Поучение на слова: «Вопль Содомский и Гоморрский умножися ко Мне, и греси их велицы зело. Сошед убо узрю, аще по воплю их, грядущему ко Мне, совершаются» (Быт. 18:20–21)

Oh, how many people are carried away by evil rumors about their neighbors and slander! Many of the kindest, most well-intentioned, even the smartest people have committed great atrocities, being deceived by evil rumors, believing slander, and frivolously becoming an instrument of dishonesty and maliciousness. Why is this? Because they forgot about the foundation of all virtues, about Godly judgment (Matthew 23:23). Leaving the court naturally leads to reckless actions. The history of mankind indisputably testifies that the atrocities of virtuous people were reckless actions, or, what is the same, actions that were not preceded by justice. The Holy Fathers 121, in order to distract us from such actions, invite us to pay special attention to the words of God: “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has multiplied against Me, and their sins have been great. When I come down, I will see if it is according to their cry that comes to Me that they are accomplished.” Let us consider the meaning of the words spoken by the Lord our God, let us imprint these words in our memory, and let us be guided by them in our behavior in order to avoid small and great atrocities, often committed solely because of imprudence. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were located on a most fertile valley under the happy sky of Palestine. Scripture compares this valley in terms of fertility with Egypt, and in terms of the extraordinary grace of nature - with paradise (Gen. 13:10). The inhabitants, abounding in earthly goods, indulged in the passion of gluttony. It is incomprehensible to us the extent to which the development of gluttony reached among the ancients, who enjoyed bodily strength and health incomprehensible to us 122. “The iniquity of Sodom was pride, the abundance of bread, and the abundance of wine” (Ezek. 16:49). From satiety, a carnal state is usually formed, inseparable from carnal wisdom, or the way of thinking of a person, “being like foolish cattle and becoming like them” (Ps. 49:13). The integral, main, essential character of carnal wisdom is pride, which serves as the door to all sins and vices. The proud is alien to the reverence of God, alien to the fear of God, respect for the Law of God and the civil law, alien to respect for one's neighbor, for his benefits, well-being, for life itself, alien to self-knowledge, alien to virtue, an enemy and villain to people and to himself. He is capable of all lawlessness, as if he has some special right to commit them. A proud person is a person with a petrified heart and a demonic mind. From satiety the Sodomites developed a carnal state; Pride 123 became the soul of the carnal state. From the combination of blind pride and a carnal state, their characteristic child was born - insatiable, unbridled depravity. This debauchery was not content with natural satisfaction: it desired the unnatural and rushed towards it with fury. “The people who are in Sodom,” says Scripture, “are very evil and sinners before God” (Gen. 13:13). Their sins were not healed by the healing of the powerful. The Sodomites did not come to their senses and did not repent of their sinful life either after twelve years of enslavement to the people and the foreign king (Gen. 14:4), or after the defeat of their army and the captivity of a significant number of citizens (Gen. 14:10–12). Heavenly execution was called upon by unrepentant sinners irrevocably carried away by sin. “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has multiplied towards Me,” God says to His beloved prophet, “and their sins have been great. When I come down, I will see if it is according to their cry that comes to Me that they are accomplished.” God, having appeared to man 124 in the form of a man, so that man was able to listen to His words, also uses human speech, so that this speech could serve as an edification in its intelligibility and adaptability for all people, even the simplest. The omniscient, all-seeing and omnipresent God says: “When I come down, I will see.” When I come down, I will see whether those great iniquities, about which rumors have risen to Me, are actually being committed in Sodom and Gomorrah. In these words lies the thought: “I don’t believe the rumor; I intend to verify with my own research, my own discretion.” These words contain an instruction to us, so that we do not quickly believe the words of those who slander and slander someone, so that we do not rush to condemn our neighbor, punish and execute, so that we do not rush to the duties of severity and cruelty, to the craft and dignity of executioners, before we ourselves see, do not know with certainty what our neighbor is accused of. It is characteristic of feeble-mindedness, frivolity, characteristic of a weak, unexalted soul to hastily entrust itself to the words of slanderers, to be angry at the slandered person, to rush at him with vengeance and executions, without knowing about the slander, whether it is fair or not. Often the malice of the wicked is the beginning of an evil rumor, and the gullibility of the frivolous is the reason for the spread of this rumor. The malice of the wicked invents slander and passes it on to the frivolous and feeble-minded for sowing in human society, and sometimes an insignificant error, an insignificant sin turns into the greatest by adding untruth to truth, decorating the story with caustic ridicule and malicious assumptions. Thus, virtue is presented to society as a human sin, and a deficiency, like a twig, is presented as a crime, like a log. Evil acts most of all in this way in order to cover itself: it throws a black cloak over the activity of its neighbor, is hypocritically seduced by this activity, hypocritically