Слово на день Святой Троицы. Святого Димитрия, митрополита Ростовского

Let us worship the Father, and His Sons, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity! On the current feast of the Most Holy Consubstantial, Life-Giving and Indivisible Trinity, it is the best time to come and worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. How—how shall we worship? The Holy Scriptures say: Thou shalt not appear before the Lord empty-handed (Deut. 16:16). Let us take out for worship a gift pleasing to the Holy Trinity and place it before the Holy Trinity. The Lord accepted and praised two small mites (Mark 12:42). Therefore, I, unworthy and wretched, decided, with God’s help, as a spiritual person, from the rich spiritual repository to take three mysterious gold coins of the holy faith in the Holy Trinity, searched for in the Holy Scriptures, and put in veneration of the Holy Trinity from the three parts of man - from the soul, from the body, from the spirit: from the soul - to God the Father, from the body - to God the Son, from the spirit - to God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Scripture, which teaches faith, is, as it were, gold itself, which is why the great teachers of the faith were called “gold-mouthed” and “gold-talking.” So, let it be allowed to make goldsmiths from this gold, according to the argument of David, who said: the law of Your mouth is good to me, more than thousands of gold and silver (Ps. 119:72). And first I will go to the treasury of the blessed. Jerome, in the spiritual name of not a wretched and not the last teacher in the Church of Christ, into his treasury - in his book, in which he writes that in ancient times the name of God was held in such reverence among people that it was allowed to write it on nothing other than pure gold, only on a golden plate. So, let this little girl be the first piece of gold for us, on which we will write the name of God and bring it as a gift to the first person of the Holy Trinity. I call the holy faith “zlatnik” or “zlatnik” not from my own intelligence, but from church singing, from the place where (in the hymns preceding the Nativity of Christ) the Church, singing about the three kings who came to Christ with three gifts, compares the holy faith with gold in the following words: “faith is like gold, love is like myrrh, like Lebanon we will bring deeds to the Creator.” Faith, they say, is like gold, faith is gold. Like gold by fire, so the holy faith is purified by troubles and persecutions: like gold in a furnace, tempt them (Wis. 3:6); This gold was cleaned with a stone: with the stone of slaughter; sawn with saws: treading bysha, cut with iron: by killing the sword of the dead; tried in different ways: there was a temptation (Heb. 11:37). Gold can be used to buy expensive things, but what can’t you buy with the gold of faith? If you had as much of that spiritual gold of faith as a grain of mustard, you would buy yourself such strength with which you could move mountains: If you have faith like a grain of mustard, you say to this mountain: move and be cast into the sea: it will happen (Matthew 17:20; 21:21). Our ancestors bought with this gold what they wanted: they wanted to grow in dignity, and, having ascended to the height of virtue, to earn the title of righteous people: by faith they did the truth, they wanted to accept the promise from God: by faith they received the promise; they wanted to pacify the ferocious beasts: with faith they stopped the mouths of the lions; they wanted to drive out the enemies: by faith they were strengthened from weakness, they were strong in battle, they put the foreign regiments to flight; they finally wanted to see the dead rising from their graves; They also received this: they received by faith from the resurrection of their dead. (Heb. 11:33–35). Such expensive things were bought with the gold of faith. And just as holy faith is gold, so God the Trinity, in whom we believe, is gold: through likening to gold we can recognize the power of the Divine. Holy Scripture usually often likens the Creator to created things and ascribes the names of created things to God, calling Him sometimes fire, sometimes sun, sometimes sea, sometimes gold, and so on: not because that is God in reality, but so that a reasonable person, through consideration of created things, as if walking along steps, would come to the knowledge of the Creator Himself and, through the perfection of many created things, would imagine what infinite perfection is. in God the Creator, which is why David says: I have learned in all Your works, in all creation I have learned Your hand (Ps. 142:5). “From Thy creation,” he says, “O God, I have learned to know You as God.” If the sky and the visible sun, moon, and stars in the sky are beautiful, then how beautiful is He who created these beautiful things! If the earth is good, and on it there are mountains, hills, forests, fields, flowers, beautiful people like angels, then how much better is He who created all this with His power and wisdom! Thus, through the likeness of creation, learning to know the Creator, for this we use gold as a likeness. Gold will be born in the deep bowels of the earth: it will not be long before anyone finds it, but to whom has the Divinity of the Holy Trinity been revealed? Who can find Him? Good, says Isaiah: “Truly You are the hidden God, the God of Israel” (Isaiah 45:14). Polished gold shines with a beautiful shine, sometimes as if emitting the rays of the sun, and the Deity of the Holy Trinity: oh, how bright rays of indescribable radiance it is filled with! and a small part of this radiance, revealed on Tabor, could not be seen by the eyes of the saints. Gold enriches people: and the Divinity of the Holy Trinity fills the whole world with the wealth of His gifts, which is why St. Damascus sings in the antiphons “for every creature is rich, let us serve him.” Gold is kind to everyone. Oh, how kind God is to those who rightly think about Him! How good is the God of Israel with a right heart (Ps. 72:1). Different gold coins are made from the same gold: thus the three Persons of the Divine are separated - the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The gold coin is round, and the Divinity has Its own circumference: for in Him, as in a circle, there is no end or beginning - God is beginningless and infinite. Having explained that gold coin with such an interpretation, we place it on Abraham’s table, that is, following the example of faithful Abraham, about whom Scripture speaks: Abraham believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness (Rom. 4:3). Let this bow of ours to God the Father be from our soul - to bow from the soul, with faith to offer our soul to Him, as to the One who gave us the soul with Divine and life-giving inspiration. And the bow of our faith to God the Father will be worthy of acceptance no other way than when, in bowing, we sacrifice our soul, like our dear goldsmith: for our soul is like gold to God, and more precious than gold, if He did not spare His Son: so love, as He gave His only begotten Son to eat (John 3:16). On the soul, as on a gold coin, there is an image of the Divine: for it is known that the soul was created in the image of God, honored by reason and freedom. On this gold coin, in the human soul, is depicted the image of God the Father in memory, God the Son in mind, God the Holy Spirit in will. Let us offer this gold coin, our soul, to God the Father as a bow, believing in Him and loving Him from our soul. For another piece of gold for another Person in the Holy Trinity, I go to the treasury of the beloved of paradise, described in the Song of Songs. Having greatly loved her beloved Heavenly Bridegroom, the Son of God, and desiring to always have Him before her mental eyes, she depicts His person in the secret place of her heart, not with simple paints, but with gold itself, and, having first outlined His head, she says: His head is chosen in gold, having outlined His hands, she says: His hands are sharpened with gold (Song. 5:11,14). Faith in God the Son, or, more correctly, God the Son Himself, which we piously believe, is a certain, albeit immaterial, gold. One of the historical interpreters, reasoning about those words quoted above in the Song of Songs, concludes that the Son of God Himself truly desired to be gold. Seeing that few people love Him, and everyone loves gold, so that someone would give up an eye to gouge out or would give his soul for gold - seeing this, the Son of God thought within Himself: “I will be gold: so people will love Me as gold.” That is why His head is chosen gold and His hands are polished with gold. This gold redeemed us from the eternal death of hell: you were not delivered with corruptible gold, says St. Apostle, - but through the venerable blood of the Lamb Christ is unblemished and most pure (1 Pet. 1:18–19). This gold has prepared for us an eternal feast in heaven: I command you, just as My Father commanded the kingdom to Me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom (Luke 22:29–30). This gold has crowned and will forever crown our heads. Christ is the golden crown; on His head are many crowns. This gold plate depicts the image of God the Father, according to what is written: the radiance of the glory of the Father, and the image of His hypostasis (Heb. 1:3); This is how the Father is depicted in Him, for whoever sees Him sees the Father: He who sees Me sees the Father (John 14:9). On the gold plate of our faith in God the Son, His Divine Person is represented by Isaac, carrying a burden of firewood on his shoulder. Truly, Christ the Son of God gathered our sins together like firewood into one burden (the crime of Adam, like a great and grievous log cut from a forbidden tree - the fratricide of Cain, the curse of Ham, idolatry, infanticide, fornication of the Israelites); all that wood worthy of a burning fire, gathered together, became a heavy burden, so that He was forced to complain: for a heavy burden weighs heavily on Me (Ps. 37:5). And, lifting that burden of human sins onto His shoulders (as Isaac once did - firewood), the Lord carried them with the heavy cross placed on Him to Golgotha, there to be a sacrifice for us: You bore our sins on Your body on the tree, says the Apostle (1 Pet. 2:24). And for this His good deed, His voluntary suffering for us, we should be grateful not only in this life, but also in endless centuries, in blessed eternity. In this life, as a sign of gratitude, we must bow before Him this golden stone of remembrance of His suffering, and of our redemption. May this bow from our body be favorable, worthy of God the Son, if with that, i.e. That is, with grateful remembrance of Christ’s suffering, and our redemption, we will mortify our bodies and, as it were, sacrifice them (like Abraham - Isaac) to God, laying aside the burden of sin with true repentance and the knife of the fear of God, quenching sinful excuses and lusts in ourselves, not sparing ourselves for the sake of God, just as God did not spare His Son for us. In fact, a true worshiper is one who does not regret the gift offered in worship to the master; a true worshiper of God is one who, not with sorrow, but with pleasure, mortifies himself, sacrificing himself to God and giving everything that is his to Him. Abraham and Jephthah sacrificed their children to God: one sacrificed a son, and the other a daughter. When Abraham offered up his son Isaac to sacrifice and stretched out his hand with a knife to slaughter Isaac, the Lord God immediately sent His angel, who restrained Abraham’s hand with the knife, saying: Do not lay your hand on the youth (Gen. 22:12), and did not allow Isaac to be slaughtered. And when Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to the same Lord God, God did not send an angel and did not hold back Jephthah’s hand and did not deliver her from death. Why did that angel deliver the baby Isaac, and not deliver the maiden from the slaughter?.. What was the reason for this? If we don’t figure it out ourselves, then St. will show us the reason. Ambrose: “since,” he says, “both had more than one image of zeal for God, then there was more than one intercession; The merit is not the same, therefore the protection is not the same.” The parent Jephthah was sick at heart and cried for his daughter, but the parent Abraham was not sick and did not cry. This is the clear reason why the angel delivered Isaac and did not protect Jephthah's daughter. Jephthah felt sorry for his daughter (Judges 11:35), was sick and cried. Eagerly Abraham lifted up Isaac, not willingly, but as if under compulsion, Jephea lifted up his daughter: and for this reason, may you, the son of Abraham, live; and you, daughter of Jepheaah, die: since there is not one image of the zeal of both, there is not one defense. A gift pleasing to God is one that is given without sparing; and less pleasing to Him is the gift that someone regrets giving. Likewise, our bow from our body is favorable or unfavorable to God the Son, when, sparing or not sparing ourselves, sparing or not sparing, with sorrow or willingly, we offer ourselves to Him, slaying our body as a sacrifice by mortification and abstinence from sinful inclinations. For the third piece of gold for the third Person of the Holy Trinity, for God the Holy Spirit, I go to the treasures of King David, where among many different precious royal things I see a dove with silver wings, with golden ribs: a krill, a dove plated with silver, and its interspace in the glitter of gold (Ps. 67:14). First of all, I marvel at the divine power of the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit appears in different likenesses of things. Firstly, in the form of a dove, as over the Savior who was baptized in the Jordan; secondly, in the likeness of fire, as He descended in tongues of fire on the apostles; and sometimes in a watery nature, as in the dew that descended on the fleece of Gideon - and in the Gospel the Holy Spirit is called water (John 7:38). But all these are different things from each other, and completely opposite to each other: fire does not unite with water, the dove has no fellowship with fire, why in the Holy Spirit does not one harm the other: water to fire, fire to the dove? – The reason for this is not another, but the fact that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love, the Spirit of peace, love itself, peace itself. And who will love and peace not agree with, reconcile, and even merge into close friendship and love? The proof of this is in the bush of fire on Sinai (Ex. 3:2): The Lord God, desiring to enter into close love and inseparable reconciliation with man, gave a sign that the Divinity, uniting with humanity (like fire with straw and hay in the bush), will not scorch humanity, and humanity will not be scorched by the Divinity. A similar thing happens in the Holy Spirit: since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love and peace, He united things that are contrary to each other, so that water does not extinguish fire, fire does not dry up water and does not scorch a bird’s feather. And from here we learn love and peace for our neighbors: for when we are kind and peaceful, then we will endure all kinds of misfortunes. I also ask: why did the Holy Spirit descend on Christ the Savior in the form of a dove, and on the apostles in the form of fire? And why didn’t he descend on Christ the Savior in fire in the same way as on the apostles? In one irmos of the canon the following words are sung: “receive fire-inspired cleansing dew, O radiant children.” And if the apostles needed cleansing from sins, since they still had sinful thorns, then the Holy Spirit needed to descend on them in fire in order to burn those thorns - not just in fire, but also in dew, as it is sung: “receive the fire-inspired dew”: in fire, so that it would burn up the thorns of sins, and in dew, so that it would wash away those ashes The Son of God who became man did not need either thorn fire or cleansing dew: for in the sinless there was nothing to scorch and cleanse: “for God does not require cleansing.” And therefore the Holy Spirit descended on Him not in fire, but in the likeness of a pure bird - a dove, as a sign of the purity and sinlessness of Christ. Further, the holy apostles, although they had love for God, were still imperfect as people, and therefore it was necessary for the Holy Spirit to descend in fire, so that He would kindle their hearts into the perfect love of God. Christ the Savior did not need such fire: for He was never without love, without the Holy Spirit, Who, being love itself, mediates between the Father and the Son, and binds the Father and the Son with an inseparable union. Thirdly, the apostles needed enlightenment: for they were still, as it were, in darkness, in imperfect knowledge of the Holy Trinity; and enlightenment usually comes from fire. The Holy Spirit descended on them in the fire to enlighten them. But Christ the Savior did not need any enlightenment: for He Himself is Light: no one knows the Father except the Son (Matthew 11:27). And therefore the Holy Spirit did not descend on Him in fire. But, leaving this alone, let’s say that our faith in the Holy Spirit should be like the interstices of doves, in the glitter of gold. Our faith must unite, like two wings, love for God and neighbor. A bird cannot fly with one wing: and faith with one wing of love cannot reach the sky. Both are krill, plated with the silver that the same David acquires, saying: the words of the Lord, the words are pure, the silver is kindled (Ps. 16:7). Divine science, which teaches love of God and love of others, is that pure silver, silver kindled by ardor for God and neighbor. These two wings are covered with silver, i.e. That is, the love of God and the love of neighbor, like a shoulder together, so that one does not exist without the other, is united by the Holy Spirit, being Himself the love of God the Father and God the Son, poured out, like melted silver or gold ore, on the human race, according to what is written: the love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom. 5:5). And those dove ramens connecting two wings, that is, dual love, are gilded, and its inter-frame is in the glitter of gold, which shows that just as gold adorns every thing, so love for God and neighbor is the most perfect, most praised love, as if merging both together. The fire of our love must always burn in the heart, kindling the incessant thought of God of that fire: in my teaching (i.e., in the thought of God) the fire will flare up (Ps. 39:4). Let no worldly and sinful fire be brought into the heart, lest the fire of Gehenna burn it forever. From our spirit we bow to the Holy Spirit: with a burning spirit, working with the Lord, with a right spirit renewed in the womb, with a spirit of tenderness. God is my witness, and Him I serve with my spirit (Rom. 1:9). Amen 136. Works of St. Demetrius of Rostov. Kyiv. Ed. 1895 part 2, pp. 267–289. You might be interested in: