heb. 3:6); “boldness” denoting piety, and “praise of hope” - a godly life, just as God said through the Prophet: “Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev.11:44). And John, beloved of Christ, reveals, saying: “Not having appeared, what we will be: but we know that when He appears, we will be like Him; and everyone who has this hope purifies himself, even as He is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). So, we are and remain to be the house of Him who says: “I will dwell in them, and I will be their God” (2 Cor. 6:16), if we have a pure life with godliness. If we live sinfully and without repentance, we will hear from Him: “Behold, your house is left empty” (Matthew 23:38); and we will be left, - I will say again in the words of Scripture, - “like a booth of vineyards, and like a vegetable storehouse in a garden” (Is. 1:8), which, when the time of need for them has passed, has nothing valuable in them. And the fact that the Lord considers us His relatives, He Himself says: “Whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, this is My brother and my sister and my mother” (Matthew 12:49). Do you see how this highest kinship is acquired? – A godly lifestyle, a life of virtues, behavior that meets the Divine commandments; because this is the will of the Highest Father. He who does not do the will of the Highest and Heavenly Father is so far removed from kinship with Him that even with the enemy of God he acquires kinship; Therefore, the Lord said to the Jews: “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do his lusts” (John 8:44). When they objected to Him that they were the children of Abraham, He again said to them: “Because the children of Abraham were quicker, the works of Abraham were quickly done” (John 8:39). The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the “House of Israel,” as Isaiah says (Is. 5:7), i.e. all who know piety. But these grapes then enjoy care and care when they bear fruit pleasing to God; if instead of grapes it brings thorns, i.e. – the sting of death, which is sins, is left out of concern and left to be trampled under foot, truly, by beasts and evil demons, and given over to the fire to be burned; why the Lord, saying to His Disciples: “I am the Vine, you are the birth, My Father is the Worker,” added: “Every rod that creates fruit for Me, He will consume it, and it will bring forth more fruit; But he who does not produce fruit will be cast out like a rod and dry up, and they will gather it up and put it into the fire and be burned up” (John 15:1-6). And the fact that He, having created us, considers us to be His flock, is He who said to the Corypheus of the Corypheus of the Apostolic Face: “Peter, do you love Me? “Feed My lambs, feed My sheep” (John 21:15–18); because we are all lost like sheep, and lost like a drachma, having fallen out of the Master’s hand. But the Good Shepherd, the Lord of nature, came; He sought, found, saved, in an indescribable way united with Himself. Let us follow, brothers, the Good Shepherd Christ, who leads us into the pastures and fences of eternal life. Let us preserve, through virtues, the image and likeness in relation to Him, so that we do not fall away from the life-giving hand. Let us bear fruit to Him in good works, so that we may be the grapes of the Lord of hosts and His beloved new planting. Let us do the good, pleasing and perfect will of God, so that we may be enriched by His possessions through our Father. Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, so that we may establish ourselves as the house of God, who, not only as vines and a house, but also as a field and sown arable land, having our family, “is likened,” he says, “the kingdom of heaven to a man who sowed good seed in his village; But as a sleeping man, his enemy came, and all the tares in the midst of the wheat, and went away” (Matthew 13:25). It is not untimely that the word brought this parable to the middle: because, thanks to it, we can repay the debt and fulfill the promise that we made to your love in the previous conversation. Because while teaching you about mental and spiritual harvest, I said and showed that the reapers of this spiritual harvest, which is expressed in the transfer from unbelief to faith, are the sacred Apostles and their successors and teachers of piety who exist even to our time in generations; and - about the mental harvest, which is expressed in the transfer of each of us from this world to the future life, the harvesters of which are God's holy Angels, who have greater prerogatives than the Apostles, because after the harvest, they select and separate, on the one hand, the good, on the other hand, the bad; and the good ones are sent to the kingdom of God, and the bad ones are thrown into fiery hell. So, although I also spoke about this, but did not prove it, I promised, when God provides time and occasion, to present an argument that would be sufficiently presented on the basis of this Lord’s parable; for He said (continuing the parable): “The servants of the Lord saw the tares in the village, and decided to Him: Do you want me to go and weed them out? He said: neither: let it not be that when you delight in the tares, you also delight in the wheat with them; During the harvest, the reaper says: Gather the tares first, and bind them in sheaves, as I have burnt them; but gather the wheat into My barn” (Matthew 13:27-30). The tares, as the Lord said, are the sons of the evil one; because, on the basis of the similarity of deeds, bearing his characteristic features, they become his seed and adopted by him. The time of harvest is the end of this age; for although it began earlier and is now accomplished through (individual) death, then everything will come to an end. The inhabitants are Angels; because they are, and especially then will be revealed, servants of the Heavenly King. “As slaughter,” He says, “they gather up the tares and burn them with fire: so it will be at the end of this age. Afterwards is the Son of Man”, - He is also the Son of the Highest Father, - “afterwards He is His angels, and from His kingdom they will gather away all offenses” (Matthew 13:40-41). Because our Lord Jesus Christ, as God, is the Lord of all and the King of heaven and earth and those who are in heaven; and as a man who became it for our sake, through the cross who overthrew the enslaved, through deception, our race, having redeemed us with Himself (δι εαυτοῦ), and bringing us to His Parent, the human race has His kingdom, especially the Holy Church gathered from all nations. So, He will send His angels, and they will gather from His kingdom all temptations and those who practice iniquity, i.e. heretics and those who did not retreat from their sins and did not repent; because every sin is lawlessness; So, having gathered them together, they will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Do you see, brethren, the harvest and separation are truly very, very terrible and terrible?! We spoke the truth when we said that the Angels are the reapers of this harvest and have greater prerogatives than the Apostles. So, seeing the servants of the Master, i.e. Angels of God, tares in the field, i.e. wicked and bad people living among the good and among the Church of Christ, and living with them, said to the Lord: “Do you want us to go and choose them?” those. shall we snatch them up from the earth by death? The master said to them: “No; so that when you choose the tares, you do not pull up the wheat along with them.” But how could it happen to them that by choosing the tares and plucking out the bad by death and separating them from the righteous, they could also pull up the wheat, i.e. good people? – Many of the wicked and sinners, living together with those who live piously and righteously, sometimes over time turn to repentance and learn piety and virtue, and instead of tares they become wheat; and thus it happens that in choosing the tares, the wheat will be pulled out along with them, if they are plucked out by the Angels before they have time to repent. And on the other hand, many, being bad, gave birth to children or grandchildren of a good spiritual disposition; Therefore, He who knows everything before it happens did not allow the tares to be plucked out ahead of time. “At the time of the harvest,” he says, “I will say to the reapers: gather up the tares first, and bind them in bundles to burn them; and put the wheat into my barn." But this is completely in harmony with what the Lord says in another parable; namely: “The king came in to see those reclining, and saw that the man was not clothed in a wedding robe: and the verb said to him: friend, why did you come in without this wedding robe? – he kept silent. Then the king said to the servants: Having tied his hand and nose, take him and throw him into the outer darkness: he will weep and gnashing his teeth” (Matthew 22:11-13). For just as there, along with the good seeds, there were also tares, so here, together with those clothed in good works, as if in a wedding garment, he who bore the stained and shameful robe of sin lay with him; and just as there the Lord commands to first gather the tares and then throw them into that fire, so here, first saying: “having tied his hands and feet,” then he says: “throw them into outer darkness”; and he added what he said there, namely, that “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” because outer darkness is the same as fiery hell. But why is this gloomy place called a place not of internal, but of external darkness? – The non-evening and true and ever-present Light, in which the spirits of the righteous now are, and then the Saints will be with their bodies, is God: because He is the Sun of Truth; but even now those living in impurity and unrighteousness are outside this Sun and the light emitted by It, but here they have hope of repentance, and live, now enjoying the sensory light and have the consolation that other creations of God provide, as God kindly allows and generously awaits their correction. But those who did not repent here, then having lost God’s patience and His mercy towards them and the pleasure that they had from God’s sensory creations, and thus becoming even more distant from God and having lost hope itself, will be given over to eternal torment. So, those who are now outside this true Light, even more outside it, as we said, will then be, and will be given over to the darkness that is outside this Light, and to inconsolable sorrow and distress, just as the Apostle says: “The goodness of God leads you to repentance; because of your cruelty and unrepentant heart, storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Rom. 2:4-5). Who can stand before the wrath of God? Who then will withstand the test and this shame, which the Lord showed us in the Gospel through a parable, saying to him, who, as it were, was clothed in the ugly clothing of sin: “How did you come here not in wedding clothing, not in the grace-filled attire of virtue?” But he was silent, not daring to open his mouth. Who can withstand God’s sentence pronounced with wrath and the zealous impulse of the Angels to carry it out, seizing the condemned man from among the righteous and separating him like tares from wheat, and mercilessly binding him and throwing him, alas, into Gehenna! Who will endure the pitch-black and forever hopeless darkness, the incessant and inconsolable confusion, as a result of very strong crying, and the gnashing and clicking of teeth? incessant and unbearable suffering from the burning of an unquenchable fire? What kind of fire is this that touches both bodies and souls, both those in bodies and those existing without a body, tormenting them and at the same time holding them in immortality? fire, with which our (earthly) fire will be destroyed, as it is written: “The elements will be destroyed by burning” (2 Pet. 3:10). What great addition to suffering is that it does not foresee liberation? What can we say about not even seeing the abyss of evil into which we are thrown, because that fire does not shine! This same harvest is the same as this threshing floor, which Christ will cleanse, having a winnowing spade in his hands, as His Forerunner and Baptist revealed, and will gather the wheat into His granary, and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:12): for the spade that is in the hands of Christ, the Baptist called the Angelic Powers; a shovel is a winnowing machine (for cleaning grain). So, just as she, being in the hands of the farmer, moves there and as the farmer would wish it, so the Angels, being in the hands and in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, move wherever and as He would wish it and fulfill His will. But what He called “field” in that harvest, here the Forerunner called “threshing floor”: because on the threshing floor everything collected on the field is distributed. What He presented there as choosing the tares, here (the Forerunner) he called cleansing the threshing floor. Here he called the tares “straw,” for even the tares, being light and not containing fruit, are carried away by the wind along with the straw. But it is possible that here by the expression “straw” something more is meant, because not only those that are harmful to good neighbors, like tares to those ears of wheat with which they are mixed by roots, but also those that, although not harmful to others, are not stable and, due to their sterility, are themselves sterile, are also worthy of the essence of fire. There, behold, there is a “furnace of fire,” and here, he called it “unquenchable fire,” showing that this future and ongoing torment (or “punishment”) is endless for those who, due to inactivity in the practice of virtue and due to a passionate and sinful life, have become like straw and tares. And what the Forerunner here called the “granary,” Christ designated there as the “kingdom of God”; for he says: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Why didn’t He say: “in the kingdom of God,” but “in the kingdom of their Father”? - In order to show that first a person must become a son of God and worthy to call God Father, and then rightly becomes the heir of His kingdom. How does a person become a son of God? - By similarity in deeds; why does the Lord speak in response to the Jews, who say that “we are the children of Abraham”: “Because the children of Abraham were quicker, the works of Abraham were quickly done” (John 8:39). And when they answered: “We are the imams of one Father - God” (Jn. 8:41), then He said to them: “If God were your Father, you would quickly love Me: for I departed from God, and came again” (John 8:42); “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do his lusts” (John 8:44). Do you see how a person, as a result of evil lusts and deeds, becomes the son of the devil, and thus becomes the heir of eternal fire? So (on the contrary), through good motives and deeds, a person becomes like God and becomes His son and becomes the heir of His kingdom. And revealing that becoming like God consists in virtue, the Lord says: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34); “If I have washed your noses, Lord and Teacher, you must also wash each other’s noses. I have given you an image, that as I have created for you, you also do it” (John 13:14–15). And: “Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). And: “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). And: “Love your enemies, and do good, and give in return; and your reward will be many, and you will be sons of the Most High: for He is good to the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35). Therefore, the one who wants to get rid of this endless torment and become an heir to the ever-present Kingdom of God, let him not be a tare, a bad and harmful seed, so as to bring general harm to the bodies and souls of his neighbors, hated by God, presented as an example of bad deeds and thoughts; let him not be reed and straw, so light as to be easily carried hither and thither by the winds and movements of the evil spirit, so unsuitable as to be given over as food for wordless passions and demons; but let him be wheat, refraining from all indecent deeds and words, and doing the opposite of this - virtue and bearing the fruits of repentance: for in this way he will be worthy of the heavenly granary and will be called the son of the heavenly Highest Father, and, as an heir, rejoicing will enter His kingdom, illuminated by the Divine glory, which may we all receive through the grace and love of mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom glory befits with His Beginning Father and the Most Holy and Good and Life-Giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. PG.151:341–353. Homilia XXVII. Dicta etiam tempore messis; ubi et de futura nobis messe spirituali That is – God considers us His property, His relatives. We took the word “fire” from the Latin translation; no doubt it was accidentally omitted from the original Greek. You might be interested in: