April: Day 24: Teaching 2: Venerable Elizabeth the Wonderworker

April: Day 24: Teaching 2:
Venerable Elizabeth the Wonderworker
 
(Against Slander)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Venerable Elizabeth, whose memory is celebrated today, labored in a women's monastery in Constantinople. She was sent there by her parents in her youth, and in her mature years she took a vow of lifelong virginity and began to lead a strict ascetic life of fasting, labor, and prayer. She ate only plants, did not eat bread, did not use oil, and often did not eat food for forty days. In both winter and summer she wore only one garment - a coarse hair shirt; her body was frozen from the cold, but the fire of zeal for her salvation and love for God burned within her with a bright flame. The severity and loftiness of her ascetic life, mixed with humility and kindness, earned her universal love and respect, and she soon became the abbess of the women's Monastery of Saints Kosmas and Damian.

A strict ascetic herself, a woman who had studied the peculiarities of the female heart through long-term experience, she was a zealous and experienced leader in the salvation of the sisters entrusted to her care in the Lord. Thus, she inspired the sisters and other women to “especially beware of deceit and evil tongues,” as sins very common among women. “We are weak in body and mind,” she said, “and with this weakness we think to be strong either by cunning or by evil tongues. But our cunning, as inseparable from lies, makes us direct servants of Satan. He is the father of lies and acts boldly where lies are loved. And women’s talkativeness is all the more sinful because, with a lack of prudence and irritability of the heart, we most often squander emptiness, lies, slander, frivolity, harmful to ourselves and others. 'The heart of the righteous studies how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours forth evil,' says the wise man” (Prov. 15:28).

II. It is not useless, brethren, for all of us to reflect on this instruction of the Saint, for slander, condemnation of one's neighbor, or as it is commonly called, gossip, is a sin very widespread among us and is therefore more widespread because almost no one considers it a sin and indulges in it as an innocent pastime. What do they spend their time in most homes doing? In either inventing themselves or repeating offensive rumors about their acquaintances that they have heard from others. No one can hide from their tongue, they do not spare either sex, age, rank, or honor of a person. Conscience does not reproach them for this. They think that this is an accepted custom everywhere.

a) But ask them: what is the meaning of this desire, this pleasure, with which they spread only bad and not good rumors about their acquaintances? Is it not that their hearts are not good, that they are glad to see something bad in their neighbors and that their listeners sympathize with them in this? When you, my brethren, speak ill of your neighbor and thereby humiliate his honor, tarnish his name, why do you not remember that an honest name is the greatest blessing for a person? "But I," you will say, "do not invent, but say what I myself know, or have heard from faithful people." No, my brethren, this cannot justify you. Even if the person you are talking about was bad and what was said about him was completely true, still brotherly love and Christian indulgence should have imposed silence on your lips. But no! Often the inner voice of your conscience has told you that the rumors that have reached you are untrue, that the man is not as he is described, but still you are glad of the opportunity to gossip about him in society. This is not enough, however! If only you would repeat what you have heard! But no! You have added something of your own, you have further inflated and embellished the rumors. And so your tongue, as the Apostle James says, has become the adornment of lies! That insignificant rumor, after many additions from you and slanderers like you, has turned into a terrible, intolerable one; a small spark of fire has turned into a conflagration, burning up the good name of your neighbor.

b) Apparently, unfortunately, you do not think at all about the consequences of your slander! Often the one you slander is in fact an honorable and honest person, and you deprive him of a good name. Perhaps he is one of the ministers of the altar. Alas! they are most often subjected to slander and condemnation - they have many spiritual children who love and respect them, expect spiritual help from them, but your evil tongue has diminished their respect, scattered hopes, shaken their very faith. Or, perhaps, you spread an evil rumor about an honest woman who has a husband, children, relatives. Not paying any attention to the fact that such a rumor is the greatest misfortune for a woman, and for her children and husband it is like a sharp knife in the heart, your poisonous tongue did not stop before such evil. Finally, how many friends have you turned into enemies with your sting, how many children have you separated from their parents, how much discord, suspicion, jealousy have you sown in families that were good and peaceful until then?

c) No one can escape the snake tongue of a slanderer. What will they not attribute to their neighbor, what will they not see as dubious and bad in people's actions? If they notices that someone of their acquaintances often goes to church and prays fervently, they are a Pharisee in their eyes - a hypocrite; if, on the contrary, they notice that someone rarely goes to church, he is an atheist, an unbeliever. Does anyone express his thoughts openly, directly? This, they say, is a heartless person. They call a meek, humble person insignificant, weak. A firm, steadfast, unyielding person seems cruel, inhuman to them. In a word - they disdain everyone, find the bad side in everyone, condemn everyone. Though the tongue is small, it accomplishes a great deal!

It should be added that although everything said thus far applies to all people in general, it predominantly concerns women. They are, unfortunately, more prone to gossip, slander, and rumors. For some of them, slander is as necessary as daily sustenance. They forget that for any respectable woman, a good name is more valuable than life itself, and they do not cease to concoct various malicious rumors about their friends.

III. I beseech you, Christian brethren, never to forget what a great sin it is to speak ill of one's neighbor. In conclusion of my frail and weak words, I shall invoke the divine words of Christ the Savior: "A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." Amen. 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.