1 Timothy 5:6Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Since many women who have children choose widowhood not to deprive themselves of life's pleasures, but to become more attached to them, to act with greater independence, and to give themselves more to worldly desires, he therefore says: "She who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives."

What are you saying? Should a widow not seek enjoyments? No, he says. Therefore, if she who is weaker by nature and by age not only has no need of pleasure, but even becomes a partaker of death, and of eternal death, what will men say who give themselves to pleasures?

Rightly does he say: "She who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives." But so that you may know this, let us examine carefully what actions belong to the living and what actions belong to the dead, and where we should place her.

The living do what pertains to life, to the future and true life. Hear Christ tell what pertains to the future life, for which we must constantly care: "Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me food. I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink" (Mt 25:34-35).

The living differ from the dead not merely because they look upon the sun and breathe the air. We do not say this. They differ because they perform some good. If they do not do this, they become no better than the dead.

So that you may know this, hear how even one who is dead can live. It is said: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Mt 22:32). But this, you say, is again a riddle. Let us therefore resolve both points.

Anyone, while alive, becomes dead when he spends life in pleasure. Why? Because he lives only for the belly, and not at all for the other senses. For example, he does not see what he ought to see. He does not hear what he ought to hear. He does not say what he ought to say. In general he does not do what the living do.

Like one stretched out on a bed, with eyes closed and eyelids shut, he feels nothing of what is around him. Or rather, he is far worse. The former is equally insensible to good and evil, but the latter feels only one thing: evil. For good he is motionless, like one lying dead.

Thus he becomes dead. No blessings of the future life move him. Drunkenness has shut him into its bosom, as into some dark and gloomy refuge, a cave full of every uncleanness. It constantly makes him move in darkness, like the dead.

Indeed, when he spends all his time either at banquets or in drunkenness, does he not remain in darkness? Is he not dead? Even in the morning, when he seems sober, he is not fully sober. Partly this is because the evening's wine has not yet been exhausted and dispersed in him. Partly it is because a strong desire for future pleasures has seized him.

He always spends morning and midday at feasting, and the whole night, even most of the morning, in deep sleep. Tell me, shall we count such a man among the living?

Who can describe that cruel storm which rises from satiety and rushes equally upon soul and body? Just as a dense cloud does not allow the rays of the sun to shine, so vapors from wine and satiety strike the brain like a rock. They form a thick mist there and do not allow reason any room. They plunge the drunkard into great darkness.

Consider what a storm is raised in the soul of one who experiences this. What confusion! When a flood begins to rise above the thresholds of workshops, we see those living inside thrown into confusion. They use ladles, jars, sponges, and many other devices to draw out the water, lest it destroy the foundations and render all the vessels useless.

So it is in the soul when it is filled with excessive pleasures. Thoughts are thrown into confusion. When they cannot remove what has accumulated, because something new comes in again, a cruel storm arises.

Do not look, I beg you, at the bright and cheerful face. Examine what happens inside the soul, and you will see how much grief fills it. If it were possible to draw the soul outward and look upon it with bodily eyes, then you would see the pleasure-lover's soul abased, grieving, sorrowful, and exhausted.

Indeed, the more the body is fed and grows fat, the more the soul is wasted and becomes weak. The more the first is softened, the more deeply the second is buried in the earth.

When the coverings around the pupil of the eye are thick on the outside, the object to be seen cannot be reflected and cannot be seen. The ray is turned back by the thickness of the covering, and from this darkness often follows. So too, when the body is constantly fed, it is plainly covered with excessive fatness.

You may say that the dead rot, decay, and pour out pus abundantly. But the same may be seen in pleasure-lovers: accumulations of bad humors, phlegm, catarrh, shortness of breath, vomiting, belching. I pass over the rest, of which it is shameful even to speak.

So great is the tyranny of pleasure-loving. It makes us do even things of which we do not dare to speak. Will you still ask how the body spreads out in every direction? Is it not because it eats and drinks?

But this is not yet a sign of human life, since irrational animals also eat and drink. When the soul lies as if dead, what benefit do food and drink bring it? When a body lies dead, colored garments covering it bring it no benefit. So a dead soul receives no benefit at all from being surrounded by a flourishing body.

Indeed, when it constantly speaks of cooks, table-servants, and bakers, and never converses about piety, is it not dead?

Let us see, then, what a human being is. Those outside say that man is a rational, mortal animal, endowed with mind and knowledge. But we shall not borrow the definition from them. From where, then? From divine Scripture.

Where does Scripture give a definition of man? Hear what it says: "This man was blameless, upright, God-fearing, and turned away from evil" (Job 1:1). This is a man. Another says again: "A merciful man is great and precious, but it is hard to find a truthful man" (Prov 20:6).

Those who are not such, even if they are endowed with reason and possess boundless knowledge, Scripture does not call human beings. It calls them dogs, horses, vipers, serpents, foxes, wolves, and everything most contemptible among beasts.

