Слово 57

(1) About the terrible day of the Lord and about the future judgment; What day of the Lord is this and to whom is it revealed? – (2) He acts in us even before death, and is revealed to those in whom he acts in this life. – (3) Faith in Christ alone cannot save us unless we consciously receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. – (4) How can one know that the grace of the Holy Spirit has been received? And the interpretation of the words: in the beginning was the Word. – (5) Pleasing those who have received the grace of the Holy Spirit. 1. The word about the future judgment is great and difficult to explain, since it concerns not real and visible things, but future and invisible ones. Why do I, who want to talk about this, and you, who have to listen to my conversations, need many prayers, great care and purity of mind, so that we, I, can know this subject well and present it to you in conversation, and you can listen with attention to what will be said. The subject of this word is the terrible day of the Lord, which is called the day of the Lord, not because it is the last day of these days, and not because the Lord has to come on it, as we talk about the days of the present time: the day of Easter, the day of Pentecost, the king's day, on which the king has to go out and do this and that. But it is also called the day of judgment, not because there will be judgment on it. Then it will not be so that that day will be something else, and He who is about to come into it will be something else. But the Lord and God of all, our Lord Jesus Christ, will then shine with the radiance of the Divine, and this sensual sun will be covered with the brilliance of the Lord, so that it will not be visible at all, the stars will darken, and everything visible will roll up like a scroll, that is, it will move away, giving place to its Creator. And there will be one He - and the day, together and God. He who is now invisible to everyone and lives in an unapproachable light, will then appear to everyone as He is in His glory, and will fill everything with His light, and will become for His saints a non-evening and endless day, filled with unceasing joy, and for sinners and the careless, like me, He will remain completely unapproachable and invisible. Since, when they lived in this life, they did not strive to purify themselves in order to see the light of the glory of the Lord and to receive Him Himself within themselves, then in the next century, in all justice, He will be unapproachable and invisible to them. For in the beginning, the All-Good God, wanting to make good things our own, gave our first parents autocracy (and through them to all of us), so that they would fulfill the commandments of God not with sadness, or out of necessity, but willingly, with joy and zeal, out of love for God, and observe them with all attention, so that later it would be considered that they acquired virtues with their own through labor, bringing them to the Lord God as one’s own gifts, and through them trying to achieve the perfect image and likeness of God and to approach the unapproachable God without being burned or dying. But since the first primeval ones obeyed the enemy of the devil with their free will and became transgressors of the commandment of God, they not only lost the hope of the highest and greater, namely, to approach the most inaccessible and unflickering Light, but because of sin they fell into corruption and death, fell into the darkest darkness and became slaves of the prince of darkness, the devil. Then we, their descendants, submitted and enslaved this tyrant, not by any coercion or violence, but of our own free will, which was clearly shown by those who before Christ pleased God, betraying their will to Him, their Master, and not to the devil. The man-loving God, wanting to deliver from the slavery of the devil all those who were well pleased with Him both before Christ and after Christ, who have good will until the end of the age, deigned to do this Himself, the omnipotent and gentle God. The one whom He created with His own invisible hands in His own image and likeness, He wanted to restore to the state from which He fell, not through anyone else, but through Himself, becoming a man like us in everything except sin, in order to honor and glorify the human race. Oh, indescribable philanthropy and goodness! Not only did He not give us over to eternal torment for those who transgressed His commandment, but what we became through transgression, He deigned to become like that, that is, a corruptible and mortal man - He, who is incorruptible and immortal, appeared among people with deified flesh, and not as a single Divinity. And for what reason? By the one who came, let not the world judge, but let the world be saved by Him, as He Himself says in His Holy Gospel (John 3:17; 12:47). For the manifestation of His Divinity is a judgment for those to whom it appears. And no flesh could bear the glory of His Divinity if It appeared alone, without human nature, not being, that is, united with Him in an inexplicable way. If the Deity had appeared alone, then all creation would have disappeared completely, because then almost everyone was immersed in unbelief. The Deity never appeared to anyone without faith. But even if It sometimes appeared to someone without her, it would be scary and trembling, for in this case It does not enlighten, but burns, does not give life, but torments. And this is evident from the fact that blessed Paul suffered: he was not enlightened by the radiance of that unapproachable light that enveloped him on the way, but became even more darkened, and even lost the natural light of his eyes, and did not begin to see. Wonderful Paul, who was to be a great teacher of the Church of Christ, who later said: the river God will shine out of darkness into the light that has risen in our hearts; - and again: the imams are this treasure (that is, the radiance in the hearts), - at that time I could not see even the slightest ray of this light. 