Word IX. Awake, Drunkards!

“«Weep and wail, all you who drink wine!»” (Joel 1:5)

“«Be not drunk with wine, in which is excess» (Eph 5:18).”

What are we, the shepherds of the rational flock, to do, brethren, what are we to say to the people?

Drunkenness has utterly overcome them.

One cannot take a step without meeting a drunk man, at every hour—on feast days and workdays, morning, noon, and evening, and even at night. — What are we to do?

What are we to say?

The wolf of the mind, the devil, destroys Christians through their greed for drink, and brazenly plunders the inheritance of Christ.

Brethren! In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered for us on the cross, I implore you—stop your drunkenness.

What has become of you? Have you forgotten God? Have you forgotten your Lord Jesus Christ, who is coming with glory to judge the living and the dead?

There is not so much as a trace of the Lord’s cross upon you.

Are you not a baptized people?

Do not your pastors tell you, by the word of God, that drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God (1Cor 6:10), and that they will surely go into the everlasting fire unless they amend their drunkenness? — Are you not found worthy of communion of the Holy, Most Pure, Heavenly, Immortal, Life-Giving, and Fearsome Mysteries of Christ, for the remission of sins, for the sanctification of soul and body, and for the amendment and confirmation of your life!

And after this do you dare so to provoke your Savior? So uncontrollably to give yourselves over to intemperance? You trample in the mud the most pure and life-giving Mysteries, upon which the powers of heaven look with fear and trembling! — You mock, terrible as it is to say, the sufferings of your Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, before whom heaven and earth and all that is in them tremble!

You mock the Mystery of repentance, the remission of sins, which cost our sweetest Savior such fearsome sufferings on the cross and so shameful a death? — Christian brothers! have pity on yourselves, I implore you, stop your drunkenness.

Live as Christians, called to the heavenly kingdom, into which nothing unclean or impure can enter.

Be sober, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, be strong, be established.

Crucify your flesh with its passions and lusts.

Know—I repeat it to you with a loud voice—soon the Lord Jesus Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead: He will come to hand over drunkards and all unrepentant sinners to eternal torment, to unquenchable fire, but the fasters and the abstinent, and all who have crucified their flesh with its passions and lusts, who for His sake have roused themselves to a hard life on earth, all who live according to His commandments—He will take into the heavenly kingdom.

Brethren! Look at the sky, at the face of the earth!

The one is almost continually overcast with rain-clouds, and the other is entirely flooded with water. Why? For our sins, and the world of God has armed itself in vengeance against God’s enemies.

Because fogs of sin and passion roam in our heads—because our hearts have grown heavy with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life (Lk 21:34). See how many unfavorable phenomena are now observed in nature too: now drought, now untimely rains. In this I see the groaning and the tears of nature over all our manifold iniquities. O weep, heaven! weep, earth! The Creator is angry—greatly angry with us; but we will not see it; we will not understand it, will not feel it.

Brethren! How long shall we go on provoking the Lord? Are we truly stronger than He? — I implore you, brethren, give up your drunkenness! I ask everyone: admonish, entreat, implore one another not to give yourselves over to drunkenness!

Threaten drunkards with the judgment of God, here and in the world to come. Shame them, restrain them from drunkenness, and the Lord will bless you with health and peace and good success in your undertakings. Amen.