7. Правило веры: познание ея, восприятие ея сердцем и введение в жизнь

Yesterday we were presented with an example of love in St. John the Evangelist; now the rule of faith is indicated in St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. And let us learn the Orthodox faith in honor of this glorious Saint. The rule of faith is composed of the following three: from knowing the content of faith, from perceiving this content with the heart, and from putting one’s life into the order indicated by faith. – These are both sides and, at the same time, degrees of faith, and its characteristic features, the presence of which testifies to the presence of faith, just as the absence indicates a retreat. I will show you that there is faith in all these degrees. And therefore, after this instruction, you will then judge for yourself, “if you are in the faith,” as the holy Apostle Paul advises. The first degree of faith, or the beginning of it, is knowledge of the content of the holy faith. If we look at all of Divine revelation from its beginning to the end, then in our minds we will imagine the entire economy of our salvation, or all of God’s wondrous care for us, with which He was pleased to save us who were perishing. And if anyone wanted to present it in brief terms, then he should, in the words of St. Tikhon (Part 8, p. 218), confess the following: 1) Our God is the Creator and Provider, worshiped in three persons, having created heaven and earth and all their adornment, and then created man, Adam, and his helper, Eve, from whom the entire human race later descended. 2) Our Most Good God created our ancestors not like other creatures, but through some wondrous and humane advice. Creating other creatures, God said: “Let there be.” When starting to create man, He holds the advice: “Let us create man in Our image and likeness.” He exalted man so highly above other creatures that he not only created him according to His special advice, but also honored God in His image. 3) God placed our primordial ancestors in a wonderful place - in the paradise of sweets, and gave them the commandment: “not to eat of the tree, meaning good and evil, under pain of death.” 4) Our ancestors did not keep this commandment of God, and they ate from the commanded tree, listening to the evil advice of the serpent and Satan, who was jealous of their bliss. Having not listened to God, their Creator, and having listened to their enemy and God, they sinned gravely before God, for which they lost the mercy of God and the grace with which God honored them in creation, they lost the image of God, and from the saints and righteous they became unclean, nasty, sinful, they fell under the righteous wrath of God and all the troubles, temporary and eternal. 5) We, their sons, became infected with the sinful plague of our ancestors, and together with them we are subject to temporary and eternal disaster. We all had to die not only temporarily, but also eternally with them, to drink the bitter cup of God’s wrath and eternal torment in hell, and to be in power and reproach with the devil, whose evil advice we listened to. 6) But God, out of His great mercy and incomprehensible goodness, did not create food for us because of our iniquities, nor did He reward us with food for our sin. – He also promised our ancestors to send deliverance and salvation to them and the whole world in the words spoken to the serpent: “He will erase your head.” 7) This paternal goodwill towards the human race and such a merciful promise was repeated and revealed by God to the Holy One many times. He revealed it to the Patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others - to the Prophets, and commanded them to proclaim and preach the Savior coming into the world, as it is written about in the books of the Old Testament. 8) When the time approached at which God determined for the Savior to come into the world, the Only Begotten Son of God came down from heaven, was incarnated by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became human. Appearing on earth, He lived with man, revealed the will of God, interpreted and fulfilled it - showed wondrous signs and wonders, healed every disease, cast out demons, raised the dead. The lost sheep heard the voice of the Good Shepherd and came to know Him. And the Pharisees, scribes and elders of the people, consumed by envy and malice, through the betrayal of Judas, seized Him, slandered Him before Pilate and, after many terrible tortures and insults, brought Him to crucifixion and death on the cross. The Son of God, who died for our salvation and was buried, rose from the dead on the third day, showing that He is the conqueror of death, hell and the devil - all our enemies. The Risen Lord appeared to many believers and especially the Apostles for forty days, revealing what was needed for the establishment of His kingdom on earth - the Holy Church. On the 40th day, He ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God and the Father, receiving all power in heaven and on earth, as the Redeemer of the human race. From heaven He sent down, as He promised, the Holy Spirit on His holy disciples and Apostles, by whose power those who were enlightened and strengthened by the Holy Spirit were sent down. The apostles preached everywhere the Son of God, who came into the world in the flesh, planted faith in Him in human hearts, and collected one holy church from all languages. The Church, to which was entrusted the holy truths and powers of grace, protecting it with the laws of St. sacraments, sacred rites and every church rite. After the Apostles, their successors were the saints of Christ, shepherds and teachers, who with the same teachings and words shepherd the Church of Christ, instruct, strengthen and send with the help of God into the heavenly fence, and themselves, having preserved the faith and passed away, resettled there: which is to happen until the end of the century. For the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, built on the rock of faith. When the end of the world comes, then there will be the second coming of Christ, in which, after the resurrection of everyone, He will call everyone to judgment and reward everyone according to their deeds: He will infuse the faithful who remained in faith to the end into the kingdom of heaven for eternal bliss, and will condemn the unfaithful and those who did not keep the faith to eternal punishment. “This is how the Son of God’s concern for us will end!” “Then a blessed eternity in heaven and a miserable eternity in hell will begin: some will reign and have fun endlessly, while others will suffer and suffer endlessly. This is the whole structure of our salvation! This is the complete picture of God’s saving view of us. This has been preached from the beginning of the world until the coming of Christ, from the coming of Christ it has been preached to us and will be preached from us until the end of the world. All the Divine Scriptures proclaim about this, and all the scriptures of the Fathers teach, and all great men have been enlightened by this. And every mind that thirsts for truth finds complete satisfaction in no other way than by accepting all this teaching. This confession puts every object in its place, and presents everything in such harmony that nothing, even a small one, can be canceled without upsetting everything. Just as in the visible world the sky is above us, the earth is below us, in the sky the sun, moon and stars are all in their order, and on earth everything around us is in its order: so the whole picture of God’s view of us constitutes our mental atmosphere, in which everything has its place and everything has its relationship. This is the first thing every believer should know and contain with his mind. Faith comes from hearing; the hearing is announced by the broadcast teaching, which lays the foundation for belief. Otherwise, what is there to believe in if they do not know this teaching. But suppose that someone knows and contains all this: does this mean that he already has real faith? No, that doesn't mean it. This is knowledge of faith, but not yet faith. Faith begins from the moment when its content begins to enter the heart and produce a corresponding feeling there. Faith is the perception of saving truths by the heart. And just as these truths have a certain content, it is accompanied in the heart by the discovery of certain feelings. The confession of faith says that we, the fallen, must perish and are saved only by faith in the Lord the Savior. Let this teaching be accepted by the heart; then what will the person experience? He will humble himself as someone who has not kept his rank, who has offended God and damaged His image in himself with all kinds of evil. - Hearing further that his sins attract the wrath of God, he will fear for himself and his fate, as if he were a ready victim of righteous punishment. - Hearing the proclaimed deliverance in the Lord, he will be drawn to Him, and with all the strength of his hope he will desire to assimilate for himself the salvation He provides. Thus, the one who has accepted the content of faith with his heart will be in the state of a thirsty, seeking, striving for the Lord. “A beginner (St. Tikhon. 4.8, p. 15) can not indecently believe in becoming like a weak person who, seeing his incurable illness, desires and is looking for a skilled doctor, or a captive who is looking for a deliverer, or someone running away from fear and looking for a safe place and protection.” Now everyone turn to yourself and believe - with the knowledge of faith, have you gone through this anxious state of fear for yourself, searching and aspirations for deliverance? But even if such a state exists, this is not all that the rule of faith requires. It is necessary by deed to enter into the order of life indicated by faith, namely: faith says: you are bad, repent - and you must repent; faith says: stop sinning, and you must stop; says: surrender yourself to the Lord, - and you must surrender; says: accept the grace of Christ in the sacraments, and you must accept it; says: fight the passions, - and you must fight: and in general, whatever faith indicates, you must immediately introduce your life into everything. The fruit and testimony of this will be the actual sensation and test of the saving actions of the St. our faith. - Such a one will feel that although he is a sinner, he will not perish; for he will be saved by the Lord, in whom he has believed and whose saving dispensation he has accepted with his heart and is undergoing in deed; that although he is weak, he does not succumb to sin by the power of grace received in the sacraments; - that although he is weaker than his enemies, he will not be overcome by them, being under the protection of the Lord, who accepted him under His roof; - that even though he still lives here and is in poverty on earth, he considers the kingdom of heaven his own, for the sake of communion with the Lord, who already reigns in heaven. - It’s the same in everything. – A characteristic feature of this degree of faith is that the believer appropriates everything that the Lord has done for the human race to himself as if everything was done specifically for him. He who has true faith in his heart, like the Apostle Paul, confesses: “I live by faith, the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). The Son of God loved the whole world and gave Himself for the whole world, but St. Paul, and with him every believer, appropriates this His love and this His good deed to themselves. Such a confession is the crown of faith, and it is not possible otherwise than when someone accepts justification, sanctification, rebirth and purification by deed!.. This is the complete rule of our faith! It begins with knowledge, passes through feeling and ends with life, thus mastering all the powers of our being and taking root in its foundations. “And the little ones shall live by this rule: peace and mercy be upon them” (Gal.6:16). In them is accomplished what the Lord said about the house built on the rock. No one should try to knock this down with any kind of speculation. Like the blows of grains of sand on a solid wall: then all these perplexities and doubts are for the soul of a true believer. There is one reflection for all of them: I know that the truth is in our faith, for I experience the healing power of it. A free person who has been cured by some medicine will not listen to those who would tell him anything against this medicine. How can he consider it not healing when he received relief from it! So it is here. – Will he who has experienced the power of faith listen to the idle talk of fashionable scholarship, rebelling against the Lord and Christ, or hesitate from questioning: why and for what? “Here is the truth,” he will repeat in response to all attempts to sway him, “here is the truth: for in this way I have received the power with which I act, without being wavered by anything that opposes me, I have healed all my infirmities and have been brought to the Lord, fellowship with Whom in Jesus Christ is the essence of my spiritual life.” – While the soul is still learning faith, you can sway it with questions, even sometimes easily solvable ones. And when she is healed by faith, then unresolved perplexities are nothing for her. Thus, an unrooted stem is pulled out and carried away by a light wind, and a rooted tree is not afraid of pressure and a strong storm. With this interpretation, I would like to guide your thoughts to an understanding of what the protective power of our faith lies, and through understanding, to dispose you to acquire this power. It is not in knowledge, but in feeling - and not only in feeling, but also in life. Only at this last degree is it solid as death and safe from all objections and attacks. And this is what you adhere to when you begin to fulfill the commandment of the Apostle: “tempt yourselves, if you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5). Amen. On the day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. You might be interested in: