Слово на Рождество Христово. Блаженного Августина, епископа Иппонийского

Listen, sons of light, sons of the Kingdom of God, beloved brethren, listen with all readiness, rejoice in the righteous in the Lord, praise is due to the upright (Psalm 33:1). Heed what you have learned; renew in your memory what you heard; love what you have believed; praise that you have loved. Since we annually celebrate this day, you now expect a word befitting this day. Christ, the God-man, was born. God is from the Father, man is from the Mother: from the Father eternal, from the Mother virgin; from a Father without a Mother, from a Mother without a Father; from the Father without any time, from the Mother without seed conception; from the Father - as the beginning and source of life, from the Mother - as destruction and trampling on death; from the Father he created times and arranged the days themselves, from the Mother he sanctified the day. And in fact, He sent the Forerunner John, who was to be born at a time when the days began to decrease; and He himself deigned to be born when the days began to increase; This, as it were, prefigured what the same John said about Him: It is fitting for Him to grow, but for me to grow small (John 3:30). For human life must in itself become impoverished and dry up, but in Christ it must prosper and be replenished, so that those who live do not live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again (2 Cor. 5:15), and each of us will say with the Apostle: I live not for this, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20). It is fitting for him to grow, but for me to grow small. All His Angels praise Him worthily, for whom He is eternal food, reviving them with incorruptible meat: for He is the Word of God, Whose life they live, Whose life they live for eternity and will never cease to live, Whose goodness they live and always enjoy bliss. They duly praise Him, God among God, and glorify God in the highest; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture (Psalm 94:7); We, weak and feeble, but reconciled by the good pleasure of God, will sing the song of peace. For today’s solemn song is a heavenly praise sung to the Savior who was born to us: glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men (Luke 2:14), - for the first time sung by the Angels themselves. So, they praise Him in the manner appropriate to them: let us also praise Him with the deepest humility, according to the goodness given to us. They are His ministering powers (Heb. 1:14; Psalm 102:21); and we are the workmanship of His hands and the people of His pasture (Psalm 18:2; 94:7). He filled their table in heaven, deigned to come down to us on earth, and the inconceivable One shut Himself up in our manger. He is the fulfillment of their table because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word; and the fulfillment of our manger because the Word became flesh and dwelt in us (John 1:1, 14), for so that man could eat the bread of Angels, for this purpose the Creator of Angels became man. They praise Him with their very life, but we with faith; they are full of bliss, and we are full of hope; they are achieving a goal, and we are only striving; They are like those who have already entered the kingdom of glory and are triumphant, and we are like those who are pushing at the door of it and are still militant. And which of the people will know all the treasures of wisdom and understanding hidden in Christ (Col. 2:3) and contained in the poverty of His flesh? - For the sake of our poverty, He is rich, so that through His poverty we may become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). For when He deigned to partake of flesh and blood that was subject to death, and to taste death for all, that by His death He might abolish the very power of death (Heb. 2:9, 14); then He revealed Himself in poverty; but He promised not only to return what was lost, but to grant unspeakable blessings in the coming century (1 Cor. 2:9; 2 Cor. 12:2–4). Since the great abundance of His goodness, He hid those who fear Him, but He made them trust in Him (Psalm 30:20)! In part we mean... until that which is perfect comes (1 Cor. 13:9, 10). And in order to make these benefits available to us and ourselves capable of perceiving them, He, being equal to the Father in the image of God, takes on the form of a slave in our likeness and transforms us into the likeness of God, and thus the Only Begotten Son of God, having become the Son of Man, creates the sons of men as sons of God and from slaves free, that is, capable and accessible to contemplating the image of God. For we are children of God, and yet we shall not appear; but we know that when He appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). These are the treasures of wisdom and understanding in Christ, the hidden and ineffable blessings of the Divine, which will completely satisfy us! This is the great abundance of the Lord’s goodness, which will completely satisfy us! So, show us the Father, O Lord, and it is sufficient for us (John 14:8), as one of Your Apostles once said to You, or, as the Psalmist said earlier: I will be satisfied, never having been revealed to Your glory (Psalm 16:15). But He and the Father are one (John 10:30), and whoever sees Him sees the Father, for He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him (John 14:9–11); Consequently, the Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory (Psalm 23:10), and the One who saves us will make His face shine on His servants, and we will be saved (Psalm 30:17; 79:4). Here lies the fullness of our bliss. Let our heart say to Him: I will seek the Lord, I will seek Your face, O Lord, I will seek Your face. Do not turn Your face away from Me (Psalm 27:8, 9). And He Himself will answer us: if you have My commandments and keep them, you will love Me: and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father: I will love him, and I will appear to him Myself; and if anyone loves Me, he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him (John 14:21, 23). Of course, those to whom He spoke these things saw Him with their own eyes, and heard His voice with their own ears, and judged Him as a man, in a human way; but He promised to reveal Himself with such blessings as the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and the heart of man has not sighed, even as comfort to those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9), that is, which we cannot comprehend in this life. So, until this comes true, until He reveals what must completely satisfy us, while we are sleepy from the bread of animals, so that the imams will never get thirsty, and let us drink from living water, so that the imams will never get thirsty (Jn. 4:10, 14; 6:35, 51), we, while we hunger and thirst for eternal truth, burning with an inexplicable desire to enjoy the endless contemplation of the beauty of the image of God, will glorify with deepest humility His birthday, at least in the form of a servant, accessible to us. We cannot yet comprehend His pre-eternal birth from the Father; Thus let us honor with dignity the even temporary birth of Him from the Virgin. The meaning of the words is not yet so clear to us: His name abides before the sun (Psalm 71:17); Thus we know that His dwelling is set in the sun (Ps. 18:5). It is still difficult for us to imagine how the Only Begotten Son abides in His Father; So let us at least imagine the Bridegroom coming from His palace (Ps. 18:6). We are not yet able to sit at the table of our Heavenly Father; So let us lean in and fall down to the earthly manger of our Lord Jesus Christ, accessible to us. Amen 60. In the order of words bliss. Augustine's real word is 194th. See “Sunday Reading” XV (1851–52), pp. 363–366; IX (1845–46), pp. 314–316. You might be interested in: