In the Babylonian furnace
According to the prophecy of many holy fathers, one of the signs foretelling the end of the world will be a universal, terrible depravity, foul carnal licence and unbridled indulgence of the passions. In the Apocalypse the final and utmost corruption of the world is pictured in the image of a woman sitting upon a scarlet beast: “a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy” (Rev. 17:3). This great harlot is adorned with purple and scarlet, with gold, pearls and precious stones. In her hand she holds a golden cup full of the abominations and filthiness of the fornication of the whole earth (Rev. 17:4). She is the symbol of the city that rules over the kings of this world — “Babylon”; this capital of the last generation of men has become the habitation of devils and the hold of every unclean spirit, where all are drunk with the maddening wine of fornication. The kings of this world will commit fornication with this city, and the merchants will become sharers in its luxury and delicacies (Rev. 18:2–3).
How the reign of “Babylon” and the feast of “the great harlot” end is well known to all! Which city at the end of the world will be granted such dark glory is not yet known. And indeed, perhaps no particular city is meant here at all, but only the image of a godless world power that is to gain dominion over the world.
Among the movements and desires of the soul, the passion of fornication is the strongest and most enslaving. The drive toward carnal union for the continuation of the race has grown into the most perverted, God-hated, sickly and manifold falls. And who among men is free of this all-consuming fire? Whose heart is not inclined toward the craving roused by bodily beauty, does not yield to it? What other passion draws us so powerfully, makes us drunk, drives us out of our minds, robs us of will and courage, if not this one?
The Creator has bestowed on man the greatest gift of love, of striving toward beauty, the beautiful and perfection. A man must not shut himself up in himself, must not stop at himself, but must reach out with his whole being, must thirst to be united with what is higher than himself, with the perfect, the beautiful.
It is precisely the power of love and the unquenchable thirst to be united with the highest Being, with eternal beauty and perfection, that is the life of the soul, its chief centre. This is the need that ceaselessly stirs the soul of man, quickens it, torments it, makes it thirst, desire and seek. One who seeks rightly also finds, and becomes a partaker of the highest love, of blessedness, and of the good Lord Himself. That is why the enemy of God and cunning tempter of men — Satan — tirelessly tries to seize the main stream of our spiritual powers, to defile it, twist it, lead it astray and turn it to every abomination and deformity. Like a serpent he “instructs” us and teaches us to bury the heavenly gift in the ground; he exchanges the thirst for salvation for corruptible desires, and turns the striving toward eternal blessedness into a craving for momentary pleasure.
The striving toward the highest, divine, spiritual beauty and the heavenly gift of love have turned in us into nothing but attraction to an alluring body. And so “man that is in honour, understands not: he is compared to the senseless cattle, and is like them” (Ps. 48:20). The sickness of fornication has entered so deeply into man's flesh and blood, has grown so fast to his heart, that it has become the straight and broad way leading to the abyss of perdition, and countless victims, easily lured into the enemy's net by sensual delights, have become heirs of Gehenna. Fewer and fewer remain who have not wished to submit to the sorceress fornication; rarely will you meet a ship of life sailing against the current. And what oarsman will survive the towering wave of the all-drowning, raging passion?
Satan, like Nebuchadnezzar, sends his servants to make mankind bow down to the “golden image” — or rather, to the coarse, crude body adorned with illusory earthly luxury. And now all over the earth people obediently bow down to the idolized flesh, and when they hear the sound of the various instruments they fall on their faces before the image. And for the stubborn and disobedient the evil one has ordered the fiery furnace of the passions to be heated “seven times more,” with “modern culture,” possessed of treacherous charm, thrown in for firewood, to stir up all the desires of men. So the Christians of the last times who have honourably kept their virginity will truly be like those three youths who remained unharmed in the Babylonian furnace. But them too only the grace-filled mantle of the Kingdom of God will shelter from this all-consuming flame (see the Book of the Prophet Daniel, ch. 3).
Christians!
Christian ladies, women, young men, men! Come to your senses! Where are you going? Do you really not see, not hear, what “culture” is flooding the world? Remember the “Revelation” of the holy apostle and evangelist John the Theologian: what is said there about the last times, about those 144 thousand redeemed who stand before the throne of God, that is, about those who will escape Satan's net and be saved. St John heard a voice from heaven: “These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins...” (Rev. 14:4). Have you not noticed that the chief mark of the redeemed is precisely virginal purity undefiled by the sin of fornication? (In which, of course, faithful married life is also included.) It seems the people of the last times will be seduced by the demon of fornication!
Today a good many people, knowingly or unknowingly, have become accomplices in heating this new “Babylonian furnace”! But do we not know what awaits the one who causes his neighbour to stumble? Have we forgotten the words of the Lord: “Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea” (Mark 9:42)? And also: “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” (Matt. 18:7).
Woe to you, woman, when you appear in the company of men provocatively dressed! Do not deceive yourself: when you go about almost naked or put on clothing that clings to your body and try to show off its charms the better, know that the passion of fornication has plainly made its nest in you; you are a stumbling-block, because you are trying to rouse a foul desire in the hearts of men, and for this, woe to you!
In this case you may not have intended deliberately to tempt anyone, but that does not lessen the guilt. Even a hidden, almost unconscious foul desire is a poison that poisons our hearts, and this passion of fornication, once it shows in conduct, becomes an occasion of stumbling for one's neighbour. To poison a person's soul is no small sin. The Lord says: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). That is, one may say: you, woman, went out dressed in erotically alluring clothes; walking half-naked through the town, you showed many people your bodily beauty and delighted a multitude of gazes with your charming looks. Then know this: today you have committed adultery with many! And woe to you, for today temptation walked the streets in your person!
Whoever shows us erotic and pornographic films on television commits the greatest of sins! Radio programmes, periodicals and the other mass media preach the sin of fornication endlessly. For the spread of indecent magazines and newspapers that corrupt the human soul, not only the publishers and staff are to blame, but also those who sell them, buy them and subscribe to them.
Every Christian who looks through such products soils his soul and fills his heart with a deadly poison, which will be hard to cleanse even with special treatment. Do not deceive yourselves that “we are only spectators and have no intention of doing anything of the kind in life; all this is only a staging on the screen.” As the famous apologist Tertullian said: “What is unacceptable in reality should not be accepted in a work of art.” If sin displayed before our eyes in a glittering, spellbinding frame does not, as we think, make us desire it, then on what principles does advertising rest, on which various firms spend countless millions of dollars? We know well that even hidden advertising, unchecked by the mind, gets in, is imprinted on the subconscious and makes a person desire the advertised thing. The seed of sin cast in at some moment by these advertised images, and the sharp desire for sweetness, may not bear their poisonous fruit at once. A soul that has once tasted the sweetness of sin in imagination, as though drunk with drugs, seeks to repeat the sensation. And, having already fallen into grave sin, we may not even remember or guess where and when we caught the bacillus of this deadly disease.
It will not be out of place to remind lovers of so-called “beauty contests,” who shamelessly look over naked women, of an episode from the life of the holy protomartyr Thecla. This holy Christian virgin was distinguished by unheard-of beauty. The pagans tortured this courageous confessor of Christianity for a long time and at last put her young, completely naked body on show to the whole people. “Only shame was left her for a garment,” relates the writer of her life, and the martyr herself repeated the words of the prophet David: “the confusion of my face has covered me” (Ps. 43:16). They set on her starving, enraged beasts let out of their cages — lions and bears. On seeing the naked virgin, the beasts bowed their heads to the ground, lowered their eyes and, as if ashamed of the woman's nakedness, drew back! Thus dumb animals turned out to be the judges and accusers of the spectators: beasts by nature predatory showed the quality of an innocent human being, while the rational creature — man — became like a predatory brute.
By baring his body and behaving licentiously, a person opposes the will of God and protests against the penance lawfully laid upon the human race (let us remember the “coats of skins” which God Himself gave to Adam and Eve); he does not admit his guilt, refuses to see his own fall and corruption, and rejects humility. The desire to draw the attention of the crowd, to make it delight in your “charm,” is from the spiritual point of view lawlessness and a temptation to others, which is hateful to God, because it opposes the law of repentance.
The apostle calls us: “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1). And how many virgins and young men, beautiful in soul and body, like a bouquet of snow-white lilies, have offered their virginal, spotless, most beautiful, fragrant bodies as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. And they were ground by the predatory jaws of the monster possessed by the demonic spirit of this world. Tortured with the utmost cruelty, dyed in their own blood, they became more beautiful still, and, adorned as with precious stones, made this beauty immortal. These are the virgins who came to know the highest worth of their beauty and, tempered in the purifying fire, now shine with an ineffable and spotless radiance. “What? know ye not,” says the apostle, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, which is God's” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).
And behold: Christianity came into the world, bringing with it the ray of true culture, the dawn of a new people, the fruit of the promised land, the olive branch of faith in eternal life; the red sun passed over the ancient earth, warmed the broken and humbled hearts, gave new life to those who thirsted for the Kingdom, sank toward the horizon, hid itself for a time, and left us freedom of choice. We have freedom, we have knowledge, each of us hears the call: the Lord calls us — the “Gladsome Light” — into heavenly joy. Satan too calls us — the fallen angel invites us into the pit of hell and the abyss of darkness. This too is our freedom! Freedom — to bridle your desires; freedom — to tear off this bridle that holds passion back, and with it the garment of ruinous craving; freedom — to make merry, to laugh, to play games with one's personal life, to trample underfoot and corrupt everything worthy and beautiful still left in you in this momentary and swiftly passing life, and to pay with eternal torment for this pitiful phantom of bliss; freedom — to endure for a short time the fire of the passions, the flame of temptation, not to be deceived by sweet lies and the spellbinding song of the siren, and not to trade your own birthright for a pitiful, momentary “pleasure”! Freedom — to choose eternal life or eternal death!
It is before this very freedom that temptation stands, “for it must needs be that offences come,” so that our choice may be tested; but for all that:
“Woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.”
Archimandrite Lazarus (Abashidze)
