The Hesychast and the Ten Commandments - Sixth Commandment: You shall not be unchaste
As we progress through the commandments, we are dealing with ever more ‘mundane’ matters. This one is about our sexual lives and more generally our contact with the opposite sex. Gregory Palamas gives a few tips on how to follow this commandment, in a sufficiently straightforward for me to post it in full. What is at stake here is a matter of habit changing: training oneself not to succumb to excessive attraction to the opposite sex. Note that there is no mention of the word 'desire', which in our mundane use has 'degraded' its meaning to something akin to lust (for a list of posts developing the notion of true desire, click here). Here, the commandment is addressed to a male audience, but I’m sure you can translate it for better relevance to you.
6. “You shall not be unchaste” (Exod. 20,14) least instead of being united to Christ you become united to a prostitute, severing yourself from the divine body, forfeiting the divine inheritance and throwing yourself into hell. According to the law (c.f. Lev. 21,9), a daughter of a priest caught whoring is to be burnt, for she dishonours her father; how much more, then, does the person who defiles the body of Christ deserve endless chastisement. If you are capable of it, embrace the path of virginity, so that you may become wholly God’s and may cleave to Him with perfect love, all your life devoting yourself undistractedly to the Lord and to what belongs to Him (cf. 1 Cor. 7,32), and in this way anticipating the life to come and living as an angel of God on earth. For the angels are characterised by virginity and if you cleave to virginity you emulate them with your body, in so far as this is possible. Or, rather, prior to them you emulate the Father who in virginity begot the Son before all ages , and also the virginal Son who in the beginning came forth from the virginal Farther by way of generation, and in these latter times was born in the flesh of a virginal Mother; you likewise emulate the Holy Spirit who ineffably proceeds from the Father alone, not by way of generation, but by procession[1]. Hence if you practice true chastity in soul and body you emulate God and are joined to Him in imperishable wedlock, embellishing every sensation, word and thought with virginal beauty.
If, however, you do not choose to live in virginity and have not promised God that you will do this, God’s law allows you to marry one woman and to live with her alone and to hold her in holiness as your own wife (cf. I Thess. 4,4), abstaining entirely from other women. You can totally abstain from them if you shun untimely meetings with them, do not indulge in lewd words and stories and, as far as you can, avoid looking at them with the eyes of both body and soul, training yourself not to gaze overmuch upon the beauty of their faces. For “whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5,28), and in this way he is impure before Christ who sees his heart; and the next step is that he commits shameless acts with his body also. But why do I speak of fornication and adultery and other natural abominations? For by looking overfondly on the beauty of bodies a person is dragged down unrestrainedly into lascivious acts contrary to all nature. Thus, if you cut away from yourself bitter roots, you will not reap the deadly harvest but, on the contrary, you will gather the fruits of chastity and holiness which it confers, and without which “no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12,14).
[1] You may want to
read up on the filioque
here, and on
the various versions of the Nicene creed over
here.
Something worth noting: As Johannes Grohe has pointed
out, a regional council in Persia in 410 introduced
one of the earliest forms of the filioque in the
Creed; the council specified that the Spirit
proceeds from the Father "and from the Son." Coming
from the rich theology of early East Syrian
Christianity, this expression in this context is
authentically Eastern. Therefore, the filioque
cannot be attacked as a solely Western innovation,
nor as something created by the Pope.
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