10. Бедствующие люди и царь, их посетивший и им сострадающий

If to the people who are in captivity and enduring all kinds of suffering and nothing more, but only awaiting a bitter death, their Tsar himself came and visited them, and wanted to suffer with them and suffer for them, in order to free them from that bitter slavery and return them to their fatherland, this thing would be so great and wondrous that all centuries would glorify it with great surprise. And truly there cannot be greater love, mercy, and condescension from his King to a subject! But the Tsar, although a high figure, is nevertheless the same mortal man as his subject, the same earth and ashes, subject to the same decay as other people. It is wonderful and beyond any surprise that God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Great and Incomprehensible, came to us, the poor, and visited us, came to us in our image. The Immaterial Spirit, clothed with animate flesh and like us, before the ages, from the Father, God from God, Light from Light shining incorruptibly, deigned to be born from the Virgin, Unartful and Most Holy, and to call Her Mother, and to be called Her Son - oh wonder of wonders! God deigned to call His Servant His Mother, and the Son of God deigned to be called the Son of the Virgin - and so the Beginningless began, the Invisible became visible, the Intangible became tangible, Inaccessible to the Cherubim and Seraphim, accessible to sinners. The King of Heaven has descended to earth. God became like us, people, lived with us on earth, with us and for our sake humbled himself. The Almighty was weak, the Almighty was powerless. And what is even more wonderful: the Lord from His evil servants, blasphemy, dishonor, reproach, binding, desecration, ridicule, reproach, judgment and condemnation, spitting, strangulation, slander, slander, beating, wounds, leading to death, nailing to the Cross, and to the lawless, He wanted to meekly and willingly endure the vengeance! For whom? For the sake of you and me, Your real enemies! This is such a great and wonderful thing that the prophet, seeing it from afar, exclaimed in horror: “Lord! I heard Your rumor and was afraid.” (“Lord! I understood Your works and was horrified.”) (Hab.3:2). Be amazed, Christian, at this great work of your Lord, which does not exist and cannot exist anymore. Sing and glorify His love for mankind, which it is impossible to describe with a pen or understand with the mind. Truly we can exclaim with the prophet: “Lord! What is man, that You have revealed yourself to him, or the son of man, that You think about him” * (Ps. 143:3). For my sake you came down from heaven, so that you will raise me to heaven. For my sake you humbled yourself, so that you may exalt me. For my sake the real God became man, so that You may make me a partaker of Your Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). For my sake he was born in the flesh, so that I might be born in the spirit. For my sake you endured persecution, and you will bring me, expelled from paradise, into paradise again. For my sake you deigned to wander, so that you will return me, captive, to the Fatherland. For my sake you were blasphemed, so that you may silence my enemy, the slanderer the devil. For my sake you were bound, so that you would free me from the bonds of sin. For my sake, you grieved, grieved, grieved and cried, so that you could deliver me from grief, sadness and eternal tears. For my sake you were dishonored and mocked, but you will glorify me. For my sake you were counted among the lawless, so you will acquit me. For my sake, my life, you have tasted death, that you may revive me. I am amazed at Your love for mankind! I sing Your mercy! I bow to Your deepest humility and condescension! “What will I repay to the Lord for all that He has given me (Ps. 116:3), Thy poor and wretched servant? Imagine, Christian, this great thing before your intelligent eyes more often, and you will always see a miracle, greater than all miracles. If you want to see a miracle any day, think about the Incarnation and Passion of Christ any day. And from this soul-saving reflection will follow: 1) Living faith. If Christ suffered and died for everyone, then for me and for you. If He is the Savior of all who truly believe in Him, then He is both mine and your Savior. With this meditation the lamp of faith is lit. 2) Hope will follow. If He suffered so much for you, will He leave you in your need? If He died for you, will He refuse to help you in your trouble? Maybe he wants to help you. He can - because He is All-Wise and All-Powerful, He wants - because He is Good and loves you. He suffered for you out of His goodness and love. If he hesitates, he waits for your patience. So, be patient and wait for Him. He will certainly come and will not be stubborn, for he is faithful in his words. 3) Love for Him will follow. He loved me and you, our enemies, so much that He died for us. There is nothing greater than this love! Therefore, how can we not love such a lover and not reciprocate love for love? We love a person who has done some small good for us. Should we not love Christ, the Son of God, such a High and Great Benefactor? 4) Obedience will follow, for in order not to offend the loved one, he must obediently show him obedience. And through obedience and love it is shown, as He Himself teaches: “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me” (John 14:21). 