Our Venerable Father and Confessor Theophilactus, Bishop of Nicomedia (c. 845)
Isaiah 5:7-16; Genesis 4:8-15; Proverbs 5:1-15; Isaiah 43:9-14; Wisdom 3:1-9; Wisdom 5:15-6:3
Great Fast Day 9. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Read Proverbs 5:1-15
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
Today’s reading warns against adultery and sex outside of marriage. The man is warned against falling for a seductive woman. Although her lips may “drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil” (v. 3), “in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol” (vv. 4-5). If the man ignores the wisdom of this warning, ultimately he is told: “at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, and you say, ‘Oh, how I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!’” (vv. 11-12). Origen of Alexandria interprets the woman of this passage as representing “wily teaching, which entices through pleasing words.” Whether this passage is understood literally or allegorically, living an undisciplined life and being unable to accept correction will lead us to regret later in life.
When a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, the two become one flesh (Mt. 19:5). When one has sex with others outside of marriage, he or she becomes “one flesh” with multiple partners. This is not in accordance with God’s plan for us. Not only the wisdom contained in the Book of Proverbs but also the wisdom of our human biology directs us to fidelity to our wedded spouse. We know that the hormone oxytocin is released during sex which establishes and thereafter strengthens an emotional bond between exclusive partners. We must drink water from our own cistern, that is, be faithful to our spouse. Allowing the vice of lust to rule over our hearts will lead us to become enslaved to it.
Four Sundays ago, we heard the story of the Prodigal Son. Remember that the son insultingly demanded his share of his inheritance from his father and took off to a distant land where he then “squandered his property in dissolute living” (Lk. 15:13). However, in spite of all of this, the father never stopped loving his son. When the son changed his mind and journeyed back to his father, “while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him” (Lk. 15:20). The father not only forgave his son and immediately restored him to his former status, but the fact that the father noticed him while he was still far off implies that the father was watching for him, longing for his return. No sin we commit is beyond God’s mercy; God’s desire is that we be in loving, intimate communion with Him. He also desires that those of us who are married be in loving, intimate communion with our spouse.