by Metropolitan Seraphim of Kastoria
The Graceful and Philanthropist Lord blessed us once again to live the period of Great Lent, which is not only a period of fasting and abstaining from certain foods, but rather a fasting of passions so that the passions can turn with the presence of uncreated energies of God into virtues and to be beneficial to us and to our fellow human beings.
That is why Saint Basil the Great qualifies fasting as the self-control of the tongue, the checking of anger, separation from things like lusts, evil-speaking, lies, and false oaths.
It is also a period in which we all have to look after ourselves and embrace the forgotten virtue of self-consciousness.
If we get to gain his virtue, then we will be ready for repentance.
Saint Isaac the Syrian said: “He who perceives his sins is greater than he who raises the dead with his prayer.
He who groans one hour for his soul, is greater than he who benefits the whole world.
He who is made worthy to see himself, is greater than the angels.”
Self-consciousness will set us free from the evil spirit that produces sinful and morbid situations in our soul such as sloth, curiosity, and love for power, which are mentioned especially during this period in the well-known words of Saint Ephrem the Syrian.
What is sloth?
Firstly: Sloth can be defined as a habitual disinclination to exertion, or laziness. “He who is slothful and lazy, has he ever stopped rambling?
Is there anything bad he has not heard of?” Saint Basil the Great asks. And then, he adds: “The inactivity without fearing God is a teacher of wickedness and evil for those who became indifferent to their duties.
Sloth is the source of evildoing.”
Thus, when man is not engaged in any creative work, being indolent and slothful, begins to think and work for the evil and sin, has ambitions against his brothers, he slanders and decries them, and as the wise Solomon reminds us: “Every slothful man desires.”
Second: St. John Chrysostom marks sloth as the greatest evil. “There is no evil worse than idleness, no greater than sloth.”
It is the source of all evil, since it teaches all evil things “and to those who love sloth, it becomes the teacher of wickedness.” And to prove how dangerous the state of sloth is, he highlights: “For there is, really, absolutely nothing that won’t be destroyed by sloth.
For even water, when it is standing, goes bad, while the one that runs and goes everywhere retains its properties…
And someone can see that uncultivated land sprouts nothing but weeds and thorns and thistles and fruitless trees, while the cultivated one is full of fruit.”
Thus, sloth eventually leads to spiritual death, that is, the separation of the soul from God. Therefore, rightly the Fathers of the Church, as anatomists of the soul and experienced physicians, rank it in the deadly sins.
Sloth condemns the five foolish virgins of the Gospel, since they definitively lose the Kingdom of God and are left outside the bridal chamber.
Finally, in the Parable of the Talents, sloth makes Christ speak firmly but justly to the third servant of the parable, calling him “wicked and slothful,” while praising the two other slaves for the diligence and care they have shown.
Therefore, it is time to become spiritually active and diligent in feeding our immortal soul.
It is time to rush into the Church’s Sacred Mysteries to purify ourselves from the dirt of our sins.
It is time to show the spirit of work to our fellow human being, to the unfortunate, to the sick, to everyone in need.
It is time for us to live the spirit of love within the worship of the Church, and to be taught the good, so that we bring many eternal fruits.
