31. Слово на Преображение Господне (Своим Преображением Господь показывает до какой славы возводит он в себе человеческое естество, но преображение внутреннего человека невозможно без Божественной благодати, которая дается в святых таинствах)

Celebrating the Transfiguration of the Lord, we undertake to assimilate its meaning and depict its meaning within ourselves. It was not for himself that the Lord revealed through the transfiguration the glory of His Divinity in humanity, as the Glorious One from time immemorial. He wanted to show to what glory He raises human nature within himself, and through it every person: the glory of transfiguration is our glory in the Lord Jesus Christ. He seems to be telling us: this is what you will all be like! The word of the Lord is true! Truly, all who believe in His name are destined to be so. But we will appear as such after the second coming of Christ, after the resurrection of all and the restoration of all things (renewal of the universe), we will appear when we find ourselves worthy of it. The question now is, how can we become worthy of this?! – It is necessary in this life to be transformed internally in order to perceive in the future the glory in which the Lord revealed His humanity in the transfiguration. This is what, after this, may all our concern and all our care be about—being built up “according to the inner man” (Rom. 7:22), being transformed in him “from glory to glory... by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). There is an inner or hidden person in us, as you know. We heard, of course, how the Apostle Peter said to the wives: “Let them not have the outward appearance of braiding their hair, or overlaying themselves with gold, or wearing garments of beauty, but rather let them be the hidden person of the heart, in the uncorruption of a meek and quiet spirit, which is of great value in the sight of God” (1 Pet. 3:3-4). Or as the Apostle Paul says elsewhere: I pray that you may be strengthened in your inner man by the Spirit of God (Eph. 3:16). It is this hidden man that we will raise from glory to glory. I am the Light that has come into the world, says the Lord. This light is the light of truth, brought by Him to earth, the light of the knowledge of the Divine. Our mind faded and darkness became. The Lord comes and enlightens him. When falsehood enters the mind instead of truth, it becomes darkened, and when truth returns to it again, it becomes enlightened and enters into its glory. The glory of the mind is the knowledge of truth. The more he assimilates the truth, the more he ascends from glory to glory. – Do you therefore want to elevate your mind to the glory of transfiguration? – Fill it with the truth that the Lord brought to earth. You know what this truth is. It is explained to us by the Creed and interpreted by the Catechism. She confesses that God exists - and is trinity in Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit - the Trinity is consubstantial and indivisible; that God created the world with His Word, provides for it and for every creature in it, and especially for man; that besides this visible world there is another, invisible world of incorporeal spirits, some of which have fallen and fight against God in bitterness; that we were created for bliss, but, having transgressed the commandment through the inspiration of the spirit of malice, we have fallen from our ancestors, and we are in misery according to the righteous judgment of God; that God showed boundless mercy to us, deigning God the Son to descend to earth, incarnate and suffer for us, that this Lord, having justified us by death on the cross, opened the entrance to us to the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit; that this Spirit, after the Ascension of the Lord into heaven, poured out on the holy apostles, and through them on all humanity, established the Holy Church on earth - our healer, enlightener and sanctifier; that whoever, united with the Church, like a member with a body, walks in its spirit, only walks in truth and prepares for himself a blessed eternity; that death separates the soul from the body, which after the resurrection will be united again and will either bliss or suffer forever, judging by how someone acted on earth. Here are the truths! Whoever assimilates them one after another, drives away lie after lie, darkness after darkness, and enters more and more into the realm of light. And whose mind is filled with all the truth and is so combined with it and imbued with it that it not only does not allow any thought to the contrary, but, on the contrary, subordinates every thought and all of its mental work to it and tests it with it, he drives away all the darkness from himself and becomes completely bright and luminous. His mind is “the mind of Christ,” according to the Apostle (1 Cor. 2:16). He is transformed from human to Divine, and from darkness clothed in light, he shines within himself, and enlightens everyone around him. This is the only way to renew our minds in the spirit (Eph. 4:23). Therefore, be transformed by the renewal of your mind (Rom. 12:2), knowing that all other teachings are, according to the Apostle, the conversations of evil talkers, corrupt in mind, deceived and deceiving (1 Tim. 6, 5, 2 Tim. 3, 8; Tit. 1, 10). Let's move on. – The Wise One says that God created a just man, or, as