Luke 21:35

He taught them therefore to take heed unto the things we have just before mentioned, lest they fall into the indolence resulting therefrom. Hence it follows, Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all those things that shall come to pass.

"But take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a snare." You heard the proclamation of the eternal King. You learned the deplorable end of "drunkenness" or "intoxication." Imagine a skilled and wise physician who would say, "Beware, no one should drink too much from this or that herb. If he does, he will suddenly be destroyed." I do not doubt that everyone would keep the prescriptions of the physician's warning concerning his own health. Now the Lord, who is both the physician of souls and bodies, orders them to avoid as a deadly drink the herb "of drunkenness" and the vice "of intoxication" and also the care of worldly matters. I do not know if any one can say that he is not wounded, because these things consume him.Drunkenness is therefore destructive in all things. It is the only thing that weakens the soul together with the body. According to the apostle, it can happen that when the body "is weak," then the spirit is "much stronger," and when "the exterior person is destroyed, the interior person is renewed." In the illness of drunkenness, the body and the soul are destroyed at the same time. The spirit is corrupted equally with the flesh. All the members are weakened: the feet and the hands. The tongue is loosened. Darkness covers the eyes. Forgetfulness covers the mind so that one does not know himself nor does he perceive he is a person. Drunkenness of the body has that shamefulness.

For that day will not come when men are expecting it, but unlooked for and by stealth, taking as a snare those who are unwary. For as a snare shall it come upon all them that sit upon the face of the earth. But this we may diligently keep far from us. For that day will take those that sit on the face of the earth, as the unthinking and slothful. But as many as are prompt and active in the way of good, not sitting and loitering on the ground, but rising from it, saying to themselves, Rise up, begone, for here there is no rest for thee. To such that day is not as a perilous snare, but a day of rejoicing.

And with regard to such people he adds: For as a snare it will come upon all who sit upon the face of the whole earth, that is, upon all who are devoted to earthly things. Whence Jeremiah forty-eight: "Fear and the pit and the …

For as a snare shall it come,.... In which a bird is suddenly taken, and cannot get out again; the Persic version renders it, "as lightning and the splendour of the sun"; which break out at once, and enlighten the whole earth; so the destruction of the Jewish nation should be sudden and unavoidable, and universal; for it should come on all them that dwell upon the face of the whole earth: or land of Judea; and so it was, for not only Jerusalem, but all Judea, and Galilee, suffered in this desolation.