8. Слово на Сретение Господне (как достигнуть блаженства Сретения Господа?)

What a touching picture the Presentation of the Lord presents to us! The very old man Simeon, holding the baby of God in his arms, on both sides of him are Joseph the Righteous and the Blessed Virgin Mary; not far away is Anna the Prophetess, an eighty-four-year-old faster and prayer worker. Everyone's eyes are fixed on the Savior. They disappear into Him with attention and from Him they drink spiritual sweetness that nourishes their souls. You can judge how great was the bliss of these souls!.. But, brothers, we are all called not to merely imagine this bliss in our minds, but to actually taste it, because we are all called to have and carry the Lord within ourselves and to disappear in Him with all the strength of our spirit. And so, when we achieve this state, then our bliss will be no lower than the bliss of those who participated in the Meeting of the Lord. They were blessed - having seen; We will be blessed - not having seen, but believing. Pay attention. I will briefly show you how to achieve this. “This is what you do and do.” 1. First of all, repent. Remember that in spiritual life nothing can be done without repentance. Whatever anyone seeks, the beginning of everything is repentance. Just as you cannot build a house without a foundation, and just as, without clearing a field, you cannot sow or plant on it, so without repentance you cannot undertake anything in our spiritual quest, no matter what you do without it, everything is in vain. So, first of all, repent, that is, mourn for everything you have done badly and decide on one thing pleasing to God. This will be the same as turning the gaze and the whole body towards the path to the Meeting of the Lord and the first entry onto this path. 2. Then, keeping the feeling of repentance constantly unchanged, arrange for yourself such a type of life and behavior that at every step you take or with every movement, the Lord and our Savior is, as it were, written to your attention. Such an order will be established in you by itself if: a) everything you do, you do for the glory of the Lord and Savior, do for the sake of Christ. Here we mean not just big things, but any action in general. For looking and hearing, silence and speaking, eating and drinking, sitting and walking, work and rest, everything in general can be dedicated to the Lord and sanctified by His All-Holy Name. Since there is not a moment when we are not doing something, then, having arranged your affairs in this way, you will continually meet the Lord, turning all your deeds to His glory. You can fulfill this and receive the fruit from this all the more conveniently if at the same time: b) insert prayer orders into the order of your daily affairs - both church and household, and in general make it a law to be strict executors of every charter of the Holy Church to the smallest iota, without superstition and false interpretations, in the simplicity of the heart. Since the content of every prayer is the Lord and our appeal to Him, then by performing it or participating in it, you will meet the Lord in the sympathies and delights of your heart. If then: c) you fill the remaining period of time with reading the Scriptures about the Lord, or listening to a conversation about Him, or with personal reflection about Him and the great work of salvation accomplished by Him on earth, then you will see for yourself that there will be nothing left either inside or outside of you that does not bear reminders of the Lord, does not bring Him to your attention, does not exhaust your spirit to the Meeting of Him. 3. We must not, however, forget that all these works and studies are only preparatory. One should not stop at them alone, but must move on. Just as from the food we take in a rough form, the subtle elements of life are then refined, so from these activities, visibly performed, tangible, the subtlest dispositions or aspirations towards the Lord should be formed in the spirit, namely: under the labor of dedicating all affairs to the Lord, the aspiration of all the desires of our soul should be qualified only for the Lord; under the fulfillment of all prayers or participation in divine services, sympathy should be formed in the heart only for the Lord and the Lord's; Reading and hearing the Scriptures about the Lord should be based on the willing aspiration of the attention of our mind to the one Lord. Those labors are the cultivation of the field, and these aspirations are the rising of what was sown; These are the trunk and branches, and these are the flower and fruit. When these dispositions arise in us, it will mean that our entire spirit with its consciousness and its mood has gone to the Meeting with the Lord. And since the Lord is everywhere and Himself seeks to meet with our spirit, their mutual Meeting after this takes place by itself. From then on, our spirit will begin to taste the bliss of Simeon the Righteous, that is, it will begin to carry in the arms of its strengths and aspirations the Lord, Who is their complete saturation and satisfaction. This is what is called eating the Lord, resting in Him, standing intelligently before God, walking before the Lord, unceasing prayer - the subject of the labors, desires and searches of all the saints of God. I wish you all who are now celebrating the Presentation of the Lord to be worthy of this blessing. If someone, complaining, said: the fruit is desirable, but the work to get it is too hard, one can answer this way: well, there is an easier way, or a simpler way. Here it is! Repent; then, zealous for the fulfillment of every commandment of God, walk relentlessly before the Lord, directing toward Him with all the attention of the mind, with all the feelings of the heart, with all the desires of the will. Having settled in this way, you will soon meet the Lord. He will enter into you and rest in you, as in the arms of Simeon the Righteous. There is no longer any possibility of easing the work necessary in seeking to meet the Lord with anything else. The Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” can strongly and powerfully help in this work. But, again, not on its own, but under the condition of the aspiration of all the powers of our spirit to the Lord! – “Be sober and watchful” (1 Pet. 5:8). “Seek the things that are on high... and let your secret life be with Christ in God” (Col. 3:1,3). – Then, having become “one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6:17), you will see and embrace this Lord, and “your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22), neither in this age nor in the next. Amen. You might be interested in: