24. Слово в день Святой Пасхи (Чувства, возбуждаемые пением Пасхального канона: ненависть ко всей нечистоте страстей и грехов, ревность о славе воскресшего Господа и всецелое в Нем упование)

“Thy Resurrection, O Christ the Savior, the angels sing in heaven, and grant us on earth to glorify You with a pure heart.” On the Holy and Great Week of Easter. Stichera on the Procession Now, brethren, we have a feast of holidays and a triumph of celebrations—a time of praise and hymns. Now the Lord has surprised His mercy upon us. His resurrection proclaims to all the end of punishment, remission of sins, justification, sanctification, redemption, adoption and inheritance of heaven: God on earth - man in heaven, all in union. Now it has become obvious that the ancient warfare has ceased, that the Divine has been reconciled with our nature, the devil has been put to shame, death has been bound, paradise has been opened and great hope for the future has been resurrected. What can compare with such benefits and promises? Come, let us rejoice in the Lord, let us compose a song to the Savior - our God. But with what and from what will we compose a song? Angels sing in heaven and cannot help but sing. Like the rays from the sun, like the fragrance from the crin (lily), so is the song from the lips of the Angels. The forces of their being are in perfect harmony, like the strings of a well-ordered Psalter. Living, they set them in motion and, living, they sing. Is it the same with us? Our forces are upset - in struggle and confusion, and at the same time will our singing resemble singing? How fitting, then, to celebrate the triumph of the Resurrection with a prayerful song to the Risen One about the gift of singing: “Grant us on earth with a pure heart to glorify Thee!” The Prophet David, beginning a song to the Savior glorified by the Resurrection, speaks about the birth of this song: “My heart will vomit out the word of goodness” (Ps. 44: 2). His song flowed so easily! And we have a word, but it may not be a doxology, and we have a heart, but it may not belch out a good word. The heart, for sure, is the closest organ of psalms and spiritual songs, and each of its feelings is the same as the tone in singing: not always, however, the song comes out of it with the same convenience and ease with which breathing occurs in our body; It must always - and sometimes with great effort - be pre-tuned so that in it praise can be born, matured and poured out. What feelings should we arouse in our hearts, so that from their fusion a song worthy of the glory of the Risen Lord can be formed? We already have a song of praise and, together with the Church, we repeat it - a song in which, through the praise of the Lord, one cannot fail to notice what filled the spirit that composed it. Here, in almost the first words, we hear: let us purify the feelings - not the external, no doubt, feelings of the body, but the internal feelings of the heart. And that's the first thing. Before the Lord, who comes from the grave purest and brightest, how can one appear for praise with a dark heart and an unclean soul! We wash, renew and whiten our clothes when we need to appear before a noble person, for fear of offending him with indecent appearance. For the Lord, Who is the God of our heart and demands our heart as a godly offering, out of the same feeling of fear, if not out of love, we must change, whiten and purify the feelings of the heart, human - to man, and divine - to God. And why, in the person of the Risen Lord, are all the blessings of redemption so majestically and amazingly offered to our faith and love, if not in order to arouse and strengthen in us the obligation - Not to return to sins in which we are forgiven, to abstain from unrighteousness when justified, not to be taken into captivity when redeemed, not to attract a curse when it has already been removed, to preserve purity and holiness when we are cleansed and sanctified. True, during the days of Holy Pentecost, everyone purified himself to the best of his ability and diligence in order to enter Bright Week with the leaven of purity and truth, and not with the leaven of malice and wickedness; nevertheless, however, even now it is timely to suggest the purification of spiritual feelings and for the holiness of days that require greater intensity of purity, and especially for those temptations and stumblings that, according to our strange order, we inevitably encounter in such abundance, stumblings from which no outside instructions can protect, except for Christ’s wisdom, sent down to the thirsty and asking, and irreconcilable hostility and hatred towards everything unclean or even only suspected of uncleanness. Only in such leaders does purity receive safe protection and the power not only to ward off strong passions - anger, vanity, intemperance and others, but to move away even from apparently innocent pleasures, entertainments, entertainment gatherings and other things, and instead encourage one to visit the churches of God, God-pleasing institutions and the dwellings of the unfortunate. In the Easter Canon we hear the voice of the Angel to the myrrh-bearing women: “Tetze and preach to the world that the Lord has risen, the one who puts to death” (Ipakoi). Then the Resurrection of Christ was a completely new and unusual subject. To be confident in it, the red feet of those who preached the gospel and preaching lips with miraculous power were needed. Nowadays in the Christian world the truth of the Resurrection of Christ is so undoubted and universal that oral preaching about it seems completely unnecessary and we do not arouse faith, but only enjoy the common faith when we repeat mutual greetings: Christ is risen - truly risen. With all this, even now among us it is not only decent, but also necessary, to preach a different kind of preaching, preaching not from the mouth, but from deeds and life, which, without saying a word about the Resurrection, by the very fact that it combines the power of the Risen One, more convincingly assures us of the truth of the Resurrection than any word. This silent sermon is exactly like how fragrant flowers announce themselves. We sometimes don’t see them themselves, but when we pass by the place where they grow, we immediately conclude from the smell alone: ​​this or that color is sure to grow here. Or again: a clean stream flows quietly and calmly; but by the same token, it reflects the sky in itself, and we look into the water of a stream, but see the sky. This is how the one who portrays the life of Christ in his life preaches about the Risen Savior. That is why in the Holy Scriptures they are called the fragrance of Christ, or those in whom Christ was imagined, or who have put on Christ, or even more so, those who no longer live for this themselves, but Christ lives in them, as if their entire life was sacrificed by the life of Christ. Therefore, the voice of the Angel: “preach to the world” in relation to us means the same thing: live so that your whole life is one word: Christ is risen, and so that, looking at you, the whole world, both Christian and non-Christian, says: truly Christ is risen, because apparently he lives in this or that, in this or that, powers are apparently working about him. Is it necessary to explain further that the basis of such a life is zeal for the glory of the Risen Lord through imitation of Him and assimilation of the power of His Resurrection. It is also sung in the Sunday song on behalf of all of us: “We sing and glorify Thy Resurrection: for Thou art our God, do we know no other to Thee, we call Thy name” (Easter Canon). This expresses the feeling of complete peace in the Savior. And how natural it is, especially now! If some beneficent person took in a poor orphan, raised him and educated him, adopted him and gave him a place of honor, without, however, abandoning his love and his protection for him, then this orphan in relation to his benefactor would not constantly retain one feeling: he is everything to me; with him I am as safe as in a wall and am not afraid of evil; his protective love will remove everything unpleasant before I know about it. In the Risen Jesus Christ, man - the poorest stranger on earth - is accepted by God, delivered from sin, hell, death, the devil, adopted by God, honored by the deification of his nature. Shouldn’t he also have the same feelings in his soul in relation to the Risen Lord? “My Lord and my God: do I not know and are not disposed to know otherwise? In You, You alone, I rest entirely. I am Yours, and You, O Lord, are my Lord; I’m not afraid of what evil will do to me, whole darkness of evil people: neither hell, nor death, nor the prince of darkness dare to approach me. I take refuge under the canopy of your wings and rejoice in a sense of security.” So a child in the hands of his mother is not afraid of the whole world and does not expect any evil. Blessed be God, who gave us birth to a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If curse and sin are destroyed, if death is trampled upon, if hell is destroyed and the head of the ancient enemy is erased, then what else is there to fear? If so much power has been revealed, will the Lord after this reduce His beneficent right hand? Here's a few of many! We extracted from the Easter song only three feelings: hatred of all the impurity of passions and sins, zeal for the glory of the Risen Lord and complete repose in Him. And many more could be found indicating how one should set one’s heart for worthy praise of the Lord; but these three are enough to understand the complete image of the mood: even from them alone a harmonious and divine song can be composed. It is not difficult to notice how these feelings correspond to the different tones of a well-arranged Psalter. There is also a lower tone here: this is hostility towards everything contrary to the purity and lightness of the Risen One - hostility that resides within; There is also a middle one: this is zeal for the glory of the Risen One through the depiction of His properties in one’s life, zeal that passes fearlessly across the earth; there is also the highest: this is repose in the Risen One, reaching to heaven and passing into the interior - behind the veil. It is not difficult to notice how all of them are necessary for a harmonious song. Where there is no one, there the Psalter is upset and the singing becomes unworthy of celebration: without hostility towards the unclean it will be goat-crying, without zeal for the glory of the Lord it will be a clanging cymbal and an ugly confusion of tones; without rest in Him it is thunder, which is heard only on earth. So only the soul, filled with all these feelings, now composes within itself a harmonious Angelic song to the Risen One. Having fixed her attentive thought on the Divine image of the Risen One, she accepts Him with a pure heart in proportionate fullness and integrity; having clothed herself, as it were, in this wonderful image, she no longer wants to appear to the world otherwise, as in Him, and walks the earth as the likeness of the Risen One; and through repose in Him, he rises from the earth, stands in the choir of Angels and with them, in the likeness of the heavenly powers, sings: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tombs. Amen. You might be interested in: