Homilies on Genesis 18–45

Homily 23

HOMILY 23 "Noe, on the contrary, found favor in the sight of the Lord God. Now, these are the generations of Noe. Noe was a just man; he was faultless by • comparison with his contemporaries. Noe pleased God. "I o [196] YOU SEE in what has been said already the extent of God's loving kindness and the surpassing degree of his longsuffering? Do you see the extremity of the wickedness of the human beings of that time? Have you learnt in the midst of this kind of populace how much virtue the good man had, and that he was quite unaffected either by their universal decline into wickedness or the fact that he alone stood out from the crowd of them and traveled in the opposite direction? In other words, he was like a skillful pilot, controlling the rudder of his mind with great vigilance , not allowing the craft to be submerged under the violence of the billows of wickedness, but getting the better of the storm and riding it out at sea as though safely berthed in port; in this fashion [197] by steering the tiller of virtue he kept himself clear of the deluge that was about to engulf everyone in the world. This is the kind of thing virtue is: immortal, unbowed, proof against the vagaries of this present life, soaring above the snares of wickedness as though from some lofty mountain peak and despising all human interests, it is thus unaffected by any of the material realities that prove harmful to other people. Like a person stationed on some high rock mocking the waves as he sees them crashing against the rock and being immediately dissolved into spray, so too the person who practices virtue is placed in a safe position and suffers no unsettling effect from the confusion of worldly I. Gen 6.8-g, with the LXX apparently endeavoring to soften the anthropomorphism in the· first Hebrew verb. 87 88 ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM affairs, but rather remains firm in serenity of mind, revelling in the tranquility of his own thoughts and aWare that the affairs of this life ebb and flow with such rapidity that they differ in no way from the tides in a river. You see, just as you can notice the waves of the sea whipped up at one moment to an incredible height and suddenly brought low again, well in just the same way let us observe people who shun virtue and are mixed up in evil enjoying at one moment lofty notions , adopting a superior pose and being wrapt in the· affairs of this life, then suddenly brought low and reduced to utter indigence. (2) These in fact are the people blessed David, the inspired author, was referring to in the words, "Don't worry when a person becomes wealthy or when the splendor of his house increases, because at his death he will take none of it with him."2 He is right in saying, "Don't worry." Don't let yourself be upset, he is saying, by the affluence of the rich and the glamor of appearances. After all, before long you will see them laid low, inert, corpses, thrown out to become the food of worms, stripped naked of all their possessions, quite unable to take anything of theirs with them, and instead leaving it all here. So don't get upset to see the events of the moment, nor commend the good luck of the person who shortly is due to be rid of these things. This, you see, is what present affluence is like, and this the true nature of wealth: it doesn't accompany those who pass on from here-instead, they leave it all here behind them, naked and destitute of everything, clad only in their wickedness and the burden of sins they have amassed. In the case of virtue, on the contrary, things are quite different: even here it puts us beyond the reach of those plotting our downfall, makes us invincible, bestows upon us endless enjoyment, does not allow us to be affected by changing circumstances, and when we pass on from here it becomes 2. Ps 49.16-17a; it is significant that Chrysostom impairs the parallelism by omitting 17b, which employs the verb synkatabainein in the sense of "going down into the grave," which would not correspond with the usual sense of his favorite notion of synkatabasis for the Scriptures, God's loving considerateness (cf. Introduction (20...