Late Repentance
October 5
(From the Discourse on Andrew, concerning a grave thief.)
By Archpriest Victor Guryev
October 5
(From the Discourse on Andrew, concerning a grave thief.)
By Archpriest Victor Guryev
People whose habit of a particular sin has become a passion think only of one thing: how they can indulge that sin as soon as possible. Warnings from those close to them mean nothing to them. But since everything has an end, their lawless deeds also have an end. And this end often comes while they are still alive, and a most lamentable end it is. They repent then, but too late.
During the lifetime of Saint Andrew the Fool for Christ, there lived in Constantinople a notorious sinner who robbed the dead. Once, learning that a young woman, the daughter of a nobleman, had been buried in a secluded place, he went to her grave intending to strip her of her precious clothing. On the way, Saint Andrew met him and, foreseeing his wicked deed, began urging him not to do it, threatening him with God’s punishment if he did. Instead of listening to the Saint, the thief merely laughed at him and went on his way. Having rolled away the stone from the cave in which the young woman had been buried, he opened her coffin and removed her shroud, then her precious clothing, and finally, without even feeling ashamed, completely stripped her and took her last garment. But at that very moment, as he was completing his final abominable deed, by the command of God the dead woman rose from the coffin and struck him on the face with her right hand, causing him immediately to lose his sight. “Wretched man!” she said to him. “If only for the sake of modesty you had left me my last garment. But from now on you will never steal again! And from this time you will learn that there is a God, that Jesus Christ is alive, that there is judgment, and that there will be recompense after death.” After this, the blinded thief was forced to abandon his trade and began to live by alms. He often bitterly reproached himself for his former life, but it was already too late. “Be accursed,” he would sometimes say, “my insatiable greed! Because of you I have received this terrible blindness. It is a wretched thing to live in idleness and engage in theft,” he would say. But alas, the past cannot be undone.
Brethren! Do we not encounter something similar among ourselves? O, very often! Thus, they say to the immoral man: “Abandon your sin!” He does not listen, and then, before you know it, the coffin becomes a coffin indeed.1 And then he will begin to say: “Why did I live this way?” They say to the drunkard: “Give up your drunkenness!” No; and then you will see how he has ruined his family and himself has begun to groan and tremble. And afterward he too says: “If only I had not drunk, this would not have happened.” They say to the thief: “Do not steal!” He does not listen; and then, before you know it, he is caught and made a cripple for life. And this one blames himself: “If only I had not stolen, I would still be whole.”
But all this is nothing compared with what awaits such people after death if they do not repent. When they stand before the judgment of God, they will truly say to the mountains, “Fall on us,” and to the hills, “Cover us” (Luke 23:30). But alas! Then it will be too late all the more. Save us, therefore, O Lord, from ever afterward setting out upon the path of ungodliness! It is slippery and terrible, and it inevitably leads those who walk upon it to destruction. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
Translator's Note:
1. The Russian literally reads “the coffin will become a coffin,” an emphatic expression indicating that death has overtaken, or is about to overtake, the person who is internally dead.
