Homily 4 — Romans 1, verses 26 to 27

“For this reason God gave them up to vile passions: for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature; and in the same way the men too, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another.” [a]

All these passions, then, were vile, but above all the mad lust for males. For the soul suffers more in sins, and is more dishonored, than the body is in diseases.

But see how here too, just as he did when speaking of their beliefs, he takes away their excuse, by saying of the women that “they exchanged the natural use.” No one, he means, can say that they came to this because they were kept from lawful intercourse, or that they were driven into this monstrous insanity because they had no way to satisfy their desire. For exchanging something implies having it. He said the same when he was speaking of their beliefs: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” And with regard to the men, again, he shows the same thing by saying, “leaving the natural use of the woman.” In the same way as the women, he puts the men beyond all means of defending themselves. He charges them not only with having the means of satisfying their desire, and leaving what they had, and going after something else, but with dishonoring what was natural and running after what was contrary to nature. And what is contrary to nature carries with it something harsh and unpleasant, so that they could not fairly plead even pleasure. For real pleasure is the pleasure that is according to nature. But when God has left a person, everything is turned upside down. And so not only were their beliefs satanic; their life too was devilish.

Now when he was speaking of their beliefs, he set before them the world and human understanding. He told them that by the judgment God had given them, they could have been led by the hand, through the things that are seen, to the Creator, and that since they would not be, they were left without excuse. Here, in place of the world, he sets the pleasure that is according to nature. They could have enjoyed it with greater ease and more gladness of heart, and so have stayed far away from shameful deeds. But they would not. That is why they are wholly beyond pardon, and have insulted nature itself. And a still more disgraceful thing than these is that even the women seek after this kind of intercourse, when they ought to have more sense of shame than men.

Here too Paul’s good judgment deserves our admiration: how, faced with two opposite aims, he carries out both with complete precision. He wanted both to speak with decency and to sting the hearer. Now it was not in his power to do both, since each stood in the way of the other. If you speak with decency, you will not be able to press hard on the hearer. But if you mean to cut him to the quick, you are forced to lay the bare facts before him in plain words. Yet his wise and holy soul was able to do both precisely. By naming nature he gave his charge added force, and at the same time used it as a kind of veil, to keep his description decent.

Next, having reproached the women first, he goes on to the men as well, and says, “And in the same way the men too, leaving the natural use of the woman.” This is clear proof of corruption at its very worst: when both sexes have gone astray, and both he who was appointed to be the woman’s teacher and she who was told to become a helper to the man do the deeds of enemies against one another.

And notice how pointedly he chooses his words. He does not say that they fell in love with one another and desired one another, but “they burned in their lust toward one another.” You see that all this desire comes from an excess that cannot bear to stay within its proper limits. For everything that breaks the laws God has set craves monstrous things, and not the usual ones. Just as many people often lose their appetite for food and take to eating earth and small stones, and others, gripped by excessive thirst, often long even for mud, so these men too ran into this boiling over of lawless love.

But if you say: “Where did such intense lust come from?” It came from God’s deserting them. And where did God’s deserting them come from? From the lawlessness of those who left him: “men with men committing what is shameful.” Do not suppose, he means, because you have heard that they burned, that the evil was only in the desire. The greater part of it came from their self-indulgence, which also fanned their lust into flame. That is why he did not say “being swept away” or “being overtaken,” an expression he uses elsewhere. What then? “Committing.” They made the sin their business, and not only a business, but one they pursued with zeal. And he did not call it lust, but “what is shameful,” and rightly so. For they both dishonored nature and trampled on the laws.

And see the great confusion that came about on both sides. Not only was the head turned downward, but the feet were turned upward too. They became enemies to themselves and to one another, bringing in a deadly kind of strife, more lawless than any civil war, full of divisions and of many forms. For they divided it into four new and lawless kinds, since this war was not twofold or threefold, but fourfold. Consider it, then. It was right that the two should be one, I mean the woman and the man. For “the two,” it says, “will be one flesh” (Genesis 2, verse 24).

And it was the desire for intercourse that brought this about, and united the sexes to one another. This desire the devil took away, and by turning its course in another direction he split the sexes apart from one another, and made the one become two parts, against the law of God. For it says, “the two will be one flesh”; but he divided the one flesh into two. Here, then, is one war.

