6. Слово в неделю по Крещении (Все, что к положению в нас христианской жизни зависит от Благодати Божией, подается тотчас и обновление совершается благодатно, то же, что зависит от нашей свободы, отлагается до возраста, когда человек самостоятельно и самоохотно предает себя Благодати)

Today is the week of Enlightenment, or Epiphany. It is so named not in relation to the Baptism of the Lord, but in relation to the baptism of believers, which in ancient times for adults was performed on the feast of the Epiphany. Therefore, today’s day directly reminds us of our own baptism; it reminds us, of course, not for the sake of idle thoughts, but then to call us to account before our conscience and God for what we have done with the grace of holy baptism. I will help you how to solve this and what we should do as a result. Remember my conversation on Sunday before baptism. There we saw that the believer must come out of the baptismal font zealous exclusively for pleasing God, with a readiness to do anything for the sake of that sacrifice. This heat of zeal for God with love and selflessness constitutes such an integral feature of Christian life that whoever has it lives, whoever does not have it is either dead or frozen and asleep. This is the seed of life and together the life force! It is the fruit of the combination of grace and freedom. Man completely surrenders himself to God's all-action; grace, having come, receives it, fulfills it, combines with it, and from this hidden treasury of life comes a man of renewal, zealous for good works (See Titus 2:14), chosen to be holy and blameless before God in love (See Eph.1:4). When adults are baptized, they really become such immediately after baptism, for they immediately, on their own behalf, represent all the necessary dispositions of the heart to be combined with grace. Regarding those who are baptized as infants, the Divine economy of our salvation was pleased to establish such an order that everything that depends on the grace of God for the beginning of Christian life in us is given immediately and renewal is accomplished by grace, the same thing that depends on our freedom is postponed until the age when a person self-consciously and self-willingly surrenders himself to grace; and then the renewal that took place before, as if independently of him, is assimilated by grace alone to his face and begins to be accomplished jointly by both grace and freedom. Then he, too, is strong by the grace of God, zealous exclusively for Christian pleasing to God with complete self-sacrifice. Everyone knows that up to this moment, so decisive in life, everything almost depends on parents and successors, then on them, and on our freedom, and then on those diverse relationships in life into which an incomprehensible combination of circumstances puts everyone. From the impact of all these influences on our consciousness and freedom and from how we use them, it turns out that for some it is all light, for others it is all darkness, for others it is neither light nor darkness. What I mean by this is that some, after a wonderful childhood and adolescence, having come to consciousness, love Christianity with a strong love and are zealous for it unswervingly, ascending from strength to strength and striving to achieve the fulfillment of Christ in the measure of their age; others soon deviate from the Lord into the path of passions, into slavery to the spirit of the world and its prince and live in oblivion of God and ungodly orders; Still others - I don’t know who they belong to - either to Christ or to the world, outwardly participate in all the orders of Christian life, but turn their thoughts and hearts to another area and place their joy, pleasure and happiness in other objects: these are Christians who do not have the Spirit of Christ. Their concern is not about the Lord, but about one thing: how to live peacefully and comfortably on earth, among all the orders into which the random situation of temporary life places them, without, however, revealing themselves to be alien to the Christian order, or without declaring themselves to be outspoken fighters against God and Christ. So, if now, at the direction of the Holy Church, turning back, we want to conscientiously determine what we are in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we exclusively served in the holy baptism, then some will turn out to be zealous lovers of the Lord and the Christian life, others - devotees of the world and passions of Christ, others - external Christians with a peace-loving heart. To whom of these should I speak now? The first ones do not require a word. We can only, looking after them, glorify the Lord and please them. Blessed are you who have heeded the calling of the Lord. You walk in the light of His face and rejoice in His name every hour, crying out: “My heart is lost in You, God, God of my heart and my God!” (Ps. 73:26). There is no point in extending a word to the latter when they are not here and never will be. They completely strayed onto the path of destruction. We can only regret them and pray. So, my word comes to you, external Christians, without the Spirit of Christ, without a heart completely devoted to the Lord, without zeal to please Him alone; or not to you alone, but to us together, for I am the first from you. What will we tell ourselves? Ah, brothers, let us force ourselves to rise to a sense of fear for ourselves and our eternal fate. We ourselves place ourselves among the true lovers of God - both those who are still here on earth and those who are already in heaven. But it is not hidden from their God-enlightened eyes who we are, and, looking at us, they truly say: these are the people who, it seems, are from us, but are not ours. It seems simple, but what a terrible word, because if we are not theirs, then they are not ours, and nothing more than theirs is ours. It became not our Christ, not ours, all His promises, not our paradise and eternal bliss. And if it’s not ours, do you know what should be ours after this?! See what a disaster! Meanwhile, look around: everything with us is almost Christian, Christian or semi-Christian orders, Christian concepts, Christian speeches, many Christian rules and deeds. What's missing? The Christian heart is missing. It is directed in the wrong direction, its goodness is not in God, but in itself and the world, and its paradise is not in heaven, but on earth. What is missing is this strong, like death, zeal for pleasing God and salvation. It’s as if we fell asleep and froze, and we move only as the flow of life moves us. Let us arouse this jealousy in ourselves, for who will do this for us except us? We ourselves have become attached to the world, but we ourselves will tear ourselves away from it. Let us go into your heart, cold, careless and careless, and begin in a friendly manner to persuade it to come to its senses at last, to shake off the bonds of the passions of the world, which have been self-imposed upon ourselves, and to strive for the Lord. Let us speak to our souls like this: “You are created in the image and likeness of God. The infinite God was so pleased to arrange you so as to shine in you with His perfections, like the sun shines in a small drop of water, and to be visible in you and to you, and to everyone who sees you - earthly and heavenly. But you turned away from God and turned to the world, took on his vile image and through this began to bear the bestial likeness of the prince of this age. Remember your first nobility - lofty and incomparable with anything, regret your present disgrace and turn to the Lord to be renewed again in the image of the One who created you. God is looking for you and, searching, surrounds you with all his mercies and cares. Your life is His, and everything you need for life is His. And light, and air, and food, and clothing, and housing, and everything that is in you and you is His. And what else is this? For your sake, He descended from heaven, suffered, died on the cross, resurrected, ascended to heaven, sent the Holy Spirit and established the Church on earth, in which He combined everything necessary for your salvation, and most importantly, through birth and the order of your external life, He introduced you into this treasury of spiritual blessings. See how much love there is! And for all this He demands from you one heart of yours. And a drop of water, warmed by the sun, rises to grief. You, who hesitate to turn to the Lord, are warmed on all sides by the warmth of His love! Don’t you see, everyone around you is coming to the Lord - the poor, the ignorant, and the unlearned - why are you standing, allowing everyone to precede you in the Kingdom? As if you are worse than others, disadvantaged, deprived of something that is given to everyone. Why are you standing, move, hurry, before the door is closed, opening to receive all who are turning now. Why are you standing there - turn to the Lord and start working hard for Him! Time flows, the forces grow old, become coarser and approach immobility in their wrong direction; Meanwhile, today and tomorrow is death; Look, you wouldn’t remain completely in this ossified coldness towards the Lord. Remember the terrible end, when God will finally turn away from those who do not turn to Him and reject those who reject Him, and be moved by fear to rush to the Lord. Seek the Lord! God or the world - there is no middle. But or don't you see? There - everything, here - nothing; there is truth, here is a ghost; there is peace, here there is illness and worries; there is contentment, here there is unceasing languor; there is joy and joy, here there is only sorrow and heartache. You know all this, you have experienced it, and yet you remain in the same vanity of mind and heart. You want to create heaven on earth. For the eighth thousand already, peace lovers are running out of means to create heaven on earth - and not only is there no success, on the contrary, everything is going for the worse. You won’t have time either, but will only be exhausted, chasing the illusory blessings of the world, like children chasing a fleeing rainbow.” With such and similar speeches, we will persuade our souls to love the Lord, to turn entirely to Him, and finally to become resolutely zealous for their salvation. Will the same thing happen to us that happens to balloons? - Being filled with gas, the finest element, with what speed they rush upward! Let us also fill our souls with heavenly truths and convictions. They will penetrate into the heart, attract desires, and there our whole being will be directed towards the sky and everything heavenly. However, what soul does not know all this? We all know that we must belong exclusively to the Lord in our hearts and turn everything towards pleasing Him alone - both small and great. But when we need to get down to business, to renounce everything, we begin to use various excuses in order to remain with our passions. Where do they say we are? This high life belongs only to the chosen ones. At least we're doing something. He who is chosen is especially called, as for example the Apostle Paul and others. To this I will say this. But didn’t these chosen ones themselves follow the call of the Lord? Were they bound, as it were, attracted by grace? – They heard the word, submitted and rushed to the Lord. However, let there be special chosen ones, and everything is special for them; but there is also a path common to everyone. Let's go along this common path. In general, we are all chosen. As soon as the word of truth touches our ears, it means that we are chosen. The Lord calls us, and we are unresponsive if we do not follow Him. Look how others treated?! One heard: “Do not hide for yourself treasures on earth” (Matthew 6:19) - and he left everything; another read: “Man is troubled in vain, he treasures treasures, and I don’t know who I will gather for” (Ps. 38:7), - he left vanity and entered on the solid, lasting path of pleasing God. The third one looked at the Crucifixion with the inscription: “This is what I did for you, what are you doing for Me!” - and surrendered to the Lord with all my heart. Are these all extraordinary callings? Yes, we hear and read thousands of similar truths every day. After this, can we consider ourselves uncalled? No, brethren, it is not a calling, but a matter for us. How were these converts converted? They realized that there is no life except in the Lord, and they changed their unlike life. This happens to everyone. Internal change, or turning point, depends on conscientiousness in relation to the conscious truth, and this conscientiousness is always from us. Let us apply it and we will overcome ourselves. No outsider will enter the inner sanctuary of the heart. There, everything is decided by a person with his conscience and consciousness. Let us stand within ourselves before the face of God, let us more vividly reproduce everything that God wants, and, having realized the urgency of this for salvation, let us put it in our hearts: from now on I will begin to belong to the Lord with all my heart and to God alone to work with all my might, and our election will be accomplished. For election is the combination of our determination with the calling of God. The Lord is near. He comes to everyone and knocks on the heart, asking if anyone will open the door! If the heart is a closed vessel, who is to blame? It’s all due to our lack of conscientiousness towards the known truth. If this were not the case, everyone would always be directed towards the Lord. And how much is required? After all, we are not completely alienated from the Lord. Only pleasing Him is not in the first place for us, it is not our main business, but, as it were, an accessory. Our business is to please ourselves, to please people and worldly customs. Now put pleasing the Lord in first place and rearrange everything else according to the demands of this single goal - and your inner mood will change. On the outside, everything will remain the same, only the heart will become new. That's it! Is this too much? I would like to tell you much more about the same things, but I see that I have tired you. You will tell your soul the rest yourself, for who, besides ourselves, will help the Lord take possession of our hearts? Oh, that we would all submit to Him and surrender our hearts to Him and, contemplating Him in ourselves face to face, would all revolve in His light, around Him, just as all the luminaries turn around the sun, turned towards it and illuminated by it, forming their own special harmonious choir! Amen. You might be interested in: