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Homilies

St Photius the Great, tr. Mango, 1958

7. The Departure of the Russians

IV

Of the Same Most-Blessed Photius, Archbishop of Constantinople, The New Rome,¹ Second Homily on the Attack of the Russians

I know that you are all aware—both those who are skilled in comprehending God’s rejection of men,² and those who are somewhat more ignorant of the Lord’s decrees—indeed, I believe that all of you alike perceive and understand that the danger let loose on us, and the sudden incursion of the tribe came upon us from no other source than the wrath and anger of the Lord Almighty. For, to be sure, the Godhead is good and above anger and every passion, inasmuch as its nature surpasses every material affection (which has been allotted a position of subordination beyond all comparison), yet He could be said with propriety to be wrath and angered, whenever an action, deemed worthy of anger and wrath, draws from Him fitting condemnation for its perpetrators; in which manner the calamity which has just overtaken us has also burst out, revealing to our faces the censure of our sins. Nay, nor did it resemble other raids of barbarians, but the unexpectedness of the attack, its strange swiftness, the inhumanity of the barbarous tribe, the harshness of its manners and the savagery of its character proclaim the blow to have been discharged like a thunderbolt from heaven. Nor shall I keep silent because you all know it, and because both the acuteness of the misfortune and the critical time have inscribed in your hearts the cause of our accumulated ills; nay, the more since I have yourselves as witnesses of what I am going to say, for this reason will I rather speak in just reproach, dramatizing and acting out to you those things for which by our own sins we have set up a stage and have jointly prepared a tragedy, making our state the theatre of multiform woes. For the wrath of God comes upon us for our transgressions,³ and the stuff of the perilous drama is the acts of the transgressors, and the exaction of punishment is for unrepented-of errors. And the more strange and terrible and extraordinary⁴ the assault of the invading nation, the more clear is the proof of the abundance of sins; and again, to the extent that that nation was obscure, insignificant, and not even known⁵ until the incursion against us, so much the more is the enormity of our shame set down and the parading of our disgrace proclaimed, and so much the bitterer is the pain caused by the lash. For the victory of the weaker and ignored over those who were effulgent in fame and unbeatable in strength makes the blow unsurpassable, ushers in an inconsolable disaster, and keeps the memory of the misfortunes ineffaceable. Thus have we been lashed by our unjust deeds, distressed by our passions, humbled by our transgressions, stupefied by evils, becoming a scorn and derision to them that are round about us.⁶ For those to whom the very repute of the Romans once appeared irresistible, have taken up arms against their empire itself, and have clapped their hands together, puffed up with the hope of taking the queenly city as a nest of birds.⁷ They have ravaged its environs, they have laid waste the approaches to the town, they have harshly destroyed those who fell into their hands, they have poured round about it with all impunity, so encouraged and uplifted by our⁸ ill-fortune, that the inhabitants could not even look at them with straight and undaunted eyes; nay, on account of those very things which ought to have incited them to engage the enemy more courageously, they were unnerved and collapsed. For whereas they ought to have been filled with righteous anger at the murder of fellow-countrymen by barbarians, and to have hastened⁹ to demand a requital with fair hopes of success, they, cowering and panic-stricken, were paralysed; indeed those who had been saved, and who ought to have avenged the victims, imagined the plight of the prisoners as their own capture. For once the sudden fright had fallen into the depths of the heart, and the infection had festered into a wound, then the flow of cowardice was conveyed from the ulcer of the heart as from a fountain and source throughout the whole body, and made those on whom the outcome of the war rested appear with limbs paralysed. Thus we became the plaything of the barbarous tribe, and we thought their threat to be irresistible, their intention incapable of being put to shame, and their attack invincible. For where there is the wrath of God, there also is every dread thing¹⁰; and when He turns away, destruction most readily creeps in, and those He delivers to chastisement fall an easy prey into the hands of assailants; and, except the Lord guard the city, the watchmen watch in vain.¹¹

An obscure nation, a nation of no account,¹² a nation ranked among slaves, unknown, but which has won a name from the expedition against us,¹³ insignificant, but now become famous, humble and destitute, but now risen to a splendid height and immense wealth, a nation dwelling somewhere far from our country, barbarous, nomadic, armed with arrogance, unwatched, unchallenged, leaderless, has so suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, like a wave of the sea, poured over our frontiers, and as a wild boar¹⁴ has devoured the inhabitants of the land like grass, or straw, or a crop (O, the God-sent punishment that befell us!), sparing nothing from man to beast, not respecting female weakness, not pitying tender infants, not reverencing the hoary hairs of old men, softened by nothing that is wont to move human nature to pity, even when it has sunk to that of wild beasts,¹⁵ but boldly thrusting their sword through persons of every age and sex.¹⁶ One could see babes torn away by them from breast and milk and life itself, and finding an improvised grave in the rocks against which, alas, they were dashed; mothers wailing miserably, being slaughtered over their infants who were still convulsed and gasping—a piteous thing to hear and more piteous to see, much better to be passed over in silence than to be told, and worthier of its perpetrators than of its victims. Nay, nor did the savagery stop with human beings, but over all speechless animals, oxen, horses, fowl and others, which they fell upon, did their cruelty extend. There lay an ox and a man by its side, a child and a horse found a common grave, women and fowl stained each other with their blood. Everything was full of dead bodies; the flow of rivers was turned into blood; some of the fountains and reservoirs it was no longer possible to distinguish, as their cavities were made level with corpses, others retained but faint traces of their former outline, the missing traces being overlaid by the bodies that lay scattered alongside them.¹⁷ Corn-land was rotting with dead bodies, roads were obstructed, forests took on a wild and desolate aspect because of corpses rather than because of bushes and solitude, caverns were filled up, mountains, hills, ravines and gullies differed in no way from city cemeteries. Thus the calamitous¹⁸ destruction spread on, and the plague of war, borne on the wings of sin, flew all round about, destroying everything it encountered.

Nobody would be able to describe in words the Iliad of ills¹⁹ which overtook us then. And who, on seeing these things, would not admit that the cup mixed by the Lord’s anger, which had boiled over²⁰ at our transgressions, was not poured out on us to its very dregs? Who is it that, studying and revolving these matters, will not walk all through life, even unto the very end, in mourning and melancholy? How everything was confounded then, and how the city could almost be said to have been captured by the spear! For while her capture was easy and her inhabitants had no means to defend her, that is to say, while it rested in the power of her foes whether she should suffer or not suffer; and while the safety of the city was in the hands of the enemy, and her fate was at the mercy of their good pleasure; then, I say, it made but small odds, or rather, it was much harder if the city had not yet fallen than if²¹ she had fallen earlier; for the latter, by the suddenness of the blow, might perhaps have concealed the reason for her immediate fall;²² whereas the former, by the lapse of time and by arousing the enemies’ goodwill (since she would thus have fallen to their mercy), and so adding to the disaster the insult of their clemency, would make yet more painful the feeling of captivity.²³ Do you remember the turmoil, the tears and wails to which the whole city descended then in utter despair? Do you recollect that murky and terrible night when the orb of all our lives was setting with the orb of the sun, and the light of our life was sinking into the deep darkness of death? Do you recollect that unbearable and bitter hour when the barbarians’ boats came sailing down at you,²⁴ wafting a breath of cruelty, savagery and murder? When the sea spread out its serene and unruffled surface, granting them gentle and agreeable sailing, while, waxing wild, it stirred up against us the waves of war? When the boats went past the city showing their crews with swords raised, as if threatening the city with death by the sword? When all human hope ebbed away from men, and the city was moored only with recourse to the divine? When quaking²⁵ and darkness held our minds, and our ears would hear nothing but, “The barbarians have penetrated within the walls, and the city has been taken by the enemy”? For the unexpectedness of the event and the unlooked-for attack induced, so to speak, everybody to imagine and hear such things—a symptom that is indeed common among men in such cases: for what they fear excessively they will believe without verification to have happened even when it has not; whereas that of which they have had no previous apprehension they will reject by the arbitrary power of their judgment even when it has come upon them. Verily, there was mourning then, and lamentation and woe.²⁶ Then each man became the unbiased judge of his own sins, not railing at the “slander” of his accusers to escape the accusation, not demanding external proofs, not pretending to call in witnesses in order to “triumph over the knavish trick,” but each man, placing the wrath of God before his eyes, admitted his own transgression, and on account of what he had foolishly done against the commandments, considered himself within the pale of danger; and, being torn away from pleasures by the experience of misfortune, he was converted and reformed to a temperate life, and²⁷ to confessing to the Lord with sighs, confessing with tears, with prayers and appeals. For a common misfortune and the expectation of death are able—indeed able—to make men aware of their sins, and bring them to their senses, and improve them by their actions.

When we made such amends, when we set up our reason as the inflexible arbiter of our sins, and we, the accused, pronounced the verdict against us to be valid, when we invoked God in litanies and hymns, when we offered our repentance with affliction of the heart, when, extending our hands to God all night long, we implored His compassion, and placed in Him all our hopes—then we were delivered from the calamity, then we received liberation from the ills that surrounded us, then we saw the danger being crushed, and the Lord’s wrath was seen lifted away from us. For we beheld our enemies retiring, and the city that had been threatened with capture being freed from pillage; at the time when, denuded of all help, and deprived of human alliance, we were spiritually led on by holding fast to our hopes in the Mother of the Word, our God, urging her to implore her Son, invoking her for the expiation of our sins, her intercession for our salvation, her protection as an impregnable wall for us,²⁸ begging her to break the boldness of the barbarians, her to crush their insolence, her to defend the despairing people and fight for her own flock. When, moreover, as the whole city was carrying with me her raiment²⁹ for the repulse of the besiegers and the protection of the besieged, we offered freely our prayers³⁰ and performed the litany, thereupon with ineffable compassion she spoke out in motherly intercession: God was moved, His anger was averted, and the Lord took pity of His inheritance. Truly is this most-holy garment the raiment of God’s Mother! It embraced the walls, and the foes inexplicably showed their backs; the city put it around itself, and the camp of the enemy was broken up as at a signal; the city bedecked itself with it, and the enemy were deprived of the hopes which bore them on. For immediately as the Virgin’s garment went round the walls, the barbarians gave up the siege and broke camp, while we were delivered from impending capture and were granted unexpected salvation. For the Lord looked not on our sins but on our repentance, nor did He remember our iniquities,³¹ but He looked on the affliction of our hearts, and inclined His ear³² to the confession of our lips. Unexpected was the enemy’s invasion, unhoped-for appeared their departure; extreme was God’s irritation, but His mercy inexpressible; unspeakable was the fear they inspired, but they became contemptible in flight; God’s wrath accompanied them in the attack against us, but we have found God’s compassion, routing them³³ and checking their onset.

Let us not, therefore, make God’s love of man an excuse for negligence, nor consider His compassion an incitement to indifference, nor make the beginning of salvation an open gate to our perdition, nor let us be softened by His mercy, so that the end may not be worse than the beginning,³⁴ and we draw upon ourselves the curse of the Jews: “Ah sinful nation, a people full of sins, why should ye be smitten any more, adding to your iniquities,” as Isaiah says, “and it is not possible to apply a plaister, nor oil, nor bandages.”³⁵ Let us not, therefore, beloved ones, render ourselves guilty of so great evils, nor become oblivious of the compact we pledged to God when we were seeing that terrible danger pressed hard against our face. For you know—you surely know³⁶—each man being taught anew by his own conscience, how at that time whoever had done an unjust act pledged himself to God never to do it again, whoever had abandoned his body to fornication was seen, out of loathing for that passion, to make free profession of temperance, yea the habitual drunkard was sober and promised to remain sober in the future; another, who was hard and inhuman of heart, gave himself entirely over to charity, begging God’s mercy as a pledge of his charity towards his neighbours; while he who was malicious to his friends and the ruin of his rivals, an executioner to slaves and a tyrant to free men, seized with weeping and lamenting, tamed and amended the savagery of his character. One could see the haughty humble and voluptuaries fasting; those whose life had been spent in laughter and play moistened their cheeks with torrents of tears; those who had devoted themselves to the acquisition of money shared with the poor, rejecting the disease of avarice, and, to sum up, after close examination of their own defects, they cast them off with much zeal and did away with them. And each man who had lived in negligence and indifference professed himself with hand and foot and every effort to embrace virtue, and they all prayed and pledged themselves to walk thereafter in all purity and without turning back along the path of their promises. So let none of us be forgetful of these things; let no one ruin these promises with oblivion, for oblivion of them can kindle God’s wrath. Moreover, we have also taken the Mother of the Word, our God, as surety for these our pledges to Him, and the mercy that thereby came upon us has delivered us from captivity. Having with these pledges cleansed and tilled our hearts, we have reaped the fruit of repentance; having in this wise reformed our minds, we have been rid of our misfortunes. Having established these foundations for our future life, let us not heap up wood, hay or stubble,³⁷ the inflammable material of sin which destroys those that are laden with it, but let us build with gold and silver,³⁸ the sincerest and purest of deeds, into which the poison of wickedness is not injected, so that we may have an indestructible bulwark for refuge and an undefiled sanctuary when temptations rear their heads. Nor let us turn back, that we may not be convicted of being unfit for the kingdom of heaven,³⁹ that we may not cause by our deeds the past ills to repeat themselves and remain with us. Let each man turn away from his evil deeds with all his heart,⁴⁰ scrutinizing and searching himself as to which of his acts has so vexed God as to have drawn on such great wrath, which is so excessively wicked as to cause so great a danger; for which of our deeds has His anger been kindled, and which have contributed to our being overshadowed by the cloud of His mercy; why was the punishment inflicted, and how was the blow averted; wherefore were we wounded, and with what medicines were we healed. If we seek after these things, and busy ourselves in such wise, and make them a matter of concern, then I know that the Lord will shed His mercy more abundantly, for He is near to all that call upon Him in truth, and will perform the desire of them that fear Him, and will hear their supplication and save them,⁴¹ and He is the protector of all that hope in Him.⁴² But if we cling to our former sins, which God forbid (Oh, that there be not one amongst us so insensitive and incorrigible as to disregard such great vexation sent by God!), if then we pollute ourselves with these same passions and stain ourselves with the mire of pleasures, instead of expiating past calamities with persevering repentance, and using bygone ills to guard our future life, into what ruin, alas, are we casting ourselves again, of what disasters are we digging a pit,⁴³ how great a storm of evils are we, in our mad folly, raising against ourselves! For it is said, “If ye will not repent, He will furbish His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready; and on it He has fitted the instruments of death”;⁴⁴ and, “He shall rain upon sinners snares, fire and brimstone, and a stormy blast shall be the portion of His cup”;⁴⁵ and, “Fire and hail, famine and death, sword and lash, all these have been created for the sinners.”⁴⁶ We have no need of the example of others for our own chastisement. We must use ourselves for our own correction and admonition, our misfortune as our remedy, the past for the future. For when we were wallowing and luxuriating in dissolute and wanton haunts—not to mention the rest—then we saw the Lord’s wrath falling down on us like a mass of hail on a harvest of crops.⁴⁷ Repentance stopped the destruction: let us not stir it up with negligence. His anger was softened by the streams of our tears: let us not kindle it again with outbursts of incontinent laughter, with addiction to theatrical plays. The sword sharpened against us has been sheathed, withdrawn by our litanies and prayers: let us not furbish it again by devoting ourselves to sleep,⁴⁸ drunkenness and the tending of our intemperate belly. God heard the groaning of our hearts, He heard that cry, and did not overlook it; let us not cease from doing so, that God’s mercy may assist us continually. Drunkenness is an evil, fornication is an evil, injustice is an evil, hatred of one’s brother is an evil, anger at one’s neighbour, haughtiness, murder, envy are evils. Negligence and indifference are evils. Let us avoid these things with every effort, beloved ones. These passions are common to rulers and ruled,⁴⁹ rich and poor, men and women; so let the righteous deeds be common also. These things inflame God’s wrath, increase the danger, repress His mercy, and while making us weak before the enemy, they raise up the foe against us. Let us abominate and reject these things with all our heart, that we may not be condemned to rejection from God.

For indeed whenever Israel of old was convicted of having surrendered to the passions, then it was delivered to the edge of the sword—that famous Israel, not an ordinary nation, nor a disregarded people, but one that was glorified as the portion of the inheritance,⁵⁰ and was blest as the chosen people. That very nation then, when it sinned, was chastised with enemies, but when it was righteous, won and prevailed over them; when it earnestly observed the commandments, it was rewarded in war with alien land and enjoyed other men’s toils, but when it despised the Law, it was taken captive and saw its own land allotted to the enemy, saw them singing martial hymns and dancing the war-dance—and that most wisely and justly. For the people beloved and favoured by God ought not to rely on the strength of the hand, or to think much of the power of the arm, or to lean on military preparations, but to be certain of vanquishing its opponents and being victorious by the alliance of the Most High, knowing that alliance to attend excellence of actions and to accompany the plenteousness of good deeds. So if one slips away from the good and from virtue, one also, of necessity, slips away from God’s assistance; but if one embellishes one’s life with good works, and wears virtue like a corselet, then one has His invincible help as ally against the foes. While then God’s people waxes strong and triumphs over its enemies by His alliance, the rest of the nations, whose religion is at fault, are not increased in strength on account of their own good works, but on account of our bad ones, through which they are made powerful and exalted to our detriment. For they are let loose upon us like lashes, and our sins are the material that these lashes are made of, and dominion over us is handed to them to the extent to which we defeat ourselves with our passions and, through our tendency of retreating towards evil, we abandon the ranks in which the holy law of salvation has appointed us. So since, on the one hand, by doing right we become closer to God, and victory over the enemy accrues to us through victory over our passions; while, on the other hand, when we sin we are paid with rejection from God and falling into the power of the enemy, ought we not then to avoid and abominate transgressions, but to seek good works, to flourish with them, and constantly enhance our life with them? How could a man even venture to prevail over the foe, when he cherishes within himself inward enemies and factions that are defeating him, when senseless anger rules over the empire of reason, and incites muderous thoughts against his neighbour, who perhaps has done him no harm? How dost thou expect victory over the enemy to abide with thee, when the greed of desire has taken under its hand the absolute power of reason, and drags it hither and thither, leading it round like a captive in any direction the passion may ordain? How could the prize over the foe accrue to men who are thus being defeated and enslaved? It is impossible, utterly impossible, for a man who has been fettered and subjugated by intestine enemies, and who has sold himself to his passions, to be able to overcome outside enemies. If we wish to destroy the latter, let us first of all take heed to subjugate our internal foes, let us end their rebellion and strife. Let reason be the complete ruler of the passions, and then we shall overcome our opponents who have license to strike and wound us from without. For if thou hast abandoned to the passions the reason which thou hast received from God to be absolute master, and hast subjected it to them like a captive, how canst thou wish to overpower the enemies who are attacking thee from outside? How canst thou despoil the munitions of thy foes, thou whose mind is constantly despoiled by internal revolts and conspiracies? Let us first expel the intestine enemies from our thoughts, and then we shall easily despoil the might of aliens. Dost thou not see how Israel, when it overcame its passions, overcame also its enemies (for God joined in leading its army), but when it was enslaved by sin, then it was also delivered over to its enemies (for the might of God which shared the leadership had abandoned it)? This nation, while it pleased God, escaped thanks to Moses the terrible and crushing hands of the Egyptians; and not that only, but even the raging sea became unto it a straight path in a manner surpassing words, while it opened up as an eternal tomb to the pursuing Egyptians, wondrously destroying horses, chariots, Pharaoh and all.⁵¹ Whereat the people beloved by God was pleased and overjoyed, and struck up in its happiness a song of deliverance to: God, the general Who grants victory. But on another occasion, when they were seduced into becoming guilty of murmuring, and equipped themselves for war without God’s command, and were led away into putting their trust in the law of might rather than in a sign from God, they were utterly worsted and defeated, swelling the power and exalting the fame of their opponents by their own transgression. And again, when they were led by God’s law and obeyed the words of Moses, they captured many cities of their enemies, took many prisoners, plundered much booty, and were filled with much gladness and joy. And that gladness and pleasure of victory would have remained with them, had they not, through ingratitude, marshalled serpents against themselves;⁵² for there was no nation at hand to fulfil and demonstrate with the sword God’s righteous vexation at their ingratitude. In this way is a sinning people chastised: either mowed down by the enemies’ swords, or devoured by the teeth of wild beasts, or punished⁵³ with earthquakes and violent eruptions, or burnt up by thunderbolts from heaven, or oppressed by dearth of crops, or destroyed by pestilential air. A means of punishment is never lacking to fit the peculiarity of the sin. If a man has escaped this one, he is impaled on that,⁵⁴ and again, if he has perhaps avoided that one, he is caught by another, and generally he who lives unjustly and has accounts to render will not be able to shun punishment. Why do I have to relate the remaining history of Israel? Its victories against the foe when it lived with moderation, its unexpected defeats when it was foolish again; its captivity, its return, its second rebellion, its restoration, the very destruction of Jerusalem, and again its rebuilding? Their good fortunes bloomed over good deeds, while wicked ones were repaid with calamities. Therefore, beloved ones, using for our own betterment the evils that have been heaped upon us, the same that aforetime have been manifested in the case of Israel,⁵⁵ let us hate sin and cleave to virtue. Let us avoid those everyday soul-destroying trespasses—drunkenness, fornication, envy, slander, greed, injustice, imposture, hatred of one’s brother, and the offspring of these sins,⁵⁶ so that we may be rewarded with victory in wars, and not forego⁵⁷ our heavenly inheritance.

But since we have been delivered from the threat, and have escaped the sword, and the destroyer has passed by us,⁵⁸ who have been covered and marked out with the garment of the Mother of the Word, let us all in common with her send up⁵⁹ songs of thanksgiving to Christ our God Who was born of her—every house that has escaped the sword, persons of every age, women, children, youths and old men. Indeed, those to whom a common destruction was impending, ought to consecrate and offer to God and His Mother a common hymn. We have enjoyed a common deliverance: let us offer common thanks. Let us say to the Mother of the Word with rectitude of mind and purity of soul: “Unhesitatingly we keep⁶⁰ our faith and love for thee. Do thou save thy city, as thou knowest how and willest. We put thee forward as our arms, our rampart, our shield, our general: do thou fight for thy people. We shall take heed to the best of our strength to make our hearts pure before thee, having torn ourselves away from filth and passions. Do thou dispel the plots of them that rise up arrogantly against us. For even if we are amiss in the commandments made unto us, it is thine to set us straight, it is thine to proffer a hand to us who are kneeling down, and to raise us up from our fall.” Thus let us address the Virgin, and let us not speak falsely, that we may not be belied in our fair hopes, that we may not be balked of our expectation, so that having overcome the tossing, the waves and storms of life’s evils, we may come to anchor in the harbour of salvation, and be deemed worthy of the heavenly glory, by the grace and mercy of Christ our true God, to Whom is due all glory, honour and veneration, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the consubstantial and life-giving Trinity, now and for ever and ever. Amen.

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