Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 6.8

For do not tell me that what is done is acting. For this acting has made many adulterers and overturned many households. And I groan above all for this, that what is done does not even seem to be wicked, but there is applause and shouting and much laughter while so great an adultery is being dared. What are you saying? That what is done is acting? For this very reason they would deserve countless deaths, that what all the laws command us to flee, these men have been eager to imitate. For if the thing itself is evil, the imitation of it too is evil. And I do not yet say how many adulterers are made by those who act such dramas of adultery, how bold and shameless they make those who watch such things; for nothing is more lewd and bold than an eye that bears to look at such things. In the marketplace you would not choose to see a woman stripped, nor even at home, but you call the thing an insult; yet you go up to the theater to insult the common race of men and women and to shame your own eyes? For do not tell me that the one stripped is a harlot; for the nature is the same and the body the same, of the harlot and of the free woman. For if this is nothing improper, why, if you see it done in the marketplace, do you leap away yourself and drive off the woman behaving indecently? Or is such a thing improper when we are apart, but when we are gathered and all sitting together, no longer equally shameful? But these things are a laughingstock and a disgrace, the words of utter madness; and it would be better to smear the whole face with clay and mud than to watch such lawlessness. For mud does not so harm the eye as an unchaste look and the sight of a woman stripped. Hear, at any rate, what produced nakedness at the beginning, and fear the cause of such indecency. What then produced nakedness? Disobedience and the devil's counsel. So from the beginning and from the first this practice was his. But they were ashamed when they were naked; while you even pride yourselves, according to that apostolic saying, “having your glory in your shame.” How then will your wife look at you after this, when you come back from such lawlessness? How will she receive you? How will she address you, when you have so dishonorably made a public show of the common nature of women and have become a captive of such a sight and a slave of the harlot? And if you are pained hearing these things, I am very grateful to you: “For who is it that makes me glad but the one who is pained by me?” Never cease, then, groaning over these things and being stung; for the pain from such things will be for you the beginning of the change for the better. That is why I too made the discourse sharper, so that by making a deeper incision I might free you from the rottenness of those who intoxicate you, and bring you back to pure health of soul; which may we all enjoy through everything, and obtain the prizes laid up for these achievements, by the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and might to the ages of ages. Amen.