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Homilies

St Photius the Great, tr. Mango, 1958

17. Tyrophagy Week

XIV

Of the Same Most-Blessed Photius, Archbishop of Constantinople, Homily Delivered from the Ambo of St. Sophia on the Friday of the First Week of Lent¹

I am come to you anticipating the appointed time and striving to pay up my debt beforehand, since willing obligations, which are extended by those who offer them in the way of gifts, do not admit of having the courtesy spoilt by delays and postponements. It is good, to be sure, that a father should not appear unpunctual to his children, but better still it is for him to discharge his debt by paying it in advance as a mark of favour. Besides, seeing your eagerness to listen (nor is it fitting for one who exhorts his neighbours to virtue to relax the intensity of their desire by evading speech), I have given myself to you all the more willingly, and while the help of the most-holy Ghost is bestowed on me, I will not refrain my lips² in shaping your improvement.

For the husbandman too rejoices when he sees his field weighed down by ears of corn, and recalling in fairness some goodly meadow; the gardener also rejoices when he sees the boughs of the trees crowded with the seasonable crop of fruit, and the pilot when he sees his freighter leaping and cutting her way across the surface of the sea before a fair wind. Sweet also is the song that the shepherd strikes up on his reeds as he sits at ease, and, laying aside his staff, he rests humming a bucolic tune to his nurslings,³ when he sees his flock in happy condition, undiminished by an evil regimen. Yea indeed, the appointed shepherd of Christ’s nurslings is also filled with an ineffable joy and gladness, when his rational flock progresses in righteousness and is adorned with virtuous deeds.⁴ How should I not be pleased, when I see the ugly pleasures trodden down by you and virtue observed, while vice is spat upon, envy voted down, while happiness gains its rights of citizenship, slanders banished while brotherly love flourishes? This, I cry out with the divine Paul, is my pride and joy.⁵ This puts to sleep the sorrows which spring up at us from many directions, craftily contrived by the Evil one, rids us of those many cares, and gives us unwonted contentment. This is also able to dispel the cloud of despondency which often sweeps over our thoughts; indeed your life and conduct are adorned by the brilliance of joy when by the laws of the spirit the law, or rather the usurpation, of the flesh is put to flight, when the ancient marks of sin are blotted out of your souls, and the new commandments of Christ’s law are inscribed instead.

Easy is Christ’s yoke, and his burden light.⁶ For what is lighter than to check the tongue? What is easier than to have a reverent mouth? What is milder than not to begrudge thy brethren? No need for thee to suffer toils, to undergo sleepless vigils, distressed all day and all night, or to dig a ditch, or erect a mound of earth, or to work in clay and brick-making, which the Egyptians devised against the Jews,⁷ or to carry out any other toilsome act. There will be need only to contain thy tongue behind thy teeth, like a fair bride guarded in her natural chamber, wherein the Creator has enclosed her with a double rampart, safeguarding her proneness to slip and her vulnerability, and teaching thee by the example of His creation not to abuse her at random, especially in matters which do not concern thee; but if thou fulfillest the divine laws, and dost not outrage the limits of nature, thou oughtst to keep her in her natural chamber like a good virgin, uttering no dissolute and wanton song, nor behaving in an unseemly manner by abusing thy neighbour, and not allow her to commit harlotry through slanders. For she is verily a harlot who, though she could have preserved her own bridal chastity, has meretriciously yielded to the vulgar passion of slander, and is not ashamed to disgrace her own beauty.

Be thou not swept along and cast down by such monstrous actions. Use her to sing hymns to Him that gave her to thee, to define accurately religious beliefs (if it pleases thee to seek into such matters also), for the pressing services of life, and for the com-mendation of thy neighbour, and that not beyond measure, lest thou slippest into the disgrace of flattery; since moderation is the best of all things, and has won its place even in the thought of some who are alien to our religion.⁸ Do not use her to insult and slander thy neighbour, but, according to the proverb, “remove from thee a forward mouth, and put far away from thee unjust lips,”⁹ for the Lord pulls down the houses of scorners,¹⁰ and a talkative man shall not prosper on the earth,¹¹ and a man’s own lips are a snare to him, and he is caught with the words of his own mouth,¹² when the use of their utterance is not observed according to nature and divine command. Do not, therefore, liken thyself to such men, nor follow them in their footsteps. For a man inspired by God and designated to be called the Lord’s brother, says that “the tongue, though it be a little member, defileth the whole body, and inflameth the course of nature,” and furthermore that “it is set on fire of hell,” and he shows that her wickedness is worse than that of beasts and serpents,¹³ when the mind leaves her vehemence unbridled and she refuses to obey the reins of the mind.

Yet what are also her disguised entrances?¹⁴ So and so is behaving badly, and I cannot help but be displeased, even against my will, and those impulses which enjoin me to be silent and to refrain from ridicule, are the very ones which impel me to imitate his evil ways.¹⁵ Verily are the devil’s devices crafty in deceiving and tripping us up, and when he fails with attacks from the left, he succeeds in gaining admission unnoticed with those that seem to come from the right.¹⁶ So and so is behaving badly? Then do thou behave thyself well, lest thou in turn be the cause of others saying the same things about thee,¹⁷ and sinning thereby. So and so behaves badly? But another behaves well. Let the former fall and stand to his own master,¹⁸ but the latter’s conduct and actions do thou remember and emulate. Is another one incontinent in his life? Why, hast thou been appointed his judge? Wilt thou discharge his accounts? Mayest thou be able to render even thine own on that terrible day of judgment! Is he incontinent in his life? And art thou not incontinent and unbridled in thy tongue, who chatterest of other men’s affairs, and takest a shameful pleasure in foul stories? Art thou not steeped in passions in thy mind (would it were only in the mind!) who art so easily convinced by the slander of thy neighbour, and whereas thou shouldst cover thy face when others are uttering it, thou appearest the first to publish it abroad? For he who in his deeds has departed from the passions is not persuaded that others fall prey to them, since by his own example he has won confidence in others. But he who readily accepts the calumny of another, does not himself abstain from such actions; for the practice of this habit is wont to drag down into association with it even the innocent. Yes, says he, but this man is also a slanderer, and rejoices in calumny, and is worthy of finding his nemesis. Why, art thou not a slanderer who sayest this of him, and dost thou not become a prey to calumny? If thou didst observe carefully thyself and thy ways, thou wouldst not have had the time to examine the defects of others, and to dwell on them.—But he too is slandering me unjustly.—Then it is fitting that thou shouldst say nothing bad of him, that thou mayest prove by thy action to be unjustly slandered. Is he slandering thee unjustly? Dost thou then hasten to show thyself rightly slandered, and to be that man’s imitator, whose just accuser thou considerest thyself to be?¹⁹ Fret not thyself because of evil-doers, neither be envious of them that do iniquity.²⁰ Nor try to defeat the tongue with the tongue; for fire is not quenched with fire, nor is evil healed with evil. The frolics of the tongue are arrested by silence, and drops of water can quench a fiery flame; yea, virtue has always been able to defeat evil.

Thou, therefore, if thou believest me at all, or rather if thou obeyest at all the divine injunctions, refrain from heaping abuse on thy slanderer. And whatsoever another may say against him, hoping perchance to win thy favour, do thou by thy goodness confute it, so that thou mayest teach him also to repent of his rashness, and show thyself to be truly above all blasphemy. Accept not therefore the slander of thy neighbour. For the voice of truth teaches that in so doing thou slanderest thyself rather than him; since he who gives ear to reports against his neighbour is led to slander himself.²¹ But if thou thyself inventest them—for there is indeed among men a wicked and spiteful race, of whom may we all be delivered, who make it their especial art to calumniate and besmear their neighbours with their own abominations, so that, the accusation being common, they may with less fear fill themselves like cattle with their wantonness in all things, and by contriving to have many sharing the same name, they may appear to show their transgression lighter—if then there be such an one (not that there is one in your midst—God forbid!—for, I believe, I am not so wretched as to have such beasts in my care), alas, what punishments he will be subjected to! Not a millstone about his neck, nor the depth of the sea,²² which are the punishment and destruction of the body only, but the outer darkness,²³ and the sleepless worm,²⁴ and every kind of torment which surpasses words and comprehension by the mind and which bitterly devours the soul, will justly await him, the calumniator amidst men, the alien amidst countrymen, the curse of human kind, the accuser of the Creation.

Let us, however, beloved ones, avoid the wickedness of these men, that we may not share in their punishment. Let us avoid false testimony, reviling, calumny. Let us guard ourselves against every work of the Evil one, that we may receive the heavenly kingdom in Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom is due all²⁵ glory, honour and veneration, together with the eternal Father and the co-eternal and everlasting Ghost, the consubstantial and life-giving Trinity, now and for ever and ever. Amen.

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