On Harmony of Thunder Orthodox podcast: In St. Basil's eighth sermon from the Hexaemeron, he compares different kinds of people to different kinds of fish. This is one way that we can use our meditation on the creation of living things as a way to deepen our spiritual lives. So, be more like and eel and less like a squid and listen to this week's Harmony of Thunder in order to hear about St. Basil's marvelous insights into the world of the animals that live in the sea.
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Harmony of Thunder, program thirteen, St Basil the Great Hexaemeron, Homily 7
Hi, welcome to Harmony of Thunder, where we explore and enjoy the rich tradition of Orthodox preaching. I’m your host, Fr. David Smith. Each week, Harmony of Thunder chooses a sermon from scripture or from the works of a saint and we spend our time together looking at the style, the illustrations, and the spiritual message of the preacher.
Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of Your Most Pure Mother and of all the saints, bless your Holy Orthodox Church with great preachers and people who want to hear them. Amen.
St. Basil was amazed by the large variety of things that live in the water. And he was even more amazed by the fact that God simply said, “Let the waters bring forth moving creatures after their kind” and an unimaginably wide variety of creatures came into being. Now that I think about it, I agree with him. I mean, when God created the sun, He created one thing, one thing that has a fairly simple nature and purpose. I can even try to imagine what it was like to create all the, say, mammals that live in a square mile around my house. There aren't that many: deer, rabbits, squirrels, woodchucks, and once I saw a bear. And of course there's my dogs and cat. But imagine a square mile of the ocean. Huge creatures, tiny creatures, creatures hard on the outside and others that have no bones at all. Fast and slow, bright and dull, teeth and no teeth, good to eat and good for, well, fertilizer.
As St Basil addresses God's creation of water creatures, he uses a great preaching technique. Rather than having a particular message on a single topic that he tries to convey, St. Basil surveys the variety of fishes and compares each of them to particular kinds of human beings – as a way of illustrating how we can, again as in the earlier sermons, learn about spiritual things by looking closely at the creation of the earth by God.
He points out how often the smaller fish are food for the bigger fish, which in turn are food for the fish that are bigger still. “What difference,” the preacher asks, “is there between the last fish and the man who, impelled by devouring greed, swallows the weak in the folds of his insatiable avarice? Yon fellow possessed the goods of the poor; you caught him and made him a part of your abundance. You have shown yourself more unjust than the unjust, and more miserly than the miser. Look to it lest you end like the fish, by hook, by weel, or by net. Surely we too, when we have done the deeds of the wicked, shall not escape punishment at the last.” How true. This is the difference between ourselves and the animals, that we can feel some aversion towards hurting those who are weaker than us.
Dogs do this among themselves: I've seen and perhaps you have too a dog fight that ends when one of the dogs rolls over on his back in surrender, and the other dog, victory being certain, then abandons the fight. But my dog also chases squirrels - and once he caught one. He had no compunction at all about killing the squirrel, even though we feed him all he needs and wants. He brought the body to me on the porch as a kind of trophy. We will be judged by God, as St. Basil says, based on how we help, and do not harm, the poor and needy among us.
The preacher then turns to the squid, the kind that lay on rocks and look exactly like the rocks so they can grab unsuspecting fish as they swim by. I wonder how St. Basil knew about these things? I'm not sure how much I would know about nature if it wasn't for the Nature channel. he says there are people who act just like this : Such are men who court ruling powers, bending themselves to all circumstances and not remining for a moment in the same purpose; who praise self-restraint in the company for the self-restrained, and license in that the licentious, accommodation their feelings to the leaseure of each. It is difficult,” St. Basil says, “to escape them and to put ourselves on guard against their mischief; because it is behind the mask of friendship that they hide their clever wickedness.” He urges us to, “flee then fickleness and pliability; seek truth, sincerity, simplicity.” In another way of saying it, dear listener, St. Basil the Great is urging us to avoid become squid.
In fact, when we observe the habits of sea creature, we note that they are lead by instinct, they are lead by the will of God for them. St. Basil says it best : “I myself have seen these marvels, and I have admired the wisdom of God in all things. if being deprived of reason are capable of thinking and of providing for their own preservation; if a fish knows what it ought to seek and what to shun, what shall we say, who are honored with reason, instructed by law, encouraged by the promises, made wise by the Spirit, and are nevertheless less reasonable about our own affairs than the fish?”
I don't know about you, dear listener, but this stabs me right through the heart. I can't tell you how many times I've know exactly what God wanted me to do in a particular situation, and I've not done it. When God tells a fish to migrate to a certain place, the fish do it. When he tells me to go someplace good or avoid someplace bad, I close my ears and do the opposite. I have a lot to be sorry for if I'm sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that a fish would fare better in the final judgment than I would. And yes, no need to write and correct me, I know that fish will not be judged in the final judgment. Well, we should be happy about that, because they'd make you and I look bad.
St. Basil also has a few words about human married life in this sermon, difficult words, I'd have to say. He compares marriage to the mating of a viper and a lamprey eel. He teaches us that a viper can call the eel from the depths of the ocean, and the eel will come, and gladly mate with the viper. I looked this up on the internet, having never seen anything like it on the Nature Channel, and there it was. A work called the Aberdeen Bestiary, from the thirteen century, speaks at length about the comparison between married life and the union of vipers and eels. And what lesson does St. Basil draw from his comparison of this odd union? Since the viper, which is the man, is naturally the cruelest of the animals, and the eel apparently knows it, so the woman who marries a man must fully expect that the ... well, how can I say it? ... relationship will not be a happy one. And yet, he says, remain married because those who are married have become one by nature.
Indeed. When I talk to young people as their preparing for marriage, I tell them that the road is not going to be easy. God did not give us marriage so that we would be happy, but that we would replenish the earth with new humans. When you suffer in your marriage, brothers and sisters, you do best by giving your suffering to God. It's not easy. I'm not sure I would have used the illustration of a viper mating with an eel as a way of conveying this truth, but St. Basil who we also call the Great did, and so I bow to his wisdom and authority.
Next week he'll speak again briefly about fish before moving onto the flying creatures. he uses basically the same sermonic structure, but he'll throw us some curve balls, as I think you can agree he did in this one. I hope you'll join me.
Oh Lord God, Creator of Heaven and earth the sea and all it contains, help us to hear and heed the words of the great preachers of Orthodoxy, that we may glorify you with our faith and lives, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
This was really extremely interesting, and I too marvel that St. Basil would have known about these things. Most everything that I don't learn from the Nature Channel, I learn from internet searches. The comparisons were exceptional. Thank you.
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... written by Nina,
August 29, 2009
What is the beautiful singing at the begin and end of the sermon? What is the choir? Could you say please if it possible to find in internet the whole singing or something like it?
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On Harmony of Thunder Orthodox podcast: In St. Basil's eighth sermon from the Hexaemeron, he compares different kinds of people to different kinds of fish. This is one way that we can use our meditation on the creation of living things as a way to deepen our spiritual lives. So, be more like and eel and less like a squid and listen to this week's Harmony of Thunder in order to hear about St. Basil's marvelous insights into the world of the animals that live in the sea. 
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