In ebriosos

Homily 14. Against Those Who Are Drunk. The evening spectacles move me to speak, but the fruitlessness of my previous labors again checks my impulse and blunts my eagerness. For even a farmer, when his first seeds have not sprouted, is more reluctant to sow the same fields a second time. For if, after so many exhortations, which we did not cease to offer you in the past, and during these seven weeks of fasting, night and day, we did not stop testifying to you the Gospel of the grace of God, and no benefit has resulted, on what hopes shall we speak today? O how many nights have you kept vigil in vain! how many days have you assembled in vain! if indeed it is in vain. For he who has made progress in good works, and then has reverted to his former habit, not only has lost the reward for his labors, but also is deemed worthy of a heavier condemnation, because, having tasted a good word of God and been deemed worthy of knowledge of mysteries, he has betrayed everything, lured by a brief pleasure. For the least is pardonable out of mercy; but the powerful, it is said, will be examined powerfully. One evening, and one assault of the enemy, dissolved and annihilated all that labor. What eagerness, then, for the present discourse? So that even if I had kept silent, you know well, had I not feared the example of Jeremiah, who, not wishing to speak to a disobedient people, suffered those things which he himself related: that fire came into his entrails, and he was paralyzed on all sides, and could not bear it.

Dissolute women, forgetful of the fear of God, despising the eternal fire, on such a day, when they ought, because of the remembrance of the resurrection, to sit in their homes and take thought of that day on which the heavens will be opened, the judge will appear to us from the heavens, and the trumpets of God, and the resurrection of the dead, and the just judgment, and the recompense to each according to his work; instead of having these things in their thoughts, and purifying their hearts from evil intentions, and wiping away with tears their former sins, and preparing themselves for the meeting with Christ on the great day of his appearing, they have shaken off the yoke of the servitude of Christ, thrown from their heads the veils of modesty, despised God, despised his angels, put to shame every male gaze, tossing their hair, trailing their tunics, and playing with their feet, with a licentious eye, with unrestrained laughter, mad for dancing, summoning every licentiousness of young men upon themselves, having formed choruses in the martyria before the city, they have made the consecrated places a workshop of their own indecency. They have polluted the air with their harlot songs, they have polluted the ground with their unclean feet, which they have beaten in their dances, having surrounded themselves with a crowd of young men as a theater, truly wanton and utterly deranged, leaving no excess of madness. How shall I be silent about these things? How shall I lament them as they deserve?

Wine has caused us the loss of these souls; wine, the gift from God given for the comfort of weakness to the temperate, has now become a weapon of licentiousness for the dissolute. Drunkenness, the self-chosen demon, cast into souls from pleasure; drunkenness, mother of vice, opposition to virtue, makes the brave man cowardly, the temperate man licentious; it knows not justice, it destroys prudence. For just as water is hostile to fire, so excess of wine extinguishes reason. Therefore I hesitated to say anything against drunkenness, not as if it were some small evil or worthy of being overlooked, but because no benefit comes from the speech being offered. For if the drunkard is deranged and darkened, the one rebuking chants in vain to one who does not hear. To whom then shall we speak? Since the one in need of admonition does not hear what is said, while the temperate and sober man does not need the help of speech, being clean of the passion. What then shall I do with those present, if speech is useless and silence is difficult? Shall we neglect the care? But neglect is dangerous. But shall I utter something against the drunkards? But we would be sounding into dead ears. Perhaps then, as in the case of pestilential diseases, physicians of bodies secure the healthy with preventive aids but do not attempt to treat those seized by the disease, so for you the speech has only half its usefulness, indicating protection to the unaffected, but not deliverance and healing to those seized by the passion. How are you different from the irrational animals, O man?

Was it not by the gift of reason, which you received from your Creator, that you became ruler and master of all creation? Whoever, therefore, deprives himself of prudence through drunkenness is likened to unreasoning beasts and made equal to them. Indeed, I would say that those in a state of drunkenness are even more irrational than cattle; for all four-footed animals and wild beasts have ordered impulses toward mating, while those whose soul is possessed by drunkenness, having filled their body with unnatural heat, are driven at every time and season toward impure and shameful embraces and pleasures. And this is not the only thing that produces irrationality in them; the derangement of the senses also makes the drunkard worse than any beast. For what beast sees so awry and hears so amiss as the drunkard? Do they not fail to recognize their own closest associates, and often run up to strangers as if to acquaintances? Do they not often leap over shadows as if they were channels or ravines? Their ears are filled with noises and sounds, as of a surging sea; the earth seems to rise up vertically, and the mountains to run around in a circle. At one moment they laugh incessantly, at another they are distressed and weep inconsolably. At one moment they are bold and fearless, at another fearful and cowardly. Their sleep is heavy, hard to shake off, and suffocating, truly neighbor to death, while their waking hours are more insensible than sleep.

For them life is a dream: though they have no cloak, nor anything to eat on the morrow, they reign and command armies in their drunkenness, and build cities, and distribute money. Wine, seething with such fantasies and so great deception, fills their hearts. Others are led into opposite passions: they are despondent, gloomy, pained, tearful, fearful of noises, and easily startled. The same wine, working in different bodily conditions, produces different passions in the souls. In those whose blood it diffuses and causes to bloom to the surface, it makes them cheerful, pleasant, and radiant; but in those whose habit it compresses by its weight, contracting and oppressing their blood, it leads them to the opposite disposition. And why need I mention the throng of the remaining passions? The harshness of character? The quickness to anger? The querulousness? The soul’s instability? The shouting? The uproar? The easy susceptibility to every deception? The unguardedness toward fits of rage? And intemperance in pleasures is directly borne as from a source of wine, and the disease of licentiousness rushes in together with the unmixed wine, making every madness of beasts toward the female second to that of

...showing the insolence of the drunken: for irrational animals recognize the limits of nature, but the drunken seek the female in the male and the male in the female. Nor is it easy to recount all the evils that come from drunkenness. The harms from plague affect men over time, as the air gradually imparts its own corruption to bodies; but those from wine strike immediately. For having lost their soul, as if stained by every blemish, they also further corrupt the very condition of the body: not only are they consumed and dissolved by the excess of pleasures that madden them into lust, but they also carry a body that is bloated, foul, and loosened from its vital tension, weighed down by its own bulk. Their eyes are livid; their complexion is sallow; their breath is offensive; their tongue is slack, and their cry is unintelligible; their feet are unsteady, like those of children; and their excretions flow involuntarily, as from lifeless things. They are pitiable in their luxury, more pitiable than those storm-tossed at sea, whom successive waves, one after another, overwhelm and do not allow to rise above the swell. So too are their souls carried under water, submerged in wine. Therefore, just as storm-tossed ships, when they become overfilled, are necessarily lightened by the jettisoning of cargo, so too for these men the discharge of what weighs them down is necessary. For by vomiting and spewing forth, they barely free themselves from the weight; they are more pitiable than those who sail with difficulty, inasmuch as the latter blame the winds, the sea, and external necessities.

But these men voluntarily draw upon themselves the winter of drunkenness. The possessed man is pitiable; but the drunkard, suffering the same things, is not even worthy of pity, wrestling with a self-chosen demon. They even compound drugs for drunkenness, not to avoid suffering some harm from wine, but contriving not to cease being drunk. For the day is too short for them; and the night, even the wintry one, is too small for the time of drinking. And there is no end to the evil. For the wine itself leads itself on to more. It does not satisfy need, but creates an indispensable need for another drink, inflaming the drunkards and always provoking them to a desire for more. And devising that the appetite for drinking be insatiable, they suffer the opposite of what they intended. For by the continuity of indulgence they wither their senses. For just as excessive brightness dims the eyes, and just as those struck by great noises are brought by the immoderateness of the blow to a state of not hearing at all, so these men have unconsciously lost pleasure through excessive love of pleasure. For the wine is without quality and watery to them, even if it is unmixed; and the perception of the fresh is tepid, even if it is the purest, even if it is snow itself, unable to quench the flame burning within them from the immoderateness of the wine. For whom the "alas"? For whom the uproar? For whom the quarrels? For whom the disgusts and gossip? For whom the empty brawls? Whose eyes are livid? Is it not those who linger over wine and spy out where drinking parties occur? The "alas" is a lamenting exclamation.

Drunkards are worthy of lamentation, because drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God. There is turmoil from the disturbance produced in the mind by wine. And there are disgusts from the bitter aftertastes of the pleasure of drinking. For their feet are bound, and their hands are bound, by the fluxes sent upon them from drunkenness. And even before these afflictions, at the very time of drinking, the sufferings of the frenzied befall them. For when the membranes become full of the soot which the wine, as it evaporates, sends up, the head is struck with unbearable pains; and being unable to remain upright on the shoulders, it falls now this way, now that, slipping from the vertebrae. He calls "babbling" the immoderate and contentious talk at drinking parties. And there are vain fractures among the wine-bibbers, who are unable to stand upright because of drunkenness. For they are overturned into all sorts of postures of falling, so that they necessarily have fractures on their bodies to no purpose. But who can say these things to the wine-stricken? For they are heavy-headed from the hangover, they doze, they yawn, they see a mist, they feel nausea. Therefore they do not hear the teachers crying out to them from many sides: "Do not get drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery"; and again: "Wine is licentious, and drunkenness is insolent." Disregarding these, they have the fruits of drunkenness on the spot. For the body swells, the eyes are watery, the mouth is dry and burning. For just as the ravines, as long as the winter torrents flow into them, seem to be full, but when the flood has passed, they are left dry.

Thus also with drunkards: the mouth, while the wine is still standing in it like a pool, is somehow full and moist, but when a little time has passed, it is proved dry and parched. But being constantly swept away and flooded by the excess of wine, it also loses its vital moisture. For what constitution of man is so strong as to withstand the evils of drunkenness? What device can prevent a body that is continually heated and continually soaked with wine from becoming washed out, wasted, and dissolved? Hence come tremors and weaknesses; for when their breath is broken by the excess of wine, and the tension of the nerves is loosened, a shaking overtakes the whole bulk of the body. Why do you draw the curse of Cain upon yourself, trembling and wandering throughout your whole life? For since the body lacks its natural support, it is necessarily tossed about and shaken. How long the wine? How long the drunkenness? You are in danger of being mud instead of a man, so completely have you been mixed with wine and rotted along with it, stinking of the daily hangover of wine, and of that wine spoiled, like the most useless of vessels. Isaiah laments these: "Woe to those who rise in the morning and pursue strong drink, who tarry until evening; for wine will burn them up; for they drink wine with lyre and flute, but they do not look upon the works of the Lord, and they do not consider the works of his hands." It is customary for the Hebrews to call any drink capable of producing drunkenness "sikera.

Those who at the beginning of the day look around to see where drinking parties are taking place, and survey wine-shops and taverns, and take one another along to drink, and consume all the care of their soul in concern for such things—these are lamented by the prophet, as leaving no time for themselves for the contemplation of the wonders of God. For their eyes have no leisure to look up to the sky and observe the beauties in it, and to survey the whole ordering of existing things, so as to infer the Creator from their good order; but as soon as the day begins, they adorn their banquets with varied carpets and flowery hangings, and display zeal and diligence in the preparation of drinking vessels, arranging coolers and mixing bowls and saucers as if in some procession and festival, so that the variety of vessels may steal away their satiety, and the change and succession of cups may produce for them sufficient pastime for drinking. And over these things there are appointed symposiarchs and chief wine-pourers and chief table-setters; and order in disorder, and arrangement in an unseemly matter, have been devised, so that, just as the dignity of external authorities is increased by their bodyguards, so also, by surrounding drunkenness like some queen with attendance, they may conceal its shamefulness by the excess of their zeal. And besides these, there are crowns and flowers and

perfumes and incense, and countless external pleasures, provide greater occupation for those who are perishing. Then, as the drinking progresses further, there are contests for more, rivalries and competitions, as they vie with each other to surpass one another in drunkenness. And the one presiding over these contests is the devil, and the prize of victory is sin. For the one who pours down more unmixed wine carries off the victory over the others. Truly, their glory is in their shame. For they contend with each other, but they injure themselves. What speech can reach the shamefulness of what takes place? Everything is full of irrationality, everything is full of confusion. The defeated are drunk, the victors are drunk, the servants mock. The hand has given out, the mouth does not receive, the stomach is bursting, and the evil does not relent. The wretched body, its natural tone relaxed, is a drain from every side, not enduring the violence of excess. A pitiful sight for Christian eyes: a man in the prime of his age, vigorous in body, distinguished in military ranks, carried home on a stretcher, unable to stand upright, nor to go on his own feet. A man who ought to be fearsome to enemies is an occasion for laughter for the children in the marketplace. He is laid low without iron, slain without enemies. A man, a soldier, at the very flower of his age, has become a waste of wine, ready to suffer whatever his enemies wish. Drunkenness: destruction of reason, corruption of strength, untimely old age, a short-lived death. For what else are drunkards but the idols of the nations? They have eyes, but they do not see.

they have ears, and they do not hear; their hands are paralyzed, their feet have become dead. Who plotted these things? Who is the cause of these evils? Who mixed for us the drug of madness? O man, you have made the symposium contrary to order. You cast out the young men led by the hand, like wounded men from war; you have killed the bloom of youth with wine; and you invite as a friend to dinner, but cast out a corpse, having quenched his life with wine. When they are thought to be full of wine, then they begin to drink, and they drink in the manner of beasts, as from an improvised spring, which sends forth streams equal in number to those reclining. For as the drinking already progresses, a certain young man enters among them, noble in shoulders, not yet drunk, bearing a large cup of chilled wine; who, having pushed aside their cupbearer, standing in the middle, distributes equal drunkenness to the fellow-drinkers through winding tubes. This is a novel measure of intemperance, that they may revel together in equal portion, that no one may surpass another in drinking. For having divided the water-channels, and each having received the one turned toward himself, they drink without drawing breath like oxen from some reservoir, hastening to draw down into their throats as much as the cooler sends forth to them from above through the silver channels. Bend down toward your wretched belly; learn the size of the vessel that receives it, that it has the capacity of a single cotyle. Do not look to the wine-jar, when you will empty it, but to your own belly, that it has long been filled.

Therefore, "Woe to those who rise early and pursue strong drink, who remain until late and spend the whole day in drunkenness, so as to allow themselves no time to look upon the works of the Lord and to contemplate the works of his hands. For wine will consume them, because the heat from the wine, entering the flesh, becomes a kindling for the fiery arrows of the enemy. For wine drowns reason and intellect, but stirs up passions and pleasures like a swarm of bees. What chariot of colts is so disorderly driven, having thrown off its charioteer? What ship without a helmsman, carried by the waves as chance dictates, is less safe than a drunkard? From such evils, men and women alike, having formed common choruses and surrendered their souls to a wine-demon, wounded each other with the barbs of passions. Laughter from both sides, shameful songs, lewd postures inciting to licentiousness. Do you laugh, tell me, and take pleasure in dissolute delight, when you ought to weep and groan over what has happened? You utter the songs of a harlot, having cast out the psalms and hymns which you were taught. You move your feet and leap madly, and dance unseemly dances, when you ought to bend your knees in prostration? Whom shall I lament? The maidens inexperienced in marriage? Or those held in the yoke of marriage? For the former have returned, not possessing their virginity; the latter have not brought back chastity to their husbands. For if some have even escaped sin in body, yet they have certainly received corruption in their souls. Let these things be said by me also concerning the males.

He saw wickedly, he was seen wickedly. He who looked at a woman with a view to desire has already committed adultery. If chance encounters hold such danger for those who pry curiously, then deliberate meetings, so as to see women behaving indecently under the influence of drink, and posturing for licentiousness, and singing with dissolute limbs, which when heard alone can instill the entire sting of pleasure into the licentious, what will they say, or how will they defend themselves, having gathered a swarm of countless evils from such spectacles? Did they not look for this very purpose, to arouse their desires? Therefore they are liable, according to the inexorable judgment of the Lord, to the penalty of adultery. How will Pentecost receive you, when Easter has been so insulted? Pentecost received the manifest and universally known visitation of the Holy Spirit; but you, anticipating, have made yourself a dwelling place of the opposing spirit, and have become a temple of idols, instead of becoming a temple of God through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. You have drawn upon yourselves the curse of the prophet speaking in the person of God, that "I will turn their feasts into mourning.

How will you rule your household, when you yourselves are slaves to foolish and harmful desires like chattel? How will you admonish your children, living a life without admonition and without order? What then? Am I to leave you in these things? But I fear, lest the unsubmissive one become more stubborn, and the one who is pricked in conscience be swallowed up by excessive grief. For a remedy, it is said, will put an end to great sins. Let fasting heal drunkenness; let a psalm heal shameful song; let a tear become a remedy for laughter; let the knee be bent instead of dancing; let the breast be beaten instead of the clapping of hands; let humility take the place of the adornment of clothing. Above all, let almsgiving ransom you from sin. For a man's own wealth is his ransom. Employ many of the afflicted for the fellowship of prayer, if indeed the thought of evil will be forgiven you. When the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play (and their play was idolatry), then the Levites, arming themselves against their brothers, perfected their hands for the priesthood. And to you, therefore, who fear the Lord, as many as have now been grieved at the indecency of those condemned, we give this instruction: If you see them repenting of the impropriety of their deeds, sympathize with them as with your own members that have been sick; but if they are obstinate and despise your grief over them, depart from their midst, and separate yourselves, and do not touch the unclean, so that thus those who are shamed may come to a recognition of their own evil.

You, however, shall receive the reward of the zeal of Phinees, through the just judgment of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom is the glory and the power unto the ages of ages. Amen.