Слово 4

(1) That the death of the soul is the removal of the Holy Spirit from it, and the sting of this death is sin; and that death and corruption of the body is likened to death and corruption of the soul. – (2) And about what are the signs of the deadness and liveliness of the soul. - (3) About how the removal of corruption and death occurs, and about the fact that death is now not destroyed, but trampled upon and made insignificant. – (4) About how after death the bodies of deceased saints are glorified, also about the resurrection and the righteous judgment of God. 1. Just as the body dies, then the soul is separated from it, so when the Holy Spirit is separated from the soul, the soul dies. This sting of death is sin, because death and corruption are the products of sin. The soul through sin died for eternal life, being separated from the Holy Spirit and from His kingdom. Do you see what connection the soul has with the body, that it is impossible for the body to live without the soul? And again, how does the soul move away and leave the body with which it was together and through which it demonstrated its strength and activity? Seeing this, think that in a similar way, the first-created man was united with the Holy Spirit of God, the Creator of all things, but, being seduced by the evil devil and abusing the autocracy given to him by God, he became a transgressor of God’s commandment and immediately lost the grace of the Holy Spirit, with which he was overshadowed. As a result of this, the soul froze, and then the body died, and thus bodily death occurred, so that after the death of the body, which we see, we would think about the death of the soul, which we do not see, for the death and corruption of the body is likened to the death and corruption of the soul. However, the nature of the body is different, and the nature of the soul is different. The nature of the soul is mental, and the nature of the body is sensual. And one more thing: the body was first corrupted and then died, because the soul left it - which is the death of the body; but it was not so with the soul: it died first, because Divine grace departed from it, and then it became corrupted. The corruption of the soul is a deviation into crossroads from direct and right wisdom - precisely that right wisdom has been corrupted and has become corrupted, having lust after all that is evil. For when right thoughts are corrupted, immediately, like thorns and thistles, the seeds of evil sprout in the soul. In this way, just as worms breed in a dead body, so in a soul that has been deprived of Divine grace, it is as if worms have multiplied - envy, deceit, lies, hatred, enmity, abuse, rancor, slander, anger, rage, sadness, revenge, pride, arrogance, vanity, unmercifulness, covetousness, theft, untruth, unreasonable lust, whispering, gossip, envy, contentiousness, reproach, ridicule, love of glory, perjury, oaths, forgetfulness of God, insolence, shamelessness and all other evils hated by God; so that man ceased to be in the image and likeness of God, as he was created in the beginning, but began to be in the image and likeness of the devil, from whom is all evil. 2. How the soul, the rational and mental force, combines together a body consisting of many parts, such as flesh, bones, nerves, veins, skin and other things, which it wonderfully binds everything with its own strength and contains good in complete harmony, so that they help one another and support one another, being connected by one soul, and when the soul leaves the body, then all these parts of the body, losing connection, disintegrate and are subjected to corruption, so the grace of the Holy Spirit combines the soul with itself with its divine power and gives life to it, as if the soul of the soul, reducing its many and different thoughts and desires to the single will of God, which is its true life, and when the grace of the Holy Spirit is separated from the soul, then all its thoughts and desires are spilled and corrupted. So, if it is possible for any human body without a soul to stand in harmony and in its order, then it is possible for the soul of a person to stand as it should, in its order, with the distinctive features of rationality, without the grace of the Holy Spirit. But that is impossible, and this is even more impossible. On the contrary, just as a person who does not have a soul is dead in the order of this world, so one who does not have the grace of the Holy Spirit is dead in the order of God; and it is in no way possible that he should have residence in heaven, because everyone who is dead (in any order) is inactive (lifeless) in him. That is why it is necessary for every person who believes in Christ to be baptized in order to be recreated and renewed by the Holy Spirit, and to become a new creation. Whoever is not born again, as the Lord says, cannot enter into the kingdom of God, and even see it, and whoever cannot see it, it is even more impossible for him to receive it. Entry into the kingdom of God is given not for good deeds alone, but also for faith. Seeing it comes through being born again, and receiving it through good deeds done through the power of faith. Therefore, whoever believes and is baptized with water and the Spirit enters the kingdom of God as one born (into and for him). And again, whoever is born again sees the kingdom of God, and then, as one included in the number of warriors and disciples (sons) of the kingdom of God, he receives it for the good deeds he does, which no one can do before he becomes a warrior of the kingdom of God. For our human nature, just as it comes into the light of this world as a participant in the oath of Adam, so it comes out into the light of the kingdom of God (from the font) as a participant in the blessing of Jesus Christ. And if it does not become a community of the Divine nature of Christ, if it does not accept the grace of the Holy Spirit, it cannot think or do anything worthy of the kingdom of God, it cannot fulfill a single commandment commanded to us by Christ (to be sons of the kingdom), because Christ is the one who acts entirely in all who call on His holy name. For this reason, God became man, may God the Holy Spirit descend into Him, as into God, and may God the Holy Spirit abide in Him, from Whom He was not separated, so that later, through communication and union with Him, the Divinity would be united with every person who communicates with Him and combines together, that is, into the will of God, all his thoughts and desires. This is the resurrection of the soul in this life. For through communication, perception and communion of the God-man Jesus, the soul is again revived and accepts its original incorruption by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, acceptable through communication with Jesus, and shows signs of the new life it has received in that it begins to serve God in honor and righteousness before His eyes, and not people, as the Apostle Paul says: how much more will the blood of Jesus... cleanse our conscience from dead works, in which we serve unto us God live and truth (Heb. 9:14). Just as when the body is alive, the actions of the soul are obvious in it, so when the soul is alive, the actions of the Holy Spirit are obvious in it, such as: goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. The soul, which through faith has received the mental power of the Holy Spirit (which Adam was deprived of through the transgression of the commandment and, as a result, was subjected to deviation into crossroads from right thoughts, to the point of impossibility of the right to understand anything), sees and understands that virtue is actually nothing more than the fulfillment of the will of God, just like all lovers of true wisdom, teachers and preachers of the coming of Christ and faith in Him, they say that virtue in fact, it is that every person who believes in Christ should do only the will of God, and in relation to the blessings of this life should be as if dead; so that only in deeds of fulfilling the commands of God would he be known and alive, and in this only circle would he reveal movement and energy. This is a sign that the soul is alive. 3. And after, after the resurrection, the body will also receive incorruption, which God has now given to the soul, having revived it in this life. Thus, by the infinite mercy of God, some great amazing economy of God is revealed: the soul is resurrected in real life, but the body dies, and the sentence of God: earth you are and to earth you will go, is not canceled; in the general resurrection the body will also be resurrected and will also receive incorruption. Death is not abolished and not left inactive in real life, but only trampled upon and despised, because if it were abolished now, then people would no longer die. Since Christians, after the cross and Resurrection of Christ, are convinced that when they die, they pass from death into the belly and into the joy of being with Christ, they desire more than death. For if the Spirit of Christ is the life of the soul, then what is the benefit for him who has received Him to live in this world, and thereby be excluded from the joy that comes from being with Christ? Happy are those who, having believed in Christ, died immediately after being baptized, because they died having put on Christ and went into another life, wearing that royal robe of the Divinity of Christ. But happier and more blessed are those who lived here after Holy Baptism, and, being clothed in this royal robe, as in the whole armor of God, entered into battle with our enemy the devil and completely defeated him with all his intrigues and evil deeds, thanking for this victory Christ who was with them and who gave it to them, and only then, after this victory, they died; because they lived, struggling for the glory of Christ, Who entrusts this good deed to everyone who believes in Him. This is the glory of Christ, so that Christians, when fighting with demons, are not defeated (but win), having with them the invincible Christ. For in every Christian Christ is the one who fought and conquered, and He is the one who calls on God, and prays, and gives thanks, and reveres, and seeks with prayer and humility - Christ acts all this, rejoicing and having fun when he sees that in every Christian there is and remains that conviction in which they confidently confess that Christ is the doer of all this. Why should every Christian, regarding all the good deeds he does, confess that they are performed by Christ, and not he; whoever thinks about this differently is a Christian in vain. People are born into this world in order to glorify and thank God, knowing that all good is from Him. And again, according to the work and feat raised in this place of bitterness, to which they were born, they die, according to God’s determination, in order to rest from their labors with the hope that they will one day be resurrected and live an unceasing life, without any sadness and deprivation. For although Christ, who is always with them, is working in them, yet they, with all their weakness, work hard just to keep Christ with them. Because all the tricks and all the machinations of the devil are aimed at tempting them to tear themselves away from the hands of Christ, and in self-deception to persuade them to say, or even to think that it was we ourselves and through our haste who gave birth to such and such a good thought, or said such and such a reasonable word, or did such and such a good deed, even if it was the most insignificant. And it is against this that the great feat of Christians is constantly turned! Every God-fearing soul is faced with two great feats: the first - to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, because it is impossible for anyone to enter the path of salvation, much less walk along it, if he does not receive in advance the mysterious grace of the All-Holy Spirit; the second, more difficult, so as not to lose this grace, received with much sweat and labor. This loss of grace occurs for the following reason. After the grace of God has been in the soul for a long time, descending on it through salvation, a strong and most difficult battle arises against it, similar to the one depicted by the prophet David, crying out to God: Lord, why have I multiplied the cold? Many rise up against me, many say to my soul: there is no salvation for you in your God (Ps. 3:2-3), that is, that your salvation is accomplished not by the power of your God, but by your wisdom and your own strength. If the soul agrees to such a suggestion, grace departs from it. But if she, having rejected such a suggestion, begins to cry out to God with David: You, Lord, are my intercessor and helper, You are my glory, and You lift up my head, You, by Your Divine grace, accomplish my salvation in me, and not I, the grace of God will abide with her. And this second feat, after the first, in which the grace of the Holy Spirit is obtained, a great feat, so as not to lose God’s grace that has already been received, lies before the soul until our last breath. She, together with the blessed Apostle Paul, who worked a lot, must cry out loudly in the hearing of Angels and men: not I, but the grace of God, which is with me (1 Cor. 15:10), - I have not done any good on my own, but the grace of God, which is with me. Because the apostles, and the prophets, and the martyrs, and the hierarchs, and the saints, and the righteous - all confessed such grace of the Holy Spirit, and for the sake of such confession, with its help, they fought a good deed and completed their course. This was the faith that they observed, that is, they believed that the winner of the great many-part and varied difficulties that they encountered in life, with such weakness of human nature as they saw in themselves, was the grace of God, which they always had inherent in themselves. Having believed at the beginning that this is how it is and should be, they later experienced this in practice and knew good; having learned, they thanked God, who arranged it this way; Having given thanks, they confessed; having confessed, they were crowned; Having been crowned, they became glorified, having in themselves the signs of deification, since they became partakers of the Divine nature, and through this gods by grace, who, like gods, have always to abide with God in the future life. People are born for this purpose, to glorify God, since they are thinking and rational beings. They alone, of all visible creatures, can recognize, magnify and thank the Creator God. Examining creation, they marvel at the Creator and, having cognized His greatness, unthinkable and boundless, they worship Him, honor Him and stand in awe of Him, and at the same time try to live in truth and righteousness, as is pleasing to God, presenting the knowledge of God as a true witness of a godly life and piety, and, conversely, a godly life and piety as witnesses of the knowledge of God. For whoever has knowledge of God and knows God, without a doubt, reveres Him and serves Him, that is, believes and worships Him as God, and lives pleasing to God; Every man who sins does not see God nor know Him, as John the Theologian says (1 John 3:6). And so it truly is. For whoever knows God naturally reveres Him and reveres Him, and whoever reveres Him and fears Him, can he forget himself to the point of allowing himself to do anything displeasing to God, when he knows that God is everywhere and sees everything? Let every person who sins be convinced that he has neither the sight nor the knowledge of God, and that if he dies in this darkness and in this ignorance, he will then be resurrected for nothing other than eternal torment, eternal because there will be no more death to stop this torment. But the one who has seen and known God, and through this does not allow himself to fall frivolously and fearlessly into sin and thereby shows that he not only fears, but also loves God, such a person, if having spent his entire life pleasing to God, passes into another with the hope and aspiration of the resurrection of the dead, he will be resurrected to unspeakable joy, for which alone people are born and die. Those born for such joy, if they despise it and spend their lives in darkness and ignorance of God, after the resurrection they will endure double torment, both remembering that they were born for unspeakable joy, and that they despised it out of frivolity and lost it through their own fault. Therefore, every person born into this world, especially a Christian, should not think that he was born in order to enjoy this world and taste its joys, because if this were the end and this the purpose of his birth, then he would not die. But let him keep in mind that he was born, firstly, in order to be (begin to exist) from the non-existent that he was; secondly, in order to, like gradual bodily growth, grow little by little with spiritual age and good deeds to ascend into that sacred and godly state about which blessed Paul speaks: until we reach all things... into a perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fulfillment of Christ (Eph. 4:13); thirdly, in order to become worthy to dwell in the heavenly villages and to be included in the host of holy Angels, and to sing with them the victorious song of the Most Holy Trinity, which alone gives him existence, and who alone, by Her grace, also grants well-being, that is, that shown sacred, divine state. With all this, however, people not only do not direct their actions towards the one goal for which they were born as people, that is, so that, having reached the measure of the age of the fulfillment of Christ, they become gods by grace, but on the contrary, they do everything opposite to this, and do it with great zeal, indulging in sins in every way, so that in the end of everything they will be cast into eternal torment, for which we are not born into this world. For eternal hellish fire is prepared for the devil and other demons, and we are born in order to become worthy of God when we die. This is who is worthy of God: the right, the true, the meek, the good, the compassionate, the merciful, the generous, the kind, the long-suffering, the gentle, the philanthropic. But no person can be like this unless he becomes a participant in the grace of God through faith in Christ; so if someone is not like that, then it is clear that he either does not believe in Christ, or seems only to believe, being in fact an unbeliever. For whoever truly believes in Christ has either already become such, as we said, or strives in every way to become such, with the help of the grace of God, without which no one can not only be a saint, but also seek one. 4. The soul, which has been worthy to become a partaker of Divine grace, being itself sanctified, by natural consequence sanctifies its entire body, because, uniting and containing the body, it is found in all its members; why the grace of the Holy Spirit, as it assimilates the soul, so also assimilates its body. However, while the soul is in the body, the All-Holy Spirit does not manifest all of its glory in this body, because it is imperative that the soul itself shows its good will until the end of its life, that is, whether it follows, as it should, the grace of the Holy Spirit. But when the end comes and the soul is separated from the body, then, since the feat is already over (the competition, as in the lists), and the soul, having won the victory, comes out of the body in the crown of incorruption, as having accomplished its feat well, then, I say, the grace of the Holy Spirit manifests its sanctifying power in the body of this soul, from which the bare bones and whole relics of saints exude healing and cure all sorts of diseases. When the soul is separated from the body with its death, then it alone, without the participation of the body in this, begins to abide with all the Divinity, that is, with Divine grace, and itself becomes God by grace; the body remains alone without a soul only with the Divine and manifests divine power for people in miracles (not through the soul, but directly from the Divine). Then neither the soul in its actions can encounter obstacles from being connected by the body, being separated from it, nor the body, because of the soul, is no longer burdened with deprivations in satisfying its needs, that is, neither greed, nor thirst, nor anything else like that. But since both of them, both soul and body, were freed from all need and all temptation, which they were subjected to because of their mutual union, then Divine grace, both in one and in the other, acts without any obstacle, as if both soul and body became completely God, having been appropriated by the Divine for the sake of a God-pleasing life, which they spent in the world when they were both together. During the general resurrection, the body will also receive incorruption, which God has already granted to the sanctified soul. For, according to the word of Saint Gregory the Theologian, just as in this world the soul was a participant in the hardships and sorrows of the body, due to their close union, so then the joyful state that it possesses will be transferred to the body from the soul. Then the soul will absorb the whole body and will be one with it, and the spirit, and the mind, and God by grace, and everything corruptible and mortal will then be consumed by the belly. For just as in Adam the flesh was overtaken by corruption due to sin, and because of the flesh the soul became in some way earthly in its actions and, having given itself up entirely to earthly things, plunged into such ignorance of God that others did not even know whether there was a God: so, on the contrary, during the resurrection everything opposite to this has to happen, by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of God incarnate; then the flesh will be swallowed up by the soul by the power of the Holy Spirit, a soul that was already absorbed by God, by the true life, as if the whole soul had all of God and only He alone was visible in everything. I’ll just say, the magnificent grace of the resurrection will show then, that is, in the next century, everything that we have is opposite to the present, opposite to the state in which we are and in which we live in this life; and just as in the present life death, due to sin, has taken strength and power and consumes everything, so in the future it will righteously faint and will itself be swallowed up by grace. Death, now trampled upon and put to shame by the Resurrection of Christ, then, after the general resurrection, will be completely abolished, as the divine Paul says: the last enemy will be abolished by death (1 Cor. 15:26). Now, in real life, death is in its time and is (for everyone) the punishment for Adam’s first crime (for sinners), the suppression of sinfulness (for the righteous), repose from sacred deeds; but in the future life, just as the life of this world will be abolished, so death will finally cease and be abolished; whereas people will not be born and live according to the image of real life, so they will not die, as now, and death will be abolished. But then there will be another life, indescribable, and another death, more painful and bitter than the present one, that is, eternal torment. For those who do not become partakers of Christ here or who dishonor this participation in Christ by living a life contrary to that, that is, who do not live according to Christ, all such are in danger of being subjected there to the already irrevocable punishment of the gravest death. In this world, God (incarnate) came to destroy the sentence of death, which was the lightest punishment; but there, in another life, where there will be no more real death (which is a kind of great consolation for those who are under painful oppression, because, having died, they are freed from it), what other healing can there be (from the second death, which will be death without the cessation of life)? On the other hand, in this world, from Adam to Christ the Lord, there was not a single person who was completely saved (but only in hope), because everyone was involved in the ancestral sin (redemption from which was still expected). And now, after the fulfillment of the incarnate economy of our Lord, many are conformed to Christ (truly saved). Therefore, for those who will be condemned in another life, there will no longer be any consolation and no hope of salvation, because they, like those, could have been conformed to Christ, but did not want to. Likewise, for the Angels who fell and became demons, there is no mercy, because when most of the Angels, having kept the will of God, remained in their rank, they too could have kept it, but did not want to. Oh, that we too may become conformed to Christ, that we may be worthy to receive eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory, honor and worship with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever. Amen. You might be interested in: