The house of mourning is better than the house of mirth

CHRIST THE HEALER

    The message of Christ can be understood from  the perspective of different icons. It is entrance into God’s kingdom, both  now (Mt.4:17;Jn.3:5) and in the resurrection (Mt.25:31-46). Another icon is Christ as the Victor triumphant  over the powers of this world (Col.2:15), the strong man armed, who  came to set the captives free and leads captivity captive (Eph.4:7-16).  Another icon is a message of healing. He is the Sun of righteousness with healing in His wings (Mal.4:2) Christ came to call the sinners to repentance,”for they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” (Mt.9:13)  It is in the light of this last icon  I want to study  these sayings.  Christ is the physician  of our souls and bodies.  The sickness is that man  is no longer in communion  with  God.  We are separated from the energy, the grace, the life giving energy of Christ, that  is in our heart. Isaiah vividly described this sickness in this way:

 5Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint
6From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. (Is.1:5-6)
 How is this sickness healed?  How does the Physician  advise us?  This is the call of the beatitudes. They summarize the attitudes we should seek by God’s grace,  so that we may be healed.

The first  saying of Christ is a call to  recognize that God is the Source of all,  the Father of all.  As  such  we must humbly seek all from Him.  We are poor and needy of His grace.”Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”  Until we truly know  our dependency on  God, and our guilt, there can be no spiritual life. We need to be acutely aware of our sin, of our sickness.  This attitude makes us  capable of receiving  God’s salvific  medicine.

The second  beatitude of Christ presents the first dose then of medicine for us.  Since  we are poor, we ought to cry out for mercy and God’s presence.”Blessed are they that mourn for they  shall be comforted”

It is the promise of the good news that God grants comfort to those who mourn. 


This promise was uttered through the Prophet  Isaiah,

1The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
 2To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
 3To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.  (Is.61:1-3)
    Reliance on God’s mercy is not presumption, but prescribed by the Lord.  Even  when we have deliberately sinned against God,  we should resort to His mercy and not despair.  David relied on God’s mercy,  even  after his sin  with Bathsheba when fathered  an illegitimate child and sought God to have mercy and not take the life of the child out of judgment.  His attitude was
22 While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live? (2Sam.12:22)

Mourning is the first spiritual prescription to  see the heart healed.  Indeed, Solomon,  the wisest man  to live,  next to Christ,  said:

2It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.
 3Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.
 4The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
 5It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. (Ecc.7:3-5)
    The wise man hears the rebuke.  As David, who repented when the prophet Nathan came to him and said, “thou art the man,”  so we should say  when we hear of our sin, “ I have sinned against the LORD.”  And as David’s sin  was forgiven, so we will hear, “The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”
    This attitude of mourning  is what the Fathers of the Church call joyful  sorrow, harmolupe.  The idea  comes from  St. Paul who said the apostles were,
“as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”
We are sorrowful over our sins- that we have pained others and insulted God, yet rejoicing in hope.
    But the question arises,”why does sorrow bring healing?” Because tears are like a spiritual eraser. Sin   has  been  engraven  upon  our hearts. The prophet Jeremiah  described the effect of sin  like this  when  he rebuked  Israel:
“The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven  upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars” (Jer.17:1)
Even  though  our  sin has  left a terrible  defacing on  our heart, tears of repentance can  wash away the sin  that defaces the tablets of our heart.
The prophet Isaiah (1:16)  exhorts Israel  to repentance saying:
“Wash you  make you clean,  put away the evil of your doing from before mine eyes.” Or again, the prophet Jeremiah:
“O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved.  How long shall vain thoughts lodge in thee?” (4:14)
This is the first pill.   Before I continue with the next beatitude, I want explain the methodology of Christ. The next step in healing is the implantation of a virtue instead of vice. He heals the evil  tendencies of the heart by  encouraging us to the virtue that is opposite of the vice  we commit.  This is the teaching of the fathers as well.  Extremes are overcome by the opposites. So  if someone commits the sin  of greed, how are they healed of it?  By almsgiving.  The practice of an opposite virtue  overcomes a vice.  We see this in the Lord’s  dinner  experience with the Pharisees.
 38And when the Pharisee saw it, he (Simon) marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner.
 39And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.
 40Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?
 41But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.”
Notice,  they were full of ravening and wickedness.  Ravening, or literally they  snatched things.  The same word is used for the Lord snatching His people at the Second Coming to be with Him. And the same word is used to describe false prophets who are ravening wolves.
How does the Lord say they cleanse the cup of that filth of greed?  GIVE! Give alms and behold all things are clean unto you. 
Another example of a healing exercise is for gluttons.  This is easily understood by those who practice the Orthodox practice of fasting.  Fasting  breaks the bonds of wickedness-  the excess desire in our hearts, overcoming the gluttony.