What Evil Does Drunkenness Cause to a Person?
April 7
(An exhortation to kings and princes, to bishops and priests, and to all Christians, that they should not become drunk.)
By Archpriest Victor Guryev
April 7
(An exhortation to kings and princes, to bishops and priests, and to all Christians, that they should not become drunk.)
By Archpriest Victor Guryev
Whoever gives himself over to the vice of drunkenness, for the most part forgets everything around him. He has only one thing on his mind — where he might drink; he watches only for opportunities to satisfy his vile passion wherever feasts are held (Prov. 23:30). And yet, if he were fully to realize what a terrible evil he is doing — to himself, to his family, and to society — he would surely be horrified. Indeed, the harm caused by drunkenness, both to drunkards themselves and through them to others, is scarcely imaginable. Ruin awaits drunkards, if they do not abandon their passion — inevitable ruin; their condition is dreadful.
“Drunkenness,” it is said in a homily from the Prologue, “darkens the mind, disorders the bodily organism, squanders property. Drunkenness leaves the land untilled; it makes free men slaves; it drives them into unpayable debts; it turns skilled craftsmen into unskilled, taking away from them the ability to do what they have learned; it subjects them to diseases, brings shame and dishonor, casts them into poverty; it produces quarrels and lawsuits; it separates wives from husbands, makes children slaves, takes possessions from under one’s feet, causes trembling of the hands, ruins the eyesight. Drunkenness keeps one from going to church and does not allow one to pray to God; it distracts from reading the holy books, drives away the fear of God from the heart; it hands over to death, sends to eternal fire. Drunkenness destroys beauty, becomes a scandal to the sober. Who has woe? The drunkard. Who has strife? The drunkard. Who has lawsuits? The drunkard. Who has sorrows and quarrels? The drunkard. Who has wounds without cause, who has bloodshot eyes? The drunkard (Prov. 23:29–30). Every drunkard will be cut off from God and from men and will be clothed in torn rags… O woe! how shall the drunk be saved, lying as if dead, having fled from God because of drunkenness and having been separated from the Holy Spirit because of the stench of intoxication? They do not have the word of God in their mouths; their Guardian Angel weeps over them, and the demons rejoice, to whom drunkards offer a drunken sacrifice.”
Much, as you see, the holy father enumerates here of the bitter fruits of drunkenness. But tell me, with hand on heart, can even one of his words be called unnecessary? Alas, though bitter, a direct and undeniable truth is heard in every word. And not only this: we think that the holy father still portrays, rather restrainedly, the terrible picture of evil flowing from drunkenness. If we were to meet it face to face, what would we see? There, an entire family has been reduced to beggary by a drunken father and goes about hungry and cold, barefoot and unclothed; there, a worthless drunkard inflicts merciless beatings upon his wife; there, drunkenness has turned a man into a thief and a robber; there, another looks like a beast, and nothing human remains in him; there, we hear, drunkards one after another end their lives in suicide. What could be more shameful, more inexcusable, more terrible than all this?
Come to your senses, then, while there is still time — you who love to seek out places where feasts are held and are accustomed to be intoxicated with wine. Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly (Luke 21:34). Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
