THE HYPOCRITE

(Taken from BEHOLD THE MAN)

by

 Archimandrite Chrystophoros Kalybas

          The hypocrite is that simple-minded cunning type [of person] who pretends to cover his, according to the rule, pitiful dispositions with gestures, contortions, movements, words and actions.                                                                 

The hypocrite always and surely has targeted his victim. The deeper motives are low, cheap, earthy. His aim is perfect[ly formed] or complete[d] in his ruined soul, but for his victim or victims it is [still unclear], dark. His victim can be an individual or individuals, a man or woman, religious or a-religious. For the hypocrite it makes no difference what state, condition, gender, attribute, religion, morality, or social strata. The dominating element in the miserable soul of the hypocrite is the aim, which includes some reward, bodily or spiritual. Hypocrisy is the means by which the selfish or pleasure-loving aim is achieved. The hypocrite is egocentric, an individualist, severely the type that gathers unto himself others belongings, deeply envious and jealous. 

As a personality he isn’t worth it.

                                 

He possesses the secret of a “clever woman”, one can say, flexibility and adapts with amazing ease to every unpleasant manifestation in his circle, and he succeeds amidst imperfect people to justify his existence as he is, his movements as they are done, his works the meaning of which he does not believe in. Thus his psychical synthesis or composition of soul is not externalized. This, though it is an admixture of selfishness, envy and every dark urge, appears with an external cloak of deception. Though he is impudent, he wears the garment of guilessness. Though he lies, he uses manners of truth. Though he is most selfish, he shows concern for common matters. Though he is undevout, he appears as being concerned over altars and homes. Most formal in the traditions is he who cheapens every idea of historic value, and most historical is the sacrilegious one for the historical name he bears. From the simple merchant to the greatest diplomat, and from the most unhewn villager to the wisest of scientists, the hypocrite is discerned as a type that divides his personality not psychologically but socially. Internally he the same singular and undivided: deeply sick and ethically corrupted. This is said, because he doesn’t feel ashamed of himself in changing himself into an actor of religious, moral or social life with the further aim, through deception, of gathering the fruits of sin or the glory withering as the grass of the field and which is able to change into a wind of destruction and heavy obscurity.                                                                    The hypocrite is undoubtedly an unethical character. Jesus, from his part, castigated no one so much, as this one. Robbers, deniers of the faith, whores, tax-collectors and the whole slew of sinners found their justification before forgiving Jesus after repenting, but the hypocrite, which the Pharisaical mafia embodied, never. Those terrifying “woes”, which ploughed and will plough through the centuries the consciences of every form and every type of hypocrites, will prove how difficult it is for these subjects to repent and to enter the clean spiritual sphere of Christ, subjects which with all their freedom, without irascibility, far from being forced, formed their life to counterfeit, with their frequent immoral asceticism, their character and to cheapen the image of God, only and only so that they may exploit the psychological phenomenon of trust and the common human sickness which is called physical weakness. In the dewy grass, the poisonous snake. In the fattest bouquet of flowers, the knife. In the Sacred Temple, satan. Under the robe, the atheist; behold the hypocrite, who gets all shaken up when the sign of the cross was not done when the church bell rang, while he himself bears the seal of blasphemy and the denial of every moral principle. He exploits religion, virtue, fatherland, family relations, friendship, and he is most known as “Tartoufos” of Molliere.                                  

The hypocrite was always a danger for every social class, inexcusably             for every honorable man. The sentiments, which he raises up, are sentiments of sacred indignation. And that, to be sure, the hypocrite can not hold up for long his role for geniuses and moral people, this doesn’t mean that his psychical synthesis, or composition of soul, changes. That, at least, is proved by the psychological analysis of those gospel passages, which refer to the stripes of the hypocrites: that is taught to us by experience. The hypocrite, as a fearful “kapilos” trader, is subject to social excommunication. But how beneficial wouldn’t it be, and indeed increasingly, if from the young age people would learn to follow the path of the morally “clear sky”, the straightforward and bright confession of his imperfections, the manner of effectively putting to use his spiritual capitals.                                            

Of course, if hypocrisy, as a living lie, was absent, trust, as a beautiful and heavenly principle, would become the most powerful moral and social bond.