7 What thunderbolts do not these things deserve? For tell me, if any one were to lead you into a palace, and show you the king on his throne, would you indeed choose to see the theatre instead of those things? And yet even in the palace there is nothing to gain; but here a spiritual well of fire gushes up out of this table. And you leave this, and runnest down to the theatre, to see women swimming, and nature put to open dishonor, leaving Christ sitting by the well? Yes: for now, as of old, He sits down by the well, not discoursing to a Samaritan woman, but to a whole city. Or perchance now too with a Samaritan woman only. For neither now is any one with Him; but some with their bodies only, and some not even with these. But nevertheless, He retires not, but remains, and asks of us to drink, not water, but holiness, for “His holy things He gives unto the holy.” For it is not water that He gives us from this fountain, but living blood; and it is indeed a symbol of death, but it has become the cause of life.
But you, leaving the fountain of blood, the awful cup, go your way unto the fountain of the devil, to see a harlot swim, and to suffer shipwreck of the soul. For that water is a sea of lasciviousness, not drowning bodies, but working shipwreck of souls. And whereas she swims with naked body, you beholding, are sunk into the deep of lasciviousness. For such is the devil's net; it sinks, not them that go down into the water itself, but them that sit above more than such as wallow therein; and it chokes them more grievously than Pharaoh, who was of old sunk in the sea with his horses and his chariots. And if souls could but be seen, I could show you many floating on these waters, like the bodies of the Egyptians at that time. But what is still more grievous is this, that they even call such utter destruction a delight, and they term the sea of perdition a channel for a pleasure voyage. Yet surely one might easier pass over in safety the Ægean or the Tuscan sea, than this spectacle. For in the first place, through a whole night the devil preoccupies their souls with the expectation of it; then having shown them the expected object, he binds them at once, and makes them captives. For think not, because you have not been joined unto the harlot, you are clean from the sin; for in the purpose of your heart you have done it all. Since if you be taken by lust, you have kindled the flame up higher; if you feel nothing at what you see, you deserve a heavier charge, for being a scandal to others, by encouraging them in these spectacles, and for polluting your own eye-sight, and together with your eye-sight, your soul.
However, not merely to find fault, come let us devise a mode of correction too. What then will the mode be? I would commit you to your own wives, that they may instruct you. It is true, according to Paul's law, you ought to be the teachers. But since that order is reversed by sin, and the body has come to be above, and the head beneath, let us even take this way.
But if you are ashamed to have a woman for your teacher, fly from sin, and you will quickly be able to mount up on the throne which God has given you. Since so long as you sin the Scripture sends you not to a woman only, but even to things irrational, and those of the viler sort; yea, it is not ashamed to send you who art honored with reason, as a disciple to the ant. Plainly this is no charge against the Scripture, but against them that so betray their own nobility of race. This then we will do likewise; and for the present we will commit you to your wife; but if you despise her, we will send you away to the school of the very brutes, and will point out to you how many birds, fishes, four-footed beasts, and creeping things are found more honorable, and chaster than you.
If now you are ashamed, and dost blush at the comparison, mount up to your own nobility, and fly the sea of hell, and the flood of fire, I mean the pool in the theatre. For this pool introduces to that sea, and kindles that abyss of flame. Since if “he that looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery,” he who is forced even to see her naked, how does he not become ten thousandfold a captive? The flood in the days of Noah did not so utterly destroy the race of men as these swimming women drown all that are there with great disgrace. For as to that rain, though it wrought indeed a death of the body, yet did it repress the wickedness of the soul; but this has the contrary effect; while the bodies remain, it destroys the soul. And ye, when there is a question of precedence, claim to take place of the whole word, forasmuch as our city first crowned itself with the name of Christian; but in the competition of chastity, you are not ashamed to be behind the rudest cities.
Source: Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew (New Advent)