21. Слово в Великий пяток (размышления перед Плащаницей. Что значит приобщиться Христовым страстям? Три способа сораспятия Господу)

I think there is no need to explain to you, brethren, what a real sacred rite signifies. You know that when, after the suffering of the night and the torment of the day, the Lord at the ninth hour gave up His spirit to God the Father, everyone left Him, and the soldiers who came to break the legs of the crucified no longer found anyone on Golgotha, around the cross of the Lord. Everyone went away to prepare for Easter, and the peace of the Divine Sufferer was undisturbed. Moved by faith and love, Joseph and Nicodemus come to pay due honor to the Lord, remove His most pure body from the cross, wrap it in shrouds, cover it with fragrant ointments - like a king, in fulfillment of the prophecy: “And His honor will rest” (Is. 11:10). This is what is remembered at this hour! What a touching picture! Joseph and Nicodemus and some of the wives stand in reverent silence, with hearts filled with sorrow, at the prepared body of the Lord, amid the silence surrounding them. Come, brethren, imitating them, let us surround the face of the Lord before us, wounded and martyred, let us delve into these wounds with meditation and listen to what this blood is telling us, crying out more than the blood of Abel? Broadcasting it a little verbosely! The Lord had previously combined it all - in one saying: “I have given you an image... I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 13, 15, 14:6). Behold the true path for you - the path of suffering and sorrow! Behold your true life - the life in the cross and crucifixion. “If they do this in a harsh tree, what will happen!” (Luke 23:31). If I, your Lord and God, suffer so much for your sake, how can you manage without illness and sorrow, for your own sake? “Whoever wants to save his soul will destroy it; and whoever loses his soul for the sake of Me and the Gospel, he will save it” (Mark 8:35). So, brethren, just as much as it was necessary for our salvation to suffer for the Lord, in order to receive this salvation it is necessary for us to suffer for the Lord, “to share in the passions of Christ... to be crucified with Christ” (1 Pet. 4:13); Gal.2, 19). Consider the power of these words: to partake of Christ’s passion, to be crucified with Christ! We are already crucified through suffering, already under the cross, which is placed on us at birth and weighs on us until death. But alone, in itself, this cross is a murderous cross of execution, and when joined to the cross of the Lord, it becomes a saving yoke that gives life. This is the secret of life and salvation! And this is what the Lord who stands before us now calls us to: join in My passion, be crucified with Me! Ask: how to do this? The answer is not difficult. Turn to the history of the Lord’s sufferings, and on the very way of the cross you will see true participants in His sorrows, true participants in His Cross and crucifixion! There the wives, torn at heart, cry and sob; further, Simon of Cyrene carries the very cross of the Lord to Golgotha; on Golgotha, the prudent thief is crucified with the Lord - and through faith, his crucifixion through guilt turns into a crucifixion of justification, into a saving co-crucifixion with the Lord. Here are symbols for us of communion with the passion of the Lord, symbols of participation in His suffering and crucifixion. Other participants in the Lord's death on the cross are also visible there: judges, torturers, crucifiers, blasphemers; but may the Lord deliver us from such participation, for in this there is not justification and life, but condemnation and death. And we are like this when we forget the Lord, indulge in carelessness and indulge passions. But, brethren, in these days, in this hour, before the presence of the Lord who was martyred for our sake, let us be zealous to show ourselves as partakers of His Cross for salvation, and not for destruction. So, let us follow the women who are sick and have compassion for the Lord. Let us go through the entire chain of the Lord’s sufferings, from the disturbance of His spirit at the Last Supper to the surrender of this spirit to the Father on Golgotha. Let us go with Him into the Garden of Gethsemane and be overcome by His prayerful languor. Let us spend the night with Him, this darkest night, in the house of Annas and Caiaphas. Let us perceive the whole sea of ​​His suffering from morning until nine o'clock, in Pilate's praetorium, through the hailstones, on the way of the cross, on Golgotha ​​- in the minutes of crucifixion and after the crucifixion. Let us not only mentally trace all this, but let us take into our very hearts the entire feat of the Lord on the Cross, transfer His sufferings to ourselves, suffer His illnesses, let us bring ourselves to the point where we feel as if we ourselves are being wounded, our hearing is torn by blasphemy, our heart is wounded by the severity of torment. When, in this way, we imprint the suffering of the Lord not only in the mind and heart, but, as it were, in the body itself, then there will be in us true sorrow, sorrow, compassion for the Lord, following the example of the wives who were sick at the sight of the suffering Lord, crying and sobbing. However, we shouldn’t stop there. We need to go further. And the wives were torn by their hearts, but what did they hear? – “Weep for yourself” (Luke 23:28). And this is what we still need to add to our heartfelt pain for the suffering Lord: weep for ourselves! What is the meaning of crying? The fact is that these plagues are the work of our hands, that it is we who are to blame for this torment and this death. Our wrong thoughts and plans, our frivolity, and sometimes freethinking wove this crown of thorns; the unfaithfulness of our hearts to God and our all-round addictions pierced these ribs, our untruths and wanderings along the paths of sin pierced these hands and feet with nails, our carnal knowledge of all kinds covered these shoulders and the whole body with wounds. No matter how strange such an accusation seems, no matter how far our conscience is from it, unfortunately, no matter how ready our heart is to deny it from ourselves, it is true. For do we have sins? - A lot of them. Who protects us from the arrows of truth and the wrath of God? - These are the passions of the Lord. To whom do we turn with a prayer for mercy? - To the crucified Lord. Why is permission given to us for sins? - For the sake of death on the cross. Consequently, all our sins were here, on this cross, they all increased its severity and wounded the Lord. Who after this will blame himself for His suffering and death? We ourselves confess this, although without a clear thought and precise feeling, every time we sing: “he was crucified for us... and suffered and buried,” every time we hear: “he was ulcerated for our sins and tormented for our iniquities” (Is. 53:5). For ours - for others'? - No, for ours, precisely for those that each of us now recognizes as ours. And this is exactly what we need to add to the illnesses of our hearts about the suffering Lord - the illness that by our sins we increased the severity of His suffering; It is necessary here before the face of the Lord to confess with contrition to each of us: in these ulcers, Lord, there is also my part. Don't be afraid of the weight of guilt! This self-condemnation is the source of justification. By assimilating guilt in the Lord's suffering, one also appropriates their justifying power. Therefore, at the very minute that we say in our hearts: we too are guilty, Lord, of these Thy sufferings, forgiveness and permission will be spoken to us in heaven. Just don’t forget to add one more necessary word to this, namely: we will not be guilty. Let us no longer offend You, Lord, hurt You with our sins with untruths, or secondly (later, in the future) crucify You with iniquities. We will keep our hearts faithful to You alone, we will decorate our heads with God-mindedness and good thoughts, we will not stretch out our hands to theft and offense, we will not allow our feet to wander along the paths of vice, we will not give indulgence to the flesh in its demands for sensual pleasures, we will sacrifice all of ourselves to You alone, who sacrificed for us (who sacrificed Himself). Otherwise, what good will it do to say with the tongue: guilty, guilty, but with deeds inflict wounds on the Lord and crucify Him! This is what the example of wives brings us to! They, looking at the suffering Lord, were torn at heart and cried. It is good for us to have compassion in our hearts for the suffering Lord, but not completely. At that time, it was excusable for wives to limit themselves to grief and crying, although they also received a due reminder at the same time. But this is completely unexcusable for us, because all the ways of justification are already open to us. We need to go a little further with an aching heart - to reach a crushing condemnation of ourselves in this very suffering and conclude with a decisive intention - not to offend and no longer crucify the Lord with our sins. And here is the first way of communion with Christ’s passions, co-crucifixion with Him! When the Lord blesses us to set a firm intention not to sin and to walk steadily along the path of righteousness, then we will enter the rite of Simon - we will bear the cross of the Lord on ourselves, we will accept His good yoke, heavy and light. And here the second way of communion with Christ’s passion and co-crucifixion with the Lord will be revealed to us - patience in the good deeds that are obligatory for us and patience with the sorrows and deprivations associated with them. When you think about this method, you can’t help but be amazed at how carefully the Lord takes care of making us, as surely as possible, as inevitably as possible, partakers of His cross and His passion! He surrounded us with crosses on all sides, placed them on all the paths of our lives, so that we cannot take a step without encountering them. All that remains for us is to use them appropriately in order to become partakers of the cross of the Lord. Indeed, let's look around, brothers! Each of us is bound by his own circle of responsibilities: now to the Church, now to the powers that be, now to society, and others, in addition, to the family. The fulfillment of these duties is a circle of good deeds required of us by the Lord. But conscientious execution requires work and patience from us, so as not only to start well, but also to continue and bring it to the perfect end. How much patience do parents need to raise their children as they should, a judge, to conduct court cases righteously, employees, to serve conscientiously, to rulers, to rule according to God. For a long time, for those who serve the Church and those who come to it, for teachers and students, for soldiers and military leaders, for servants and masters, for those who sell and buy, for every rank and status in general, their own measure of labor and patience is inevitable in order to conduct the affairs obligatory for them in accordance with the intention and command of the Lord. And on top of this there are so many troubles, insults, obstacles, misunderstandings, failures, losses, mistakes and falls, all of which again require your patience. It is this patience in the labors and sorrows that are inevitable when performing the tasks that are obligatory for us, and there is the second way of communion with the passions of the Lord, the method of saving co-crucifixion with Him. Not always, however, but when? - When we realize that our duty, that the circle of our responsibilities is the good yoke of Christ, is a cross imposed by the Lord on us, - when we conduct all our affairs and each individual task in the thought that this is bearing the cross of the Lord - when, moreover, we endure all the labors and sorrows complacently for the sake of the Lord, for the sake of the sufferer. Only through patience in this spirit will our labors and sorrows become part of the sorrows and sufferings of the Lord and serve us as co-crucifixion with Him. And without this, they will only exhaust, deplete and exhaust us, not at all contributing to the salvation of our soul, and perhaps only some temporary, and even unreliable, benefit. So, not for the sake of honor or benefits, not to gain a name or achieve contentment, be zealous to conduct your affairs correctly, but for the sake of the crucified Lord; For His sake, begin every task, be inspired by the memory of His Cross in completing it, and attribute everything completed to the glory of God - and you will always be a partaker of the Cross of the Lord. When the evangelist calls you to worship, force yourself to go to the Church of God, where Golgotha ​​is, remembering that the Lord went to the place of execution under the cross. When you decide a court case, spare no effort in sorting everything out in order to decide the case correctly, remembering that the Lord was condemned to death by a crooked court. When you sell, try to set the right measure and price, remembering how the Truth itself was sold for nothing by the greed of Judas. Equally: if anyone weakens under the weight of his obligatory deeds, turn to the crucified Lord, who completed the work of our salvation, and say: the Lord endured so much for my sake, should I not endure this little labor? When we set ourselves up in this way, then every deed we do will bring us into suffering with the Lord, into communion of His passions, into co-crucifixion with Him, and as every minute we have some kind of work to do, then every minute we will be partakers of His cross. And this is what the word of the Lord means: “in your patience you will win your souls” (Luke 21:19): save your souls by conscientiously conducting the deeds obligatory for you for My glory; Let each of you say within himself: I walk this path of the duty that lies upon me and complacently endure everything that I encounter along this path for the sake of the Lord, who suffered and died for me. “And as I live... I live by faith the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). This is the second way of sharing Christ’s passion, a more sincere method than the first, but not yet final. He will already lead us to the most essential communion with the passion of the Lord. According to the rank of a prudent thief - to the most sincere co-crucifixion with Him, through the crucifixion of the heart, always inciting evil to us and ready to desecrate and destroy every good deed of ours with the passionate thoughts emanating from it. In fact, brothers, shall we offer only the external cross to the Lord? Shall we limit ourselves to just touching His cross externally? - No. It is not enough to just carry the cross to Golgotha; we must ourselves ascend to it, we ourselves must be crucified on it. “They who are Christ's are the flesh crucified with passions and lusts” (Gal.5:24) teaches the Apostle. “Son, give me a heart” (Proverbs 23:26), says the Lord. What do we have in our hearts? – Pride, vanity, greed, hatred, envy, anger, voluptuousness, lust and every evil thing3. Is this the kind of heart to give to the Lord? This is a real robber. We must crucify him; it is necessary to bring the cross inside the heart and nail this robber nesting there on it, nail him through guilt and by faith in the Lord turn this executional crucifixion into the saving co-crucifixion of Christ. How? - Anger has come - extinguish it; lust is aroused - kill it; covetousness attracts - cut it off; envy tempts - suppress it; condemnation instigates - do not heed it; vanity is instilled - push it away. Thus cutting off every bad thought, every evil passion, we will strike our heart with illness, inflict wounds on it, wound it and crucify it. For what? - For God's sake. This is co-crucifixion with the Lord. But this internal warfare will then require special feats of self-mortification, it will require fasting, vigil, prayerful work, attention to oneself, renunciation of one’s will, filial submission to another. Let us also apply this, knowing that only from one and the other, that is, from deeds and internal warfare, mutually intersecting, is an internal cross, saving for us, made up, on which co-crucifixion with the Lord is worthily accomplished and living communion with His passion is given. This self-crucifixion is what the Lord actually expects from us. It was for his sake that He came into the world, for his sake he suffered, for his sake he endured free passions, crucifixion and death: “after the first life of ours, put off for us the old man, which is corrupting in the lusts of deceitful desires... and put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and in the excellence of the truth” (Eph. 4:22, 24). Blessed is the soul that can say with the Apostle Paul: “You have been crucified with Christ. Now no one lives, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:19-20). This is the third way of co-crucifixion with the Lord, the final one. In the first method, only the beginning of this co-crucifixion is laid down, in the second it is actively prepared, in the third it is accomplished by the deed itself. This is what the Lord obliges us to do now when he calls us: join in My passion, be crucified with Me. Let us give, brethren, an answer worthy of this call! Now stand each one before the face of the Lord, wounded and tormented, and, looking at this head, wounded by thorns, say: I bear the image of Your sufferings, imprinted in my mind and heart, O Lord, and I am sick with them; I recognize my guilt in this very suffering and I firmly intend not to hurt You with my sins and not to crucify You with them. Kissing these nail-scarred feet, make a covenant with the Lord: with patience I will unswervingly walk the path of duty and good deeds that You require of me, despite any labors and troubles associated with it; Inspired by Your deed on the cross and turning everything into Your glory, I will complacently carry this cross You have placed on me, and cheerfully walk with it after You. Kissing these breasts, pierced with a spear, give your word to the Lord: from now on I will stand at the entrance of my heart and will mercilessly strike at every wrong movement that arises in it, I will crucify my heart, despite any illness it has, no matter any of its languor. Only then will our present sacred act have a meaning that is not contrary to God and not useless for us, only then will we do what the Lord wants from us, commanding the Church to offer His face to the gaze and honor of the faithful in such extreme humiliation, with such terrifying signs of our torment and suffering. Without this, won’t our worship in some way resemble the mockery of those who, walking around the cross, shouted: wow! “They ruined the church!.. save yourself and her” (Matthew 27:40; Luke 23:39). Let us be jealous of this, brothers, and let us be jealous as much as our own salvation is dear to each one. For do you hear what the Lord says? - “Be in Me, and I in you. Just as the rod cannot produce fruit for itself unless it is on the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, and you are the birth” (John 15:4–5). The power of this parable is clear! We are dead; we need to be grafted into the Lord and receive life from Him. The Lord is the only tree of life in the midst of the earth. But this tree is the tree of the cross - the Lord, martyred, wounded, crucified. How can one be grafted onto Him without compassion, without co-crucifixion with Him?! So, if anyone thirsts to taste life from the Lord, thirst first for sorrows, sufferings and crucifixions for His sake! Methods at hand, samples in front of your eyes. Choose whichever one you want, just offer compassion to the Lord, be crucified with Him. Either be heartbroken for Him with your wives, or bear His cross with Simon, or be crucified with Him with the robber. These are the only turns of a gardener's knife with which a gardener cuts off a wild branch, cuts a fruit tree and plants a branch alien to life into it. These are the threads with which this graft is tied to a living tree, and together a healing ointment, with which the painful wound of the graft heals. There are no other ways of grafting into the Animal Tree (Tree of Life); without them there is neither life nor salvation. Why leave them if we sincerely seek life and salvation? Are you having trouble? – Start with the easiest thing, start with thinking about the suffering of the Lord. Perhaps they will soften their hearts and give birth to a sickness for the suffering Savior, and from this the transition is not far to a crushing condemnation of themselves in their sins that hurt the Lord, and to a decisive intention not to crucify Him with their sins. Then the first step on the path of righteousness will be bearing the cross of the Lord; after several experiences of conscientious performance of duty, the deceit of the heart will be revealed and itself will lead us into battle with passions and lusts. That's our whole way of the cross! How simple and easy everything is! Meanwhile, we always have at hand so many means and incentives to conduct this business as successfully as possible! The crucified Lord is prescribed to us everywhere. With the first awakening from sleep, we place the sign of the cross on ourselves, each bow is made with the same sign, we look at the icon, we rarely do not see a cross there, there is a cross on the church, there are crosses everywhere in the church, in the days of the week - Wednesday and Friday, in the hours of the day the first, third, sixth, ninth proclaim to us the sufferings of the Lord. This is how the crucified Lord is ordained for us! Is it worth a lot of work to carry our thoughts a little further with this, to grieve for the Lord, to condemn ourselves and to give our word: I will not? How healingly would the Lord’s passion be applied to us if every glance at the cross, every sign of the cross were accompanied by such turns of heart and will?! As for our affairs - I mean those that are obligatory for us by duty, and not the deeds required by the customs of the world, which are not the essence of God - as for deeds, whether we want it or not, we must lead them and we do. How much does it cost to drive away laziness, apply conscientiousness, sanctify with good intentions, dedicate everything to the crucified Lord and strengthen yourself with the power of the cross of the Lord? What a wealth of spiritual blessings would then be given to us every minute from the all-generous God! But is our heart with passions far from us and is it such that one can not notice its malice? How much we suffer from passions - and don’t they themselves ask to be crucified! How much does it cost to go inside and tell them: shut up? We refer to weakness and powerlessness. But, brothers, the Lord is near. The reason is not weakness, but reluctance to deny oneself. And from indulgence we destroy ourselves with the poison of passions, and we often destroy our deeds, which were worth long labor and patience, for a deed of passion is already a lost deed for eternity. Thus, everything around us encourages and encourages us to enter into compassion and co-crucifixion with the Lord. It is incomprehensible what makes us shy away and refuse! Does anyone really think of placing the entire work of his salvation on the Lord alone, but he himself does not even want to touch this burden with his finger? Let him save as he pleases. Save yourself and us. Ah, brothers, the Lord has so much love for us that He would be ready to do this for us. But you can't. Sorrow must be brought into the Kingdom. The narrow path only leads to life. Look at the apostles: they always wore the death of the Lord on their bodies. Why? – Because it is impossible otherwise for the life of Jesus to appear in our dead flesh (2 Cor. 4:1-11). Look at the martyrs, they all sing: I love You, my Bridegroom, and I seek You, I suffer... for what? - Yes, and I live with You. And why did all the saints enter the Kingdom? - For being convinced of blood, and the blood of Lambs. Who do we want to belong to without wounds in the heart, without a drop of blood on the body? The Lord arranged everything for the saving communion of us with His passion. He planted the Tree of the Cross in the middle of the earth and from it he drew, as it were, threads to each of us - these are the methods we showed - in order to attract us to it, to instill and revive us. But refusing to co-crucifixion with the Lord, we carelessly cut off these threads, speaking as if to the Lord; Depart from us, we do not want to lead Your ways. What happens to us? - The same as with a small boat, which, while attached to a large ship, is not afraid of the waves, but when separated from it, it perishes in the depths of the sea. And that's what we are!! Ah, brothers, now the traces of this renunciation of the cross and co-crucifixion with the Lord are still invisible. But there will be a time when this cross will be taken from the earth and will no longer appear as a lightener and life-giver, but as an accuser. What will happen then? “Then something wondrous will happen before our eyes.” All crusaders will be attracted by this cross, like small particles of iron by a large magnet, and lifted from earth to heaven. What will happen to those who renounce the cross?!! May the Lord deliver us from this fate, bitter and incorrigible! And he will deliver. But when? - When, for the sake of Christ, who suffered for us in the flesh, we arm ourselves with the same thought (See 1 Pet. 4: 1). May we all receive the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who endured the cross and death for our sake. Amen. You might be interested in: