Омилия XXXI 138 .

Said at a prayer service held on the first day of August “God does not create death, nor rejoices at the destruction of the living” (Wis. 1:13). If the Lord did not create death and is not the culprit of all the hardships that come with death, then where do we get weaknesses and illnesses and other types of evil from which death is born? Where does death itself come from? – As a result of our disobedience to God in the beginning; as a result of the transgression of the commandment given to us by God; as a result of our ancestral sin, which was in the paradise of God. Thus, illnesses and infirmities and the manifold burden of temptations come from sin; because as a result of it, we dressed ourselves in a leather robe - this painful and mortal body, subject to many sorrows, and passed into this world subject to time and death, and were condemned to live a multi-passionate and very unhappy life. So, as if illness is the path, short and difficult, onto which sin has led the human race, and the final point of this path and the end of the journey is death. God not only did not create death, but also withheld its appearance. And since He created man as a living being with autocracy, 139 He could not have prevented it without thereby violating His work, by taking away the freedom of power over Himself that He had given us. But in His wisdom and goodness He found a way: how to warn a person from death and at the same time preserve his freedom of will intact. How did He do this? – As soon as He created and revived him, He instilled in him advice that contained immortality, and strongly reinforcing this life-giving advice, He gave him the form of a commandment and clearly predicted that the violation of this life-giving commandment would be followed by death, and not so much by death in the body, as by the death of the soul, saying to the pair of our ancestors: “In the same day, you will cut down from the tree, you will understand good and evil one, you will surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17). Please note: he does not tell them in the form of a command: on the day you eat, you will die; because His command is the very beginning of being for everything (that which His command establishes), and (as it is said): “He commanded, and it was created” (Ps. 33:9); He did not order death to happen, but predicted that it would be on the basis of a crime, saying: “Do not tear it down from the tree; “If you destroy it one day, you will die,” so that, while maintaining advice and fleeing from crime, we will not suffer death. And what He said then not about the death of the body, but about the death of the soul, is seen on the basis that they did not die bodily on the day when they ate from the forbidden tree. But how is the death of the soul expressed? - In the abandonment of God. Because just as when there is light on the face, it is impossible for there to be darkness in the same place, but when the light leaves the place, darkness sets in, which has its existence not from light, but from shadow, which occurs when access to light is blocked; so also when God, who is the Life itself and the Life of all living and especially those living a spiritual life (Feios), is present in our souls, it is impossible for death to be there. When God leaves her, death approaches her, which has its existence not from God, but because of the abandonment of the soul by God, and the reason for this is sin. Do you see that death is not from God, but from sin? But how does He who is omnipresent and Who is nowhere absent leave the soul? – Because at first she deliberately leaves Him and that He does not use force against the autocratic soul; so it is not God who created us, but we ourselves who are responsible for God’s abandonment of us. So, alas, we are the parents of our own death, having consciously abandoned the Lord who created us for life and is always present and life-giving, being like those who, at midday, close their eyes and deliberately distance themselves from the light, although it is here and illuminates them. Because, having abandoned the life-giving Light and, because of the crime, abandoned God and consciously retreated from Life, we accepted the deadly advice of Satan and thereby settled it within ourselves, a real dead spirit, as having already abandoned God and becoming the culprit for us of mortification and death, until, I say, the death of the soul, which, when separated from God, as Paul says, “living died.” And even her life (in this state) is worse than death. Because she is inert in every good deed, but energetic in every evil, weaving intrigues against herself and constantly pushing herself into the worst with suicidal evil. Perhaps many blame Adam for the fact that he, having so easily obeyed evil advice, violated God’s commandment, and as a result of violating it, became the culprit of death for us. But it is not the same thing: before experience, to desire to eat from some deadly plant and, after it has become known from experience that it is deadly, to passionately desire to eat from it. So, the one who, having already had experience, absorbs poison and unhappily brings death upon himself is more worthy of censure than the one who, before experience, does this and suffers (the consequences of this). Adam, before experience, having listened to evil advice, violated the advice and commandment of the Good; but each of us, alas, does this, despite the fact that we have already had experience and the result of the threats is known; therefore, each of us, more than Adam, deserves blame and condemnation. But (you will say) - there is not a single tree in our midst, there is not now a single commandment of God forbidding us to eat from it. - But although this tree is not in our midst, the commandment of God still has a place for us, who submit to it, and want to live according to it, freeing us from punishment for all our own sins, and together - from the ancestral curse and sentence, and those who violate it now, and prefer the advice and access of the evil one to it, sending us to that eternal fiery Gehenna, threatening and prepared for the devil and the angels its 140. What is this commandment of God set before us? – Repentance, the beginning of which is expressed in no longer touching what is forbidden; because, after we were expelled from the place of pleasure in God and rightly cut off from God's paradise, and fell into this quagmire, and were condemned to live and spend life together with dumb animals, and were deprived of all hope, if there was any, of an appeal to paradise, then the Truth itself, having taken upon itself the punishment, or better said, rightly agreeing that it befall us (taking it upon itself), now the abundance of humanity and goodness, out of Her heartfelt pity, came down to us for our sake and becoming such a person as we are (albeit sinless) - in order to teach like and save like - announced saving advice and the commandment of repentance, saying: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 4:17); because before the Incarnation of the Word of God, the kingdom of heaven was as far from us as heaven is from earth; when the Heavenly King dwelt with us and deigned to enter into unity with us, then the kingdom of heaven approached for all of us. Therefore, let us repent, brothers, I pray, and show fruits worthy of repentance, so that we may inherit the kingdom of heaven: because it has become close to us, let us not remove ourselves from it due to bad deeds. The non-evening Light has shone for us: let us go to its radiance through good deeds. Eternal life has appeared: let us acquire it through feasible virtues. Christ, who makes us blessed, has come to us: let us diligently follow Him. We flee from the calamity experienced by those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Let us desire and acquire works of repentance: a humble disposition of the soul, contrition and spiritual weeping, a tender heart, filled with mercy, loving the truth, striving for purity, peaceful, pacifying, patient during persecution and disasters for truth and righteousness; during insults and slander and suffering, remembering the words of the Speaker: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for among them is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who cry, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied,” etc. (Matthew 5:3–4). But for what reason, when saying: “blessed are the poor,” the Lord added: “by the spirit”? - In order to separate the concept of blessed poverty from the concept of an unhappy situation, and then in order, one might say, to present all poverty as blessed and, moreover, to show us the reason for bliss. Because when our spirit, which is the beginning of every feeling (προποπαθές), is configured nobly and godly, it makes us blessed; when he is in a bad and God-hating mood, he makes us unhappy. There are three types of distress. First: poverty in the way of life and existence of a person, expressed in the scarcity of the means necessary for life - to which the opposite state is wealth, according to what was said: “Do not give me wealth and poverty” (Proverbs 30:8). Another type of distress: in relation to the state of the human body, when, due to very meager nutrition and malnutrition, it becomes stunted, according to what was said: “My knees are weary from fasting, and my flesh has changed for the sake of oil” (Ps. 109:24). Another (third) type of poverty: restraint and modesty of the spiritual structure, which is expressed in the humility of the spirit of our soul, to which the opposite state is pride. So, such states of the soul, I mean - in relation to the way of life and the state of the body, if they go hand in hand with a humble disposition of the soul, are worthy of bliss; if they are not combined with humility, then they are combined with pride and then, truly, they are filled with unhappiness. Someone is in a difficult situation regarding the means of life or the condition of the body, either by his own will 141 or against his will. So the one who is in poverty involuntarily and does not have a good disposition of soul, which occurs on the basis of repentance, i.e. - humility, he does not tolerate the poverty inherent in him in a noble manner, but also grumbles at God, accusing God’s Providence of injustice; and in every possible way he harms people, not turning his gaze to God, in whom everyone who places his hope is not ashamed; and instead of reducing expenses and working with his hands to earn his living, or asking humbly from those who have wealth, such a person becomes a thief, a robber, a grave digger, a kidnapper, or a parasite, a slanderer, a liar, a hypocrite, showing baseness and servile flattery towards those who have, in the expectation of receiving some profit from them. But isn’t such a poor man the most unfortunate person? Are not this type of people very, very far from those whom Christ pleases? If there is someone who voluntarily suffers from poverty, but who does it not with humility, but with some kind of pride, and who rejects pleasure and wealth not for the sake of commendable poverty of spirit, such a person will not be like demons in any way: because their poverty and lack of food are associated with pride. “Blessed,” says the Lord, “are poor in spirit,” that is, in the inner, humble disposition of the soul that exists in them, and kiss the poverty of the body that occurs as a result of their abstinent life, and consider their poverty more desirable than any wealth; if any disaster befalls them involuntarily, through patience and gratitude they make it a voluntary benefit for themselves; Such people are the kingdom of heaven. Let us strive, brethren, and we too be such poor people in order that we may receive the kingdom of heaven. If we do not want to be such beggars, then at least by giving alms to them and making them participants in our property, we will be partners with such beggars. Let us make friends through unrighteous mammon, i.e. - from the abundance of our property - while we are in this life, so that when we depart from this life, they would accept us into their eternal abodes. I wanted, believe me, to reveal to you now the meaning of all the following beatitudes in the Gospel of the Lord, brethren, but the present time does not allow this, and the initial theme of the word requires continuation. Because our task was to show that God did not create death, sickness, or disease; and we have shown this in relation to the death of the soul, the sting of which (death) was originally sin. Now we must investigate and study the matter regarding bodily death: where it has its origin: because God did not create this kind of death, being Life Himself and entirely Life and the Author of every kind of life, whether in time or in eternity, and especially - ever-present and divine. So, God did not give this death in the body, did not create it, and did not command it to be. But if God did not create this death and He is not the culprit of bodily illnesses, then where do we have carnal infirmities and ailments? and where does the death of the body come from? and where does this death itself come from? – Listen carefully and you will find out. – The spiritual and initially evil serpent, after having flown to evil at the beginning, was deprived of goodness and true life, rightly being deprived of it, from which he himself was the first to deviate, and became a dead spirit, dead not by nature, because the nature of death as such does not exist, but as a result of deviating from Real Life. Not being satisfied with his passion for evil, he makes himself a spirit bringing death, and through deception, alas, he has drawn a person into accomplices of his death. Having become contrary to the will of the Creator, consubstantial with Satan and having exposed the bright, life-giving clothes that were due to divine illumination, our forefathers, alas, like Satan, themselves became dead. Since Satan is not only a dead spirit, but also a mortifying spirit for those who touch him, and each of the participants in his deadness had an inherent body by which the mortifying advice was put into action, they transferred to their bodies the dead and mortifying spirits of deadness; and immediately the human body, having dissolved, would have turned to earth, if only the contents of Providence and the more powerful power of Him Who carries everything with one word, it had not delayed the execution of the sentence. For He withheld and postponed, as we said earlier, the sentence about the death of the body, and with the depth of wisdom and love for mankind, He carried it out so that in the future its execution would be reserved for Him. Because He did not say to Adam: “Since you have eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat, then turn into that from which you came,” but, among other things, indicating the assessment of this life, he added: “As you are earth, you will return to earth,” and here not commanding, but foretelling and allowing and rightly not preventing what was about to happen. Do you see that bodily death does not come from God, but it also comes from sin and the soul that committed the sin, and from the serpent who cunningly ensnared us? Consequently, carnal illnesses also have their origin in sin; therefore, the first to take possession of a dead body, Cain, who lived with a constantly shaking body, came to such a pitiful state due to sin; because those convulsions, which in the language of doctors are called “spasms,” are involuntary movements in those organs that are created in order to regulate or combine various members of the body, and such a condition, occurring due to a lack of natural juices of the body, is not amenable to either medical art or subsequent cure. So, since Cain, in a bad way, finally severed the ties that naturally bind him with his brother, turning love into hatred, arising from a feeling of envy, which ended in murder, then the state of decline (of family love), which resulted from envy, is punished by another incurable disease: damage to the area of ​​​​nerves and muscles, which are the connecting principle in the body. Do you see clearly that not only death, but also illnesses and infirmities of the body have their origin as a result of sin? The Lord, revealing this to us in the Gospel, intending to heal the paralytic in Capernaum, brought to Him by four, says to him: “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Matthew 9:2). To the one lying at the Sheep Font in Jerusalem, after the healing, he says: “Behold, you are healthy: let no one sin, lest any worse befall him” (John 5:14). And Paul knowing this, i.e. - that most illnesses occur as a result of sins, speaking of someone who unworthily approaches the Mystical Meal, that such a person eats and drinks as a judgment to himself, he adds: “For this reason there are many infirmities and sicknesses in you, and they fall asleep enough” (1 Cor. 11:30). But the disasters of mortal nature, from which every disease arises, have, of course, their beginning as a result of sin; Rare are those who suffer for the sake of the glory of God, like the one who was blind from birth and healed by the Lord. The philanthropy of the God-bearing Fathers, since of the four seasons, summer is the most dangerous for health, and of the summer months August is especially dangerous, because our body, heated due to the increased heat and high temperature, becomes susceptible to illness... So, the philanthropy, as we said, of the sacred Fathers, knowing that this time is dangerous for health, as if conducive to diseases, established for us to perform this sprinkling with consecrated water, so that those now sanctified with approaching by faith, we remained above the illnesses that struck us, and at the same time teaching us that if someone were to become ill, they should resort not to healers and sorcerers, but to God, to the prayers of His Saints, to those dedicated to Him and throughout our lives offering prayers, supplications and entreaties for us. Because those who resort to healers and sorcerers deny the existence of God, compare themselves with demons, and kill their souls. For when Ahaziah the son of Achaab, having suffered from an illness, sent, as it is written, to the deity in Ekron, and the inhabitants of that country were idolaters and devoted to sorcerers and soothsayers... So, this son of King Achaab sent to them to find out about his illness. Coming out to meet the messengers, Elijah the Prophet said to them: “Or is there no God in Israel, as if you are coming to ask Baal the god in Ekron? For this reason, the Lord says: “The bed, on this worthless one, you ascended, and did not dare to get down from it, for you would surely die” (2 Kings 1). Do you see that those who want to learn or experience something from sorcerers and soothsayers deny (thereby) the existence of God among us, and from there bring death upon themselves, especially in the soul, and sometimes in the body? He who resorts to God and His Saints in times of need and illness, if it is for his benefit, is freed from everyday difficulties and illnesses, always receiving mental health and remission of sins; because this is what Christ’s Apostle and Brother James says: “Is anyone sick in you? let him call the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil, in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick one, and the Lord will raise him up: and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him” (James 5:14-15). You should also contribute to prayers for you: by conversion, by confession, by doing alms and other penitential deeds - “for the prayer of a righteous man can make much progress” (James 5:16). May it be easy for all of us, being free from mental and physical adversity, now living in moderation, to easily walk the path of this life; having passed through it, become participants in due time in an eternal and blessed and unclouded life, completely dispassionate and carefree, in Christ Himself, the Physician and God of our souls and bodies, with whom be glory to the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen. PG.151:388–400. Homilia XXXI. Dicta in piblica supplicatione die prima Augusti. The words: “his angels” are not in Greek, we borrow them from Lat. translation. Those. if they deliberately made themselves poor or deliberately remain in poverty, or in exhaustion of the body, as a result of ascetic deeds; in both cases, doing it as a feat for the sake of Christ. We are making a free translation, since it reflects the views of medicine that was very imperfect at that time. You might be interested in: