That No Tempting Books or Pictures Should Be Kept in the House

"Throw away, brethren, the rubbish from your houses! To read both holy books and immoral books, to look with reverence at holy icons and also to admire seductive pictures, is the same as to build a house with one hand and destroy it with the other, to build your salvation and destroy it."

In your home sometimes you encounter very unpleasant things. On the walls next to the holy icons you sometimes see pictures of the most seductive kind, and in the case of literate people on the shelves between the holy books there are often songbooks or immoral books. How sinful and soul-damaging this is, you may see from the following narrative.

Presbyter Kyriakis, who served in the Kalamon Lavra near Jordan, says,

I saw in a dream a woman, with a reverent image, dressed in purple, and two men with her. They were all standing near my [monastic] cell. The woman I recognized as the Blessed Virgin Mary, and her companions were John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Rejoicing at this visit, I threw myself at the feet of the Protectress of Peace and asked Her to enter my cell and in it to pray to God for me. But She did not agree. When with tears I did not stop begging Her, She said to me,

"In your cell you keep my enemy; how is it that you want me to enter?"

With these words She withdrew, and the vision ended. When I awoke from sleep, I began to grieve and ponder, who could be the enemy of the Blessed Virgin Mary - in my cell? I did not find myself guilty of anything against Her, and there was no one else.

Having long given myself up to grief, I finally thought to entertain myself by reading the books I had, and at the end of one of them I found the teaching of the heretic Nestorius. He was condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council for not calling the Blessed Virgin the Theotokos, but calling her the Mother of Christ, claiming that from Her was born a mere man, and not God incarnate. Here only I realized who was in my cell — the enemy of the Most Holy Mother of God — and, taking the books, I immediately took them to my brother to whom they belonged, told him my vision, and, filled with zeal, in his presence I cut out and burned the sheets containing the false doctrine of Nestorius, saying: "Let there be no enemy of the Most Holy Mother of God in my cell from now on!"

Throw away, brethren, the rubbish from your houses! To read both holy books and immoral books, to look with reverence at holy icons and also to admire seductive pictures, is the same as to build a house with one hand and destroy it with the other, to build your salvation and destroy it.

And look, how much evil is caused by that! Here you are standing at prayer, and suddenly your eyes fall unintentionally on such a picture. What thoughts may arise in your mind? Will you be able to lift up your mind and heart to heaven, to concentrate in yourself, to go deep within yourself, to detach yourself from all worldly things? Or will your little son or daughter foolishly pray to a morally bad picture instead of an icon: on whom will their sin fall? And what is worst of all, what terrible contagion from these pictures or immoral books can strike their young innocent heart and spoil it forever! Who will be responsible for their temptation? Judge for yourselves. Woe to that man by whom the offense comes! (Matthew 18:7). But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6). Amen.

  • Shqip
  • العربية
  • English
  • Français
  • Deutsch
  • Bahasa Indonesia
  • Italiano
  • Português
  • Русский
  • Español