2. From this we truly learn that for those possessed by unbelief and passions, the grace of the Holy Spirit is unapproachable and invisible. But for those who show worthy repentance and begin to fulfill the commandments of Christ with faith, and together with fear and trembling, it opens and becomes visible, and by itself produces in them the judgment undoubtedly such as it has to be, or, better to say, it becomes for them the day of Divine judgment. He who always shines and is illuminated by this grace truly sees himself - what he is, and in what pitiful state he is - sees in subtle detail all his deeds, which he performed with his body and which acted only in his soul. At the same time, he is judged and judged by divine fire, as a result of which, watered with the water of tears, it is irrigated throughout the body, and little by little the whole body is baptized, soul and body, by divine fire and Spirit, becomes all pure, all immaculate, the son of light and day, and no longer the son of mortal man. Why will he not be judged at the future judgment, since he has already been judged before, nor convicted by that light, because he was illuminated by it here before, and will not enter into that fire to be burned forever, because he entered it here before and was judged, and will not think that then the day of the Lord had just appeared, because long ago he had become bright and shining throughout the day from the meeting and conversation with God and ceased to be in the world or with the world, but completely became outside of it. This is what Christ the Lord says in the Holy Gospel: I have chosen you out of this world (John 15:19), and the divine Paul: even if you had reasoned for yourself, you would not have been condemned. We are judged and punished by the Lord, lest we be condemned with the world (1 Cor. 11:31), and again in another place: Walk as children of light (Eph. 5:8). So, those who have become children of light and sons of the coming day and can always walk gracefully as in the days, for those the day of the Lord will never come, because they are always with it and in it. For the day of the Lord will not appear for those who are already illuminated by the divine light, but it will suddenly open for those who are in the darkness of passions, live in the world in a worldly way and love the blessings of this world; for them he will appear suddenly, unexpectedly and will seem terrible to them, like an unbearable and unbearable fire. This fire will not appear entirely spiritually, but, as it were, incorporeally and corporeally, just as Christ appeared to his disciples after the Resurrection. The Evangelist says that when the Lord ascended into heaven, the Angels said to the disciples: He who ascended from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him going to heaven (Acts 1:11). If this does not happen, then how is it possible for sinners, infidels, heretics and Doukhobors, who are blind in soul and have the eyes of their souls blocked by the filth of unbelief and sin, to see Him? About this, Saint Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: about the years and about the times, brothers, you do not need to write: for you yourselves know that the day of the Lord, like a thief in the night, will come. Whenever they say: peace and affirmation, then all destruction will suddenly attack them, like a disease in the womb of a woman, and they will not be able to escape. But you, brothers, are in darkness, so that the day will come upon you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day: the nights are unbearable, lower than darkness. Likewise, let us not sleep like others, but let us be awake and sober. And a little lower: for God did not put us in wrath, but in receiving salvation... whether we watch or sleep, we live together with Him (1 Thess. 5:1–6:9, 10). 3. But, beloved, hearing: we are sons of light and sons of day, do not say in your thoughts that we, baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, who believe in Christ and worship Him as God, are, of course, sons of light and day, in any case, even if we did not feel or recognize it in ourselves in fact. No, brother, do not think as I said, and do not spend the rest of your life in negligence. But test yourself accurately and think about how many commandments of the Lord you have transgressed after Baptism and how many sins you have committed, because of which the grace of the Holy Spirit departed from you, and you, from a son of light and day, became a son of night, and you sit in darkness. And say to yourself: if now, when I am still in this world, I do not see the light of Divine grace and remain in darkness, then probably even after death I will remain in darkness; and of course, like a thief in the night, the day of the Lord will come upon me, and then suddenly eternal destruction will overtake me. So truly it is, my brethren; Let no one deceive you with vain words, and let no one rely on faith in Christ alone. Listen to what the Apostle James says: faith without works is dead... Just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead (James 2:20, 26). Those who confess that Christ is true and do not keep His commandments will be honored not only by those who rejected Christ, but also by those who despised Him, and will be righteously condemned more than those who did not know Christ at all. Whoever dishonors his father, how can he be honored by his son? And whoever withdraws from the light, how can he remain in the light as in days? No, my brothers, this cannot be. If anyone begins to say that no one can fulfill all the commandments, then let him know that he is falsely slandering God, as if He has commanded us the impossible. Such a one will be condemned, like the one who said: I know that you are a cruel man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not waste (Matthew 25:24), and like the devil, who said to Eve: God knew that on the day you eat from the tree of knowledge you will become like Him, for this reason He commanded you not to eat from it ( Gen.3:5). For he, too, considers God to be a liar, deceiver and envious. A liar, because when the Lord said: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” he not only says that it is not light, but also claims that it is even heavy; deceiver and envious - because, having descended to earth, he promised us a lot, but does not want to give us anything, but is jealous of our salvation, which is why he commanded us to observe and do impossible things, so that we could not fulfill them, and He had a seemingly blessed excuse to deprive us of the benefits that he promised. But woe to those who say such things if they do not repent! Our Lord Christ did not command us anything difficult or difficult to fulfill, but all His commandments are convenient and easy. I will explain this to you with the following example. Someone served the enemy and apostate Christian king, won many victories over the servants of this king and was in great glory and honor with the apostate and his army. The Christian king sent to him, inviting him to