On the Battle with the Main Sins

In ancient times, the eastern despots, especially in Persia, had two terrible, disgusting forms of punishment.

One was that a decomposing corpse was tied to the one being punished, and the corpse’s arms were tightly wrapped around his neck. The sunken eyes of the dead man constantly gazed into his eyes, and he always smelled the stench of the decomposing body; he went about with this terrible burden on his shoulders; he sat down with the corpse; he couldn’t go to sleep without feeling its terrible embrace.

The other punishment was that the convicted man was placed naked on a board with his hands and feet bound tightly to it; then they placed a rat on his stomach, covered it with a clay pot, and a hot iron was placed on the pot. The pot would heat up, and the rat would begin to gasp from thirst, and not finding a way out, it would gnaw the stomach of the man being punished, climb into his insides, and cause terrible pain.

My friends, in our age of culture and civilization, in this age of great discoveries, both punishments have been preserved. Many of us are carrying a terrible corpse on our backs, this dead man of our times—godlessness. It’s also that rat that gnaws at our insides; and people go about with these terrible burdens, because the terrible executioner—the devil—is preparing punishment for them. Oh, what a loathsome, unbearably horrible torture!

If, my friends, you went to the cemetery, and all those buried there would rise up from their graves and surround you, and would wander as pale shadows around you, would your heart not tremble? Wouldn’t you want to run away from this sight? But we often walk among the living dead. Aren’t the unbelievers dead? But we have to look into their souls—aren’t they also dead? Do not the words of the Revelation of St. John the Theologian apply to us: “You think that you are rich, but I tell you that you are poor and wretched and dead” (cf. Rev. 3:17).

So it sometimes seems to us that we’re alive, but in fact our souls are dead from sins, because sin slays the spirit of God within us. That’s why we must all cry out: “Risen Jesus, raise up our souls!”

The holy Apostle Paul says in the Epistle to the Galatians:

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world (Gal. 6:14).

Every Christian must be crucified to the world, be crucified on the cross. He also has nails—four nails, with which he’s nailed to the cross; there’s also a spear with which his heart is pierced.

What kind of cross does a Christian have?

This cross is called renunciation of the world.

The world must be rejected—not the world in which the bright sun shines, not the one in which beautiful flowers bloom—no, through this world we can only know and glorify the Creator.

We must distance ourselves from the other world, from the one that the Apostle John calls an adulterous and sinful world (Mk. 8:38).

This world moves on an infernal chariot of three wheels, which the holy Apostle also speaks about.

These wheels are the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 Jn. 2:16). With these three wheels, the chariot of the world heads directly into the abyss of hell, into the kingdom of satan.

The first wheel is the lust of the flesh: Those who live in impurity, who break the bonds of marriage (and this happens quite often in our times, to our great sorrow), who promised to preserve virginity and then violated it, are those who are carried away by the first wheel of this terrible chariot.

The second wheel is the lust of the eyes. This is when we sin with our eyes, when we violate the purity of our souls with our eyes. For example, when we admire the beauty of another, not glorifying God, but gratifying ourselves with impure thoughts and desires. All sorts of spectacles that act on the passionate side of the soul are also considered the lust of the eyes. The doors of the theaters ought to have the inscription: “The lust of the eyes.” When we admire dancing, we follow after this wheel.

The pride of life is when a man wants to do everything himself, everything his own way, and he’s annoyed when others object: “How could they not listen to me? Am I wrong? Impossible!” We often, very often grab ahold of this third wheel.

This is the chariot driving the adulterous and sinful world…

Continuation: Four nails in every Christian’s Cross

St. Seraphim (Zvezdinsky) of Dmitrov
Source: Orthodox Christianity