November: Day 9: Teaching 1: Venerable Onesiphorus of the Kiev Caves

November: Day 9: Teaching 1:
Venerable Onesiphorus of the Kiev Caves
 
(The Sin of Hypocrisy)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. There was in the Monastery of the Caves a man adorned with virtues, named Onesiphorus, who held the rank of priest, whose memory is celebrated today. Blessed Onesiphorus had a spiritual son, a monk and friend, who appeared to be a faster, humble, pious, but secretly ate, drank and made merry. One day he died. No one could come near his body, because of the stench. Horror fell upon everyone, no one dared to bury him. Finally, some decided to bury him in a cave. Then Saint Anthony appeared to Onesiphorus and said: “Why have you laid a wicked man here? Such a one has never been here before. He has defiled the holy place.” Onesiphorus began to weep and said: “Lord, why have you hidden the deeds of this man?” An angel said to him, “In order to show him to all who sin and do not repent.”

The next night they ordered the monk's body to be removed. But Onesiphorus began to pray to God and the monk's body stopped emitting a stench. Thus the sin of hypocrisy, i.e. external piety, was exposed.

II. Christian brethren! The sin of hypocrisy is great, and a true Christian must shun it, just as a person shuns a dangerous disease that can destroy him.

a) A hypocrite is not capable of faith in God. “How can you believe,” said the Lord to the Jews, the greater and main part of whom was infected with Pharisaism, or hypocritical, i.e. feigned, piety, piety for show, “receiving glory from one another, and the glory that comes from God you do not seek” (John 5:44)?

The elder of the Jewish congregation mentioned in the Gospel proved by experience the hypocrite’s inability to believe in Jesus Christ, to accept the Redeemer. This vain soul, thirsting for praise and human veneration, conscious of himself as fully worthy of them, could not bear that the involuntary praise and wonder of men were attracted by the miracle of Jesus Christ performed before everyone. This soul was seething with envy. It was impossible to reject the miracle: he sought to humiliate Him, to destroy Him, accusing Him of violating God's law against God's miracle; because the healing of the sick man was done on the Sabbath. The hypocrite resolutely enters into the struggle against God, resolutely approaches and utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Hypocrisy, further, is that kind of sinfulness which especially counteracts the knowledge of Jesus Christ and Christianity. The beginning of conversion to Jesus Christ consists in the knowledge of one's sinfulness, one's fall. From such a view of oneself, a person recognizes the need for a Redeemer and approaches Jesus Christ through humility, faith and repentance. But the hypocrite, suffering from passions that are not so noticeable to people: vanity, pride, love of money, envy, deceit, malice, covering them up with hypocrisy and pretense, is incapable, as Satan is incapable, of recognizing himself as a sinner. The soul of the hypocrite is struck with blindness: which is why the Lord called the Pharisees foolish and blind (Matt. 23:17). A hypocrite is that unfortunate, in his own opinion, righteous man who is rejected by God: “I came not,” said the Savior, “to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matt. 9:13). Here the Pharisees are called righteous not because they were exactly righteous, but because they themselves recognized themselves as such, with petty precision fulfilling the ritual regulations of the law of God regarding sacrifice, ablution, etc., and trampling on its essence, which consists in directing the mind, heart - the whole human being - according to the will of God, in love for God and neighbors. In their darkness and hardness, the Pharisees even boasted of their inability to know and accept the Redeemer: “Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in Him?” they said (John 7:48)! The Lord also pointed out this inability of theirs to truly know God: “Amen, I say to you,” He said to them, “that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you” (Matt 21:31). An obvious sinner, a sinner who has fallen into mortal sins, a sinner who has attracted the contempt and disgust of people, is more capable of repentance than that supposed righteous man who is blameless in his outward behavior, but in the secrecy of his soul is satisfied with himself. Pharisaism is a terrible illness of the human spirit, similar to the illness that afflicts the fallen angel. “Take heed to yourselves,” the Lord commanded His disciples, “from the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1). Hypocrisy is called leaven because, having crept into the soul, it penetrates all thoughts, all feelings, all deeds of a person, and becomes his character, as if his soul.

b) He who wishes to protect himself from hypocrisy must, firstly, according to the Lord’s command, do all good deeds in secret (Matt. 6); then he must renounce condemning his neighbor.

He who does good deeds in secret, before the face of the omniscient God, and not before people from whom he does not expect praise, he truly serves God, and from God, who sees all his deeds, he will receive a great reward on the day of judgment before the face of all the angels and saints. He who is pious only in appearance, who even donates large sums for the construction of God's temples in order to acquire miserable earthly rewards: newspaper praise, ranks and offices - he, as one who does not have love for God in his soul, will inevitably be deprived of a heavenly reward and will even be severely condemned for his hypocrisy and deception, as if he did all this out of love for God.

Condemnation of one's neighbor, from which we must free ourselves if we sincerely declare war on external piety, is a sign of hypocrisy according to the all-holy instruction of the Gospel (Matt. 7:5)! In order not to condemn one's neighbor, one must renounce judgment about one's neighbor; because in the Gospel commandment, which forbids condemnation of one's neighbor, judgment about him is previously forbidden. "Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned" (Luke 6:37). At first people allow themselves to judge the affairs of their neighbor, and then involuntarily fall into condemnation. Let us not sow the seed, and the tares will not grow. Let us forbid ourselves unnecessary judgment about our neighbors - and there will be no condemnation. (see the teachings of Ignatius, Bishop of the Caucasus and the Black Sea).

Here they will ask: what is the connection between condemning one's neighbor and hypocrisy? This connection is obvious: the one who condemns and belittles his neighbor, involuntarily presents himself as righteous, perhaps without saying it in words and without even understanding it. We are all sinners; any presentation of oneself as righteous, both direct and indirect, is hypocrisy.

The Holy Gospel condemns the sin of condemnation, seeking our salvation: “Every idle word,” it threatens us, “whatever men shall say, they will give account of it in the day of judgment: for by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned” (Matt. 12:37). Let us, brethren, look into the beginnings of sins, let us guard ourselves from the beginnings of sin: and let us avoid sinful development. The seeds of sin, such as idle talk, are apparently insignificant; the field of the soul is imperceptibly sown with them. But when these seeds sprout, especially when the sprouts become strong and mature, then sin embraces the whole person, and its destruction becomes extremely difficult.

“Whoever forbids his lips from gossip,” said a certain great Holy Father, “guards his heart from passions. Whoever guards his heart from passions: he sees the Lord every hour. Whoever draws the contemplation of his intellect within himself: will contemplate the dawn of the Spirit.” (St. Isaac the Syrian, Discourse 8).

What shall we see, brethren, in our spiritual cell when the divine light illuminates it? We shall see the countless multitude of our sins. That fall of our forefather, of which the Holy Scriptures tell us, we shall see and perceive in ourselves; we shall see and perceive in ourselves the necessity of a Redeemer; having known the Redeemer in our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall confess Him; having known and confessed Him, we shall see Him and worship Him with that worship which is proper and fitting to God, our Creator and Savior.

III. By the prayers of Venerable Onesiphorus of the Caves, to whom it was shown from above how vile the sin of hypocrisy is in the eyes of God, may the Lord preserve us from this sin. Let us strive to ensure that every deed of piety is performed by us not for show, not for human glory, but out of love for God and our neighbor, and if possible in secret, so that only God may see it.

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