return to himself and promising great favors even before accepting him as a participant in the reign, but he not only did not agree to go over to the king, but, on the contrary, launched even stronger attacks on him. As time continued, however, one day he came to his senses, repented of everything he had done and decided to run away and come to the king on his own, reasoning with himself that although he had not previously obeyed the king who invited me to come to him, I still believe that if I come to him now, he will not blame me for being so late in coming to him, for he, as I hear, is very lenient and He loves humanity, which is why he will probably forgive me and fulfill everything he promised before. As he conceived this in his mind, he did it in action: he immediately got up and went to the king and, having arrived, fell at his feet, asking for forgiveness with tears. Then that kind king received him, beyond his hopes, with the greatest joy, marveling at his change and humility, that instead of presenting himself with claims and demanding honors for showing such love and faith towards him, he, leaving his enemy and coming to him, himself lay at his feet, crying and contrite in heart, that he had returned so late and had done so many evils before. Why, having raised him, fell on his neck and kissed him for a long time and his eyes were full of tears, then he ordered to bring a crown, royal clothes and shoes - everything like he himself, and he himself, his former enemy and adversary, clothed him in all this - he did not reproach him for anything for what he had done, but rejoiced and had fun with him day and night, hugged him and kissed him on the mouth, and had such affection for him love, that even when he went to bed, did not separate from him, but lay down with him, enveloping him everywhere with royal veils and watching over him like the apple of his eye. Similar to this is what God does to us; in the same way, the man-loving God accepts and loves those who repent with all their souls, flee from the charming world and from the ruler of the world, the devil, and come to Him, the true King and God, stripped of all the things of this world. And all this is done easily. If there is anything difficult here for others, it is to leave God’s enemy the devil and all his satanic works, with all the imaginary blessings of this world, which he entices them to be with him. But there is absolutely no trace of a return to God. Here I am, believe my word, when I ran to God, my Savior, I did not encounter anything sorrowful or difficult and unbearable, but - if I tell you the truth and reveal to your love what I did not want to reveal to anyone in order to bring even the slightest benefit to some of you - when I had sorrow, cramped conditions and the so-called suffering, then I felt most of all that all this brought me greater joy and joy, through revelation and the appearance of the face of God at this time - so that what St. Paul says was accomplished in me: our light sorrow... He brings the burden of glory to us (2 Cor. 4:17), and what David says: You have spread me out in tribulation (Ps. 4:2). Because of this joy, I counted the sorrows and temptations that came upon me as nothing, looking not at the future, but at the present glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was then immediately manifested in me by the grace of the Holy Spirit. From contemplation and communion of this glory, I imputed to nothing the most deadly pains and any other sorrow, the most unbearable of all that can befall a person with much illness and suffering, forgetting every painful languor of my body. From this same contemplation and participation in the glory of Christ, I began to consider the burden of the commandments light and the yoke of Christ good. I had great and unbearable sadness only because, believe me, I did not find a blessed reason to die for the love of Christ. So, my beloved brethren, let us leave everything and run naked, let us resort to the Lord Christ and, falling at His feet, weep before His grace, so that He, seeing our faith and humility, accepts us in the same way and even better than the said king of his enemy, honors us and adorns us with his own clothes and his crown, that is, with his glory, and makes us worthy of heavenly things. his bridal chamber. For to escape from a corruptible king and again return to another king, a corruptible one, and to be worthy to receive a share in the earthly kingdom, is not the same as what I say, that is, to ascend from earth to heaven, to receive eternal glory and an incorruptible kingdom, and to become a fellow member of God and a joint heir of His kingdom, and not only a king, but also God by grace, and to rejoice with God forever. Let us not, brothers, I ask you, prefer nothing temporal and earthly to this, so as not to lose the glory and consolation of Christ, but let us be zealous to purify ourselves, so that here we may still receive the guarantee of the kingdom of heaven, or, better said, let us be zealous to acquire God Himself, the King of all, in whom is all good for all. 4. Therefore, it is necessary for us to accurately test ourselves, whether we have acquired the Lord Jesus Christ within ourselves, in order to understand whether the realm has been given to us, whether we have also received from Him, as John the Theologian says, to be children of God (John 1:12). And let everyone heed the words of the Holy Scriptures, and look kindly into himself, so as not to fall into vain flattery and consider himself faithful, and then turn out to be unfaithful. For it is possible, considering oneself to have Christ within oneself, to come out of this life empty of Him and to be condemned as having nothing, with the deprivation of even that which one thinks one has and being cast into the fire of Gehenna. But how can we know whether we have Christ in us, and how can we examine ourselves in this regard to the utmost precision? Thus: let us take the words of Divine Scripture, place them before our souls, like a mirror, and begin to compare ourselves with them in everything; We will immediately know what we truly are. But listen, I ask you, and with the help of God, who gives the word at the opening of my mouth, I will explain to you a little, how can we know whether we have Christ in our souls? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was to God, and God was the Word. This is from time immemorial to God. Everything was by Him and without Him nothing would have happened. In Tom there is life, and life is light as a man. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it (John 1:1-5). Saying this, John the Theologian reveals the mystery of the indivisible Trinity and calls the Father God, the Son the Word, the Holy Spirit life, Who is also light; and again all three persons, Father, Son and Spirit, are one Light that shines in darkness, that is, in this world. For God is present everywhere, in the entirety of existence, and, being Light, enlightens everything, and darkness does not embrace Him, that is, sinful impurity does not at all approach Him. The world does not prevent Him from shining and enlightening, but it did not know Him, and did not find Him, and did not see Him. Why does John the Theologian, in order to present this more clearly, add further: this is the true light that enlightens every person coming into the world. In the world there was no, and the world was, and the world did not know Him (9-10). From the beginning, he says, God was everywhere, who enlightens and gives life to every person coming into the world. And before the creation of the world He was. And everything was with God, before manifestation in existence. Then, when God created this sensory world, he did not move away from it in place, because He is everywhere and fulfills everything, but of all the things in the world, nothing came close to Him in the nature and glory of His Divinity. God, being not distant from everything that exists, is clearly in everything, and yet no one knows Him, as our Lord says: “No one knows the Father, except the Son, and what the Son wills to reveal” (Matthew 11:27). So, God, who was in the world and was not known from it, came, he says, to His own, and His own did not receive Him. He calls the world and the people who exist in the world His own, both because there is a Creator and Lord of them, and because of the affinity that He entered into with people through His incarnation. Think well about what we have said, and know that God the Word, who was in the beginning with God and the Father, who has life in Himself and created everything, and is the light that enlightens every person, is He who was before the world was and created the world, who is in the world and is not known by the world and is not encompassed by it - He came into the world and became man, so that He may appear as God and be known as He is, to those who accept Him as God with faith and keep His commandments. Why does the Holy Evangelist say: the little ones received Him, and gave them the realm to become children of God, who believe in His name, who were not born of blood, nor of carnal lust, nor of manly lust, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, and we saw His glory, the glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:12–14). Here! Here is the mirror that I spoke about before - these very words! And look, I ask you, what accuracy is in the words of the Evangelist! How clearly he designates the signs by which the faithful are known, so that we can know ourselves and our neighbors! The Elitsy, he says, accepted Him, of course, through faith, and confessed Him as God, and not only as a man, giving them the realm through Baptism to become children of God, freeing them from the tyranny of the devil; so that they not only be faithful, but if they want to live according to His commandments, so that faith is also attracted to holiness through doing His commandments, as the Lord says in another place: Be holy, for I am holy (Lev. 19:2). And again: be merciful, as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:36). Then the Evangelist shows the way in which such are made children of God, saying: “Who was not born of blood, nor of carnal lust, nor of man’s lust, but was born of God” (John 1:13). Here he calls birth a spiritual change that takes place and is seen through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, as the false Lord Himself says: John baptized with water, but you must be baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5). Therefore those who are baptized with the Holy Spirit are like light within light, and they know Him who begat them, because they see Him. And that those born by the grace of the Holy Spirit have the need to be nourished by the holy communion of the most pure Body and the precious Blood of our Lord, about this listen to what the Evangelist says: and the Word became flesh and dwelt in us. And what these words say about the Most Pure Mysteries, listen to the Lord, who says: He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him (John 6:56). When we are spiritually born by the grace of the Holy Spirit and become children of God, and through the communion of the most pure Body and the precious Blood of the Lord the Lord dwells in us and begins to dwell as the Light, Christ, the Son and Word of God incarnate, then this will follow: we have seen His glory, the glory as the Only Begotten of the Father. For when we are born spiritually from Him, when He dwells in us through the Mysteries and we begin to consciously abide in Him, then, at the very hour when this will be in us, we suddenly see the glory of His Divinity, the glory as the Only Begotten from the Father, that is, such as no one else has, neither Angel nor man. And since the Father and His Only Begotten Son are one, it is clear that the glory of both of them is one, which is revealed and known (made known) to everyone to whom the Son wants to reveal it, through the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father. So, my brethren, let everyone carefully understand the power of these words and test himself by them - whether he accepted God’s Word who came into the world, and whether he became a child of God, whether he was truly born not only of flesh and blood, but also from God, whether he knew that God the Word incarnate dwelt in him, and whether he saw His glory, the glory as the Only Begotten of the Father. In whom all this has happened, he is truly a Christian; he sees himself born again from above, and knows the Father who gave birth to him not only by word, but also by the work of grace and truth. Let us stand, my brethren, before this mirror of truth and let us avoid the harmful and heretical teaching of those who say that the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ is not now revealed in us believers by the grace of the Holy Spirit. For grace is given with this revelation, and this revelation is effected by grace. Why does no one accept the Holy Spirit without the Spirit being revealed and not visible with intelligent eyes, and no one beholds such a revelation unless he has been enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit. One who has not received the grace of the Holy Spirit cannot even be called faithful. Christ the Lord said to the Samaritans: drink of the water... whatever I will give him, he will not thirst forever; but the water that I will give him, there will be in him a fountain of water flowing into an everlasting belly (John 4:14). This, as the Evangelist notes, on the occasion of the Lord’s words about drinking water from Him, in another place, the Lord spoke about Dus, whom believers wanted to receive in His name (John 7:39). Do you see that those who do not have the Holy Spirit, so that He acts and speaks within them, are not the faithful? For Christ is innocent, who committed no sin and in whose mouth no lie was found. Why, if Christ says that he will give the Spirit to those who believe in Him, then there is no doubt that those who do not have the Spirit are not those who believe in Him with a pure heart. If anyone begins to say that each of us believers has received and has the Spirit, although he does not recognize and does not feel it, he is blaspheming, since he represents Christ as a lie, who said: there will be in him a fountain of water flowing into an eternal belly, and also: believe in Me... rivers of living waters will flow out of his belly (John 7:38). So, if a spring flows, then probably the river emanating from this source and flowing is visible to those with eyes. But if this (we will speak in the tone of those who so philosophize) operates in us, and we do not feel or recognize anything like this in ourselves, then it is obvious that we will not feel at all the eternal life that is the consequence of this, and we will not see the light of the Holy Spirit, but we will remain dead, blind, insensitive in the future life, as we are in the present. Thus, it turns out that our hope is vain and our journey is in vain if we are still in death, that is, we remain dead in spirit and do not perceive the feeling of eternal life. But this is not how it is in truth, it is not so. But what I have said more than once, I will say again, and I will not stop saying: light the Father, light the Son, light the Holy Spirit; These three are one Light, timeless, undivided, unmerged, eternal, uncreated, inexhaustible, immeasurable, invisible, since it exists and is thought to exist outside and above all, which no person could ever see before purification and could not receive before vision. For first one must see it, and then acquire it through many deeds, since many have seen it, but have not acquired it, like those who are worthy to see great and immeasurable wealth in the royal treasuries, and then go away with nothing, as before. At first, it repeatedly finds divine enlightenment and illumination on those who repent with warmth of heart, but soon it goes away. And if they devote themselves entirely to exploits, even to the point of death, and seek this enlightenment with heart disease, and present themselves to Christ the Lord as worthy, pure, blameless in all deeds, then they will receive it again, and it will come to them again more perfect. If they become negligent and do not want to put themselves into great labor because of their love of life and their love of peace, then they are unworthy of such a gift and do not enter the eternal life (they do not accept its first fruits) now, while they are still in the body; if they do not enter now, they will obviously not be worthy of this even after death, in another life. If the one who, having received a talent, hid it, was condemned for not multiplying it, then how much more will he be condemned who not only did not multiply it, but also completely lost what he received due to his negligence? So, here, as the Divine Scripture says, is a marketplace, here are feats and competitions. Here crowns of victory are given to the victors as pledges, just as here the beginning of their shame and torment is laid for the vanquished. Bring to your memory the forty martyrs and all the other sufferers for Christ. They confirm what I say. Forty martyrs, while still in the lake, received martyr's crowns from the hands of Christ, and the one who entered the bathhouse immediately seemed to melt from the heat and went into eternal fire to be tormented. Also, Saint Eustratius, a man admirable in virtues, when he was tormented for the love of Christ, said: now I have come to know that there is a church of God and the Spirit of God lives in me. Get away from me, you workers of iniquity! And to the tormentor who judged him, he said: if you were of sound mind and your soul was not all earth and dust, due to passions, I would show you that this crucified Christ is our Savior, Redeemer and Benefactor. You see how this saint, when he entered into the feats of martyrdom and began to endure torment in his struggle, then he recognized himself that he was the church of God, and began to see with the intelligent eyes of his soul that the Spirit of God tangibly dwells in him. What other evidence could be clearer than this? If others say that these were martyrs who endured such and such suffering for Christ, and how can we become like them? - then I will also say to those that you yourself, if you want, can go through the feat of martyrdom every day, like the martyrs, you can suffer and endure for Christ every day, every night and every hour. How can this be? If you also establish a war with our mental enemies - demons, and always resist sin and your passionate will. They resisted the tormentors, but you resist the demons and destructive passions of the flesh, which tyrannically rush upon our soul every day, every night and every hour, and force us to do what is inconsistent with Godliness and which angers God. So, if we resist all this, do not listen to the advice of evil demons and do not do the will of the flesh and thoughts and feed it with the satisfaction of its disorderly lusts, then in all justice we too will be martyrs, fighting against sin. And if, resisting the devil, we willingly endure all labor for the sake of the commandments of Christ, just as the martyrs, resisting the tormentors, endured unbearable suffering for Christ, and at the same time, bringing to mind the torments and wounds suffered by the martyrs, we groan, sigh from the depths of our hearts, thinking how far we are from their exploits, and grieving that we are not worthy like them to suffer for Christ, then we will undoubtedly be worthy to receive crowns like theirs, according to the great goodness of God, which He has always shown and shows us from the beginning to this day. For although at the same time we will not be like them in courage, we can in every possible way become like them in patience and complacency, with which we will endure the labors and illnesses experienced in the form of keeping the commandments of Christ. They were sanctified by the deeds of martyrdom, and we hope to be saved for the sake of good deeds and deeds that we go through to acquire virtues - entirely through the love of mankind and the grace of God; they were sanctified by the sweats of martyrdom and illness, and we - by tears and deeds of repentance; they - through the outpouring of their blood, and we - through cutting off our will and the determination to die, according to which we would be ready to die every hour for the sake of the commandments of the Lord, not allowing ourselves to transgress any of them even with a single word. Therefore, we all, my brothers, must despise the present, like the martyrs, because it is impossible for anyone to receive the incorruptible if he does not count the corruptible into his mind (dung - Ed.), nor to acquire the eternal if he is attached to the temporary; no one who has any passion in his heart, even the slightest, can have Christ living within himself by the grace of the Holy Spirit, for God is Light, as He himself says: I am the light of the world (John 8:12). If, perhaps, you think that Christ is light according to the flesh, then, in your opinion, it will turn out that when Christ ascended into heaven and disappeared, then the light moved away from His disciples, and therefore from us, and the whole world remained in darkness. If you confess that He is the Light of the world according to Divinity, then how do you think that He is in you, and you say that you do not see Him? If you say that the Holy Spirit in you is obscured by passions, then you make God describable and overcome from the evil and darkness that exists in you, for evil mind and passions, even without sinful deeds, are darkness. So, whoever says that he has light in his heart covered by the darkness of passions and therefore does not see it, claims that the light (of God) is overcome by darkness (human), and proves that the Holy Spirit is lying, who speaks through the Evangelist John: and the light shines in the darkness, and its darkness is not embraced. The Holy Spirit says that the light is not overcome by darkness, but you say that it is covered in you by the darkness of passions? Know then, who says this, whoever you are, that you are clearly sinning in knowledge, for if you admit that the darkness of passions covers the light that is in you, then first of all you expose yourself to others, affirmatively saying about yourself that you sit in darkness and are under the power of passions, and despite all that you have accepted the region to be a child of God, that is, a child of light and a son of the day, you lie in idleness and inaction in the darkness of passions, you do not want to strive in doing the commandments of God and disperse the darkness of passions, but you despise Christ, who came down from heaven and became a man for your salvation, and you leave Him to lie in your unclean heart, as if in some kind of cronyism. Therefore, this is what the Light, that is, Christ, says to you: I judge you out of your mouth, you wicked servant. I, unapproachable even for Angels, came, as you say, and moved into you, and you know this, and yet you leave Me lying immersed in the darkness of your passions and sins, as you yourself again say. I endured so much time, waiting for you to repent and begin to do My commandments, but until the very end you never wanted to seek Me and never once took pity on Me, drowned and oppressed in you, and did not allow Me, having kindled My light in you, to find you - the lost drachma, and make you see Me as I look at you, but left me to always be covered with your passions. Depart from Me, you worker of iniquity, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. I longed for your conversion and repentance, but you did not let Me taste this and satisfy My desire, that is, you did not repent of your evil sins. I was naked from your virtuous deeds, and you did not clothe Me with them. I was in the cramped, unclean and dark prison of your heart; you did not want to visit Me and bring Me to the light. You saw how I lay in the illness of your own negligence and inaction, and did not come to serve Me with your good deeds. Get away from Me. This is what the Lord will say, this is what He says even now to those who say that they have the Holy Spirit within them, only He is hidden and covered by the darkness of their passions and is not seen by the intelligent eyes of their souls. To those who say that they know Christ, but do not see the light of His Divinity, Christ says: if you have known Me, then, of course, you have known Me as Light, for I am truly the Light of the world. But woe to those who say, When will the day of the Lord come? - and they do not strive to comprehend it here, in this life, for the coming of the Lord has come and always comes to the faithful, and is present in all who wish. And if Christ is the Light of the world, and promised His Apostles to be with us until the end of the age, then how can He come with us? No, He does not have to come to us, because we are not the sons of darkness and night, so that light may come to us, but the sons of light and the day of the Lord. Why and while we live in this life, we abide with the Lord, and when we die, we will live through Him and with Him, according to the divine Paul (Rom. 14:8). And Saint Gregory the Theologian says: “What the sun is to the sensual, so is God to the mental (spiritual). He will be the future age, and the day without evening, and the kingdom of heaven, and the bridal chamber, and the land of the meek, and the divine paradise, and the King, and the Servant, as He Himself said: blessed are these servants, for whom the Lord will come to find those who are vigilant. Amen, I tell you, he will gird himself and make them sit down, and come and minister to them” (Luke 12:37). All this, and much more than this, which no one can even count, is Christ for those who believe in Him, not only in the future life, but first in the present, and then in the future, only here to a lesser extent, and there to the fullest. However, the faithful from now on still clearly foresee future benefits, and accept the pledges (or beginnings) of them. Just as they do not think that they receive all the promises here, so again they feed themselves with the wrong hope that they can receive them all only there, but here, in this life, they are deprived and completely uninvolved in future blessings. But since God made it possible through His death and His Resurrection to grant us an incorruptible kingdom and eternal life, then from now on we are still, without a doubt, worthy to be partakers of future blessings with our souls, that is, to be incorruptible and immortal in our souls, to be sons of God, sons of light and day and heirs of the kingdom of heaven, since we have this very kingdom of heaven within us. We really still receive all this from now on, not without feeling and knowledge of the soul, if we are not artless in faith and are not poor in doing the commandments of God. But we do not yet receive this physically, because this body of ours is perishable, just as the body of Christ was before the Resurrection. And since our soul is embraced by such a body and bound by it, we cannot now absorb into our soul all the divine glory that is revealed to us, but, seeing, as in a mirror, an immense sea of ​​that glory, we think that we see one drop of that sea of ​​glory. This is why we say that we see it now, both in a mirror and in fortune telling. However, we also see what is spiritual, that is, in our souls we are similar to Him Whom we see and Who sees us; after the resurrection we will also receive a spiritual body. Just as Christ, by His divine power, made His body different, that is, spiritual, and thus resurrected it from the grave, so we, having first become here like Christ in soul, then we will become like Him in body - men by nature and gods by grace, just as Christ, being God by nature, became man, as man is, by his great goodness. Knowing for sure this sacrament, how can we not desire death, when, as the Apostle says, we groan while in this body for the revelation of the tea of ​​the sons of God? (Rom.8:19-22). But if the righteous do not participate in eternal blessings and do not receive the grace of God here, still in this present life, then Christ is only a prophet, and not God, and everything that the Gospel speaks about is not a gift of grace, but a prophecy of future gifts; in the same way, the Apostles received a prophecy, and not the fulfillment of what was prophesied: they themselves received nothing, and they did not teach anything to others. Alas! What insensitivity and what blindness there are among those who hold such an opinion! For if it is so, as they say, then we will follow that our faith is mere words, for which there is no corresponding action. But if the grace of God, saving all people, appeared only in word, and not in deed, and if we begin to think that the sacrament of our faith is precisely this, then who will be more damned than us? If the light of the world is Christ and God, and we believe that no man has ever seen Him, then who else will be more unbelieving than us? If Christ is light, and we say that we do not feel Him when we put on Him, then how will we differ from the dead? If He is the vine, and we are the branches, and, however, we are not aware of the unity that we have with Him, then it is obvious that we are soulless and fruitless - dry wood, fit only for eternal fire. If, according to the divine word, those who eat the Flesh of the Lord and drink His Blood have an eternal life, and when we partake, we do not feel that there is anything more in us than what comes from ordinary food, and we do not realize that we are receiving a different life, then it is obvious that we are communing only with bread, and not with God. For if Christ is God and man, then His holy flesh is not flesh only, but flesh and God inseparably and unmerged, and insofar as the Flesh, that is, insofar as it exists under the guise of bread, is seen with bodily eyes, but according to the Divinity it is not seen with bodily eyes, but is seen with the mental eyes of the soul, that is, with the mind. Therefore, the Lord says: he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood, dwells in Me, and I in Him (John 6:56). He did not say: He abides with them (that is, with flesh and blood), and they with Him, but - abides with Me, that is, with My glory, with My light and with My Divinity; as in another place he says: as I am in the Father, and the Father in Me, so am I in you, and you in Me (John 14:20). So, if we think that all this happens in us without us being aware and feeling it with the feeling of our soul, then who will be able to mourn our insensibility as we should? Truly no one. 5. But blessed are those who received Christ, who came as light in them, who were in darkness, because they became sons of light and the uneven day. Blessed are those who have put on His light in this present life, because they have already put on the wedding garment and will not be bound hand and foot and cast into eternal fire. Blessed are those who, while still in the body, saw Christ. Blessed are those who saw Him and worshiped Him mentally and spiritually, because forever and ever they will not see death. Blessed are those who taste Christ every day with such contemplation and knowledge as the prophet Isaiah did - a burning coal, because they will be cleansed from all filthiness of soul and body. Blessed are those who every hour receive the ineffable light with the eyes of the mind, because they will walk gracefully as in days and will live the entire time of their lives in spiritual joy. Blessed are those who, while still here, have come to know the light of the Lord as Himself, because in the future life they will appear before Him with boldness. Blessed are those who always abide in the light of the Lord, because both in this life they are and in the future life they will always be His brothers and joint heirs. Blessed are those who in this life kindled a light in their hearts and kept it unquenchable, because at the time of death they will meet the bridegroom Christ, being bright and radiant, and together with Him they will enter His bridal chamber with lit lamps. Blessed are those who never allowed the thought that people do not receive proof of their salvation during this life, but at the end of this life or after death, because they strive to receive such proof of their salvation here. Blessed are those who do not doubt anything that is said and do not suspect that there is anything false here, because if they do not have anything like that - which may not happen - they will probably become jealous of acquiring it. Blessed are those who with all their souls seek to enter into the light (of Christ), despising everything else, because even if they do not have time to enter into this light while they are in this life, they will in every possible way depart from here with good hopes and will enter into it according to their measure. Blessed are those who always cry bitterly about their sins, because light will finally overshadow them and turn their bitter tears into sweetness. Blessed are those who are enlightened by divine light, and see their weakness, and comprehend the shame of their soul, because they will cry all their lives and will be washed with their tears. Blessed are those who approached the divine light, and entered into it, and united with it, and became all light, because they have completely taken off the defiled clothing of their sins and will no longer cry bitter (but useless) tears. Blessed are those who see that the robe of their soul is as radiant as Christ, because every hour they will be filled with inexpressible joy and, amazed and amazed at this, will shed the sweetest tears, realizing that they have already become sons and partakers of the resurrection. Blessed are those who always have the mental eye of their soul open and during every prayer they see the light, because they have become equal in honor with the Angels. If they are like this, while still in this life, still bound by corruptible flesh, then what will they be like after the resurrection, after they have received this spiritual and incorruptible body? Of course, they will then not only be like the Angels, but the Lord of the Angels Himself, Christ the Lord, as it is written: We know that when He appears, we will be like Him (1 John 3:2). Blessed is the Christian who stands before God in prayer so that God sees him, and he sees God, and feels that he has become outside the world, either in the body or outside the body, because he will hear ineffable verbs, which no man should speak, and will see what the eye has not seen, what the ear has not heard, and what has not entered the heart of man. Blessed is the one who sees that Christ, the Light of the world, has been imagined in him, because he will be called the matter of Christ, having Christ in himself as the fruit of the womb, as He Himself, the most unfaithful, promised, saying: These are my mother and my brothers and my friends - they who hear the word of God and do it (Matthew 12:48-49), - so that those who do not keep the commandments of God are their own by will they deprive themselves of such grace, since this thing was, and is, and will be possible - and it happened, and it happens, and will not cease to happen in all those who keep the commandments of the Lord. However, so as not to leave what we have said without evidence and not to incur suspicion that we are saying something from ourselves, and not from Divine Scripture, making the impossible seem possible, let us cite the testimony of this again from the same blessed Paul, who is the mouth of Christ and says: my children, in the image of my illness, until Christ is imagined in you (Gal. 4:19). But in what place, or in what part of the body, do you think he believes that Christ will be imagined? In the face or in the chest? No, in our hearts He is imagined not bodily, but incorporeally and as befits God. However, just as a woman who is pregnant knows this clearly, since the baby in her womb makes some movements (jumping), and she cannot help but know that she has a fetus in her womb, so the one who has Christ imagined in himself knows His movements and leaping, that is, His shining and shining, and sees the imagination of Christ within himself. Just as the light of a lamp is seen in a mirror, so Christ is seen in it, however, not ghostly and not insignificant, as is what is seen in the mirror, but Christ is seen in it as light, essentially, invisibly visible and inconceivably comprehended, in an ugly image and in a formless form. Thus, brothers, the incomprehensible in our faith is comprehended! This is how the Father and Son with the Holy Spirit are seen and undoubtedly imagined by those Christians to whom the Father and Son with the Holy Spirit come, and make their abode in them, as the Lord says, cognizable in one inseparable light, as we said. However, just like someone who is chasing someone who is running away from him, although he thinks that he is already very close to him, although it seems to him that he is about to grab him, even as if he is already touching him with the ends of his fingers, but he cannot grab him in any way until, according to a common saying, there is a distance between them of at least one hair, so we, if through our negligence we have even the slightest thought or reflection of disbelief, or double-mindedness, or fear (for ourselves), or some other passion, or if we have an addiction to something temporary, then, of course, we will not be worthy of having God as an indweller in our souls and will not ascend to the height of such glory. For just as for someone who is chasing another, the slightest distance, even one hair, is the reason that he cannot grasp him, so in relation to spiritual things, the slightest passion is the reason that we are not worthy to come to the contemplation of the mysteries of God. And if we do not completely despise our very life and our body, with a readiness for martyrdom itself, to surrender ourselves and our life entirely to all torment and all death, completely expelling from memory everything that serves to support the life of this corruptible body, then it is impossible for us to be friends and brothers of Christ, nor partakers and co-heirs of Him, and we will never come to contemplation and experimental knowledge of the said mysteries of God. Therefore, whoever has not yet been honored to achieve this and receive such benefits, let him blame himself, and not say, like one who does not feel guilty about sins, that this is impossible, or, although it is possible, it happens, but outside of our consciousness, that is, in such a way that we do not know it. May he be convinced from the Divine Scriptures and may he know that this thing is possible and truly happens and happens before us, so that we cannot help but know about it, but because of the omission and non-fulfillment of the commandments of Christ, everyone in proportion to this deprives himself of such benefits, which we would all be able to receive, so that we can taste them in this life and understand that the Lord is good, and there we will see this Lord of all and rejoice with Him forever. Amen. You might be interested in: