Homily for the Sunday of the Paralytic
On Sinful Habits
By St. Makarios Kalogeras of Patmos (+ 1737)
On Sinful Habits
By St. Makarios Kalogeras of Patmos (+ 1737)
A person is naturally inclined to feel sorrow and pain at the misfortunes and calamities of others. Perhaps because they are common, or because we are all of the same substance, or because a person does not know “what the coming day will bring.” He is not certain that later the thorns of pains which he sees in others will not also grow in himself. For these reasons, one is rightly drawn into a sympathetic disposition when he observes the illnesses and sufferings of his fellow human beings.
Who, then, would be so hard in heart, so beast-like in disposition, as not to grieve and not to feel compassion today, hearing from the holy Gospel of those many years which today’s paralytic spent lying down, like an insensible stone, upon a bed? Whose soul would not feel pain, hearing that this wretched man was not only paralyzed but also in extreme poverty, and for this reason was deserted by friends, deprived of relatives? Who would not feel compassion, when he considers not only the pains caused to him by the very grave illness of paralysis, but also the sorrow and the complaint that he felt when he saw the Angel troubling the water of the pool, another being healed and departing, while he himself remained always lying there?
It seems to me, therefore, that as many years as passed and as many sick people were healed, so many wounds this miserable paralytic received, reflecting that all the others had relatives and friends who helped them toward their healing, whereas for him there was never found, in so many years, either friend or relative to help him so that he might be healed. Who, then, is there who will consider this extreme poverty of the paralytic and not grieve with him?
And just as there is no one who is not moved to compassion by this extreme misfortune of the paralytic, so likewise there is no one who will not become indignant and be stirred to anger when he sees that another such paralytic, having a person who stands always ready and willing to give him healing, yet he, being moved by his own willful malice and ignorance, delays the time of his healing, is able and yet does not wish to rise from that tomb of illness. Such a paralytic, such a sick man — who will hear of him and not be indignant? Who will see him and not be angered against him?
“But is it possible,” someone may say to me, “that such a foolish sick man, such an insensible paralytic, can be found, who turns away from his physician? Who does not want his health, but prefers to be leprous rather than clean, to be as one living yet buried among pains, within the foul odor of illness?” Yes, there are many — just as many as the unrepentant sinners, who remain lying down, paralyzed, motionless in the practice of the commandments of God.
All these are represented by that paralytic who turns away from his physician, by the one who had a man — the Son of God — who is able to heal him in a single moment, without needing an angel to trouble the water once a year, because He Himself is “the Angel of Great Counsel,” and indeed has many times set pools before the eyes of the sinner. As many mysteries, as many drops of tears of repentance, so many are the healing stirrings. As many moments as an hour has, so many times the Angel of Great Counsel is ready to grant forgiveness in order to heal the leprosy of sin.
And yet the sinner, the spiritually paralyzed man, closes his eyes so as not to see the physician; he prefers to be dead, lying in sin, rather than alive in virtue.
From where does this extreme insensibility come? From where this tear-worthy condemnation in the sinner? From the evil habit of sin. This is what has bound the sinner to the bed of insensibility; this is what moves him to prefer death over life. And in order that you may be assured that this habit is so strong, consider this: he who has his ears open to the preaching of the gospel and receives with such readiness the things proclaimed, as letters sent to him by his Heavenly Father, easily understands that the paralytic of today represents an image of the one who is bound by the habit of sin. For just as paralysis, because it loosens the sinews of the body, makes the body dead and immobile, in the same way also the habit of sin cuts the sinews of the soul and therefore makes it immobile in every work of virtue, to which the soul does not have the strength to rise, because it is always dragged down by the weight of sins.
Wherefore also Basil the Great writes: “A habit which has become fixed, through the passage of a long time, takes on the force of nature. For this reason it is no small struggle for someone to overcome a habit.” Let anyone labor as much as he wishes, let anyone try by whatever means he can to cut off a natural property of the human body, for example laughter or desire. He labors in vain. In the same way also the habit of sin, when it grows old, is transformed into nature, and acquires the qualities of a natural power. And indeed the great Father whom we mentioned rightly says that it is no small struggle for someone to overcome an old habit.
Blessed therefore and worthy of many praises is the one who, before sin grows old, cuts off its sinews, and before it makes him dead, puts it to death. Just as in a new vessel, whatever you place in it at the beginning and leave it for a long time, it takes on its odor, whether good or bad, and afterward, however much you may wash that vessel, you cannot by any means remove that fragrance or foul smell, in the same way also sin, when it remains for a long time in the heart, when it becomes a habit, is no longer easily — or even at all — separated from a person, but the longer it remains, the more the habit of evil and sin takes root.
Wherefore I praise that wise man, whoever he may be, who, wishing to show the breadth and depth of evil habit, gave it such a symbol. He depicted as a hieroglyph an underground cave with the inscription: “the width as great as the depth.” By this he wished to show that evil habit, increasing each day with the milk of wickedness and malice, the longer it endures as a passion, the worse it becomes. For just as other things begin from small beginnings and grow with time, in the same way also the habit of sin comes, with the passage of time, to such growth that it becomes unconquerable.
With much pain the great Augustine writes in the golden book of his Confessions: “I groaned, being bound.” By whom, O man of God? Not by another, he says, not by a foreign chain, but by my own iron habit; my own will was the tyrant. The unbreakable chain was habit, which bound me so strongly that it brought me into licentiousness, something which, being unable to cut off, became necessity, and necessity ended up becoming nature. Wherefore after all this he cries out: no one can understand how great a difficulty there is, how much pain, how much struggle, for someone to cut off an old habit, except the one who has struggled.
For what reason, however — explain it to us more clearly, O teacher of the world? Because, he says, the evil thought gives birth to pleasure, from this again is born consent, and from consent comes action, and from action comes habit, and from habit is born necessity, and this is followed by death.
Wherefore you do not err if you liken that sinner who has allowed sin to become a habit in his soul — you do not err, I say, if you liken him to someone who has fallen into the hands of a pitiless and merciless tyrant, whom that tyrant, wishing to kill, shut up in a dark prison without locking him in. Nevertheless, he lost the door and does not find from where to go out. Thus, wandering about, he dies there within. The same happens also to the one for whom sin has become a habit. He feels that he is in a dark prison and goes about seeking the door, yet the evil habit has it shut. Therefore, continually postponing finding the door of freedom, he finds the death of complete destruction, as it has been written: “sin, having become a habit, leads to complete ruin.”
King Saul came into great necessity in that war which the proud Goliath proclaimed against him; for this reason he was compelled to clothe David with his own royal armor. David put them on with great joy; but when he tried to move in order to go against Goliath, he saw that from those weapons he was hindered more than helped. Remembering then that he was not accustomed to overcome enemies with such weapons, but with the help of God, together with his own shepherd’s sling, he says to the king: “Most exalted king, I thank you for the honor you have shown me. Splendid and precious are your weapons, but they are not for me, because I am not accustomed to conquer enemies with such arms.”
Do you see how much power habit has, so as even to surpass the strength of royal weapons? How many noble men, how many of royal blood, how many of royal mind, how many nourished in wisdom? And yet they are not able to wrestle against a Goliath — a passion, an anger, a drunkenness, a concubine, a love of money, a vain glory. But armed with royal and splendid weapons, they are dragged into the darkness of sin by the evil habit of those contemptible passions, which they themselves confess to be shameful, to be deadly. These royal men, these splendidly arrayed giants, groan beneath the feet of an insolent and blasphemous Goliath; they groan under the tyranny of a many-headed Hydra, which the new Heracles, David, easily slays with a sling, with a flight, with a swift cutting-off of sin. O accursed habit of sin, who will consider the power that you have and not groan? Who will consider the contempt and disgrace that you bring upon royal and noble men and not say with the great-voiced Isaiah: “Woe to those who draw their sins as with a long rope”?
But let me briefly enumerate the other things which this evil habit causes in the soul. First, it makes sins heavier, because their roots — the passions — go ever deeper. It is evident to every thinking person what I say, namely that every sin, the longer it remains in a person, the heavier it becomes, and the more its wickedness increases. Second, evil habit diminishes the natural goods, and this harm needs no proof for one who considers the reverence, the love that every soul had for God before it was overtaken by some mortal passion, or also the inclination it had to show mercy and compassion toward others before it was seized by love of money. These virtues which a person has before he falls into the sins opposed to them — if you measure them afterward, you find that they have greatly fallen from their former degree. Third, habit makes a person vulnerable to other sins, because one sin opens the way to another; the one assists the other. Fourth, by the weight which habit gives to the soul, it no longer merely urges as at the beginning, but compels, forces, and constrains a person — often even against his will — to sin. The fifth result of habit is despair, and the last is eternal punishment.
Wherefore the sacred Augustine likens the evil habit of sin to a deep sleep, from which, when a person awakens, he wishes to walk but cannot, because he is hindered by the heaviness of sleep. Thus also the one who is possessed by the long-standing habit of sin hears the word of God which says: “Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return to Me, and I will have mercy on you, and I will forgive your sins.” He wishes to return to God, he desires to abandon his sins, yet he cannot, being hindered by habit. And if at some time it appears that he returns to God, his return is not true, but feigned. And just as when rain falls upon the earth, it appears that even the stones are wetted, but only on the outside, and if you look within them they are completely dry and devoid of the moisture of the rain, so also it happens with those whose heart has been hardened by evil habit. Outwardly they appear to have received the divine dew of repentance — therefore they often even groan and weep — but inwardly their heart is dry and barren of the dew of divine repentance, because evil habit does not allow the dew of the divine word to reach the innermost parts of the soul.
A certain teacher compares those who are dominated by the habit of a sin to a game that children play. They often catch some wild bird and tie it by the leg with a string. They let it fly, and it flies upward in order to escape, but they pull it back down again. The same game, it seems, the devil plays with those whom he has bound with the cord of habit. Many times he lets them fly to the height of virtue, and you see that, while they are still within passions, within the bonds of their former sins, they begin to practice self-control, to fast, to accuse the life they have lived, to blame the slavery of sin, to praise the freedom of virtue. But while they make this good beginning of virtue, you see them again being hurled into the abyss of wickedness, because the devil has them bound with the cord of habit; therefore he allows them to fly only a little to the height of virtue, to their shame and disgrace, and to his own pleasure and joy, for he has never known any other enjoyment, any other delight since he was cast out from the beauties of heaven, except to mock the wretched man through the habit of sin.
Historians write concerning Mithridates, that notorious tyrant, that by frequently using as food the poison called hemlock, he came to such a condition that, when at some time he was compelled, because of his great misfortune, to put himself to death, he sought this poison and consumed much of it. Yet it did not act; it did not bring about what he desired, namely death, which he considered preferable to falling into the hands of his enemies and becoming their plaything. The same happens also to the wretched sinner. Because the daily use of sin becomes for him a second nature, he partakes of the Mysteries without appetite and desire. But by the frequent contempt which he shows toward them, being moved by habit, he eventually finds them ineffective.
Something similar happens to him as to a traveler who, coming to cross a river, at first finds a small wooden bridge, but despises it and goes forward, thinking that he will find another, larger, stone bridge. He labors much but does not find it, and therefore is forced to return, supposedly to cross by that wooden one. But before he arrives, the river increases from the rain, a strong current descends, that wooden bridge is covered over, and thus the traveler remains in desolation and afterward in death. The same happens also to the miserable sinner who, being bound by habit in sin, at first finds it easy to be loosed by the heavenly bridge of repentance. But because at the beginning he despises it, later he is moved to seek it, yet he does not find it, because habit has brought down many currents of passions and sins, and covers over the contrition of the heart, thickens the mind, cools divine love; thus nothing remains for the wretched sinner except to be cast down from the lesser abyss of sin into the greater, and finally into the depths of Hades.
To understand what I am telling you, turn your gaze once to the courtyard of Caiaphas. There you will see Peter, who, when at first he was asked whether he also was a disciple of Christ, says: “I do not know the man,” and again, when after a little while he was asked a second time, he even swears that he does not know Him. And the third time he was asked, he even adds a curse: “Then he began to curse and to swear, saying, I do not know the man.” O accursed habit, what is there that you cannot do? Whom can you not cast down?
Let us therefore avoid, my beloved, the habit of sin; let us not despise a small habit, lest we be overtaken by a great one. Peter, if he had not allowed that smallest suggestion — “I do not know the man” — to enter into his soul, would not have come to such a necessity as to add to that “I do not know the man” an oath and a curse.
It is praiseworthy, though it appears blameworthy, the deed that that young man did, whom the executioners, taking him to hang him because he was a thief, allowed to approach his mother, who was nearby weeping, after he had begged them. They, though merciless toward the misfortunes of others, yet at that moment — I do not know how — showed compassion and gave permission to that condemned young man to go near his mother, thinking perhaps that he wished to embrace her and say to her a final farewell, since at that moment they were about to be separated by such a separation. The executioners therefore allowed the young man, though bound, and he approached his mother; and as he made as though he wished to say to her some secret word, he seized with his teeth his mother’s ear and cut it off. This impious act greatly disturbed those present there, who said that this young man was unjust not only toward others but even toward his own mother. But he replied: “She is the cause of this death of mine and of all my other evil. For if she had cut off the habit which I had in my youth of stealing the tablets of my fellow students, I would not have dared to steal that Octoechos, and afterward greater things, and thus come to this misfortune.”
Plato sees a friend of his who was playing dice, and immediately he begins to accuse him very harshly and to insult him without mercy. And that friend of Plato, wondering at his excessive reaction, the only thing he answered was: “for small things?” as if he were saying to him: “O most wise Plato, for such a small sin you heap so many insults upon me? For such a small relaxation, which I give to my body with this innocent game, you weave so many reproaches against me? You give me so many insults? So many accusations? And indeed in front of so many people? A great reaction for small things. You insult me for so small a matter.” And he replies to him: “But when it becomes a habit, it will not be small.”
Do you hear a word from the mouth of a Greek, do you hear a golden evangelical teaching? Small is the sin that you commit, my friend, yet the habit of sin is not a small thing, but deadly, which causes many to close their eyes so as not to see the physician of their soul. This has killed and daily kills many, and indeed giants. Truly, sin, when it becomes a habit, is not a small thing. For this is the paralysis of the soul; it is the chain with which the devil binds a man upon the bed of insensibility. Habit is not a small thing, but great and terrible, because it causes in man that fearful and inconsolable hell. Habit is not something small, for it is incurable in those who do not know the therapeutic means, which are:
The first thing needed in order to cut the roots and the sinews of an evil habit is nothing other than the omnipotence of God. This is what, instantly and effortlessly, heals this incurable passion, as the paralytic of today proclaims with his bed upon his shoulder. Yet this omnipotence does not act by itself. Not that it cannot, nor that it does not will to, but so as not to abolish that which He granted once and for all to man — free choice. Therefore this omnipotence of God needs much, in order to act in us: abstinence from evil, hatred against sin, contrition of heart, restitution, the mystery of repentance and true confession. And together with all these, prayer and the will of man to bend his neck, and with warm tears to seek the omnipotence of God. What I say becomes evident from the paralytic of today. Our Christ, the knower of hearts, knew also the many years during which the disease had him bound upon the bed; He knew also the pains and the great suffering which he endured. He did not ignore the desire which that wretched man had to be freed from the disease, nor the lack of necessities, nor the abandonment by friends and relatives. Nevertheless, He asks him: “Do you wish to become well?” so as to give him an opportunity to confess Him as Lord and Almighty, and together with the confession to ask also for his healing. But also in order to show you, O man, how much power the evil habit of sin has, so that it requires the omnipotence of God to cut it off.
The second therapeutic means is the desire and love of the opposites of sin, something which also agrees with the definition given by physicians: “opposites are healed by opposites.” Do you therefore wish to cut off the evil habit of drunkenness and gluttony? Place as an effective herb upon the passion the love and desire of fasting. Are you ruled by a carnal passion, are you bound by the habit of brutish fornication and adultery? Love and seek to acquire the purity and virginity of the Angels, and with this praiseworthy and holy desire you cut off the first — the abominable and foul one. Are you ruled by the passion of resentment and hatred? Love the freedom from resentment of God and the love of the evangelical life, and in this way you cut off that habit. Are you ruled by the passion of avarice and lack of compassion? Love evangelical self-sufficiency and the compassionate mercies of your heavenly Father, and thus you cut off that passion of Jewish insensibility. Are you ruled by diabolical arrogance and pride? Love the humility of your Master, and in this way you heal the evil lessons of Lucifer.
The third therapeutic means is the complete subjugation of the body, which you cannot conquer in any other way than that which the crucified Jesus showed you upon Golgotha, and by the whole example of His all-holy life. Just as He delivered His all-holy flesh into that most bitter sea of dreadful sufferings, in the same way you also should not spare the flesh, in order to gain the soul. Know that this body is a slave, and the soul is its master. Do not spare the slave lest it hunger, sweat, and toil, and thus its master will be honored. Do not spare the slave — your flesh — if it is dishonored and stripped for a time, for thus it will be clothed with the garment of innocence and the soul will be glorified eternally.
These are the means by which one can cut the sinews of every evil habit. Consider, O man, both the ease and also the honor and the glory which these have. If therefore you reject them, know that you are a paralytic who both has a man to help him enter into the waters of the pool, and has therapeutic means to free him from that pitiable passion, and yet by his own will rejects them. You are the one who, with your own hand, signs in the testament of your heavenly Father that you are to be disinherited from His Kingdom.
Aristotle writes in his Politics that among the Scythians there existed a law which ordained that whoever had not slain at least one enemy of the city had no right at the festivals to use the common drinking cup. Know this, O man, that the same will happen also to you, if you do not slay — if you do not cut off — the evil habit of sin, in which you are found bound by the hostility and counsel of your enemy, the devil. You will never be deemed worthy to drink that cup of the New Covenant, that cup of the heavenly life, the inheritance of the glory above. And from this misfortune, from this disaster — can any greater be found or conceived?
Therefore, you wretched man, do you endure it, for the sake of one bad habit, to lose the heavenly Kingdom? Is this the work of a rational soul — to sell, for so little, for a temporary pleasure, the glory, the boldness, the love of the tri-hypostatic Divinity? Is this the work of a prudent man — to leave the company of the Angels, the fellowship of the Apostles, the joy of the Prophets, the dwellings of the Righteous, for one evil and perverted habit? No, I beg you, let none of us be found so foolish; but all of us, with the therapeutic means which I have spoken of, let us cut off every evil habit, so that we may be deemed worthy of the good things promised to us, by the grace and love for mankind of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belongs all glory, honor, and worship, together with His unoriginate Father and the life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Source: Evangelical Trumpet, p. 162. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