Again, he stirred up these same two parts to war both against themselves and against one another. For women, again, misused women, and not only men did so. And the men stood against one another and against the female sex, as happens in a battle by night. You see a second war and a third, and a fourth and a fifth. And there is yet another: besides those already mentioned, they also acted lawlessly against nature itself. For when the devil saw that it is chiefly this desire that draws the sexes together, he set himself to cut through the tie, so as to destroy the race, not only by their not coming together lawfully, but also by stirring them up to war and to rebellion against one another.

“And receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was fitting.” See how he goes back again to the source of the evil, namely the ungodliness that comes from their beliefs; and this, he says, is the recompense of that lawlessness. Speaking of hell and punishment, it seemed, would for the present not be believed by the ungodly, by those who had deliberately chosen such a life, and would even be scorned. So he shows that the punishment lay in this very pleasure. [e]

But if they do not perceive it, and are still pleased, do not be surprised. Those who are mad and in the grip of frenzy do themselves great harm and make themselves so pitiable that others weep over them, yet they themselves smile and make merry over what has happened. Still, we do not say that they escape punishment because of this. On the contrary, for this very reason they are under a heavier penalty, because they do not know the state they are in. For it is not the deranged but the sound-minded whose vote one has to win.

And yet in old times the thing even seemed to have the standing of a law. A certain lawgiver among them commanded household slaves neither to rub themselves with oil when dry nor to keep boys, giving the free this place of honor, or rather of shame. They, however, did not think the thing shameful, but treated it as a grand privilege, too great for slaves. The Athenian people, the wisest of peoples, and Solon, who is so great among them, allowed it to the free alone. And one can see many other books of the philosophers full of this disease.

But we do not say for that reason that the thing was made lawful. We say that those who accepted this law were pitiable, and deserved many tears. For these men are treated the same way as women who prostitute themselves. Or rather, their state is more miserable. For with the women the intercourse, even if lawless, is still according to nature; but this is contrary both to law and to nature. Even if there were no hell, and no punishment had been threatened, this would be worse than any punishment.

But if you say, “They found pleasure in it,” you are telling me something that adds to the punishment. Suppose I were to see someone running about naked, his whole body smeared with mud, and yet not covering himself but delighting in it. I would not rejoice with him; I would rather mourn that he did not even perceive that he was acting shamefully.

But so that I may show how monstrous this is in a still clearer light, bear with me for one more example. If someone condemned a virgin to live shut up in close dens and to have intercourse with animals without reason, and she then took pleasure in that intercourse, would she not for this very reason be especially deserving of tears, since she could not be freed from this misery because she did not even perceive the misery? Surely that is plain to everyone. But if that was a terrible thing, this is no less so. For to be outraged by one’s own kind is more pitiable than to be outraged by strangers.

These men, I say, are worse even than murderers, since even dying is better than living under such outrage. The murderer separates the soul from the body, but this man ruins the soul together with the body. Name whatever sin you like; you will not name one equal to this lawlessness. And if those who suffer such things perceived them, they would accept ten thousand deaths so as not to suffer this evil. For there is not, there surely is not, a more terrible evil than this outrage. When Paul was speaking about sexual immorality, he said, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body” (First Corinthians 6, verse 18). What, then, shall we say of this madness, which is worse than sexual immorality by more than words can say?

For I would not only say that you have become a woman, but that you have lost your manhood. You have neither changed into that nature nor kept the one you had, but have been a traitor to both of them at once. You deserve to be driven out and stoned by men and women alike, as one who has wronged both sexes. And so that you may learn how serious this really is: if someone came and assured you that he would make you a dog instead of a man, would you not run from him as from a plague? But look! You have not made yourself a dog out of a man, but an animal more disgraceful than that. The dog is useful for service; but the man who has given himself up in this way is useful for nothing. Or again, if someone threatened to make men go into labor and give birth, would we not be filled with indignation? But look! Those who have run into this frenzy have now done something worse to themselves. For it is not the same thing to change into the nature of women as to stay a man and yet to have become a woman; or rather, to be neither the one nor the other.

But if you want to know how great the evil is from other grounds as well, ask why the lawgivers punish those who make men eunuchs. You will see that it is for no other reason at all than that they mutilate nature. And yet the wrong they do is nothing compared with this. For there have been men who were mutilated and were in many cases useful after their mutilation. But there can be nothing more worthless than a man who has prostituted himself. Not only the soul, but also the body of one who has been treated this way is disgraced, and deserves to be driven out everywhere.

How many hells will be enough for such people? But if you scoff when you hear of hell, and do not believe in that fire, remember Sodom. For we have seen, we surely have seen, even in this present life, a likeness of hell. Since many would utterly disbelieve the things to come after the resurrection when they hear now of a fire that is never put out, God brings them to their senses by things present. For such is the burning of Sodom, and that great blaze! Those who have been to the place know it well: they have seen with their own eyes that scourge sent by God, and what the lightning from above did (Jude, verse 7).

Consider how great that sin is, to have forced hell to appear even before its time! Since many scorned his words, God showed them its image by his deeds, in a strange new way. For that rain was unheard of, since the intercourse was contrary to nature; and it flooded the land, since lust had flooded their souls. That is why the rain too was the opposite of ordinary rain. Not only did it fail to stir the womb of the earth to bring forth fruit; it made it useless even for receiving seed. For such too was the men’s intercourse, making a body of that kind more worthless than the very land of Sodom.

And what is more detestable than a man who has prostituted himself, or what more accursed? Oh, what madness! Oh, what derangement! Where did this lust come from, reveling so lewdly and doing to human nature everything that enemies could do, or even worse, by as much as the soul is better than the body? Oh, you who were more senseless than the creatures without reason, and more shameless than dogs! For among them such intercourse never takes place; nature knows her own limits. But you have made our race dishonored even below the things without reason, by such indignities inflicted on one another and by one another. Where, then, were these evils born? From luxury; from not knowing God. For as soon as people cast out the fear of him, everything good goes straight to ruin.

So that this may not happen to us, let us keep the fear of God clearly before our eyes. For nothing, surely nothing, ruins a person so much as slipping from this anchor, just as nothing saves so much as constantly looking to it. If having a human being before our eyes makes us slower to sin, and we often keep from doing wrong out of shame before servants of better character, think what safety we will enjoy by having God before our eyes! The devil will never attack us when we are in that state, since he would be laboring for nothing. But if he sees us wandering about and going around without a bridle, once he has gotten his start from us he will be able to drive us off anywhere he likes afterward. [k]

It happens with thoughtless servants at the market. They leave the necessary errands their masters have entrusted to them, attach themselves at random to whoever they happen to meet, and waste their time there. This is what happens to us too when we depart from the commandments of God. We soon stand about admiring wealth, and physical beauty, and the other things that are none of our business, just as those servants stop to watch the beggars doing conjurers’ tricks, and then, arriving home too late, are severely beaten. And many miss the road set before them by following others who are behaving just as disgracefully.

But let us not do so. We have been sent to carry out many urgent tasks. And if we leave them and stand gaping at these useless things, all our time will be wasted, in vain and to no profit, and we will suffer the extreme of punishment. If you want something to occupy you, you have things you ought to marvel at and gaze at all your days, things that are no matter for laughter but for wonder and endless praise. For the person who admires ridiculous things will often become ridiculous himself, and even worse than the one who raises the laugh. So that you may not fall into this, jump away from it at once.

Why is it, tell me, that you stand gaping and all in a flutter at the sight of wealth? What do you see that is so wonderful, and able to fix your eyes on it? These horses in gold harness, these attendants, some of them barbarians and some eunuchs, the costly clothing, and the soul going utterly soft in all this, and the haughty brow, and the bustle, and the noise? What about these things deserves wonder? How are they better than the beggars who dance and play the pipe in the marketplace? For these men too, gripped by a severe famine of virtue, dance a dance more ridiculous than theirs. They are led and carried around, now to costly tables, now to the lodgings of prostitutes, now to a swarm of flatterers and a host of hangers-on. And if they do wear gold, that is exactly why they are most pitiable: the things that mean nothing to them are what they most eagerly desire.

Do not look at their clothing now, I beg you, but lay open their soul, and consider whether it is not full of countless wounds, dressed in rags, destitute and defenseless. What, then, is the use of this mad love of display? It is much better to be poor and live in virtue than to be a king living in wickedness. For the poor man enjoys within himself all the delights of the soul, and because of his inward riches he does not even feel his outward poverty. But the king, living in luxury among things that do not belong to him at all, is punished in the things that most truly are his own: his soul, his thoughts, and his conscience, which will go away with him to the other world.

Since, then, we know these things, let us lay aside the gilded clothing and take up virtue and the pleasure that comes from it. For so, both here and hereafter, we will come to enjoy great delights, through the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.