Macarius the Great explains, adorned him with every virtue: the fear of God, humility, meekness, abstinence, love, and so on. When man heeded the advice of the serpent, at the same time he took into himself the seed of selfish malice, which, having grown, produced thorns of passions that drowned out virtues. Every virtue was overshadowed and drowned out by the opposite passion; and man became violent instead of meek, proud instead of humble, hater and envious instead of loving, pretentious and selfish instead of sociable, and so on. He was bright with the light of righteousness and holiness and became darkened by malice and passions. The Lord came to restore our first kindness (inner perfection), and this is what he commands: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the patient. Throw away, he says, the passions that dishonor and darken you, and you will be blessed. Restore within yourself the purity of character in which the forefather was blessed and the holy inhabitants of heaven are blessed. “Be holy,” says the Lord, “I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16). And there is nothing superfluous or exaggerated here, for we are in the image of the One who created us. This image is damaged in its fall. We need to restore it. How? – Just like artists restore damaged paintings. They guess the shapes of the parts, look for colors, as they were in the originals, and thus restore, part by part, the whole picture, as it was in the beginning. Passions came instead of good dispositions and disfigured us. It is necessary to restore good dispositions that are opposite to passions. So let’s extinguish anger and embrace meekness, suppress selfishness and restore love, drive away envy and strengthen ourselves in rejoicing, let’s stop judging and let’s praise, let’s stop appropriating and let’s give, and so on. Thus, uprooting passion after passion and rooting virtue after virtue, we will return to our former purity, “putting off the old man, putting on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and the likeness of the truth” (Eph. 4:22, 24), “putting on Christ, walking in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). The light of truth and the purity of holiness and dispassion are two sides of the transformation of our inner being. We cannot do either one or the other on our own. For this reason, Divine grace is promised and given to us in the Holy Sacraments. Its spark lies in holy baptism. Its fieryness is nourished throughout life in holy repentance and communion, and is warmed and inflated by faith and good deeds, participation in all the prayerful and sanctifying rites of the Church. When a spark, falling into a flammable substance, is fanned by the wind, it soon turns into a flame. So in us, when the spark of grace, received by us in baptism and maintained in repentance and communion, is kindled by us through labors in piety and goodness, it shines not only within us, but also outside. Fire, says the Lord, I came to the earth and as if I wanted it to kindle as soon as possible. This fire is the fire of grace of the All-Holy Spirit, descending in the form of fiery tongues, and a spiritual fire that warms the hearts of those who receive Him. You know it is. And be jealous of the storage and strength of this fire. When there is this fire, then no work is difficult and everything is done easily. It brings peace, purity and strength, and is the same as the wings of birds. A bird flies into the air on its wings, and within us the blessed fire delights our spirit with grief, and not only in thought, but in deed, elevates us to Divine perfection. Fire, melting impure ore, extracts from it pure noble metal: thus the fire of the Spirit cleanses our impure nature. Even more, he dissolves with us. Just as the noblest metal, poured into copper, imparts to this latter its purest and most pleasant sound, so grace, having dissolved with our spirit, imparts to it its Divine purity, both internally recognized and externally manifested. This is the way to transform! – Assimilate the tenets of faith and saturate your mind with them; to eradicate passions and inculcate good dispositions, and, more importantly, to kindle grace in oneself with the grace-filled means contained in the Church. This is how our inner hidden person will mature and transform. This is our John - gracious, James - righteous, Peter - zealous in the faith. This is how the law and the prophets - Moses and Elijah - are fulfilled in us! And what an end! - The one about whom they spoke to the Lord. Having suffered and suffered in labors to please God, enter into glory. Just as beautiful butterflies, before they fly out into the air, are closed in balls that are ugly to look at, so our inner man, when he acts as indicated, matures, despite the rough shell of the flesh and the unseemly external environment. The time will come - he will shed his plump flesh, be torn out from the external bonds in which the course of this life holds him, and the mountain will soar - to God, into the choir of Angels and saints, so that he can remain there forever in joy and joy until the future general resurrection, when complete endless bliss begins. May the Lord help you to be so that, having been transformed here, you will be worthy to enter into His glory in the next century. Amen. 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