condemns it in order to present its own activity as bright. We need sobriety, we need caution, we need a God-ordained judgment, so that a lie is not accepted as the truth, so that the unexistent is not given existence, so that the insignificant is not turned into the enormous and the forgivable into the unforgivable. An evil rumor must be verified by one’s own judgement. By teaching us this, God presents His divine action as a model. “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah,” he says, “will multiply towards Me, and their sins will be great. When I come down, I will see if it is according to their cry that comes to Me that they are accomplished.” As an omniscient One, He knew exactly the sins of the Sodomites and Gomorrites, but He takes upon Himself the action characteristic of limited beings, so that we act in accordance with our limitations, without delighting ourselves with the action corresponding to an unlimited being, whose hearing and sight cannot be mistaken, which is not subject to deception and deception. Having heard the cry of Sodom, God does not immediately stretch out his hands to execute, but precedes the execution with the most precise study of the case, although the case was known to Him in the most precise way even without the study. Abandonment of justice, the only basis for correct and truly good actions, was the cause of great atrocities. People devoted to vanity, who have not dedicated their lives to piety, the benefit of humanity, and pleasing God, constantly fall into this error. They do not even notice that their way of action is false due to the falsity of the beginning from which it flows. They do not know about the falsity of this principle, because they do not know and do not want to know the Law of God. They do lies as if they were right, they commit atrocities, thinking that they are doing great good deeds or, at least, deeds of justice. “Rule the way of fools before them,” says Scripture (Prov. 12:15). We see an example of such an act and behavior in the act and behavior of Pentephry, Pharaoh’s courtier, the relatively chaste and virtuous Joseph. Pentefry's wife became infected with a criminal passion for Joseph and, not receiving satisfaction, slandered the innocent and righteous before her husband out of a sense of vengeance. Pentephry, without any questioning or investigation, imprisoned Joseph. To Pentefrey his action seemed so thorough and correct, of course, out of habit of such a course of action, that it did not even occur to him to check it during the entire long time during which Joseph languished in prison, until he was brought out of it by the Providence of God 125. It is not surprising that a pagan who did not know the true God was subjected to such a mistake associated with an atrocity: holy men were subjected to it when they forgot that actions regarding the accused and their punishment must be preceded by a court. Forgetting this, the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine put to death his virtuous, beloved son, Crispus, who had been slandered by his stepmother Fausta on the same occasion for which Joseph was slandered by the Egyptian woman. Subsequently, the truth was revealed. The emperor indulged in deep sadness, cried, sobbed, repented of his rash act and found himself forced, after the execution of an innocent person, to execute a guilty one. Fausta is deprived of life. Two murders followed, one righteous, the other unjust; the reason for both was the abandonment of the commanded judgment by God and a rash, hasty action on a slander 126. In the Life of Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, we read the following edifying and at the same time terrible story. A certain monk walked around Alexandria for several days, having with him a young, very beautiful maiden. Many who saw this were tempted, thinking that he had her for sin, and reported this to the patriarch. The Patriarch immediately gave the order to seize both of them and, subjecting them to severe corporal punishment, imprisoned them 127. When night fell, the monk appeared in a dream to the patriarch, showing his back, ulcerated by the merciless beating. “Does this please you, lord? - he said. – Have you been taught by the Apostle to shepherd the flock of Christ “not through need, but by will and according to God” (1 Pet. 5:2). Believe me, you made a mistake as a person.” Having said this, the monk left him. The Patriarch woke up and began to reflect on the vision; Having realized his sin, he sat on his bed, sad and regretting his rash and hasty act. When morning comes, he orders the monk to be brought to him in order to see him and find out whether he appeared to him in a dream. The monk came with great difficulty, because he was barely able to move from severe wounds. The Patriarch, seeing him, became as if dead and could not utter a single word. Having come to his senses, he asked the monk to take off his clothes to make sure whether he was as wounded as he was seen in the dream. With difficulty the monk bent down to take off his clothes. When he took it off, it was revealed that he was a eunuch, which they did not recognize from his appearance because he was young. The Patriarch, seeing his tortured body, greatly regretted this and, calling on those who slandered him, excommunicated them from the Church for three years, and asked the monk for forgiveness, saying to him: “Brother! forgive me because I did it in ignorance. I have sinned before God and before you. However, you should not have walked so openly around the city with a girl, so that the laity would not be tempted: after all, you are wearing a monastic image.” Then the monk answered with great humility. “Believe me, lord, I will reveal the matter to you in all truth. Before this, I was in Gaza and, going to venerate the tomb of the holy martyrs Cyrus and John, I met this girl in the evening. She fell at my feet and with tears begged me to allow her to accompany me. I refused her and wanted to get away from her. But she, following me, said: “I adjure you by the God of Abraham, who came to save sinners and who has to judge the living and the dead, do not leave me.” Hearing this, I said to her: “Why are you conjuring me like that, girl?” She, sobbing, answered me: “I am a Jew. I want to leave the evil faith of my fathers and become a Christian; I beg you, father, do not leave me, but save my soul, which desires to believe in Christ.” Hearing this, I feared the judgment of God and, taking her with me, taught her the holy faith. Having come to the tomb of the holy martyrs, I baptized her in the church and walk with her in simplicity of heart with the intention of placing her in a nunnery.” The Patriarch, hearing this, sighed and said: “How many hidden slaves God has! But we, the damned ones, don’t know them.” And in front of everyone he told the vision that he had at night. He took a hundred pieces of gold and gave it to the monk; but the monk did not want to take one, saying: “If a monk believes that God cares for him, then he does not need gold, but if he loves gold, then he does not believe in the existence of God.” Having said this, the monk bowed to the patriarch and left. Having learned from difficult experience, the patriarch was wary of frivolous condemnation of his neighbors and taught his verbal sheep to do the same 128. Among our spiritual illnesses, produced in us by the fall, we notice a failure to see our shortcomings, a desire to hide them, and at the same time a thirst to see, reveal, and punish the shortcomings of our neighbor 129 . Lacking the means to discover the shortcomings in our neighbor, or due to the non-existence in him of those shortcomings that we would like to see, we resort to inventions, covering, decorating and reinforcing them with brilliant, sharp words. Our shortcoming seems excusable and insignificant to us; We strive to increase the lack of our neighbor, to present him as worthy of all censure, all punishment. This mental illness is developed to the highest degree in those who do not pay attention to themselves; but he also exists in those who pay attention to their salvation. You need to be vigilant over yourself to avoid being carried away by this disease. Saint David fell into a grave sin and for a considerable time, as often happens with those who have fallen into the abyss of sin, he could not come to a state of consciousness and repentance. The Lord commanded the prophet Nathan to expose David. The prophet depicted his sin to the king with a parable, with which both the sin and the sinner were covered - he asked for judgment and punishment for the sinner. Immediately David pronounced a sentence that far exceeded the severity of the law (2 Sam. 12:1-14). This is the property of our fallen nature! For our own sin we seek leniency and mercy, for the sins of our neighbors we seek penalties and executions. Caution and caution are required; we need caution from ourselves. Do not judge by your opinion and understanding, formed from slander, from hearing and hearsay, from your own superficial observation, but imitate God, Who said: “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has multiplied against Me, and their sins have been great. When I come down, I will see that if they cry, coming to Me, they will be accomplished.” Make sure in the most precise way and then only decide to condemn if the law requires it of you, which also prohibits the very condemnation of your neighbor when it is carried out arbitrarily, without the requirement of the law. Envy, hatred and slander presented to human society the greatest righteous people, the God-Man Himself, in the form of the greatest villains. A godly judgment must precede not only all our actions regarding our neighbor, in order to avoid condemning and blaming innocent and righteous people or taking cruel measures against sins that do not cause such measures at all, it must precede all our actions in general, both external and internal. The holy fathers call this judgment spiritual reasoning, that main virtue on which correctness, and therefore the entire dignity of all other virtues, depends. Virtue can be wrong, and evil can be clothed in the guise of virtue. Our natural good is mixed with evil and damaged by it; Due to our damage, we cannot in any way trust the good thoughts that appear in us, or the good, at first glance, heart desires. Both our limitations and our state of decline require that our actions must be preceded by consideration. St. Cassian the Roman tells us the following excellent teaching of St. Anthony the Great on spiritual reasoning. Once upon a time, holy elders from the surrounding deserts and monasteries gathered with this saint of God and, in a long night conversation, began to consider what virtue preserves the monk from self-delusion and the snares of the devil. Some of the elders pointed to fasting and vigil, because they refine the thought and, having acquired purity, can more conveniently approach God. Others called non-acquisitiveness and contempt of property, because in this case the thought, having broken the bonds of various earthly cares, is conveniently assimilated to God. Others gave preference to alms, based on the words of the Lord: “Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” and so on. (Matthew 25:34). Having listened to the opinions of everyone, the Great Anthony answered: “Everything you said is both necessary and useful for those who seek God; but it is impossible to give these virtues a decisive advantage for the reason that we see many who spent their lives in fasting and vigil, retired into the desert, maintained the strictest non-covetousness, gave away all their property to alms and came into extreme poverty because of alms, then miserably fell away from virtue, crawling into a sinful life and into apostasy from the faith. What was the cause of their mental disorder? In my opinion, nothing more than that they did not have the gift of reasoning. Reasoning teaches a person to avoid immensity in everything and to follow the royal path. It does not allow one to be robbed from the right side by immeasurable abstinence, nor from being deprived from the side by excessive indulgence of the body. For the soul it is like an eye and a lamp, according to the teaching of the Gospel, which says: “The eye is a lamp for the body: if your eye is simple, your whole body will be light; if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark” (Matt. 6:22–23). This is true! Reasoning, considering all the thoughts and deeds of a person, eliminates every thought and intention that is evil, displeasing to God, and removes delusion from us. This can be proven by Divine Scripture. Saul, the first king of Israel, lacking reasoning, was darkened in thought and could not understand that it was more pleasing to God to obey His commandment than to make a spontaneous sacrifice; he angered God with what he thought to please Him. Saul would not have suffered this if he had acquired the light of reasoning. The Apostle calls reasoning the sun: “Let not the sun,” he said, “go down on your anger” (Eph. 4:26). Reasoning is called feeding our life, as the Scripture says: “those who have no control fall like leaves” (Proverbs 11:14). It is also called in Scripture advice, without which we should not do anything. The most spiritual wine, which gladdens a person’s heart, is forbidden to drink without advice: “Do everything with advice; drink wine with advice” (Proverbs 31:4). Also: “Just as a city is destroyed by walls and is not fenced, so a man does something without advice” (Prov. 25:28). Reasoning combines wisdom, reason, and a spiritual sense that distinguishes good from evil (Heb. 5:14), without which our inner home is built below, below which spiritual wealth can be gathered (Prov. 24:3–4). This clearly proves that without the gift of reasoning, not a single virtue can take place or remain firm to the end. The mother and guardian of all virtues is reasoning.” The other fathers also agreed with this position and the opinion of the great Anthony 131. Spiritual reasoning is acquired by reading the Holy Scriptures, mainly the New Testament, and reading the Holy Fathers, whose writings correspond to the type of life led by a Christian. A Christian living in the middle of the world must read the fathers who wrote instructions for all Christians in general; a Christian living in a cenobitic monastery should be imbued with reading paternal instructions for cenobitic monks; a Christian living in solitude should be immersed in the depths of the teachings of the holy hermits, who were constantly in self-contemplation and moved from a spiritual, grace-filled vision of themselves to a spiritual, grace-filled vision of God. It is necessary that reading be facilitated by living: “Be makers of the word, and not just hearers, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). It is necessary that reading correspond to living, so that reading can be carried out as an activity, so that it does not arouse only fruitless daydreaming, leading to a state of excitement and self-delusion. “Your law is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths” (Ps. 118:105), says the Holy Scripture, calling activity in general “legs”, “paths” the private actions of a Christian, and “light” spiritual reasoning. When studying the law of God, with one’s own effort to fulfill the law of God, one must ask through fervent and humble prayer for grace-filled illumination from Above. And this is what the Holy Scripture teaches us: “Do not cast me away from Your commandments!” (Ps. 119:10) “Teach me Thy justification!” (Ps. 119:12) “Open my eyes, and I will understand the wonders of Your law!” (Ps. 119:18) “Hide not Thy commandments from Me” (Ps. 119:19). The saving instruction of the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers is to precede all our actions with a God-pleasing judgment, to subject all our intentions, all thoughts, all our heartfelt aspirations and desires to this judgment, to direct both our internal and external life according to the word of God, according to the mind of God. Without this, our behavior can be neither prudent, nor virtuous, nor godly. Without this, we must constantly be subject to deception from without and self-delusion within ourselves. May the fear of God instruct us in sobriety and caution, and may the study of the Word of God and life according to the Word of God provide us with spiritual reasoning, which is the door to the palace of virtues and the treasury of spiritual blessings. The words of the Lord will be fulfilled, will certainly be fulfilled over us: “Whosoever you judge with judgment, they will judge you; Amen. Saint Demetrius of Rostov, metropolitan. Chronicle. The saint borrows the explanation of these words of Scripture from Saints John Chrysostom, Gregory the Dvoeslov, Isidore of Pilusiot and Pimen the Great See Cicero's speeches against Antony “The soul will not humble itself if it is not deprived of bread,” said St. Pimen the Great. Alphabetical Patericon Saint Abraham, Patriarch and Prophet Saint Demetrius. Chronicle Corporal punishment was in general use among the ancients. The highest dignitaries of the Roman Empire and patriarchs were not removed from them. For example, the Patriarch of Constantinople Saint Flavian, the Pope Saint Martin and others were subjected to severe corporal punishment Life of Saint John the Merciful. Chetii-Minei, November 12 Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 89th. About the harm of reckless jealousy Venerable Cassian the Roman. Collatio secunda, de discretione Reverend Cassian. Collatio secunda, de discretione You might be interested in: