An Instruction for the 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

Today’s Gospel, on the one hand, exposes and admonishes the luxurious, the self-indulgent, the haughty, and the hardhearted rich, who make merry every day in splendor and take no thought for pleasing God, for the true food and the true, unceasing, heavenly joy of the spirit, and for mercy toward the poor; on the other hand, it pours heavenly comfort into the souls of the poor, the unfortunate of this world, despised by their rich brethren, who forget themselves in their own wealth and pleasures. The Lord Jesus Christ, every one of whose words is truth, depicts the fate, after death, the eternal and unchangeable fate, of both: the unbearable torment of such rich men, in the flame of Gehenna, and the comfort of the poor, like Lazarus, in Abraham’s bosom, in the dwellings of the righteous; He relates the rich man’s petition for help to Abraham and to Lazarus, and the decisive refusal of even this help to the rich man, seemingly so trifling a thing; He speaks of the impassable gulf between hell and heaven, between the place of torment for sinners and the place of blessedness for the righteous; then He speaks of the rich man’s further request to Abraham, that he would send Lazarus to the house of this rich man’s father, to testify to his five brothers, who lived, as he had, in luxury, idleness, and merrymaking, of the existence, after death, of fearsome torments for sinners—and of the further refusal to grant this request, as groundless and unreasonable. Let us all, then, draw a lesson for our own life from today’s Gospel—let us condemn the vanity, the folly of our own life, our own love of pleasure, our own love of gain, our own pride, our own ingratitude before God, our own hardheartedness toward our neighbors. In our own time, more than at any other, the passion for exquisite, luxurious clothing, and for a life of daily dissipation, has grown strong. Fashions turn the heads of many young women and women, and of many effeminate men as well, occupy their whole soul, and leave no room to think of the one thing needful—of the salvation of the soul from sins and passions, from the fire of Gehenna, of moving to mercy, by the tears of repentance, the righteous Judge, who is about to judge «the world in righteousness» (Ps 9:9); of acquiring faith in the Lord, of changing a pagan life for a Christian one, conformed to the Gospel.

The passion for fleshly merrymaking—especially for drunken merrymaking, for the tavern, the theater, the spectacle—likewise reigns today among those who call themselves Christians; the drunk are not infrequently seen at nearly every step; theaters are filled with idle spectators, fond of passing their time lightly, playfully—even on Sundays and feast days, which ought to be devoted entirely to reflection on the greatest works of the divine providence concerning us, and to thanksgiving to the Lord for it. My God! How great are our own iniquities! We neglect to please You, our Creator, Savior, and Judge, to fulfill Your saving commandments, in which lies our temporal and eternal life and well-being; we take no care for the salvation of our own souls, than which nothing is more precious, for which You came down from heaven, suffered, died, and rose again—and to whom, instead, do we give our devotion?

To the flesh and the devil—to the flesh, which is alive today and tomorrow, perhaps, will be dead, cold, motionless, and foul-smelling.

We spare nothing for fleshly pleasures, yet for our own brethren, for the poor, we grudge a few kopecks. But, brothers, «God is patient without end, but He also torments without end». Nor shall we ourselves escape the judgment of the fire of Gehenna, if we do not abandon our own carousing, our own drunkenness, our own passion for dressing exquisitely, and do not take care to satisfy the hunger of our own soul—not a hunger for bread, and not a thirst for water, but a hunger for the peace of God, for holiness, for the righteousness of God, for the fulfillment of Christ’s commandments. Behold, today’s Gospel gives fair warning of the fate, after death, of all such revelers: they will be in flame, in torments, in fearsome torments, with no hope of their ever ending. He who has ears to hear, let him hear, and let him hasten to amend himself: for death is near to everyone, and, together with it, the judgment: «for it is appointed for man to die once, and after this the judgment» (Hebr 9:27). But what do I hear from these revelers? Very many of them do not believe that there are such fearsome torments after death, and imagine that all their own follies will simply pass unpunished, that there will be nothing at all after death. Behold, even the rich man mentioned in the Gospel, cast into Gehenna after death, asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his own brothers, to assure them that there is a fearsome torment after death for all unrepentant sinners; which means that they too, like him, lived carelessly, in part because of their unbelief in the righteous recompense that awaits everyone after death. No, friends—do not be deceived: God is not false in His threats and His promises; there has never been a lie in the mouth of the Lord; a great multitude of His holy words has already been fulfilled exactly; and the rest will be fulfilled too. It cannot be that the Lord would fail to reward those who diligently keep His commandments—for instance, the commandments of patience, self-restraint, meekness, humility, purity, and chastity—and fail to punish those who fearlessly resist Him, who continually defile within themselves the image of God through intemperance, through fleshly impurity, through excessive love of gain, through pride, and through the other passions. The fire of Gehenna stands ready. «Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire» (Mt 3:10). And who is this fruitless tree? The sinner who lives without repentance; and this fire is not our own earthly, feeble fire, but the fire of Gehenna, a thousand times fiercer: for everything of that other world incomparably exceeds everything of this one; our own fire here, compared to that of Gehenna, is but a shadow. You will say: this is fearsome. Yes, it is fearsome. It was from just such a fearsome fire, from just such fearsome torment, that the Son of God came to save us; and what fearsome sufferings did our salvation cost Him, the sinless and most holy God-man! And after all this we still dare to live carelessly—and even to disbelieve that there is a fire of Gehenna at all. What, then, after this, shall we believe? My brothers! Let us abandon intemperance and luxury, carelessness for our own soul—a soul beyond all price; let us despise temporal pleasures, which vanish like a dream, yet cast us into eternal torment, if we do not amend ourselves, and let us spend the rest of our life in repentance, in self-restraint, in blessed labors. Amen.