Prologue in Sermons: September 16

Everyday Affairs and Needs Do Not Hinder Our Salvation

September 16

(From the Leimonarion: On Dorotheos the Hermit)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev 

He who stops caring about his salvation, becomes lazy about going to church and praying to God at home, always begins to blame his negligence on work. “I am sinful,” such a person usually says, “but there is nothing I can do. And I would be glad sometimes to pray, to think about my salvation, but work has overcome me. I have done one thing, and lo and behold, another is hanging over my shoulders. I have done this, and the third has arrived,” etc. Such a person says this in his own defense, and it turns out, according to him, that one is saved only by sitting with folded hands, that in order to please God, one must be free from all work, not know any worldly occupations, and not bear any labors at all. Let us see if this is really so?

The examples of the Saints show how unfair the above-mentioned excuses are. Thus, Abba Dorotheos worked day and night. During the day he would leave the cave where he lived and go into the desert, collect stones and build cells for the monks from them, and at night he would weave baskets from date branches. He ate only dry bread and had almost no sleep. It is known that the Venerable Zechariah (November 17) was a shoemaker, Saint Eucharistos was a shepherd, and the Venerable Eulogios was a stone-cutter. Saint Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, voluntarily gave himself up to slavery and bore the heavy labors of a slave, and Alexander, Bishop of Comana, was a coal miner before accepting the episcopacy. One of the Greek patriarchs tended mules; another, who lived in solitude on Mount Athos, carried wheat on his own shoulders from the sea to the terrible steepness where his cell stood; the third, finally, also lived for several years on the Holy Mountain as a worker in one of the monasteries. And the Holy Apostles say about themselves that, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God, they worked day and night to acquire their daily bread. "We among you... have not eaten anyone's bread for nothing, but have been busy with labor and toil day and night" (2 Thessalonians 3:8), wrote the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonian Christians.

What will you now say to me, who say that work prevents you from working on the work of salvation? After all, as you see, people have found time, even during difficult labors, to save their souls. Some were concerned about the salvation not only of their own souls, but perhaps of thousands of others entrusted to their care by God. But the examples cited are only a drop in the ocean. Read the lives of the Saints, and you will see that many of them bore such labors in comparison with which your labors are nothing, and that it is not worth further talking about it. Is work to blame for the stagnation of the work of your salvation? No, not so, brethren, but instead it is your greed for profit, or, what is most often seen, your habit, or, better yet, passion, of spending all your free time from work in idleness and debauchery.

Give up greed for profit, leave acquaintances with dissolute companions, spend your free time from work meekly and piously in your family, visit the church of God on feasts, go to talks with pious people; in the midst of work itself, think about God, about the soul, about the Last Judgment, keep prayer in mind. But to say that work is an obstacle to the salvation of the soul is sinful, dishonest. Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.