5. Слово на Крещение Господне (Как подобает вести себя крещенным на Крещение Господне? Место языческих обычаев при встрече нового года. О ясновидящей. Надо осознать неотложность дела своего спасения и проявить решимость в устремлении к Господу)

Let us now sing only the glory of God, who appeared in three ways on the Jordan, a glory whose magnificence delights and excites the angelic minds and angelic tongues to sing and spiritual songs. But are you and I fit to take on this holy and heavenly task?! Have you prepared, acquired a stock of God-thought contemplations and blessed utterances, and tuned your soul, like David’s harp, so that on it Davidically could publish the God-moving psalm - to the Son who is baptized, to the Holy Spirit who overshadows Him, and to the Father who bears witness to Him? Whoever is ready, let him sing, enjoying the comforting movements of the heart and the vast contemplations of the mind. And I am forced to turn my words to something else. On the Feast of Epiphany, it is timely to ask the baptized: do you, baptized people, behave in the way that befits the baptized? Do you serve the God whom you promised to serve in baptism? Looking at you, will everyone say: these are the baptized? These are those who have renounced Satan and all his works, and all his ministry, and all his pride. I ask you in advance, don’t be angry. I want to reproach you. I want to reproach you for turning to pagan customs and starting to resort to demons instead of God. These are not just loud words, but the real thing! Remember how many of you celebrated the New Year, and now calmly judge whether this looks like anything Christian!? Play cards until midnight or talk about all sorts of trifles, and at midnight, at the turn of the old and new years, take glasses and spin around - what is this? and is there any meaning here? God, the Lord of time and our life, gave us one year to spend and leads us into another. At the moment of this transition, what is decent? – Raise your hands to heaven and thank the Lord for past mercies and beg Him to extend His favor into the future. Whether you do this specifically in each family, or gather several families together, it is a blessing to welcome the new summer this way. What's the point in fidgeting with glasses? Is our life a joke, and is time a useless thing? If so, then of course there is no better way to celebrate the New Year than with idle talk and dancing. This will set the tone for the whole year. But you yourself don’t think about time and life that way!! What was this done! Do you want to have some fun?! “Isn’t there another time for fun, something less significant?” Yes, and you don’t have so much fun here. No, something else was happening here! What would it be? You will say: the custom has passed. And I will confirm: the custom has passed, and I will add: a custom that is not Christian at all, but pagan, wicked, ungodly. After all, you are looking forward to this moment as a sacred moment, and you are not taking your glasses with the same thoughts as at other times, and you are not turning around in the same spirit as usual. All this is done as some kind of sacred rite. Let us now ask you: what kind of God is performing such a sacred rite among you?! Is it Christ the Savior, who redeemed us, who tasted gall and ocet, whose hands and feet were nailed to our cross for the sake of salvation?! - Of course not. What kind of communication?! What kind of communication between Christ and Belial!?! This does not go to Him, but either to Bacchus - the pagan god of drunken joy, or to Venus - the goddess of carnal unclean pleasures. And behold your gods, new to Israel! Expect from them what you wished for each other; and you have nothing to expect from the true God, because when the Holy Church prayed to Him for the blessing of the new summer, you were not in the church. There was no strength left. They are sacrificed to the pagan gods, or to an empty dream and the flattery of the enemy. What now, and why are your well-wishes? As if you have taken all the blessings into your own hands and are distributing them with a generous hand - one thing to one, another another - without turning to the true God?! This cannot be understood otherwise, except that you have plundered the treasury of God and are disposing of it as you wish, apart from God, the Almighty Ruler of the World, or that all your sweet speeches are childish buffoonery. So, no matter how you look at this custom, you have to say: your praise is unkind. And do not justify yourself by saying that you do not have apostate thoughts. “But this is an apostate thing, but there is no thought about God.” How can we call this if not apostasy? Don’t make the excuse that you don’t know how the custom came to be. How will he come in if you don’t accept him? “Don’t open your house for him, and he won’t come in.” So one wouldn’t let him in, another, a third. And that’s all - he wouldn’t go to anyone. And let him go wherever he wants and not disgrace our city, consecrated by so many saints. This matter, however, is already a thing of the past. You can't turn it back. But you will please the Lord and His saints if, realizing the absurdity of what you have done, you repent and resolve not to submit to such empty customs any longer. It was sad to hear this, but this grief had not yet passed when another came. I heard the other day that some clairvoyant arrived and everyone reached out to her in hopes of finding out from her all the secrets and all the destinies of their lives: what was, what is, and especially what will be. Do you really not have enough Christian understanding to understand the groundlessness of your hope and the fragility of the promises of this deceiver? After all, she promises that she will give an answer to everything you ask. So she insists that she knows everything. And you didn’t remember that this cannot be said about any person. Only God alone knows everything and the one to whom God reveals it. Does God reveal it to her? - Where! To whom God reveals, he will not trade revelations. How can one now completely rely on her stories? He might guess some things, but he will confuse more and hide them in unclear words. After all, the same thing happens here that happened in pagan times in the oracles. The priests, the Pythias, and the idols themselves prophesied. By what power this was accomplished, you can judge by the fact that when the true servant of Christ appeared somewhere, the soothsayers fell silent, and the demons publicly complained about their persecutors and oppressors - Christians. When Christianity spread, the soothsayers fell silent. But now, when Christianity has weakened, they again began to appear in different forms and attract the gullible and disgrace the name of Christ in them. First they opened up in the West, and from there they came to us and now they are collecting tribute from the gullible and superstitious. And it would be good to turn to them - only gullibility. – No, we need to see something more here. This is a betrayal of Christian hope. Ask yourself: who are you turning to and from whom do you expect help? “You might say there is some kind of power here.” “Don’t you know that there is only one true power—the power of God, from which alone one can expect everything.” By turning now to this unknown power, are you not retreating from the one true power? If so, where is it? - Of course, to a false force, opposite to the true force, - or ungodly. I do not undertake to explain to you the state of these soothsayers. In my opinion, it is an extraordinary painful condition, subject to which, as a result of this disorder, in part they themselves see more widely than we do, and in part, or most of them, they are instruments of evil spirits. Demons take advantage of their painful disorder and through them attract the weak to themselves. Demons have lived for a long time and know a lot from the past; They fly everywhere and know what is happening where now, and tell stories through these instruments of theirs. They do not know about the future, but only guess; but just as they tell their questioners much of what was and is true, they are also believed in what they say about the future, although it almost never comes true. This, I believe, is the true source of clairvoyance. Judge now, what are you doing when you turn to clairvoyants? – You reveal your faith to demons. I’m not telling you this, my fortune-telling. Remember what happened in Philippi during the preaching of the Apostle Paul there. There was a certain young woman there, “having an inquisitive spirit,” who “gave much gain from her Lord” (Acts 16:16), guessing and predicting. The Apostle Paul cast out this spirit, saying: I rebuke you in the name of Christ, come out of her. - The spirit came out at that very hour. And the gentlemen, seeing that “the hope of their acquisition had departed,” raised a persecution against the holy Apostle Paul and Silas, who was with him. This is the same kind of clairvoyant who is now beckoning you to her. She has an inquisitive spirit. Its goal is to acquire a lot for oneself or to deliver it to those who carry it. It is of no benefit to you, just a waste of money and desecration of souls by approaching the demonic power and trusting in it. Having looked at this, I am forced to say: your praise is not kind! In one part you have pagan customs that smack of idolatry, and in the other there is a direct appeal to demons. What is this? Have you renounced the name of Christ? Or has the prince of darkness reigned again, driven out by Christ our God? After all, if we were to resurrect a pagan and show him first how we celebrate the New Year, and then how everyone reaches out to the Pythia-soothsayer, he would not find any difference between us and what happened among them. Everything here is ours, he would say. And we served our gods in the same way - with fun and drunkenness, and we went to our soothsayers in the same way. Where is Christ here, and where are the Christians baptized into Christ, who then took such an advantage over us?! Wouldn't his speech be right? - Of course you’re right. Just as one can recognize, for example, a citizen, an official, and a military man by his clothes, so by his customs, deeds, and hopes one can recognize who is of what faith. If you admit many things that are not characteristic of those who believe in the Lord and are baptized in His name, who is to blame if someone else doubts whether you are baptized? Forgive the Lord for the fact that on the bright feast of Epiphany I address you with such reproachful words. I have a duty to say this, and I speak with honor for the sake of the Lord who was baptized and who sanctified us with baptism, with one purpose, so that you look around and remove from your behavior everything that may lie as a black spot on the light clothes that you put on in baptism. Amen. You might be interested in: