This sermon too we have seen attributed to Saint Maximus in the same Casinensian codex XII, page 335; that it is to be entitled concerning the study or the guarding of chastity is plain to everyone who reads it. How great and how necessary a profit, dearest brethren, we can have from the holy Scriptures, the most blessed Paul instructs us, saying: 'All Scripture divinely inspired is useful for teaching, for reproving, for instructing' (2 Tim. 3). What a splendid and how marvelous a maxim the teacher of the Churches promulgated concerning the divine oracles, which direct and form the hearts of mortals unto the fullest perfection of living! The heavenly word is indeed useful for teaching, for reproving, for instructing.
For teaching indeed, when it sets in order by the wholesomeness of holy instruction the perverse manners of the undisciplined. For reproving truly, when by the pure and unmixed truth of its assertions it refutes the errors of heresy from the Church of God. For each of the faithful, by the admonition of the divine law, discerns lest he incur guilt while unknowing and ignorant, and we are terrified by its severity, lest by damnable presumption we should dare to perpetrate what is not lawful. By its intimation likewise, of our good and evil deeds, we perceive God to be the future judge, and we confess Him the avenger. Hence in the holy Scriptures there is both the doctrine of honesty, and the correction of offenses, and the instruction of truth.
For it is opportune that we should speak something to your charity concerning the observance of modesty, concerning the guarding of chastity. For chastity ought to be preached by us before the other virtues, which above all Christ chose by a certain special grace, being silent concerning the Virgin. And therefore the doctrine of the holy Gospel is to be taken up by us, which no one of the faithful is ignorant to be divinely inspired. For there I find it written, there we all read: 'If anyone shall have looked upon a woman to lust after her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart' (Matt. 5).
See, most beloved, how mightily our Lord, the corrector of all baseness, curbs the wantonness of human glances, and with what headlong force He forestalls the incitements of slippery flesh, lest an evil seed be followed by a most wicked fruit! How far He wills lust to be removed from the heart of man, who with such great caution restrains and chastises lascivious looks! 'If anyone,' He says, 'has looked upon a woman to lust after her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.'
And, as I think, the Lord with reason so carefully anticipates the diabolical temptations, so that a religious man, if perchance he has let his eyes wander at the sight of a comely woman, may catch himself sinning before he sins, and may understand that through the ministry of his own eyes he has incurred guilt before he has committed the sin. And these things, dearest ones, are said not that wretched man should incur the sentence of condemnation, but that, driven back by the compunction of a sighing breast, he should not neglect to avoid the fault he foresees. O truly saving physician of human weakness! Who, lest He find in man something to cure only with harm to man, sends the medicine ahead of the wound. And because He wills none of His believers
to burn with the deadly fevers of sins, the remedy of His fatherly love heals before the sickness creeps in, as the blessed prophet David says: 'My God, His mercy shall go before me' (Ps. 58). For the salvation of the human race knows excellently how to cut away the harmful beginnings of a savage conception, He who at the very gate of sinning shuts out the entrance of the deceiving devil about to come in. For one and the same Son of God is the Lord of our nature and the master of chastity. And why do I call Him the master of chastity, when He Himself is uncorrupted purity, He Himself is inviolate chastity? For He in whose mouth no guile was found, whose heart and flesh rejoiced in the living God, could not have even in His eyes any trace of sin.
Therefore, brethren, since manifold sins corrupt our frailty, and that dread judgment is being prepared for our life, let us look more cautiously, let us think more holily, lest an undisciplined glance of the eyes that surround us steal upon our idle heart. For we have received eyes that they may afford light to the body, not that they may bring blindness to the soul. And in all things the ministers of light ought not to be more frivolous than those of darkness; for the Lord says to each one of us: 'If the light that is in you is darkness, how great shall that darkness be!' (Matt. 6).
And therefore, dearest ones, the holy Scripture must more often be reviewed by us, through which we can be taught in honesty, be restrained from covetousness, and be trained by the salutary rules of true faith, even as the Apostle says: 'Be you also enlarged, and bear not the yoke together with unbelievers' (1 Cor. 6).