Homilies on Ephesians

Moral. Let there not be one idle word; for from idle words we fall also into foul words. The present is no season of loose merriment, but of mourning, of tribulation, and lamentation: and do you play the jester? What wrestler on entering the ring neglects the struggle with his adversary, and utters witticisms? The devil stands hard at hand, “he is going about roaring” to catch you, he is moving everything, and turning everything against your life, and is scheming to force you from your retreat, he is grinding his teeth and bellowing, he is breathing fire against your salvation; and do you sit uttering witticisms, and “talking folly,” and uttering things “which are not befitting.” Full nobly then will you be able to overcome him! We are in sport, beloved. Would you know the life of the saints? Listen to what Paul says. “By the space of three years I ceased not to admonish every one night and day with tears.” And if so great was the zeal he exerted in behalf of them of Miletus and Ephesus, not making pleasant speeches, but introducing his admonition with tears, what should one say of the rest? But hearken again to what he says to the Corinthians. “Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears.” And again, “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” “Who is made to stumble, and I burn not?” And hearken again to what he says elsewhere, desiring every day, as one might say, to depart out of the world. “For indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan”; and do you laugh and play? It is war-time, and are you handling the dancers' instruments? Look at the countenances of men in battle, their dark and contracted mien, their brow terrible and full of awe. Mark the stern eye, the heart eager and beating and throbbing, their spirit collected, and trembling and intensely anxious. All is good order, all is good discipline, all is silence in the camps of those who are arrayed against each other. They speak not, I do not say, an impertinent word, but they utter not a single sound. Now if they who have visible enemies, and who are in nowise injured by words, yet observe so great silence, do you who hast your warfare, and the chief of your warfare in words, do you leave this part naked and exposed? Or are you ignorant that it is here that we are most beset with snares? Are you amusing and enjoying yourself, and uttering witticisms and raising a laugh, and regarding the matter as a mere nothing? How many perjuries, how many injuries, how many filthy speeches have arisen from witticisms! “But no,” you will say, “pleasantries are not like this.” Yet hear how he excludes all kinds of jesting. It is a time now of war and fighting, of watch and guard, of arming and arraying ourselves. The time of laughter can have no place here; for that is of the world. Hear what Christ says: “The world shall rejoice, but you shall be sorrowful.” Christ was crucified for your ills, and do you laugh? He was buffeted, and endured so great sufferings because of your calamity, and the tempest that had overtaken you; and do you play the reveler? And how will you not then rather provoke Him?

But since the matter appears to some to be one of indifference, which moreover is difficult to be guarded against, let us discuss this point a little, to show you how vast an evil it is. For indeed this is a work of the devil, to make us disregard things indifferent. First of all then, even if it were indifferent, not even in that case were it right to disregard it, when one knows that the greatest evils are both produced and increased by it, and that it oftentimes terminates in fornication. However, that it is not even indifferent is evident from hence. Let us see then whence it is produced. Or rather, let us see what sort of a person a saint ought to be:— gentle, meek, sorrowful, mournful, contrite. The man then who deals in jests is no saint. Nay, were he even a Greek, such an one would be scorned. These are things allowed to those only who are on the stage. Where filthiness is, there also is jesting; where unseasonable laughter is, there also is jesting. Hearken to what the Prophet says, “Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice with trembling.” Jesting renders the soul soft and indolent. It excites the soul unduly, and often it teems with acts of violence, and creates wars. But what more? In fine, have you not come to be among men? Then “put away childish things.” Why, you will not allow your own servant in the market place to speak an impertinent word: and do you then, who sayest you are a servant of God, go uttering your witticisms in the public square? It is well if the soul that is “sober” be not stolen away; but one that is relaxed and dissolute, who cannot carry off? It will be its own murderer, and will stand in no need of the crafts or assaults of the devil.

But, moreover, in order to understand this, look too at the very name. It means the versatile man, the man of all complexions, the unstable, the pliable, the man that can be anything and everything. But far is this from those who are servants to the Rock. Such a character quickly turns and changes; for he must needs mimic both gesture and speech, and laugh and gait, and everything, aye, and such an one is obliged to invent jokes: for he needs this also. But far be this from a Christian, to play the buffoon. Farther, the man who plays the jester must of necessity incur the signal hatred of the objects of his random ridicule, whether they be present, or being absent hear of it.