If, therefore, this is what a human being must be, it is clear that the pleasure-lover is not a human being. How can one who cares for none of these things be human? Pleasure-loving and sobriety cannot be joined together. One of these qualities is destroyed by the other.

Those outside say the same: a fat belly does not give birth to a subtle mind. Moreover, Scripture sometimes calls such people soulless: "My Spirit shall not remain forever in men, because they are flesh" (Gen 6:3). Of course they have a soul. But because it is dead in them, they are called flesh.

As we say of the virtuous that they are wholly soul and wholly spirit, though they have a body, so the opposite must be said of the wicked. Therefore Paul also says: "But you do not live according to the flesh" (Rom 8:9), because they did not do the works of the flesh.

Therefore pleasure-lovers have neither soul nor spirit. "She who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives," he says.

Listen, you who spend all your time in feasts and drunkenness, and who despise the poor languishing and dying of hunger while you constantly die from pleasures. You become the cause of two deaths: one that overtakes those wretched people, and another that kills you yourselves. Both are the result of excess.

On the contrary, if you supplied their want from your abundance, you would save two lives. Why do you enlarge your belly by satiety? Why do you exhaust the poor man by want? You fatten one beyond measure and waste the other beyond measure.

Consider what comes forth from foods, what they are changed into, and what they become. But even hearing this, you become indignant. Why, then, do you take care that more of this should accumulate? Excess satiety is nothing other than an increase of dung.

Nature knows the measure. What exceeds it is no longer food, but rather uncleanness and dung. Feed the body. Do not kill it. It is called food for this reason, that we may nourish the body, not destroy it.

I think food undergoes such a transformation so that we may not love satiety. If this did not happen, if it did not lead to something useless and become destructive to the body, we would not cease devouring one another.

If the belly, receiving as much as we wished, digested everything and passed it to the body, then you would see countless wars and quarrels. Even now, when one part of food turns into dung and another into useless and harmful blood and moisture, we give ourselves to pleasure-loving. We often spend our whole substance on the table alone.

What would we not do if pleasure-loving did not lead us to this? The more we give ourselves to pleasure-loving, the more we are filled with stench. The body swells on every side like a wineskin. The belching we experience disturbs the brains of those standing nearby. Foul vapors stream from the body on every side, as from an oven overheated and full of stench within.

If the outer members fall into such disorder, what do you think the brain must suffer within, being constantly darkened by vapors? What is the condition of the streams of boiling blood when their free circulation is obstructed? What do the other inward parts suffer, the liver and spleen? What do the very receptacles of dung experience?

Worst of all, we take care that actual receptacles of dung not become clogged and cast dung upward. We use every possible measure for this. We push with poles and dig with shovels.

Meanwhile, we not only do not cleanse the receptacles of our belly, but even clog and obstruct them. We pay no attention to dung rising upward, to the place where the king himself, that is, the brain, has his dwelling.

We do all this because we regard it not as a venerable king, but as some unclean dog. God placed these members far away so that nothing might suffer harm from them. But we oppose this and corrupt everything by excess.

Who can count the other calamities that come from this? Stop up the drains of the receptacles, and you will see that contagion appears at once. Therefore, if stench encountered from outside produces contagion, will not the stench inside, surrounded on every side by the narrow limits of the body and having no outlet anywhere, cause countless diseases to soul and body?

Most terrible of all, many become indignant with God, saying: What is this? He Himself appointed that we should carry dung within ourselves. Yet they themselves multiply the dung. God arranged it this way to turn us away from pleasure-loving, at least by this means. Through this, at least, He persuades us that we must not cling to worldly goods.

But you, not even looking at this, do not cease giving yourself to pleasure-loving. You keep eating to satiety up to the throat, up to the next meal, and even longer than the pleasure itself lasts. Does pleasure not cease as soon as food passes through the tongue and throat?

The sensation consists in tasting. After this it ceases, and a state of great discomfort begins, because the stomach either does not digest the food received at all, or does so with great difficulty.

Therefore the Apostle rightly said: "She who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives." Indeed, a soul given to pleasure-loving can neither hear nor speak anything. It becomes soft, slack, timid, enslaved, fearful, full of cruelty, ignorance, flattery, rage, and laziness. It is full of all vices and alien to the virtues opposed to them.

Luxury, though in itself it may seem insignificant, becomes for us the cause of great evils. Again, luxury does not appear to be an obvious and open sin, but it produces much evil for us: drunkenness, frenzy, covetousness, and plunder.

A person given to luxury, spending much and carrying out heavy services for the belly, is often forced to steal, seize what belongs to others, grasp more than is needed, and commit violence.

Since many women choose widowhood in order to do what pleases them with greater independence, he says that the pleasure-loving woman (σπαταλωσα), though she appears to live this sensual life, is dead in spirit. But if it is not permitted for a woman to surrender to pleasures, though both nature and age often prove weak, what will pleasure-loving men say?

The pleasure-loving woman, he says, has already died and perished because she spends all her care on herself. See 1 Tim 5:8.

The Apostle condemns this kind of death when he says of the widow that the pleasure-loving woman is dead while she lives. Therefore a soul that was impious but became pious is said to have risen from the dead and, through justification by faith, lives again. But of the body it is said, according to the Apostle in one place of Scripture, not only that it will die because of the coming separation of soul from body. But also that it has already died because of the great weakness of flesh and blood: “The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom 8:10).

It is difficult, indeed wholly impossible, while drowning in enjoyments and pleasures, to think about anything other than what occupies us. Some pretend in vain that they use pleasures while preserving faith, chastity, and purity of soul. It is contrary to nature to enjoy an abundance of pleasures without pleasure. As a warning against this, the Apostle said, “She who is pleasure-loving is dead while she lives.”

The bodily senses are like horses running without reflection, while the soul, like a charioteer, restrains them with bits. As horses without one who governs them plunge into the abyss, so the body, without guidance and governance by the soul, is dragged toward its own destruction.

By excess in food she suppresses the rational power within herself and causes this power to remain motionless in her body, as in some tomb.

The pleasure-loving widow is alive bodily, but dead spiritually, because spiritual activity in her has been completely suppressed and slain by excess in luxury and sensual pleasures. Or otherwise: before natural death she has already died, because her soul and body have lost the capacity to move toward virtue and have become as though insensible.

If a pleasure-loving widow is in such a state of deadness, then certainly a married woman can be in it also, and still more a man. For pleasure-love, in whomever it settles, is death.

There is another death besides visible death, and another life besides visible life. Scripture says that the pleasure-loving woman is dead while she lives.

No one who permits what the Lord abhors, even if he calls himself a Christian or a monk a thousand times a day, remembers God. He does not truly confess himself the servant of Him whose commandments he neglects with senseless obstinacy.

In such death remains the pleasure-loving widow, of whom the blessed Apostle says: the pleasure-loving widow is dead while she lives.

Consequently, there are many who, while living in this body, are dead. Being in Hades, they cannot praise God. Conversely, there are those who, having died in body, bless and praise God in spirit.

In the Apocalypse it is said that the souls of the slain not only praise God, but also intercede.

May God turn away from us the judgment that will be heard over those who merely surrender themselves to pleasures, dress in extremely costly garments for vainglory and worldly greatness, seize others’ property, indulge in many pleasures to satiety, drown themselves in wine, and, while giving scant alms, prepare for themselves little reward in heaven, or none at all. Of such people the Apostle says, “The pleasure-loving soul is dead while it lives.”

A hesychast who is carried away by gluttony, gives himself to excessive sleep and softness, or in general to pleasure and self-love, proves by this that he is dead in soul, though alive in body. Christ, the true Life, dwells only in those who have been crucified.

"The widow who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives." Do not think that these words refer only to widows according to the flesh. They apply far more to me and to you, who have renounced the world for service to Christ.

A monk is the true widow, for whom the world must be dead. O monk, mysterious widow, listen to my poor words.

“She who is truly a widow, and is left alone, trusts in God.” Only she can be called a true widow who has not turned to worldly life, but withdraws from its temptations and pleasures and continues in prayers. But she who seeks only pleasures lives broadly and “is dead while she lives.” That is, all higher aspirations have died in her. The rational power remains in her as in a tomb (Theodoret).

“But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives” (1 Tim 5:6). That is, pleasure-loving widows who ask to be maintained by the Church, yet care only for the comforts of their bodily life in order to avoid the pious labors and struggles of widowhood, must be refused as already dead. For in a living and sensual body they carry a soul deadened by sins (Theodoret; Theophylact).

“These things command them,” the Apostle exhorts, “that they may be blameless” (1 Tim 5:7).

The Apostle speaks about widows in detail, since they and their poor children were then under the special care of all the Churches. Moreover, the more honorable women were, as it were, numbered among the clergy as deaconesses, to help distribute aid and render other Christian services, especially toward women (Acts ch. 6).

Young widows also caused the Church no small concern because of temptations. These could give Jews and pagans occasion to slander the good conduct of all the faithful.

After exhortations of a general character, the Apostle gives Timothy instructions about dealing with the various persons who compose the Church. Touching first on the relations Timothy should have with ordinary believers of different ages and sexes, the Apostle turns his attention to the position of widows.

Only those widows have a right to Church assistance who have no close relatives, children or grandchildren, obliged to care for their support. Moreover, a widow living under the Church's care must conduct herself as befits a woman no longer bound by ties of kinship to the world. She must devote herself to constant prayer, and not live luxuriously at another's expense.

"She who lives in pleasure," απαταλωσα, means one attached and given over to the comforts and pleasures of earthly and worldly life.

"She is dead while she lives." In appearance she is alive, but in the essence of things she is dead. She is dead to that true life which is proper to man according to his purpose.

Man was created in the image of God. He must become like God through detachment from everything sensory. At creation he was endowed with spirit, a power that cannot be satisfied by anything created, but only by the one God.

Whoever detaches himself from everything created and sensory, and seeks the one God, lives the true life. By abiding in communion with Him, he is made alive by Him.