5) Gratitude will follow. He redeemed you from eternal death not with gold and silver or any other price, but with His honest Blood. Reasoning this way, you will certainly be convinced to thank Him from a pure heart and out of gratitude to please Him as your Great Benefactor. There is and cannot be anything greater than this blessing. This benefit of Christ, bestowed upon us, the unworthy, is so great that it is impossible to repay it in any way or with anything. Even if you lived a hundred or two hundred years and endured the most severe torment every day for the sake of the name and honor of Christ, then this would be nothing against His blessing. Because I, and you, and all people are nothing against such a high and great Face of Christ. For we are people, earth and ashes, He is our Lord and God, Who showed such condescension towards us. For this, our wholehearted gratitude is required. For the greater the good deed, the greater the gratitude for it. 6) Fear will follow. For to whom Christ’s suffering will not benefit and lead to eternal salvation, there will be greater condemnation, and even more so for Christians who have come to know Christ, but do not listen to Him. Be afraid to sin, so as not to lose the grace of God and so that the Blood of Christ itself, shed, which, however, you neglected, would not cry out against you to God. 7) Comfort will follow for the sinner and the repentant. If Christ suffered and died for you, how will He not accept someone who has sinned and repented? Is it hard for Him to forgive you a sin, with a contrite and regretful heart coming to Him and asking for forgiveness - for Him, Who was not hard to suffer and die for you? He who died for your sins will gladly forgive you your sins as you repent. 8) From here, Christian, know the nobility, honor, dignity and advantage of the human soul. For the sake of her deliverance and redemption, not an Angel, not some other intercessor sent from God, but God and the Lord Himself came. He himself honored her with His coming and visited her. And He redeemed her from the devil, death, hell and other enemies, not with silver, or gold, or any other perishable price, but with His honest Blood. He honored us in our creation, when He created us in His image and likeness. But he honored us more when He Himself came to us, fallen and perished, in our image, and suffered and died for us. The Lord placed the human soul so dearly that He Himself came to seek it and shed His Blood to acquire it. The more expensive the thing, the higher the price given for it. And since there is and cannot be anything more precious than Christ and His Blood, then from here the preciousness of the human soul is recognized, that for its sake Christ, the Son of God, did not spare Himself and His Blood. Know, Christian, the preciousness of your soul and do not be seduced by the charming ranks and titles of this world, with which the sons of this age are seduced and fall into madness. The honor, glory and dignity of your soul is greater than the glory of the whole world. Your soul is a bride, with Christ, the Son of God, forever betrothed and redeemed by His holy Blood. Understand her nobility. The Noble Groom is the noble and bride associated with Him. You don’t see this nobility and dignity now, but you will see it when the children of God are revealed. “It hasn’t yet been revealed what we will be. We only know that when He is revealed, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). All the nobility, dignity and advantage of this world, collected together, is pus before the honor and nobility of the human soul. 9) Humility will follow from here. How? Here's how. If the earthly King came to you, a low man, and visited you, and came not invited by you, but of his own free will, you would not be horrified, and, falling in front of him, you would not say: “Who am I that my great Sovereign visited me, low and unworthy?” To us, His poor and lowly servants, not an earthly one, but the Heavenly King, the King of kings and Lord of lords, came and visited us, not at our prayer, but according to His merciful promise, and not only visited, but also suffered suffering and death for us. Humble yourself, Christian, seeing such condescension towards you from your King, your God and your Lord, bow down, fall before Him and say to Him with fear and humility: “Who am I, earth and ashes, a sinner and an unworthy servant, that my Lord and my God came to me? But His unparalleled goodness deigned to do so! Glory to His goodness, glory to His love for mankind and immeasurable generosity!” 10) We see how our Lord humbled himself for us. Let us, Christians, humble ourselves, for His sake and for our own sake. For His sake - since nothing is so pleasant and kind to Him as our humility. For our own sake - since nothing is more useful to us than humility, since “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). He did not abhor us, vile and sinful slaves. We also do not disdain brethren similar to ourselves, although inferior to us, looking at that living image of humility. That is, let the masters treat their slaves, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the glorious and the vile, the wise and the foolish, the learned and the unlearned, treat as their own brethren, and let no one despise the other. This is what our kindred nature requires. He did not despise us, vile and humiliated, and we, vile, vile, and humiliated, will not despise the humiliated. All of us, every single person, by nature and our nature, are beggars, wretched, poor and damned, from the prince and nobleman to the simple peasant. Why should the poor despise the poor, when the Lord and King of glory did not despise us, the vile and the poor? 11) Since we cannot adequately thank Christ for His highest kindness to us, and He wants nothing more than our salvation (for this he came into the world, and suffered, and died), then let us try to be saved by His grace and thereby please Him. In the future life, through all endless eternity, we will sing to Him with His Father and the Holy Spirit a song of thanksgiving, praise and glorification. Amen. Translation by P. Yungerov – Editorial office of “The ABC of Faith” You might be interested in: