Feasts of the Lord

Contents June 20, 1857 August 10, 1857 November 21, 1860 December 25, 1856. Nativity December twenty-fifth Early mass December 31, 1860. New Year January 1, 1861 December 31 January 5, 1857. Epiphany January 6, 1861. Epiphany January 6, 1859. Behold the Lamb of God February 2, 1861 April 5, 1859. Palm Saturday April 11, 1864. Palm Saturday March 30, 1863. Great Saturday Liturgy of Great Saturday April 22, 1861. Bright Night of the Resurrection April 12, 1859 June 1861. Ascension of the Lord Trinity Day Saturday evening Belongs to the early works of K. P. Pobedonostsev. In a letter to S. A. Rachinsky dated March 13, 1893, K. P. Pobedonostsev wrote the following about the preparation of the first edition of “Feasts of the Lord”: “It will come out on Passion Street, - of course, without my name. Then I'll send you a clean copy. And now - to the Holy One - I would like to tell you these leaves. I think you will like them. I'm sending them tomorrow under a registered parcel. All this is tempi Passati, 1 from Khlebny Lane, 2 under the shadow of Simeon the Stylite” 3. 4 Blessed are the people who cry out: Lord, in the light of Your face they will walk. (Ps. 89:16) HOLIDAY! Holy word. When God condemned fallen man to cultivate the land burdened with the curse of sin, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, He commanded man to celebrate the Sabbath: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.” 5 This does not only mean: rest one day, O man, from your labors. No, this means much more: you, man, have worked for a week, caring for earthly things, with your face close to the earth, your nourisher, but on the seventh day raise your face from the earth, turn your gaze to heaven, to God your Creator, and soar to Him with a grateful soul. And then - leave the worries that oppress you; abolish yourself from wealth and honor, and from poverty and dishonor, and turn to the source of immortal life - where there is no need, illness, evil and untruth. This is God's eternal covenant to man. Our Holy Church keeps it strong, and all her faithful children, all who love the Church, keep it strong and faithfully and lovingly, because they cannot help but love holidays dedicated to the remembrance of great events in the Church of Christ. How would we, believers, live here without these holidays, how empty and joyless life would seem to us, in the midst of all its vanity, in the midst of oppressive worries, in the midst of need and untruth! And every soul “grieving, embittered, demanding help and mercy from God,” without a holiday, where would it go, where would it rest from its desperate grief? Every soul, no matter how immersed it may be - in the rumors of men and in the silence of loneliness - the holiday calls on to sing a song to the Almighty God. This word is understandable and sympathetic to the Russian person, who has been brought up in pious customs since childhood, who has known the church and its holidays since childhood. A Russian person is used to measuring his entire life, all his working time, according to church holidays. The Russian soul rests and rejoices on a church holiday, and it is good for those whom pious parents taught from childhood to honor the holiday, to wait for it with a joyful feeling and to enjoy its refreshing and uplifting power. And our Church, with its divine services, has so solemnly arranged not only the great holidays, but also the mysterious expectation of them for believers, that the holiday itself gradually enters the soul, illuminating it with the quiet light of grace. This light shines all year round for those who are accustomed to feeling it. The holiday, Easter of Christ, comes in the spring of the holidays - and it is preceded by seven weeks of solemn preparation and anticipation - a continuous chain of prayerful contemplations, mysterious memories and inspired chants. The truly “queen of times, spring for souls” is coming, as it is said in the canon for St. Thomas. – After Easter comes a series of Easter weeks, dedicated to Gospel memories that touch the soul, until the joyful Ascension, at which the Church truly gathered chants and sounds filled with bright joy. It will not be long to wait for the flourishing holiday of Pentecost: “the heavens will tell the glory of God,” nature with its magnificent blossom calls to glorify God in the Holy Trinity, and the living and the dead are united in common prayer for each other. Autumn brings the great days of Transfiguration, Dormition, Nativity of the Virgin Mary, Exaltation and Intercession. And already at the beginning of winter, the aspiration of Vvedenev’s Day arises in the soul, when the dawn of the Nativity of Christ begins to glow and quiet singing can already be heard in the church: “Christ is born!” We are waiting for Christmas Eve - and what can be compared to the solemn silence of this day, filled with mysterious images, prophecies and chants from the royal hours to vespers and all-night vigils! All church people know these days, who stood in anxious anticipation of the first evening stichera: 6 “Come, let us rejoice in the Lord, telling the real mystery.” Following Christmas - Epiphany with its solemn Christmas Eve - Meeting, Annunciation, already illuminated by the distant radiance of Easter. To many people who belong to the Church, but do not have a living connection with it and its Divine services, the joyful anticipation of Great Lent seems strange and incomprehensible. But a church person strives for it as a source of living water in the desert, and longs to feel the silence in it among the noise of everyday life. The Lenten Triodion opens, the week of the Publican and the Pharisee, the harbinger of fasting, begins, and the reflections of the first dawn of the Resurrection are already visible in the distance. From early morning on Clean Monday, the quiet spirit of Lent can already be felt. What silence in Moscow streets and alleys, and in the fresh, clean spring air, what harmony the silvery sounds of the bells sound, calling from everywhere to Matins! You enter any church - it is filled, and in what silence the first preachers stand everywhere. Something solemn is beginning everywhere - and the Orthodox person waits for the touching songs of the great Canon to flow after Vespers and the long-unheard quiet, majestic melodies of the Irmos to be heard: 7 Helper and Patron. Each week then is a new step in the ascent to the great holiday. To wait for this holiday, experiencing day after day the sublime services of Holy Week - and, finally, to enter the hour of bright midnight: happy is he who is familiar with these sensations, whom they carry with a bright memory into the distant years of a blooming, innocent childhood. Such is the blessed chain of holidays that connects the life of a Christian in the church from year to year. But throughout the year and every week, Resurrection Day shines for the believing soul. Tired of six days of bustle and care, a person longs for Saturday evening - and here again the sacred poem of Saturday is revealed to him - at the Sunday all-night vigil: the solemn beginning of Vespers, calling with the voices of nature to glorify the Lord, then the hymn of 8 Sunday stichera, and evening hymn at sunset; then, in the darkness and silence, prayers and sublime images of the Psalms of David; 9 then, in the radiance of light, loud, solemn songs of the Resurrection, from childhood delighting the ears of the faithful son of the Church, and on the canon, wonderful songs of the Irmos in 8 voices, one more euphonious than the other, one more solemn than the other, all long familiar to the ear, all invariably touching the soul... This is how the crown of summer is celebrated in the church and in the life of an Orthodox Christian. Truly blessed are the people who lead exclamations on church holidays. It will give joy and gladness to my hearing. (Ps. 50:10) How fitting this prayer is for one entering the church of the Lord! It happens that you enter and stand in prayer with a dull thought, with a sleeping feeling. Around you they sing and read, words are pronounced filled with holy, great meaning; but the words fall on deaf ears, without touching the heart or awakening thoughts. Something alien to the church, worldly, vain is spinning and developing in my head. You force your thoughts, you drive away alien ideas and pictures, but nothing helps unless God sends His grace. This grace is the joy and gladness of the ear, when it greedily catches every word, every word falls on the heart and excites it. In the midst of tears and sighs, the heart rejoices; therefore he rejoices because he is in agreement with himself; The location is quite consistent with the desire. The soul has melted in prayer and converses with God in joy and gladness. God gave my hearing joy and gladness: this is the beginning and goal of good prayer. At a time when a heart filled with contrition humbles itself before God and is filled with sighs, God sends it joy and gladness. This is the action of the Spirit, interceding for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. It’s as if Christ appeared in a host of disciples and said: peace be with you, rejoice! Oh, holy and unspeakable joy! Without you there is no turning to God,” there is no filial love and filial boldness without you. With you, everything is easy in this world, and the thought of happiness with you only becomes clear to a person, because with you he feels happiness in his heart, independent of people, time, and circumstances. Christ the Savior brought you to earth and He left you on earth as a consolation to man. He gave him strength, love and boldness to cry: Abba 12 Father! to God Almighty, to God, Who is menacing as a consuming fire, and Whom only grace-filled joy represents to man as a Father, quenching, warming, reviving Love. God! Give to my hearing joy and gladness, that I may know You in Your life-giving Word, in life, in nature, in man, and in everything, may I love You, and may I know and love everything in You, the beginning of all love and joy and all knowledge! Anyone who happens to experience the wondrous power of memories knows from experience how often suddenly, unexpectedly, amid indifference and fatigue, amid noise and bustle, one accidentally heard word, one melody or sound awakened a sleeping soul and instantly opened the doors for it to the vast world of the past. Instantly a living picture from the past life with all its surroundings was resurrected in the soul, sweet images that had long been left behind us arose from the depths of the past, and the soul heard so clearly, so understandably and delightfully the whole harmony of that moment touched by the memory. No words can express the impression made in the soul by such a memory: some kind of solemn poem is composed in it from the remnants of the past, which a minute before were fragmentary ideas. Here they all come to life and converge into a harmonious whole. Everything that was too sharp and angular in reality disappears, giving way to soft tones and colors. Such moments belong to the best moments in life. But how happy is the one whose memories of childhood and youth are connected with the most sublime sensations that are capable of capturing the soul - with the sensations and impressions of faith! How many new sources of religious inspiration are acquired by a soul that has a store of religious sensations from a bygone time - and how prayer is enlivened by such memories! Arriving at church with a cold and motionless feeling, you suddenly perk up from one word or chant, recalling the feeling with which you once listened to it in another, long-past time - that mood of spirit in which that sound was then greeted. You look at the walls, at the icons, at the altar and remember how during that time you stood and prayed here, how your family brought you here and brought you here, praying for you or with you. You sit at home on a holiday and wait for the bell; Then they hit me, and suddenly my soul was moved. This one sound reminded you of how you encountered that same moment a long time ago in childhood, and just as then, with ardent desire, with impatient expectation of something mysterious and solemn, you rush to church to take your place. How often at home, while reading the Bible and indifferently passing through entire pages in thought, you suddenly come across a word that immediately warms your soul and introduces you to the world of the sweetest and most sublime spiritual sensations. Why? Because this word is a kindred word, familiar to the soul, a word that at that time awakened your thoughts and cherished your feelings. You remember the solemn moment of the past - and the present moment is illuminated by the same solemn light. It sometimes seems that some words of Holy Scripture themselves have some kind of mysterious power to ignite and uplift the soul. The more often you read it in the best moments of spiritual tenderness, the deeper these words sink into the soul, and are stored in it until the time when the soul needs a word in order to fan in it the spark of the same tenderness that was stored under the ashes... Mothers, rejoice! Virgos, jump up! These words are not in vain. The Christian virgin, hearing them in church, will leap in her heart, and her heart, perhaps already too familiar with other delights of secular vanity, will be touched by Divine inspiration. But if a good seed is sown in this heart by the early lessons of her mother and the Word of God, if the thought of purity of heart is dear to her, if turning with prayer to the Most Holy Virgin, her soul fell in love with the ideal of a Christian virgin - the spirit of prayer will awaken and leap within her at these words of the church song. She will feel the joy of the Pure Virgin, brought to the church and standing before God in joy and trembling of soul, the joy that she herself, a Christian virgin, stands before God in His church. How can she not say at this moment: Lord, I am here before You. Bless me and make my heart pure! Mother of God! Most Pure Virgin! help me maintain purity of heart in the midst of a world filled with all kinds of impurity! The pure, holy image of the Mother of God must remind the Christian virgin every minute that there is no name and place on earth holier and purer than the name and place of the virgin, and that to violate this holiness, to dishonor this name is a great sin, a great misfortune, a great contempt for the gift and calling of God. Since the Virgin - the Mother of God - appeared on earth, everything pure, good and glorious in human nature has been united in this one word - virgin. Where will we find another name that would be equal to this, where will we find an honor that would be worth this, where will we meet an image of purity and innocence, similar to the image of a Christian virgin? This is the power of faith that conquers the whole world, the power of humility, which crushes all pride; this is love, and joy, and peace about the Holy Spirit. That same active love that is long-suffering, merciful, does not envy, does not exalt itself, is not proud, does not act outrageously, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not remember evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth, covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That same joy, which even in the midst of earthly grief preserves a smile of meekness and hope, has the wondrous power to illuminate and console every darkened and desperate soul of a person who has not known love and sympathy. Take a maiden from the world, and the world will become dark and empty. In the midst of everyone’s worries about their village, and about their property, and about their human honor, it’s a disaster if the thought of purity and innocence is eclipsed! And she will be eclipsed when faith in the holy name and title of a virgin disappears, when the radiance over her place disappears, when they stop giving her the honor of virginity and innocence, they stop looking at her in the family as a guardian angel, as the glory of the parents and the whole house, in society - as a pure being, at whose appearance impure words and discordant speeches should be silenced. Woe will be the society in which sacred respect for the virgin disappears, and her appearance ceases to arouse in everyone concern about whether his thought is good, whether his word is pure? But trouble is also for that Christian virgin - who has lost in her soul the holy desire to walk worthy of her title and carry her honor within herself, so that the honor that society bestows on her does not become a lie and a reproach. The trouble is that when she gets used to accepting this honor as a due tribute, she wants to dominate her circle - the image and shadow of beauty and innocence; will demand love and service from everyone who approaches it, forgetting that in the Christian world all power is service, and that Christian love itself first of all loves, without expecting love from others: just as God loved the world and man. Then her honor will become hypocrisy, her love will become flattery and deception. The joy that she should have brought with her everywhere will leave her, the fragrance of purity will disappear, the great power that, by the will of God, is connected with the name and title of the Christian virgin will disappear. All true power we have comes from God, and God has shown us to carry all power in a fragile “clay” vessel. Whoever still has a purpose for this vessel, whoever has not broken it in the market of everyday vanity, let him thank God for his mercy and, asking God for help, let him carry his vessel with faith and with the fear of God until the end of his earthly journey. Another was given great power for good and glorious things, but he broke his vessel halfway along the road, without having accomplished anything good and glorious, only thinking about how much good and glory he carried with him in reserve. Another was given small power, but God helped him to maintain small power in the simplicity of his heart, and his small light glows, and his small work grows and smells fragrant around him. It is scary for a person to carry strength within himself, it is scary to walk in it with honor before people - when a person remembers that he walks before God, and that God, and not human will, has placed a title on him. It’s scary because every person is a lie, and every word he says on his own is an idle word of self-deception. That is why the fear of God embraces a person as soon as he stands with his thoughts, feelings, words and deeds not before himself, not before people and human judgment, but directly before God. And it is good if this fear of God leads him every time to humble prayer, to the consciousness of his insignificance and God’s power, to a feeling of God’s love and grace. Then, having passed through the fire of prayer, a person’s melted heart will bloom with the festive joy that comes from living love for God and hope in Him. The heart of man will leap before God. This is how a Christian virgin’s heart will leap when, standing in the church on this day, she thinks how pure, humble in soul and full of quiet faith and love of God she was, Whom God chose for Himself as a church not made by hands. She will then think about her title and the great honor of a Christian virgin; will think about herself, and, putting herself before God, will see how far she is from the purity and simplicity of heart worthy of her title. How must the desire burn in her to be among those virgins who will “be brought to the King” after the Most Pure Virgin and “entered into the house of the Kings”! How fervently will she pray to God and the Most Holy Virgin for help and purification in the midst of the world, so that she is not confused by human flattery, so that human honor is not seduced, so that the desire for love and service of many does not lead her away from love and service to the few with whom her destiny will be connected, so that an idle word about love does not weaken her love in deed and truth, so that that spiritual joy with which a person himself is happy and makes him happy does not dry up in her heart neighbor approaching him! The grace of God will answer a simple and fervent prayer, and the Christian virgin will deeply feel the truth of the church’s appeal to virgins: “Virgins, leap!” December 25, 1856. Nativity of Christ Never are the impressions of childhood felt so strongly in my soul, never is my imagination so clearly transported to the distant, flourishing time of my youth, as on the days of the great holidays of the Nativity of Christ and Holy Easter. These are holidays primarily for children, and on them the power of Christ’s words seems to be fulfilled: unless you are like children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Other holidays are not so accessible to children's understanding, and are kind to children more in terms of their external setting than in their internal meaning. This is, for example, Pentecost. However, of the two major holidays mentioned, the child will most likely understand and accept with a simple feeling the Nativity of Christ. How happy is the child who was able to hear from his pious mother simple stories about the Nativity of Christ the Savior! How happy is the mother, who, while telling a holy and touching story, met lively curiosity and sympathy in her child, and she herself heard from him the questions in which children’s imagination so loves to play out, and, inspired by these questions, hastened to convey to her child her own pious feeling. For a child's mind and for a child's imagination, there is so much that is attractive in this story. A quiet night over the fields of Palestine - a solitary den - a manger furnished with those domestic animals that are familiar to the child from the first impressions of memory - in the manger there is an entwined Baby and above Him a meek, loving mother with a thoughtful gaze and a clear smile of maternal happiness - three magnificent kings following a star to a wretched den with gifts - and in the distance on the field shepherds in the midst of their flock, listening to the joyful news of the Angel and the mysterious choir of the heavenly powers. Then the villain Herod, 15 persecuting the innocent Child; the massacre of the infants in Bethlehem - then the journey of the holy family to Egypt - how much life and action there is in all this, how much interest for a child! An old and never-aging story! How attractive she was to children's ears, and how quickly the child's understanding became familiar with her! That is why, as soon as you bring this simple story to mind, a whole world is resurrected in your soul, all of your long-past childhood is resurrected with its surroundings, with all the faces that surrounded it, with all its joys; the same mysterious expectation of something that always happened before the holiday returns in your soul. What would happen to us if there were no such moments of childish delight in life! This is the evening before Christmas: I returned from the all-night vigil and am sitting at home in the same room in which I spent my entire childhood; in the same place where my cradle stood, then my childhood bed, now stands my chair in front of the desk. Here is the window where the old woman’s nanny sat and persuaded him to go to bed, when he didn’t want to sleep, because there was excitement in his soul - the expectation of something joyful, something solemn in the morning. It was not an expectation of gifts - no, - the soul definitely felt that tomorrow would be an extraordinary day, bright, joyful, and something great would happen. It happened that you would lie down and the bell would wake you up before Matins, and the nanny, who got up to go to church, again had to persuade the child to fall asleep. God! I feel this same anticipation of childhood days in myself even now... How quiet everything is in me, how solemn everything is in me! How everything in me breathes with the feeling of former years, and with what spiritual greed I await the solemn morning. This feeling is the most precious gift of heaven, sent among the worldly noise and bustle to adults, so that they vividly remember the time when they were children, and therefore were closer to God and more directly than they ever received from Him life, light, day, food, joy, love - and everything that makes God’s world beautiful for a person. But this expectation of great joy and great triumph in the morning was never deceived by the child. As a child, the minute of waiting so merged with the minute of pleasure and satisfaction that it was impossible to grasp the transition or the middle. The child woke up in the morning and certainly found what he was thinking about in the evening, met in reality what his childhood dreams told him about: significance for a child is not the same as a dream; Isn’t his dream the same thing as reality? The child woke up in the morning, surrounded by the same blessings of childhood life that he unconsciously accepted every day - only illuminated by the festive light, the faces surrounding him were twice as cheerful, the caresses more lively, the games more animated. What more for a child? The child did not regret in the morning what he expected in the evening: just as yesterday’s expectation was unconscious, so the morning pleasure was unconscious: there was no place for reflection, analysis and comparison. Yesterday's dream was so similar to today's reality; present reality was so consistent with yesterday's dream that the dream could not be called a dream and reality did not need to be opposed to it. This is not always the case with adults; but it’s a pity for those whose joyful anticipation of the holiday when the holiday morning arrives is replaced by a bitter feeling of emptiness and disappointment! "For every thing there is a time under heaven." 16 Childhood passes, and an adult cannot live the way a child lived. In order to preserve in himself the ability to live, full and pure festive joy, an adult cannot be content with that immediate feeling that is characteristic of a child: as his child looked at the world, an adult cannot look at his own world: since he began to grow and come to consciousness, his own world has formed in his soul, which has developed in him often unconsciously, partly consciously - a world as vast as the universe, a world as boundless as eternity! What a person puts there is what he will take out. And if he put the impressions of his youth there like an old thing, without assigning a place to it, without understanding its meaning, without connecting it in thought and spirit with all the rest of the store collected along the path of life, these impressions will serve him only as a shiny toy that can be taken out for a while for fun, but which will then have to be put aside with sadness or mockery. What's the use of one toy for an adult? But if in these impressions of his childhood a person managed to grasp the mysterious meaning of life and eternity, if from them the light of love and truth shines for him throughout his entire life to the last earthly feature, if in the memories of childhood his heart beats with the same joyful beating that it feels outside childhood in every striving for goodness, beauty and truth, if in the best and most powerful impulses of his soul an adult person recognizes the same feeling that unconsciously arose in the soul in the early period of its life - in this case memories of childhood joy will never seem to him like just a playful dream. Then the holiday morning will not deceive a person - in the happy expectation that he felt in the evening. And if in the evening the dawn of a happy childhood shone on him, then the morning will illuminate him with the quiet light of the sunrise and will pour peace, love and hope into his soul. If before, in the days of the Nativity of Christ, he was a child, listening attentively and unconsciously preserving the holy story of the Divine Infant in the manger, now, enlightened by consciousness, strengthened by faith, warmed by love, the childish feeling will be revived in him even more vividly, and again feeling like a baby, he will turn with all his heart to the solitary den, to the Infant lying in manger - to look closely to them as a child, and with a child's eyes and heart, with a child's lips, to exclaim to the Infant Christ, as the child Samuel once exclaimed to God: 17 Behold, Lord! 18 O great mysterious night! Oh, bright, solemn morning! If I forget you, if I remain indifferent to you, if I stop hearing those speeches and words whose voices are heard in you by every believing soul, then I will forget my childhood, my life and eternity itself... for what is other blissful eternity than the eternal joy of a baby in the face of God! Twenty fifth December 19 And in the cathedral of the capital city, one of the most solemn moments is mass on the day of the Nativity of Christ, and after it the well-known, dear to every Orthodox Russian soul, a prayer of thanksgiving, on the occasion of the invasion of Moscow and Russia by the Gauls and with them twenty languages. What triumph of all public gatherings can compare with this triumph in grandeur, in truth and concentration of feeling, penetrating everyone and everyone, uniting in itself two great, two dominant sensations of human nature - religious and national? Truly, the world of the most sublime phenomena of art and science cannot imagine anything like it. This whole continuous, huge mass of heads seems to have merged into one and lives one life of a festive, solemn mood, and from its chest pours a single song to the Born Christ, the Savior of mankind, the Savior of believing Russia. Liturgy 20 is going on - powerful, harmonious singing thunders from the choir 21 - old and young (for parents bring and bring here, without fear of crowding, their little children), the most noble and the simplest person stand side by side - in a simple, unconscious, and even more precious state of general equality before God, and celebrate God in prayer. But now, the liturgy is over. A procession emerges from the altar, heading towards the dais in the middle of the church. The entire council of hierarchs residing in the capital stands on the platform, and among them there are the elders, white-haired - living witnesses or participants in many great events in the Church, another contemporary, although in his childhood - with the great era of the liberation of Russia in 1812. The service begins, a great service, composed by the artist of church speech, of which every word reverberates in the Russian heart, starting with the thunderous “God is with us.” Russian people are waiting with trepidation, after Christmas songs, for the “Worldwide Glory” to ring out with its mighty “Be of good cheer, ye people of God,” when the familiar words of prophecy are heard about the proud conqueror who provoked the earth, shook the kings, put the whole universe in emptiness - the words of the Apostle Paul about the heroes of the people’s war, who defeated enemies by faith, the words of the Gospel about the difficult times when tongue will rise against tongue and kingdom against kingdom. The deacon proclaims the touching petitions of the special litanies, 22 with thanksgiving and confession to God, that he did not do us our iniquities, but in the time of temptation that came to the whole world, he delivered us, and when our enemies passed us by, he showed us his salvation, with a prayer for the repose of the souls of leaders and warriors and all zealots of faith and truth, in the time of temptation who laid down his life for his brethren. Finally, the most solemn moment of the service comes, when, following the elderly metropolitan, the entire mass of people filling the church, as if the entire Russian Church, kneels and listens in deep silence to the great, truly great final prayer. And the elderly metropolitan, who knows how to pronounce national prayers like no one else, pronounces them, as the charter says, “with all attention and tenderness in a loud voice.” Every word of prayer is heard in all corners of the church. “You spoke to the children of Israel: if they do not listen to Your voice, to keep and do all Your commandments, You will bring a shameless tongue upon them, and crush them in their sins... And we knew that this terrible verb was coming upon us and our fathers! But not being afraid of Your forgiveness and neglecting Your mercy, we abandoned the path of Your righteousness and walked in the wills of our hearts, and did not learn to have You, the God of minds and hearts, in our minds and hearts! And yet, having regarded the fatherly tradition as nothing, we have angered You for the sake of strangers. And for this reason, like the children of Israel of old, we were seized by a fierce situation, and those very whom we wished to have as our teachers and mentors appeared to us as violent and bestial enemies... But You, Lord God, generous and merciful... leaving us for a short time, had mercy on us with great mercy!... You looked upon our sorrow and the consumption of the reigning city, in which from the years of old it was called Thy name, and to our prayers... and gave us the backbone of wicked adversaries... Grant us, Lord, to have within us a firm and unceasing memory of this glorious visit of Thy..." Which of our fathers and grandfathers, witnesses of the unforgettable year 1812, did not shed hot tears while reading this great prayer, stunning the Russian soul! But can we, the sons of the people of that century, hear it indifferently? In it, the entire history of the Russian land cries out to us, the history of disasters and sudden joys, heavy falls and uprisings from the fall, anarchy and the sudden resurrection of power, a history imbued with the unshakable faith of the good people in the Providence of God over our fatherland... And isn’t now, just like at that time, that terrible word that was once spoken to the sons of Israel and which came upon us and our fathers is not hovering over us ours? And aren’t the very ones we look to as teachers and mentors now ready to turn into violent and bestial enemies for us? The solemn all-night vigil ended on the eve of Christmas. Quiet and joyful at heart in anticipation of tomorrow morning. Everyone was tired, but the fatigue was somehow gratifying. You go to bed early to avoid oversleeping in the morning. You fall asleep to the sounds of the song running through your head: “Thy Nativity, Christ our God, rise up into the world’s light of reason.” But it’s impossible to oversleep. “You sleep, but your sensitive heart does not sleep,” and the sight of a brightly lit church, and people praying, and wide-spread singing floats before him. An anxious expectation, like the smile of a child upon meeting a suitable mother from afar, and never before has this expectation been disappointed. The hour has come, and something wakes you up, as if whispering in your ear: it’s time. It’s dark and quiet outside—early, “before the morning sun.” The snow crunches under your feet, the frost stings your face; vague shadows pass by in the same direction. You make your way cheerfully and cheerfully to the church; Everywhere they “strike” for early mass, and the accustomed ear distinguishes the sound of each bell: here at Nikola’s, here at Boris and Gleb’s, here at Theodore the Studite, here is our native bell. 23 You enter - the church is full, and bright light pours into the darkness from the windows. They enter, cross themselves - and soon - like ears of corn in a sheaf - the whole crowd of people has rallied into one. They got up early, and how many of them are there for whom this early hour can only be snatched from their continuous working life - for the sake of the Lord's holiday! Many gathered from dark corners and cramped homes, out of need and bitter grief, from unbearable work. And so, in this house of the Lord, everyone feels at home, in a free place: at this early hour, all the rulers of the first places are still resting on their couches, giving up a free place to the working man. They stand like a solid wall, from the front door to the sole, right up to the local icons - they stand and cross themselves and pray. The church is shining with lights. The combined choir on the choir, gathered from the same environment, sings a wide festive song. The solemn antiphons between the litanies flow out of the soul like a stream, and the troparion of the holiday, at the small entrance, like a wide, abundant river, carries the soul to the very center of joy. It is gratifying for an Orthodox person to disappear with his self in this mass of praying people, which at these moments merges into a single soul celebrating before God, and the wave of popular faith and prayer raises high the prayer and faith of everyone who, without further ado, brings with them to the church the simplicity of a believing feeling. Here an Orthodox person will feel what the Church means to him, and what a repository of faith is in the soul of the people. The mass ended and the people dispersed. But the church is not yet empty: in the dark corners, near the lamps, people still stand in front of the icons and pray in silence. It is clear that they still do not want to leave the church, where it was so good that it is difficult for them to tear themselves away from silence and prayer, that it hurts them from the festive joy to return to their corner, where, perhaps, daily need and grief await them, where they will be overwhelmed by care, or deafened by the noise of discordant joy. There is light on the streets. Lights lit up in the windows everywhere. At home everything is still quiet, and a person returning from church brings quiet joy with him to his home. Carry it, man, carefully, like a full vessel on a rough road, like a burning lamp on a windy field, until the wind of all kinds of sensations carries it away, until it drowns out the noise of all kinds of human rumors! December 31, 1860. New Year Once again on the threshold of the new year... Another peak at which you can stop, from which you can survey the path you have traveled before setting off on the road again. I’ll stop, rest, say a word of prohibition to my restless heart at least for this minute, hide from the blizzard that accompanied me all the way and will meet me again when I come out of my solitude again. God! help me to look calmly into my soul and at Your creation. I look from here at God’s creation, at everything that was sent by Him to me, that was placed around me, that according to His will was collected in my life, and hand on heart, from the depths of my heart and conscience I say: all is good! Here is my happy childhood - how brightly it shines and smells fragrant from the distant past, how it illuminates my path before me, how it refreshes my soul in moments of exhaustion! Here is ardent youth, and with it everything from which the first delights of sympathy arose in the soul. Here are my lessons, my joys, my bitter losses, here are the people with whom I live in happiness, here are others whom I buried in the damp earth, not remembering myself from grief, here are all those with whom I grew up and worked, from whom gifts of love and indignation poured upon me, from whom I received both honor and dishonor; Here is nature, which sometimes seemed to me even more alive and sympathetic than living people, and excited my spirit even more; these are my amusements, my meetings, my illnesses. All, all good. Everything is good that came to me in life from the Providence of God. Everything was not in vain. Everything was for the good. My past! How far it has gone back, in an unknown direction, from which you get now a joyful sound, now a sweet image, now consolation and hope, now a bitter reproach of conscience. If you look into it, you will smile joyfully; If you look at it another time, you’ll cover your face with your hands in shame. And yet you think: it is mine, it is me, it is part of my life, and no force will take it from me, will not erase what is written in it. And the whole future, the whole destiny of a person is written in it. There are many lines in it whose mysterious meaning you will unravel someday later - after, when the grain that was placed there has ripened, when the word that was written there, not yet revealed to the mind and conscience, but always inherent in life, comes out and is outlined in bright letters. While a man was going through his days, while he was doing and sleeping, laughing and crying, while he was spinning and resting, she wrote this word in his life and sealed it with her seal and put a vow on it, until the time comes - the seal will be broken, and the still dark corner of the past will be illuminated by the light of the mind of God hidden in life. It can be painful to read other words, but when you read them, your heart will know that these are words of God’s love and God’s Providence for man. With each new word, the mystery is revealed, the veil is removed and the thoughts and desires of his heart are revealed to man. All the goodness is great... And yet the restless heart beats, and still asks for something at this moment - and yet it carefully peers into the distant future. Who hasn't experienced this feeling? Who hasn’t had to stop on their way at a solemn moment when everything tells a person that life is turning him somewhere? Where is unknown. Everything that filled the soul with worldly interest and excitement has been lived through, the previous circle of life is over - some new circle is opening up, into which Providence is calling. I cherished a feeling within myself - it was shattered; I developed a thought in myself - it turned out to be a delusion; tied his heart to earthly treasure - it was stolen; put his whole soul into his loved one - he retreated and left. The heart is broken - all the bright examples of life have turned pale; the hopes on which the soul lived flew away and left a bitter emptiness in the soul. We must say goodbye to what was most precious, in which we expected to spend and end our lives. Difficult moments, but in such moments our horizon clears and our gaze, clouded by worries, begins to peer more closely into that clear distance where our “one thing we need” lies, where God’s Providence mysteriously hides for the time being the fate of its creation. You look back and see how many times in your difficult struggle with your desire, in tears about the lost earthly joy and hope, your fate turned to itself and for a moment showed you its bright and thoughtful face, in order to tell your heart: do not be afraid, there is a God of love. You see how every grief, every parting, every new emptiness left in the heart by an unfulfilled desire and a broken connection - how all this lay deep in your life and outlined in it the edges and steps of God’s providence, how light shone from the darkest places, a smooth road ran along the sharp hills. You thought it was over, you forbade your heart to desire as before, to desire and become attached, you told yourself: I will not move forever; Taught by bitter experience, I will not be deceived anymore. But just a little more, and again you wished, and again you tied your heart to a new treasure, again you put your soul in a person, you established your happiness on him - and again your heart lies, broken, deceived. But it seemed that the desire was so legitimate, the plan was so simple, happiness was so close! At such moments, the touching story of Paul’s farewell to his disciples in Miletus 24 comes to mind. How sad it was for him! His ardent soul had long been completely given over to the love of God; but at that moment human nature spoke in him too. In anguish, in tears, he hugs his friends and students, feeling that he is saying goodbye for the last time to those whom he loved to the point that he was ready to sacrifice his salvation for salvation. His life is leaving them. “Now,” he says, “I am bound in spirit, I am coming to Jerusalem, even what will happen in it, I do not know.” 25 He had already experienced many hard things in his ministry, many bonds and sorrows; but the Spirit testifies to him that something even more difficult awaits him - he doesn’t know what it is. Standing in thought, melancholy and anxiety at a new turn in life, at the moment of farewell to what I have tied my soul to, and I ask: where are You leading me, Omniscient God! I don’t know where my road is, what awaits me on it when it ends, but the voice of Your Spirit tells me clearly that new bonds, new sorrows await me on it. How many more times will the heart break, how many more fires will pass, until everything lights up with Your pure fire! How many more earthly attachments will he survive, how many times will he be convinced by bitter experience that every person is a lie, and that You alone are love and truth. When will he get tired of “committing adultery from You,” when will he stop loving for himself and find in You the treasure of God’s and human love, and in this love will extinguish and conquer every desire? I look at my life and see Your love everywhere, and I know: one way or another it will lead me to the end of my life. I know and I’m afraid - I’m afraid of melancholy, I’m afraid of pain, I’m afraid of my playful heart, I’m afraid of the seductions of earthly love, I’m afraid, my God, of my weakness and Your power, crushing everything unclean, so that everything that is unclean, so that everything is cleansed, everything that is dry, so that it softens and blossoms and bears fruit. Oh, when I could say with Paul: “I worry about nothing and do not value my life, if only I could complete my path and service with joy.” 26 In youth, when the heart is open to the whole world, when the revealed forces of life bloom in the soul, how simple it seems to love God and believe in Him and look with hope into the distant horizons of life! Cares still so easily pass by, and grief itself soon falls from the soul, like clothes that you are tired of wearing. A bitter, burning grief scorches the young soul, but its sting soon softens, because the joy of being is still intact in the soul, because the virgin veils still lie on it, and underneath them the deep, mysterious darkness of life has not yet been revealed - a darkness in which the present, past and future, merging together, plunge the soul into sacred fear - the fear of existence! This day will come for the believing soul, the day of struggle with a mysterious, unknown, but felt force that blocks its path of being and before which a person is powerless. Here the will becomes confused, horizons close, and thought gets lost in the questions: what am I? who am I? where am I from? why me? where am I going? The mysterious embraces the soul - and it is good for it when, having recognized the revelation of God in this sacrament, it takes from it a new strong faith in the Heavenly Father, God, Provider and Savior. I remember the young man Jacob. 27 He took the blessing of his father by cunning, and in fear of the brother whom he had offended, he fled as an exile on a long journey. And then one day, when, stopping in Harran, 28 he spent the night on a stone headboard, God appeared to him in the spirit of peace, forgiveness and blessing. The earth on which he slept is connected with heaven through an open path: the ladder stands on the earth, and its top touches the sky, and the Angels of God descend and ascend along it, and the God of Abraham and Isaac confirms to him the covenant of mercy and blessing. “This is the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.” Jacob got up cheerful and went on his way rejoicing. "The Lord will be with me." It's been too twenty years since then. Jacob, with his entire house and all his acquired wealth, returns, according to the covenant of God, to the land of his fathers. But on the way he meets the terrible news that the offended avenger of the past, his brother Esau, is coming to meet him. There is no escape. And so, preparing for death, having sent ahead of himself everyone who was dear to him, and all his wealth, Jacob was left alone across the river, in the dark night. And then, in the darkness, he heard a voice and sensed a presence - and Someone approached him and fought with him until dawn appeared. - Who are you? - Jacob asked, exhausted from the struggle, - tell me Your name? – Why are you asking? the invisible Fighter told him. My name is wonderful. You fought with God and you will overcome people... So, in anticipation of death, at the decisive moment of life, overcome with fear, a man struggled with God and walked away, rejoicing that his soul was preserved. January 5, 1857 29. Epiphany of John A strange rumor spread throughout the land of Judea. They began to say that a man of God appeared in the Jordan desert - he lives alone in asceticism, has abandoned all the sweets of life, has no home, is dressed in camel skin with a leather belt, eats what the desert gives him, and calls everyone he meets to repentance and immerses him in the streams of the Jordan, 30 and tells everyone about some new Prophet who will come after him and will be stronger than him and will bring a new baptism to the people. At this time, everyone who still had the religious covenant of their fathers and forefathers in their hearts, and who was worried about the people’s concern for the fate of Israel, everyone was in some kind of vague expectation of the fulfillment of prophecies and the appearance of the promised Messiah, everyone was busy with questions: Who will He be? where will he come from? where can I see Him? How will He arrange the work of glory and liberation? And so, having heard about the appearance of John in the desert, crowds began to gather to him from the environs of Jordan, from all of Judea and from Jerusalem: “Is that food Christ?” 31 Without a doubt, the mass of the people were attracted primarily by curiosity, attracted by a national feeling that aroused new hopes, expectations and dreams at every event in which they thought to see signs of the appearance of the Messiah. 32 They were waiting, perhaps, to hear mysterious news about the Savior, to receive mysterious orders about how and where to gather around Him, they were hoping to see the dawn of national triumph, to receive a harbinger of a glorious people's kingdom... But instead, they were met by a stern ascetic, met with a stern and inquisitive look penetrating into the soul, greeted with a word about sin and repentance and - for the first time, menacing news about the proximity of the wrong earthly kingdom, which they hoped for, but the kingdom of heaven. “Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand! 33 What they met was not what they expected; but what they saw and heard fell on their souls and awakened their spirit. Without a doubt, among them there were many who never thought about sin, did not test their hearts and did not ask him questions about its fate; There were also people who had long carried within themselves a conscience burdened with sin, a heart tired of worrying about the ways of life, a mind outraged by the struggle between the soaring of thought and the weakness of the acting will. Poor people came - people whose thoughts are dormant, bound by heavy worries about their daily bread, oppressed and humiliated; publicans came - people for whom oppression of the people became a habit, a matter of life and a means of living; warriors came, hardened in spirit and heart in matters of military service, violence and profit. But in all these people there was a spark of the Divine, there was a living soul, capable of perceiving thought and fire, a soul desiring and sighing and demanding better. Many of them wandered in darkness and longed for light and did not find it. They had prophetic writings, there was a church with all the rituals of the 34 Law of Moses, with sacrifices for sin, with a host of priests and teachers; but in these rites of the law and in its servants there was no longer a living spirit: “the scribes and Pharisees sat on the seat of Moses” 35 - those who take the key of understanding to themselves - do not themselves enter and do not allow those who wish to enter; those who impose heavy burdens on the conscience and do not want to move them with their fingers; there were learned experts in the law and scriptures - those who, through deep research, solve the questions of “where Christ is born,” but they do not feel the born Christ and reject it. There were teachers who locked themselves in the dead letter of the law, but there were no living teachers. There were high preachers who said one thing and did another; That is why their word remained a word without power and without force, and did not strike the soul and did not arouse consciousness. There were no teachers in the cities and villages, in the midst of real and active life - and so, far from worldly affairs, in the desert a man appeared to the people, in whom the people sensed a living teacher. He, completely unfamiliar with everyday affairs, exhausted in body from desert exploits, completely alienated from communication with people, he knew how to awaken hearts and tell every heart its sad story and lit the fire of repentance in every heart. To him - to the desert dweller - everyday people, from their teachers, living with them, turn to him with the question: what should we do? and from him they receive instructions appropriate to each rank. It’s a strange thing: a man of thought, a man of quiet contemplation of the spiritual, comes and attracts to himself countless crowds of people living in the world and immersed in worldly affairs, and rivets their confused gaze to his stern and stern gaze, and their thoughts, scattered throughout the world, to his strong and harsh word. And what word does he bring to them? Not a word about love and tenderness, not a promise of peace, not a prophecy about bliss and glory - not the word from which a soul thirsting for good and happiness usually melts and is touched, but a bitter, terrible word of threat, a word “about the coming wrath” against the sons of disobedience. This is the word God chose as an instrument in order to shake hardened souls, in order to prepare the way of the Lord in them and level His path. John stirred up hearts with a word about sin and the law of retribution for sin, and hearing this word, perhaps for the first time spoken with authority, by a man to whom the power and power of truth had been given, the hearts sensed sin within themselves and trembled and moved. Such are all of us, children of the vain world - both unfaithful and those who consider themselves faithful, and cold activists and ardent dreamers, and deep thinkers and absent-minded seekers of pleasure. We carry sin within us and don’t know where to find it. We think that we know life, but life bypasses us and stands behind us, unknown. We imagine that the image of truth is clear and bright before us, and lies play with us as ghosts of truth. We enjoy the works of our hands and do not suspect that our deeds are illusory, like the passionate desire that gave birth to them, deceptive like the pleasure that we seek in them. We live and walk over the abyss - and we know and talk about the abyss, but we entrust ourselves to the place on which we walk as a stronghold. We senselessly yearn, senselessly rejoice, and by deceiving ourselves, we deceive others. We long for the fulfillment of our heart’s desires, but what we want, we cannot do by will, but we do what we do not want. Who will lead us out of this deception, who will cleanse our eyes and open our ears and lead us to a high place and from on high will show us our lives and tell us the truth about life and the heart, who will tear off the deceptive veils with a mighty hand and with a strong word will shake our slumbering soul to the depths! Blessed is he who sensed such a hand over himself and met on his path a person with strong faith and the all-powerful word of truth. This word will be harsh, and upon hearing it, the soul will tremble with horror. It will show us life as it is, and in life it will reveal the inexorable law of truth - and when we see our sin and its terrible fate face to face, our whole soul will tremble with one feeling: “Where will we run away from the coming wrath?” We will see what seeds we have sown, and we will learn what we did not know before, that each seed sprouts and bears its fruit and prepares a harvest of sin in human life and destiny. Love rules the world, but we only dreamed of this love in self-gratification: what will happen to us when we see that love does not destroy the law of life and does not retreat before any human suffering? You have sinned - suffering awaits you - love does not violate this law, and leads a passionate person on a passionate path, and not a single human soul can escape this law - neither harsh and cruel, nor soft and tender, blooming with the good will of the human heart. When the consciousness of sin awakens in us, we feel for the first time what the coming wrath is and how terrible it is. God's spirit was given to me, pure, with a desire for perfection: I polluted its purity, I distorted its high aspirations; I extinguished the radiant light within me; and everything that I did and that happened in me was and is and stands before me - an indelible, irresistible event written into my fate - you cannot return the past moment, you cannot redo the evil that has been done: it remains. My resentment remained for my neighbor, who at that moment passed by me and will not return and will not bring this moment with him; the word of temptation that sounded in the air remained, the unclean movement of the will remained and gave rise to many movements and words and deeds. All this is with me - and how many have moved away from me and disappeared without the return of good movements that did not bear fruit! They rushed by, leaving a trace of lies in my life, and these lies remained with me. Oh, what a deep melancholy attacks the awakened soul when its sin is revealed to it, endlessly and without measure reflected in itself and in many other souls who accepted it and joined in with it! And then, when the thought of eternity appears before a person, in which nothing is lost and everything is written down in human destiny, then a place opens up for horror and shame and the bitter hope of “future wrath.” This is the “baptism of John.” It shakes the soul with the consciousness of sin and the expectation of future wrath, and washes it with the water of repentance. January 6, 1861 36. Epiphany Whoever sees the face of the Lord and lives! On the day that God revealed His glory and made His voice heard by the Jewish people on Mount Sinai, 37 the glory of God appeared in the cloud, the voice of God was heard from the midst of the fire. But the people, listening to the commandments of God with reverent awe, experienced a heavy feeling of horror, in which there was no sweetness, and, apparently, there was no love. Fear, fear alone, took possession of the souls of those who heard. That is why, when the phenomenon took place, the people became afraid, lest it should happen again. And so, the elders say to Moses: we have seen that God can speak to man, and man can remain alive. But now, why should we expose ourselves to the danger of death? It’s better for you to start, listen and retell it to us, and if we continue to listen, a terrible fire will devour us. And Moses answered them: You will not die. God came to test you and put His fear on you, so that fear would keep you from breaking the commandments. And the God of fear then confirmed the words of Moses. But then He made the frightened people feel that the time for another manifestation would come. “I will raise up for them a Prophet from among your brothers, just like you. I will put My words in His mouth; He will tell them whatever I command Him.” But Moses had more than one fear. He was given boldness in proportion to His zeal for God and faithfulness to God. And then the hour came when, having poured out a fiery prayer to God for his unfaithful and sinful people, Moses came to the extreme measure of boldness. A desire burned within him to see closer the terrible glory of God, not in image, but in reality. But God did not reveal His face to Moses. He said: It is impossible for a man to see My face and live. This is what He did to Moses. He showed His goodness before him and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. 38 When the glory of God passed by, God hid Moses in a cleft of the rock, covering Him with His hand, and then showed Himself to him from behind, showing the trace of His presence; this trace illuminated the face of Moses with a radiant radiance, and the people could not look at this radiance without fear of death. In another time of trial, another prophet appeared to the lawless descendants of lawless fathers, a man of a fiery spirit and a fiery word, Elijah the Tishbite. 39 Great was his zeal, great was his boldness. One day the hour of grave trial came to him. In the name of God, he performed great miracles before the lawless king and the lawless people - he brought down fire on the sacrifice, brought down water on the earth, and defeated the prophets of Baal. 40 But miracles did not soften the bitter. Elijah had to flee, and despondency fell upon his soul; he doubted himself. “Lord,” he said; I have grown old; take my soul now, for I am no better than my fathers.” 41 The prophet's reproofs had no effect; the signs did not enlighten the wicked: what could the prophet expect, except great wrath, great judgment, great destruction? And so the Lord, on Mount Horeb, 42 asks him: why are you here, Elijah? and tells him to go out and stand on the mountain, and promises him His revelation: “Behold, the Lord will pass by.” 43 A storm began to roar, mountains cracked, rocks broke, the earth shook, and fire rushed through. But neither in a storm, nor in an earthquake, nor in a fire, nor in anything terrible did the Lord reveal himself. After the storm there came silence, a breath of coolness came, and in this silence God revealed Himself to His prophet. “And the spirit is great and strong and destroys the mountains, but the Lord is not in the heart. And by nature he is a coward, and the Lord is not a coward. And fire is for a coward, and the Lord is not for fire. And through the fires there was a thin voice of cold, and there was the Lord.” Lord in sweet silence! The Lord reveals himself to man in coolness! Oh, what sweetness blows over us, Christians, from the depths of centuries, from this quiet appearance of God: in it the Christian soul sees the transformation of that Divine appearance, in which man will ascend to heaven and God will descend to earth, God will become man, and perfect love, by the grace of the Lord, will cast out the fear of God's presence. “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us, and we saw His glory, the glory as the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The appointed time has come, and in a quiet breath of coolness the Only Begotten Son of God appeared to the world, in human flesh and blood, a cradled baby in a manger, in the arms of a mother, a virgin of the human race, appeared sinless and stood under the law given for the sake of sin, among crying babies, among rejoicing sinners, among the labors, illnesses and disasters of lawless humanity. God descended to earth and the sound of a trumpet is not heard, the terrible glory of God is not visible, there is no storm or earthquake. He walks on the earth, meek and merciful, blesses the sinful earth, eats and drinks with sinners: he will not contradict, he will not cry out, anyone on the crossroads will hear His voice! He will not break broken reeds, and he will not extinguish the lena that heeds. 44 The Spirit of the Lord was upon Him and anointed Him “to bring good news to the poor, He sent Him to heal the brokenhearted, to preach understanding to the captives and sight to the blind, to send away the brokenhearted into joy, to preach the year of the Lord’s delight.” January 6, 1859. Behold the Lamb of God In a famous psalm, the prophet portrays himself as the blessed lamb of God. “The Lord shepherds me and deprives me of nothing!” The Lamb of God is calm and safe under the hand of the shepherd, does not know a single worry, in the consciousness of God’s protection, and in this feeling of security finds the opportunity to taste in fullness and simplicity all the simple blessings of life: “in a green place there they settled me, in the calm water they raised me.” This description presents to us forever the most complete picture of happiness imaginable. In it we recognize precisely that state of spirit to which we all strive, for which we all sigh, which we all seek in vain and, not finding it, we consider our life to be a failure: this is our heaven, which we dream about while walking on earth; a sky that is possible for us everywhere and is not connected with any place or position, as long as we only know how to find it. It is everywhere, but when we ask ourselves: where is it? We don’t know the answer, because no one on their own knows where to find it - except those few who are given it. This is the kingdom, the image of which was foreseen by the prophet and the king of the earth in his inspired hymn, and if there are two or three happy people on earth who received this kingdom, they alone are worthy of the name of the conquerors of life, the kings of the universe, to whom the kingdom was given without blood, without struggle, without enemies and vanquished, without stain and without fragmentation, a whole, complete, pure, holy kingdom. Wherever he is, wherever such a person lives, in a poor hut, in a monastery cell, or in the midst of the noise of the market, he is a king everywhere, because his heart is simple, he is not bound by anything, he is free everywhere, his eye is clear everywhere, and he is a winner everywhere. Before Jesus Christ appeared to the world as the lamb of God in the sense of a mysterious sacrifice for the sins of the world, he appears on the banks of the Jordan as the lamb of God depicted in the psalm. He left his humble home in all the simplicity and meekness of the spirit of God, in all the fullness of the gracious gift of the Lord, in the radiance of the world that rests on him according to the word of the prophet. In this sense, the whole picture of the mysterious night of His birth is filled with an inexpressible peace; In this sense, the inspired description of the Messiah in Isaiah the prophet shines with peace: “My servant, My beloved, My Spirit will rest on Him; He will not break a broken reed, He will not quench the smoldering flax.” 45 At his very birth he was given all beauty and all victory and all wealth. His destiny, His calling is to bring peace to earth, to reconcile God with man, to destroy the mediastinum of hostility between heaven and earth - and here He is the son of peace, in the simplicity of God, in all the abundance of inner peace; He carries with him the kingdom of God, and this kingdom is within Him. This is how Christ the Savior appears on the banks of the Jordan. The Lamb of God is met by a man of strong struggle, who from birth has been assigned to the work of struggle and exploits. This is not the lamb of God in the sense in which the psalm depicts the lamb. There is no peace in his soul. The truth aroused in his soul a consciousness of strength and a desire for activity; the truth led him out of the city and into the desert, first in a strong struggle with himself, with his desires and thoughts and passions; the truth confirmed his thought, and in the name of truth he convenes crowds of people around him with his fiery, stern word, awakening them to new life, to the feeling of a new spirit, the breath of which he sensed before anyone else. He calls to them: cleanse yourself! repent! The kingdom of heaven is approaching. And now it has approached - a new, unheard of kingdom, which Elijah sensed from afar when God revealed himself to him, past the thunder and storm, in a quiet breeze. The Lamb of God appeared on the banks of the Jordan. And the stern prophet, a man of strength and struggle, nourished by desert and feat, after many years of battle who has not yet known peace, sees before him the One who appeared as the son of the world and the lamb of God at birth; recognizes and bows before the One in Whom he recognizes the highest strength, perfection and completeness, bows before the One in Whom there was no internal division and confusion of faith, in Whom deep and heavy thoughts have not yet raised storms and unrest. He sees the royal seal of the world on Christ the Savior and bows before His greatness. From the depths of his heart, having seen outside himself a living image of that reconciliation and unity, which he sought in vain within himself, John had to exclaim at the sight of Christ: “Behold the Lamb of God.” 46 Today should be a holiday of old age. If on a holiday the heart of every person, of any age, rejoices, experiencing within himself the event of Christ’s life, then on this holiday the heart of an elder should especially rejoice. The pure young woman, the Blessed Virgin Mother, brings to the church the forty-day-old baby Jesus, the newborn hope of Israel. And so, in the soul of the old man, 48 who has lived the entire limit of his earthly life, tired of a life filled with many of his own and the people’s trials, a living hope of deliverance flares up more than ever. He was told by the Spirit that he would not die until he saw his innermost hope alive, until he saw the Deliverer, long awaited from the ages, Christ the Lord. The hope of deliverance came for everyone: for him the very moment of deliverance and freedom had come. He waited a long time and finally got it. He goes to the church and sees the desired Baby, and takes Him in his arms, and giving glory to God, says: “Now You are releasing Your servant, Master (from this life) according to Your promise, with a joyful spirit. Behold, my eyes have seen the Savior, whom You have raised up before the face of all the tribes of the earth. This is a light for the enlightenment of the Gentiles, this is glory for Your people Israel.” 49 Every person's life is waiting. The baby does not know what to expect, playing before God, in the bosom of his parents, calm, quiet, cheerful, trusting, contented. He is pleased, but he also expects: he expects everything that earthly happiness responds to and affects him, he expects the return of his father, his mother’s affection, a ray of sunshine, his childhood play, he expects new joy, having spent the previous joy. The baby's expectations come true - not today, then tomorrow, not now, then another minute. That is why the life of a baby is the happiness that only exists on earth. The young man does not know what he expects when he rushes into everything and wants to taste everything and live in this world with all the fullness of his soul, and do everything and give himself to everything and overcome everything with the ebullient strength of youth, firmly believing in all the impulses and love of his and his indignation. The husband, who has grown up in the life experience of business, grief and pleasure, does not know what he expects. And business, and grief, and pleasure did not bring him what he strived for, nor brought him happiness and peace, but he still puts his hope ahead - still, throwing back and forgetting the days he has lived, he pushes forward with his chest and seizes from everywhere business and grief, and pleasure, and new hopes and expectations... He has already learned how deceptive his hope is, but he still carries it within himself, and his life is full of sad, but still strong and ardent expectations. They are waiting and do not know what they are waiting for so stubbornly, what they have put into it, what they have directed the aspirations of their soul towards. Old age comes... and she waits even harder, even more stubbornly. But woe to the old man if he does not know what awaits his tired heart! Woe to the old man when, sadly seeing off the past day, he is worried only about what tomorrow will be like, when he, too, is still gathering half-extinguished strength in order to capture and endure the same joys and pleasures that youth is chasing, when he, too, in failures, consoles himself with the song of youth: “tomorrow I will be happier”! No, if all old age were like this, woe would it be for a person to live to old age - and what pity and hopelessness of life a person would encounter at the end of his earthly career! But this is not the kind of old age that the Lord, in His love, indicated to man. All good things belong to the Lord; His grace and His blessing rest at every age. Let us recognize this grace, and our old age will be not grief, not a decline in hope, not crying over past joy, not the destruction of vital forces, but peace, love and joy, growth in consciousness, gathering strength and affirmation of hope. The ebullient, active youth has passed and will not return: everything has its time under heaven. But it is good for him who, instead of fruitless tears about the past and sinful murmur about the present, surveying his past, says: it is mine, and it is a precious gift of God; turning to the present, he says: here is my peace, here God showed me the place of settlement: may the place be holy and the peace be blessed! After all the noise and all the bustle of the years experienced, God in old age prepared for man a quiet place of peace. There is nowhere to strive in life, nowhere to run - and there is no strength to take part in the hectic affairs of the younger generation. There is no temptation to become dissipated in appearance and to absorb sounds and images and fleeting impressions from the outside. At this moment, a person will learn the value of the treasure that was collected for him in his entire past life, full of gifts and punishments of God, and bless God for the silence in which God, at the end of his life, placed him, and gave him a great, grace-filled book of the past, and showed him a great matter - knowledge of God and self-knowledge. Blessed is he who, having reached old age, learns to read this book and understands its language, simple for the simple, and sophisticated for the sophisticated. Then, on every page of this book, the meaning of his entire past life will be revealed to a person; then he will understand what he wanted, where he was striving, what he was worried about, always dissatisfied and always thirsty, what he expected every day and hour in his early and late times, not understanding his expectation. And as the elder begins to delve deeper into reading the past, this vague expectation of something unknown, some unknown happiness will turn into a quiet and clear expectation of a known good - the expectation of Christ the Lord, the Hope of Israel... The day will finally come when the doors of the church will open for the elder, and the Spirit of the Lord will call him to enter and meet the Desired One, bless God and say: “Today you are releasing your servant, Master, according to Your word, in peace.” April 5, 1859. Palm Saturday What joy the ringing of the bell awakens in my soul for the solemn all-night vigil of this day! How many bright memories! A child who has just left the cradle, who is just starting to walk, is already familiar and already pleasant with the sight of a willow tree. The old nanny would bring it to his bed after matins, lightly hit the blanket with it, saying kind words, then give it to him, and, while still lying in his bed, the little one played for a long time with the smooth red twigs, tearing off the fragrant bark from them and admiring the beautiful velvet white lambs: from them he then spent the whole day forming his flock and driving it around the table in different directions. Then - in early childhood - what a fun Saturday morning it was: painted and gilded cherubs on willow trees are carried through the streets, cages with songbirds are carried on long poles, the melodious cries of peddlers are constantly heard. The spring sun looks welcomingly through the window; it makes you want to ask your nanny to go for a walk under the willows, where there are so many children and toys; and even without partying, in the wide yard, which is already beginning to dry out, how many new and varied pleasures there are! There, hens cluck, recently released from winter captivity, a rooster crows, as if calling for spring, warmth and greenery; dried boards and logs have long been beckoning a boy to walk and jump on them through streams of melting snow, and build bridges and launch boats... Evening is coming. For a long time now the boy had been besieging his mother with persistent requests to take him to church, where, in her own words, everyone was so happy and happy, where everyone stood with willows and candles, from where everyone returned, having met Christ, with a smile and a song. Something unknown and mysterious appears in the church to the young imagination: how good and light it should be there, how fun it can be to stand with everyone, holding a burning candle on a long branch in your hand. And finally, the mother, after several years of stubborn refusal, decides to take her child to church with her, my God - what a joy! Mom, when will the candles be lit? asks the child, and cannot wait for the desired minute. Finally, she has arrived! His mother herself lit a candle for him, stuck it on a willow tree and gave it to him, and at first he stands in some embarrassment, but at the same time proud that he, like all the big ones, is standing with a candle, and his heart is jumping with excitement. “Pray,” his mother whispers to him, “Christ is coming.” A mysterious thrill of expectation attacks the soul for the first time, and it seems to the child that Christ is here, about whom his mother told him so much this morning, and he sees in front of him a picture from his big book, how Christ walks, sitting on a donkey, among the people crowded on the street, clinging to fences and roofs, how they lay carpets and clothes for Him along the way, how mothers bring their children to Him, and the children shout to Him: Hosanna! And for a long time after that, the child imagines a solemn picture when the next day he plays with the willow he brought from the church and sculpts figures from his candle. And the next year, as soon as spring approaches, he impatiently asks his mother: will the willows come soon? Willows coming soon? Willows coming soon? Shall we go to church soon and light the candles again? Sweet thrill of the wonderful! holy expectation! an unconscious feeling of joy embracing a child's soul! Does the soul of a person who has left childhood far behind him with all the unconsciousness of his pure impressions still know you? Happy is the one on whom at least a reflection of this childhood feeling is reflected later in life on the church holiday of Palm Sunday. I’ll stand in church, light my candle, take a fluffy willow in my hands: God, light a holy fire in my soul, resurrect a young feeling in it, just as life was resurrected in my young willow in the spring! Behold, children stand around me and carefully hold their willows and gaze intently at the flame of their candle. I will look at them and remember how I was a baby and childishly stood before You in childish joy and carefree played in front of You, waiting for a firm thought and a clear consciousness. I will see, and my heart will melt before You, if You help me melt it, and again it will beat with living faith and love for You, and again the mother’s voice will be heard in it: “pray, my child, here is Christ coming”! And then let me hear, as happened before, the quiet tread of the donkey and the rustle of Christ’s robe, and the timid voices of children and loud cries of the people: “Hosanna to the Son of David,” 50 and from the depths of my shocked heart I myself will exclaim with them: Hosanna! What will I do? What will I bring to Christ the Victor? It’s not enough for one click, which comes out of the heart by itself, - I want to give Him what is mine... I’ll give him the clothes in which I came here. I will give him the care of everything that I loved and thought about all morning and all day in everyday anxiety, I will give him all the plans that I made, all the things that I did and planned to do, I will give him the memory of yesterday and calculations for tomorrow, I will give him the sorrows of the past days and the happiness that He sent me, I will give him human praise, which so grows with the soul, and human condemnation, which so quickly disappears from it, I will give the consciousness of dignity and achievement, the contentment of labor, the success of independent thought - I will give everything that I have grown in my soul and with which my daily life has clothed it, and I will remain before Him naked, like a baby, with a simple childish feeling, with a simple childish joy... Lord, send me such a feeling for this hour, so that I can meet You as I want, as my soul thirsts! And may it come to me again at that decisive moment when You appear to me for the last time - to take my soul. Let even then not a single garment woven by earthly life remain on me, so that even then I can meet You with childish joy and say with my last breath: Hosanna! Hey, come, Lord Jesus! April 11, 1864. Palm Saturday A holiday on the street - the crowd began to stir, and everywhere you go, you meet shining faces, as if everyone’s everyday burden had been lifted from their souls, as if everyone began to breathe more freely in God’s world, as if everyone wanted to look around the world with an open gaze and meet the gaze of another person; Speech loosened and expressions on faces became softer, and it was as if, speaking with one’s neighbor amicably and cheerfully, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth spoke.” 51 Children come from the festivities with willows and toys, and behind them, adults, seeing off the children, seem to be enjoying themselves like children. The smile on the old man’s face never leaves his face, and these young people, who rejoice in life every morning and evening, seem to be especially happy and joyful today. A strict moralist, a stern preacher, is ready, at the sight of a wandering crowd, to ask: who among the many keeps within himself the sacred memory of the holiday and is accustomed to sanctifying the Lord’s day in life and deed? A vain question, because before it we are all unanswerable. But today the church does not ask for an answer. Today - on His holiday - God closed the black abyss, into which sinful man is afraid to look, and put the seal of His grace on its top. The children are happy. Let him remember who the child was, whether he knew what he was happy about. But this joy became the basis of all earthly joy in an adult’s soul: it is the first link of all the holidays of his life. In a child’s soul, festive joy places a seed of grace, and “a person sleeps and rises night and day; but how the seed vegetates and grows, he himself does not know.” In a child’s soul, the memory of festive joy leaves a radiant light, which itself unknownly shines far from this life and into the future, then becomes obscured and dims, then, rising from the unknown depths of the soul, suddenly illuminates the whole person and you cannot discern which rays the past brought and which the future sent to meet them, for in the human soul the mystery of God is accomplished. And so sometimes, after many years of spiritual sleep, oblivion, ignorance and passion, the extinct dawn of a children's holiday suddenly rises in a tired soul and illuminates it, drives away the shadows, breaks the strong knots of doubt and places a person before God in a new feeling of festive joy. Another simple person could not fully resist wearing festive clothes and mixed the holiday with the dirt of everyday need, with the dirt of rough fun and rough habit... But who knows what share of festive joy God gave him when, with the rising of the sun, he shone with the festive light; who knows, maybe his share was richer than ours, and deeper than us, the feeling lay in his soul, and earlier than us, it will be reflected in his hours of grief and spiritual darkness. For all of us, the holiday opens the doors of the church, and in the church the “quiet light of the holy glory of the Heavenly Father” shines - for one less, for another more spacious, for one it will be reflected on the threshold, for another it will shine inside the church. The time will pass, the doors will close, but the sweetness of blissful contemplation remains in the soul. And we stand in front of the doors, and knock, and call to the sinful soul: open, Lord! What if to this simple soul, without a call and without effort, the doors opened wide and the glory of the Lord appeared, and, showing her His light, the Lord sent her away in peace? Carefree and proud young men are walking, and as if not feeling the holiday, they pass by the shrine with a frivolous smile... But what called them here, into the festive crowd; what makes them look at the world of God more cheerfully and cheerfully than yesterday; What, if not a festive folk feeling, which, unknown to them, perhaps denied by themselves, unconsciously lurks in the depths of the soul and raises in it the keys of life with an inaudible force? And the stamp of God’s gift lies on them: even if this gift has not yet been recognized and touched, it was not given to them in vain; and in them, under the seal, lies the grain of truth and grace-filled knowledge. Who knows when it will rise again? God knows about this, who brought forth water from a stone, and who grew a green branch from a dry tree. And they have childhood memories in their souls, but their keys are not sealed forever. Today we have the joy of the “general resurrection”, and our willow tells us the news of eternal life and victory over death. Let them carry their willow and follow the people, even if they themselves do not know why they rejoice together with the people: the time will come for them too. The Lord came “to seek and save the lost!” Let us rejoice without being embarrassed, that everyone rejoices in his own way. The Feast of the Lord has illuminated the universe and shines on everyone indiscriminately. On this day, which the Lord has created for all people, let us rejoice and be glad with all His people! March 30, 1863. Holy Saturday Yesterday His appearance was dishonored, humiliated more than all the sons of men. His disciples fled, the crowd that followed Him in amazement and praised His miracles turned against Him when they saw Him deposed, humiliated, condemned, crucified. But today - rest His honor. Wandering through the land of Judea, He had no place to lay His head. He died. - A rich and noble man arranged a burial for Him and laid Him in his tomb, “and he laid a great stone over the door of the tomb.” It was just morning, the coffin had not yet been sealed, the Jewish guard had not yet been assigned. Where are you at this moment, all those who loved Him, who walked with Him, who hold Him in their hearts and quietly cry for Him? Here are the wives who followed Him, sitting straight from the tomb: they stood at the cross, they saw how He suffered, they watched how they buried Him, and now they are still not able to move away from the place where His body lies. Peter - even before the crucifixion - went out, crying bitterly: he did not dare to go to the cross, he is still crying bitterly in solitude, and by this he has already shown that he is crying for himself at this moment, and not for the One Whom he so ardently swore to love to the point of blood and death. He has his own tears: oh, how bitter such tears must be, because they could not mix with anyone else’s tears into one common feeling. Other students - where are they? they fled in fear, thinking about their salvation; they were not at the Cross of the Lord, they did not see the suffering of Jesus - they will learn from others how He suffered, how He was mocked, how at His death He cried out to the Heavenly Father: Has He forsaken all of Me? They hear and think: who was He? We saw His power, we saw His miracles, we heard His word, and now His enemies defeated Him, and God, Whom He called His Father, abandoned Him. “We hope that this one will deliver Israel.” Are they crying? Yes, they cry because they loved a person, but there is doubt in their soul, questions of practical life in their mind. They are already thinking: what should we do now? - and now, the Lord, after the resurrection, will find them again at their former craft. One did not leave Him - His beloved disciple, the one who bowed his head to Him at the supper, the one who followed Him into Anna’s courtyard, although “we know the bishop.” 52 John's love knew no fear; he, together with the Mother of Jesus, stood at His cross, he, together with her, from the first to the last minute, lived the entire terrible story of the trial, reproach and torment of the Savior. Apparently, he loved, just as a mother loves - simply, without thinking, without thinking about himself, without caring about what will happen - ardent, but simple, complete, whole love, which does not ask about anything, does not examine anything, in which there is no thought about the extent of devotion, since there is no thought about the possibility of doubt, evasion or betrayal. Therefore, knowing the simplicity of this heart, the dying Savior entrusted this heart with the care of His Mother. “Wife! behold your son. Be your mother!” 53 “And from that hour the disciple has been drinking in his own home.” So she is in his house, and of course they cry together, if they can cry; together they keep in the secret of silence and faith, like a shrine and a treasure, the memory of the Deceased, and the love that merged with their whole life, with their whole being. We don’t know how much bitter sorrow there was in the fresh memory of the suffering of the Beloved, but we can imagine if we looked into that black terrible abyss that opens before a person at his deathbed, in the suffering of the one into whom the whole soul has passed with immeasurable love. And here was dying, mocked and tortured, He Who was more beautiful in kindness than all the sons of men, in Whom dwelt all the fullness of the Corporeal Divinity, Whom God the Father called His beloved Son. How the Most Holy Virgin, the Mother, loved Him, how the Most Holy Virgin Mother looked at Him, can this be understood, can any earthly mother explore it, in comparison with her own feeling, no matter how deep, ardent, selfless and pure it may be! The Word of God does not dwell on her love for the Son, does not tell us, does not describe to us her feelings and relationships. Before this love, the study of human love must stop in reverence - and if anywhere, then here love appears to us - a sacrament. No matter what fire the love of the human heart burns on earth, this fire is earthly; for here the human self is attracted to another self, the flesh speaks in the language of the flesh and the spirit loves “in jealousy.” But what name to call, what property to explain the mysterious love of the Most Holy Virgin for the Son-God-Man, how to separate the fullness of love from the fullness of faith in this feeling? And love and faith in him are one, without division, without confusion. This is how a humble human soul, overwhelmed with joy and trembling in the feeling of the presence of God, loves God: it loves not by seeing, but only by believing. And she believed with human faith, she believed in the Son announced to her by the angel of the Annunciation; but she saw this Son, in Whom she believed! She held Him and swaddled Him and fed and kept Him, and raised Him and “painfully sought Him” with human care, and walked after Him, and listened to Him, and saw His deeds in the flesh, and in all the fullness of her Divine love there abided inseparable love for the Son of Man. And therefore - whatever her faith in eternal life and the resurrection of the Son - how could she not suffer - and who will measure the depth, who will confess the bitterness of her suffering? It is known to Him alone, to the One Who, knowing the Divinity and seeing His glory, at the same time felt by human nature that “His soul is sorrowful even to death,” and prayed to the Father, if possible, to carry past the mortal cup. In the solemn peace of His great Saturday, was there a place for the peace of the great sorrow of the mother’s heart? Oh, the great mystery of the Sabbath, the mystery of love and faith, the mystery of the cross and suffering, the mystery of life and death! In this tomb, behind this stone, under this seal, “let all human flesh remain silent and stand with fear and trembling and think of nothing earthly within itself.” Early morning, quiet, fresh, spring morning. The last sounds of the bell die in the air. Matins of Holy Saturday has just passed. Its beginning is in the darkness of the night; at the dawn of a bright day, the solemn procession of Christ’s burial took place; the people who filled the churches went home - and in the midst of solemn silence, the solemn anticipation of the holiday began. Expectation. Who is unfamiliar with this feeling before any solemn event in life, before anticipated joy, before a desired date! Who hasn’t had to, remembering the long-gone days of life’s joy, to ask themselves what is more pleasantly reflected in the memory of the heart - the bright light of accomplished joy or the quiet light of its anticipation? And happy is the one who has known from a young age, who has access throughout his entire life to the end, the feeling of anticipation for the Bright Holiday! It is familiar to those who are accustomed to going through the wonderful ladder of divine services throughout Great Lent and especially Holy Week, which, along the steps of prayerful, sublime contemplation, elevates the believing soul to the very pinnacle of the saving sacrament of faith. And the peak is not far: at midnight, with the first strike of the bell on Ivan the Great, the whole church will respond to it with a wonderful choir of bells, and every Orthodox breast will be overshadowed by the sign of the cross. But now everything is silent, everything is waiting - on the threshold of the Resurrection. Dawn is busy with it. Silence in the air, silence in the soul. But the soul is still asking - where is it asking? To the church, where she will have to experience, experience a wonderful poem of memory and contemplation, cross the threshold and enter solemnly and quietly on the eve of Sunday joy. At noon the liturgy of Holy Saturday begins. Anyone who is familiar with this service, the only one of the year and surpassing everything in its mysterious composition, looks forward to it every year with joyful anticipation. After the first litany at Vespers, a trembling feeling embraces the soul, filled with the impressions of the passion and death of Christ, when the first stichera of the first tone, the first hymn of the Resurrection, is heard: “Accept our evening prayers, Holy Lord, and grant us remission of sins, for You are the only one who manifests the Resurrection in the world.” One after another, these stichera, familiar to the ear, elevate the feeling and are reflected in the soul, as if you were hearing them for the first time, as if for the first time the solemn promise of the universal resurrection of the dying and dead was shining in them. And when the voice changes from the first to the eighth, with new trepidation you hear the thunderous victory songs of the Church with the personification of the overthrown hell: “Today the walls of hell are crying out - the mortal power is exhausted” - and at the end of each the chorus will shake the soul: “Glory, Lord, to Your cross and Your resurrection.” The last majestic stichera will depict the mysterious sign of the Sabbath of the Old Testament and New Testament day of repose: “Moses typified this secretly great day with the verb: and God bless the seventh day, for it is a blessed Sabbath, this is the day of repose, from all His works the Only Begotten Son of God rested.” The loud “Worldwide Glory” gives way to the hymn: Quiet Light, which receives special meaning on this day, glorifying in the evening light the quiet radiance of the glory of the Heavenly Father at the tomb, from which the resurrection arises. And after the last sounds of the singing “Son of God, give life, with the same the world glorifies you,” the reading of parimia begins, in which the entire history of God’s economy about the salvation of man passes before us in images and songs - from the beginning of creation to the Resurrection: the sacrifice of Isaac, 54 the establishment of the Passover of the Lord, the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, the story of Jonah, 55 the resurrection of infants through prayers Elisha 56 and Elijah in Zarephath 57 of Sidon and at the Somanite widow, finally the song of the three youths in the cave of Babylon. And in the midst of these samples one can hear the solemn speeches of the prophets about Jerusalem and Zion. Anyone who has been accustomed since childhood to hearing the parimations of Holy Saturday in church and recognizing in them familiar faces and images of sacred history, simple and touching stories about the sorrows and joys of man, always hears in his soul the images imprinted on it: about Jonah snoring on the ship and faint-hearted under a pumpkin, about the baby of the Somanite widow, how he got a headache and died on his mother’s lap, how Gehazi walked to her with a rod from the prophet and with a strict order from him not to greet anyone on the road - as on the field of Deir, with the sound of music, psalms and samvika, the people bow to the golden body that Nebuchadnezzar 58 set up as king, and three Jewish youths denounce the king before the people... In the silence, in the middle of the church, the words of the reader are heard, but twice this silence is interrupted by the loud repetition of solemn Biblical chants: the royal gates are opened, and after the reader, repeating, verse by verse, the triumphant song of Mariamne upon crossing the Red Sea, the choir loudly exclaims: “Let us sing to the Lord, gloriously shall we be glorified.” 59 But at the last parimia of St. The Church has staged the most solemn song of biblical legends, the song of the three youths in the cave of Babylon, the song of all nature and all humanity, in glorification of the Most High Creator God. All the heavenly lights, all the elements, all creatures, the entire church of the living and the dead - everyone is called to glorify God, and after each verse of praise the choir proclaims: Lord, sing and exalt Him forever. The soul-shaking impression of this song subsides upon reading the sublime words of the Apostle Paul about the participation of a Christian in the suffering of Christ, in the likeness of His death, and in His resurrection. “And ye think yourselves dead because of sin, but alive of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And now comes the moment of solemn contemplation again. Following the reading of the Apostle, 60 before the shroud, 61 in view of the King Christ lying in the tomb, the reader proclaims, verse by verse, a psalm lesson to mortal kings, rulers and judges of the earth, to all those in power who do injustice, until the King of righteousness Himself appears to fulfill the prophetic word about the establishment of righteousness on earth: “The God of a hundred is in the assembly of gods, in the midst the gods will judge. How long will you judge unrighteousness and accept the faces of sinners? Judge the poor and the poor, justify the lowly and the poor. Take away the poor and wretched, deliver him from the hand of the sinner. Without knowledge, below understanding, they walk in darkness. Let all the foundations of the earth move. Az rekh: you are gods and sons of the Most High. You, like men, are dying and like one you are falling from princes.” And behind each verse one can hear in the singing of the choir how all creation, suffering and sighing from unrighteousness, calls: “Arise, O God, judge the earth, as You have inherited among all nations.” There was a moment of silence in the church. In the middle of it, a procession of a deacon with the Gospel protrudes from the altar through the entire church in front of the shroud. He walks, in the likeness of the Angel of God, the messenger of the Resurrection, all in white vestments, to which by that moment all the clergy had replaced their previous black ones, - for the great thing is already being proclaimed, which happened “on the Sabbath evening, rolling together from the Sabbaths, - when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.” 62 And when the deacon reads this Gospel, the whole church hears the message of the Resurrection for the first time, and when in the midst of deep silence, in the ears of the people, the desire of the soul catching every sound of the holy story, the words are heard: “and behold Jesus take them together, saying: Rejoice,” everyone as if hears from Him Himself for the first time this life-giving word... At this service, the Liturgy of the Catechumens seems to merge with the Liturgy of the Faithful into one composition, for already in the very first part of it the song of baptism is heard. “The Elites were baptized into Christ,” and in the first centuries of Christianity, at that moment a host of saints came into the church from the baptismal sanctuary. baptism in white robes, joining the congregation of the faithful. The soul is filled with solemn sensations: in the midst of them the mysterious song of Holy Saturday arises: Let all human flesh be silent. The mysterious embraces the soul on the eve of the greatest holiday and keeps it in the peace and silence of bright anticipation, until midnight... April 22, 1861. Bright Night of the Resurrection The great evening has arrived. The lights are off. There was silence in the house. Everyone settled down to rest in anticipation of the celebration. The noise on the streets has fallen silent: and everyone there is waiting for something, preparing for something. Only in my room the fire still glows, and from the silence that surrounds me, the voices of the mysterious night are heard, the voices of the distant and near past. How much they tell me - no, they don’t just talk, but whisper, caressing the feeling, and awaken one after another the memories of childhood and youth. My whole life was spent in this quiet shelter. Here my cradle hung, here later, between the beds of my brothers and sisters, my crib stood. Here, by the window, the old nanny sat and told me to go to sleep. Never had her persuasion been so zealous and convincing as on this evening, on the occasion of the holiday of Bright Resurrection, and never had her childish stubbornness been so persistent. How can one fall asleep in the evening, when the whole day was one cheerful song about the joy that will happen tomorrow, when from the very morning a series of those extraordinary phenomena began that always take place in the house before a big holiday and most of all attract and occupy a child’s imagination. Yesterday, two whole days of washing, cleaning and tidying ended: this morning the whole house looks anew, fresh, swept and decorated: a new spirit emanates from it, the spirit of joyful expectation. And today new work began; Today, as soon as they came from mass, everyone started doing small things - preparing dresses, painting eggs; children sort through their toys and, imitating the big ones, clean and wash their small household. How many new rumors have arisen in this small world, so much fuss and worry about something that for an adult has long ago lost all value, but for a child is an important matter, a great event! Tomorrow “Christ is Risen!” tomorrow is a holiday! and an adult will never understand how much delight there is for a child in this one word: holiday! The older children know that they will go to matins with the big ones, and together with the big ones they went to bed early in anticipation of the night. Older children want to sleep but cannot; small children may or may not want to. And how can they sleep when whispers are heard from everywhere from the beds, abrupt negotiations are heard about what will happen tomorrow, what happened today. How can they sleep when the mysterious image of the holiday looks out from every corner by the light of a lamp! But fatigue takes its toll. If you couldn’t persuade your mother to take you to church with you, you persuade the nanny: nanny! Darling! Wake me up when they go around the church! - And the nanny promises, she would promise everything in the world, if only the child would calm down. But from other beds, the older lucky ones respond with laughter to the nanny’s promises - and again the restless child rises, and again persuades the nanny, and again makes her promise for the tenth time that he will do it and will not forget. The old nanny, it seems, really will not forget: she is so angry with the older naughty girls that they embarrass the child and do not allow him to sleep. And you slumber in sweet hope; but the fear that the nanny will deceive overpowers sleep, and once again the half-asleep child forces the nanny to repeat her promise. Fell asleep! says the nanny: “Glory to Thee, Lord!” A child's sleep is strong: tomorrow it will be completely light when the child wakes up, lulled by a sweet promise, and is ready to cry when he sees that the night has passed and the bright matins have passed. But how can we cry when the holiday has already arrived and looked so cheerfully in the face, and the nanny is standing near the bed, brothers and sisters are standing, kissing, and laughing, and from everywhere you can hear: Christ is risen! Christ is risen! But even in a sound sleep, sometimes the bright hope of a child does not fall asleep. It happened that she woke me up at that moment when a mysterious hum was sweeping throughout Moscow, and thousands of brassy voices merged into the first song to the risen Savior. It happened - a child jumped up, and the nanny, who remained at home, brought him to the window and showed him the sparkling lights on the bell towers and the lamps of the Sunday procession. For a minute everything in the room fell silent, and the child, half asleep, half awake, listened with the old woman to the last sounds of the church bells, and then he fell asleep again in his bed, and the old nanny sang in a rattling voice: Christ is risen! and – Shine, shine. And what was seen and heard then through a dream, now, like a sweet dream, is seen and heard from the foggy, distant past... First Matins! My God, how my heart beat when the mother finally decided for the first time to take her child with her to Bright Matins. They put you to bed, you don’t want to sleep - and you just wait for the desired time to come, hour after hour. Here it is. After the silence into which the whole house has plunged, the joyful noise of cooking rises below and above and in all corners. for matins. Dressed in a festive way, at night you walk along a still dark street - they haven’t rung the bell yet, the church is dark, but it is already full of people, everyone is in a hurry to take their place, and everyone is standing dressed in a festive way, with new candles, and a mysterious whisper of expectation floats throughout the church. They light candles in large chandeliers, 63 which, it seems, have never been lit. How light it became - how full the church was with people, how happy everyone looked and how fun it was to look at everyone. And then suddenly someone nearby crossed himself, hearing the sound of the cathedral bell: in fact they struck, another - a third, and wonderful, mysterious sounds rushed out in chorus, and finally our dear bell covered the entire choir with its thick buzzing and absorbed all the sounds. How good, my God! How good it is to stand near your mother and brothers and sisters and listen to mysterious voices and look with all your eyes around you, and wait, wait with your whole being. And then there’s a whole world of new sensations for the excited child. They took out from the altar old icons that stood somewhere far away, which they had never seen before, took down banners, which they had never seen in motion, and sang “Thy Resurrection, O Christ the Savior,” and the procession began. And so, the doors closed, the church was full of people, and everyone lit their candles, everyone had such calm, important faces, and everyone stood quietly, quietly, without saying a word. It becomes wonderful for the child, he looks around him - the old nanny stands nearby with a lit cinder and prays and cries, the brothers and sisters and mother look straight into the eyes and do not smile - and everything is quiet, as if there is no one in the church, and above this silence only the same solemn roar of bells floats. God, what will happen is good and strange! But then, behind the doors, the abrupt sounds of exclamations from the priest and the responses of the choir were heard, and the crowd began to stir, people crossing themselves and praying and whispering. Suddenly the doors opened and a loud “Christ is Risen!” was heard. and in response to him the people boomed in their hundred-tongued voice: truly! And soon the whole church began singing joyful songs of resurrection along with the choir. Oh, holy songs, familiar to everyone, dear to everyone! Who among the Russian people does not know and sing you and does not respond to your sounds with all his heart? And a child, hearing you for the first time, feels a thrill of festive joy, and an old man, who has spent Easter many times throughout his life, when he hears you, it is as if he becomes a child again and celebrates Christ with childish joy. Whenever my ear hears you, whenever my imagination imagines the bright night of Easter and the church celebrating, a festive feeling blossoms and smells fragrant in my soul. And childhood, dear, long-gone childhood, looks into it and is reflected in it, and again one hears in it the same hopes and promises with which the soul lived and rejoiced in that blessed time. In these hopes and promises there is the light and hope of a whole life, an echo of an eternal holiday, a reflection of a non-evening day in the kingdom of Christ. Move away, bitter worries! Let what the heart was waiting for does not come, let what is scary to remember and think about remains in life, let it stand here with me, next to me! Let what the heart believed and placed itself in betrayed it; let that which was more precious than life leave life! Let what seemed truth and beauty and light turn out to be lies and darkness and ugliness! Life is all as it is and with everything that is in you, remain, I am not afraid of you, because with this sound of the bell the curse fell from you; At this moment, God's blessing illuminated you again, from end to end, from the first to the last minute, and you shine, and you show off, and shine, and tremble with the love of God, dear, bright, blessed life! All covered with the dew of God, all washed by the Blood of my Savior, radiant, pure, without end and without measure, without death, without grief, without loss. The light of Christ's resurrection revealed your truth, and merged your future with the present and past in one consciousness of endless happiness! Oh, when would I stop this moment! Oh, if only I could forever hold this harmony in my soul, and begin to live and not end living with this one word, with this one feeling: “Christ is risen!” Risen by Christ!” Be patient with the Lord on the day of His Resurrection, be patient with the Lord, O man! For a long time and in vain He called and knocked on the door of your heart and in it he looked for a church for Himself, where He would bring glory, but you did not let Him in. Your house was unclean and untidy, your church was full of guests, and from morning to morning songs were sung in it and feasts were held: and all your guests were His enemies. How could He enter your house? but He loved you and wanted to give you and you to find rest for Himself: therefore He did not leave your doors and kept calling you and sending His friends to you to tell you: behold, the Lord is calling. But you listened lazily; You were having a noisy conversation with your guests, and you felt sorry and ashamed to drive them out. Rarely, having sobered up for a minute, did you open the door to see if the Lord was waiting, but again, at the call of guests from the inner rooms, your doors were closed, and you locked yourself in again with your friends, forgetting about the voice of the Lord standing at the door. He begged you to leave at least one inner room for Him, and in it to place Him in peace; and you agreed and you willingly gave Him a room in your house; and at first he received Him with fervor and fervor: but your guests and friends were dearer to you than the Lord. You gave them your whole day and your whole night, and you went in to Him for one minute, only to immediately leave Him again. Now, having appeared in glory, on the day of the Resurrection, He shone His light on your dirty and unclean house, and its appearance was transformed, and unclean interlocutors fled from it. The Lord comes to you in light and triumph; He has not forgotten you, having once loved you, and on the day of His Resurrection He wants to be with you in peace and calls you: be patient with Me on the day of My Resurrection! Rubbed even now and rejoice with Me! June 1861. Ascension of the Lord The word “flesh” came and moved into us. God is omnipotent and incomprehensible, God is spirit, in the living, unapproachable light - flesh came and dwelled in us. Having loved us, He united in a visible way with our nature and became one from us, the Son of Man, and we approached Him and saw in Him a mortal man. He revealed Himself to be the Son of God in signs and in teaching and in the testimony of His Father; and all who saw and heard could believe the testimonies that He is the Word of the Father, the Son of God - and they believed and confessed. But no matter how strong, no matter how ardent the faith, human nature could not contain it within itself, was not able to merge and reconcile with the fullness of faith in one whole feeling the idea that God lives among us, as one from us. When He came, His own did not receive Him. The little ones received Him, and gave them the realm to become children of God, who believe in His name, who were not born of the flesh... but born of God. But these chosen ones, and these children of God, were also people with a weak human nature. They saw the Son of God next to them every day, and no matter how much they loved Him, no matter how much they believed, no matter how much they saw His works, they could not help but be tempted. More than one of them asked himself in bewilderment: is this our Messiah, the Son of the Living God? Is it he who eats and drinks and touches human filth and sits with publicans and sinners? Is he of a famous family and a famous mother, born on earth and raised on earth with the children of men? Is it he who wears human clothing and obeys the law and pays taxes to foreign human power? Is it he who loves and grieves like a man and sheds human tears for those he loves? Is it he, the Messiah, God, who comes from unknown places and dwells in unknown places, and appears in glory and power? Did He perform miracles that plunged everyone into horror and amazement, they said: a great prophet has arisen in us and visited the God of His people, but they remembered the former prophets who worked miracles, and asked themselves in bewilderment: He is the Messiah - why does our whole nature around Him not change, and how is it that God is in the midst of us, while we and everything around us remains the same? Why do our illnesses remain with Him and around Him, people die and suffer as before, man tills the land by the sweat of his brow, foreign power oppresses the people of God, the lawless do the wrong, and unrighteousness rules over righteousness? Is this him, the one for whom we were waiting, in whom we hoped for deliverance from bondage, from oppression, from disasters: why is the kingdom of truth and freedom and happiness not coming? Is it he - the deliverer and the king - who preaches to us the law of patience and the bliss of suffering and bondage? Where is His authority and strength? Will He perform a great miracle? Delight and amazement are followed by the seductive thought of what His new miracle will be, in which He will reveal Himself, and each miracle arouses an insatiable thirst for new miracles. He fed the people in the desert - and the thought was born: why, if it is God who rained down the manna, why were only those who were with him fed, while whole thousands of those who were not are starving in the land of Judea? Why should those who are satisfied today from His hand still have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow tomorrow? Why did He raise the paralytic here, raise the dead, restore sight to the blind, but there thousands die from the sword of Herod, hundreds are crushed by the tower of Siloam? 65 Why does He Himself not know where to lay His head, and the disciple buys bread for Him and for himself from a meager monetary supply? He speaks about the kingdom - and they believe and cry with emotion - and in the morning a dispute ensues between the disciples about which of them in this kingdom should take first place next to Him! And all that night, when He was seized and bound as a criminal, everyone was offended because of Him, and first of all he was offended who confessed Him: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. His love was ardent, but his faith was unable to bear the contradiction between reality and the living image of the teacher that he had formed for himself. In the bound and abused captive, he was unable to recognize the one whom he recognized as the Son of the living God, and his faith was shaken. And when He was imputed with the lawless, when He hung on the cross as the last of the evildoers, in whom could faith in the God-Man still remain? At that moment, His enemies with an evil grin and after them the mob with bitter contempt called to Him: if You are the Son of God, come down from the cross: when we see, then we will believe in You. And if those who loved Him and walked with Him did not turn to Him with the same thought at that moment, of course, there is only love, that ardent and simple love that does not cope with faith and does not ask about the beloved: who is He? she alone made this thought impossible. But faith, human faith alone, would not have endured this terrible sight. “We hope that He is the one who wants to raise up Israel!” But now He has risen, and defeated love celebrates, and dead faith revives! He recognizes Christ the teacher and sees that He Himself, but not the one who was before, not the one who wandered in humiliation along the paths and hills, “until he brings judgment into victory.” Mary recognized Him and called: Teacher! and in delight she is ready to rush to Him and hears: “Don’t touch Me!” 66 The disciples recognized Him at the table at Emmaus, and before they could cry out to Him from the fullness of their hearts: Teacher! He was already “invisible”, 67 He appears to them later, He eats their fish and honey. He allows Thomas 68 to touch Him - but no longer shares days and nights and meals with them, and He appears intangibly and leaves them intangibly, and, thinking about Him, they say: Lord! and the feeling of love for a person merges with the awe of reverence for the Lord. They no longer walk with Him, and only wait for Him, at their own providence, at their own business, which everyone has taken up again, as if leaving the work for which they walked together following Christ, they see their Lord with bodily eyes. This is their holiday; but the holiday will not last long - and the day of Ascension will come. It is impossible for a person in the body to remain for a long time in the state in which the apostles were after the resurrection, and Christ truly say to them: “from you there is, let them come from you.” How can they live with faith and vision, how can they endure both together? How to retain the whole integrity of faith when there is a vision? How to preserve the purity of your thoughts about the Lord, Whom you see alive before you, how to be careful not to distort in your imagination the image of the Lord, visible with bodily eyes? How to combine the visible with the invisible? How not to be seduced by the desire of the human heart, approaching with it the One in Whom desires disappear and unite and Who alone knows good and evil, and truth, and the beginning and the end of all things? Here in His glorified flesh He appears to them and speaks to them words of spirit and life “about the Kingdom of God,” but they still cannot comprehend it! They still came together and asked Him: “Lord! Will you establish the kingdom of Israel in this year?” 69 They still think about the earthly kingdom of Israel. But the day of Ascension came. He ascended from them into heaven, telling them that He would be with them always until the end of the age, and that He would send the promise of His Father upon them. They do not see Him - vision has been taken away from them, but how everything in them has changed through faith! Only from the time He ascended from them into heaven did they recognize Him and feel within themselves the promised strength, the promised joy, which no one can take away. They do not physically see Christ, the Son of Man, but they have never felt so close the presence of the Son of God, the God-Man. They all carry Christ within themselves by the Holy Spirit, they all understand the power of the kingdom and, without fear of death, they go to preach Him throughout the universe. There is nothing to be embarrassed about in Him when He ascended in glory and sat down at the right hand of God - there is nothing to desire when one treasure appeared in heaven, equally close to everyone, equally desired by everyone; there is nothing to argue about who is closer to Him, when He, having ascended from the earth, drew everyone to Himself and called all the children of God into freedom: there is nothing to think about the kingdom of Israel, when the universal kingdom of God opened and everyone felt within themselves “the truth about the world and the joy about the Holy Spirit.” And now the Christian soul, inflamed with love for Christ, seeks a vision and grieves over the fact that it cannot see, cannot hear and cannot touch its Christ. This desire is cowardly! If faith were strong in us, it would not come to us. But we have little faith, and in the cowardice of our hearts we think: oh, if only I would see Christ with my bodily eyes, if I would live with Him, how my faith would be confirmed! We forget that faith cannot be reconciled with vision, and where there is vision and sensation, there and precisely there, faith is most likely to weaken. When He lived on earth, “neither His brothers believed in Him. 70 No matter how ardent the desire of our hearts for him, Petrov’s love was a hundred times more ardent; he lived with Him, followed Him, listened to Him, saw His works, but in the hour of danger, Peter’s faith betrayed him, and he denied! Of those who shouted: crucify Him! how many saw Him and His miracles, listened to Him and cried with emotion! Judas 71 was His disciple, and what became of Judas! There were so many witnesses to His wondrous miracles, witnesses to Lazarus’ resurrection, and at the hour of death, everyone “left Him and fled.” No - in that which should completely embrace the whole soul of a person, in the integral consciousness of God and eternity - vision cannot for us. Let us remember what is said about the relatives of the Gospel rich man: “even if someone rises from the dead, they do not have faith.” Vision affects human sensation only in fractions and fragments; vision only strikes a person in a living way; the vision has passed, the feeling has weakened, and a question is born in the soul; it requires a new vision, a new experience, a new sensation - and there is no end to questions, and no end to doubts. He who seeks transitory images and visions in order to establish his faith on them does not know what he wants. We walk here by faith, not by sight. When would they tell us: here is Christ or here and there, would we go to look for Christ outside ourselves, in this or that place - and where would we find Him? And having found Him in one place, we would, like the Jews, begin to judge, according to the desire of our hearts and according to the imagination of our feelings, how Christ appeared to us, and we would imagine our Christ, and then, seeing Him again not as the deceptive heart imagined Him, we would be tempted, as the Jews were tempted, waiting for deliverance, asking for a sign, as the Greeks were tempted, seeking wisdom. Today the circle of holidays has concluded, from the very week of the Publican and the Pharisee, elevating the believing soul, as it were, along the steps of prayerful contemplation from one sacrament to another. We contemplated the mystery of sin, the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of suffering, the mystery of resurrection. And so, like a crown, like alpha and omega, the beginning and end of contemplation, the feast of St. Trinity. People of God! after all, this is the very depth of our faith - this is the mystery of life and death. And our holiday stands precisely at that time of the year when the life of every creature arises from everywhere, is excited and increases. The whole earth is blooming and beautiful, the villages are dressed in glory, the air is teeming with myriads of creatures - and every leaf, every flower, every blade of grass, every midge is a secret of creation, a great, unsolved, but tangible mystery. Man walks in the middle - the greatest mystery of life, bearing within himself the likeness of the image of God, and above all this is the great and terrible mystery of eternity, embracing life from everywhere! In the middle of this life, under the roof of this secret, the human soul feels that it has arisen from somewhere, at someone’s command, along with everything that lives with it in the universe - and lives and strives somewhere - to its beginning! How can she renounce this mystery when the vault of heaven with the mysterious luminaries of the universe is high above her, around her is the life of nature, full of mysteries, and below on the earth and in the dust of the earth are the graves through which all living things have passed and are passing! And no matter how many smart and crazy speeches are heard around that there is no secret, the human soul will not believe this and will not stop turning upward from the grave to the luminaries, and with the great desire of truth to seek the life-giving Spirit, from Whom everything comes and by Whom everything is contained. And so, so that our faith does not weaken along the way, so that our aspiration is renewed with new strength, today the Holy Church compiled this great holiday for us and collected on it all the verbal features of the great mystery, so that our prayerful contemplation would focus on them and blossom with joy. Now in the prayer that we are accustomed to repeating every day, today we hear as if a new solemn revelation of a mysterious expectation deeply hidden in our souls: “To the Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Soul of Truth, Who art everywhere and fulfill all things. Treasure of good things and life to the Giver, come and dwell in us and cleanse us from all filth and save, O Blessed One, our souls!” The entire Matins merges, as it were, into one solemn hymn to the Triune Divinity, the Creator and Savior of the world, who spiritualizes the life of everything living in the universe. “In Your courts I will sing praises to You, Savior of the world, and I will bow my knees and worship Your invincible power, evening and morning and noon, and at all times I will bless You, O Lord.” And in all these songs, rushing in a stream to the entire assembled Church Council, one can hear, and on the faces of everyone, big and small, the quiet joy of solemn contemplation of the mystery of God is reflected. The Lord Jesus, the Word of God, “having quietly finished,” in the words of the church song, “the hearts of men,” ascended into heaven, but abides relentlessly, and sent down His Spirit to the disciples, and created them as fishers of men, taught them wisdom, showed fishermen as theologians and revealed to them the secret of tongues, and sent them into the universe to enlighten the light of the heart and soul and bring new covenants into life: one - love one another, as I have loved you, and another covenant: Rejoice. And today we look around: there is quiet joy on all faces, everyone is carrying flowers and greenery with them - a sign of life and beauty, everyone is rejoicing at the nature blooming on all sides, and everyone’s heart is racing when the antiphon rushing like a stream is heard at the liturgy: 72 “The heavens tell the glory of God, but the firmament proclaims the creation of His hand. The Lord will hear you in the day of sorrow. Save us, O Good Comforter, who sing to You: Hallelujah!” In the light of this holiday, the Church embraces the entire universe in prayer, in eternity, in the face of the eternal God, Who is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. 73 With them is a host of all our neighbors and dear ones, mourned by us in life, and we pray for them, believing that they are alive and together with us they are all united in a celebrating and praying church, and in their memory we, smiling, crying, and crying, rejoice that life, according to the word and according to the faith of the Holy Church, merges with death in one eternity, and that death is not death and destruction of life, but “transition from worse to better,” from evil and untruth and slavery into “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Arise, O north wind, and blow, O south wind, in my garden, and its fragrances will drip... I sleep, but my heart does not sleep - and now, I hear the voice of my beloved striking the door: open, my sister, my neighbor, my dove, my pure... Song song IV, 16. V, 2. This is what the bride said when she was waiting for her groom, and her whole soul trembled with the ardent expectation of the desired happiness. It was not enough for her to think and love: she wanted to see the one to whom her soul had given itself, to call him hers, to give all of herself to him once again, to collect all her treasures for him, and to present all her beauty and all her kindness in a festive attire for his joy. Her time has come: she wants to forget everyone and everything, except the one to whom she bears her soul: she left all work, she sent away all strangers, and drowned out all the remnants of the daily bustling noise within herself. She has cleaned her house for the welcome guest - she has prepared everything - and is waiting for him to knock on the door, for him to come in, and for the door to close behind him. The garden was planted for her by her beloved groom, and every day she grows and waters and decorates her garden - and wants to show it to him in flowers and fresh herbs. “Come,” she calls, “come, midday wind, and blow on my helicopter city, and let its aromas drip.” Behold, your bridegroom, your soul, is coming to you. Do you love him that much, do you tremble with ardent anticipation, do you really yearn to accept your fiancé, to see him, to forget everything for him, and to prepare your triumph for him and to tell him once again: I am yours, and no one else’s. He didn't come for a whole week; for a whole week you worked in the bustle of everyday life, for a whole week there was the noise of the market under your windows and idle visitors knocked on your door. They came to you, and sat down with you, and looked into your eyes and caught your desires, and told you about beauty, talked about love, and promised you honor and fun. Did you listen to them? were you tempted by their flattering speeches? put on her outfit and went out for a walk with them, and was proud of their honor and love? Or did you do your job in silence and between flattering speeches you thought: oh, when will the desired one come again, to whom I gave my heart, to whom I am preparing my life, for whom I adorned myself with beauty: he loves me, he sends me greetings and affection every day and promises his coming. Now, a week has passed, and he comes again to revive your fatigue, and brings you the joy of meeting and festive celebration. He said, leaving for the last time: I will come again on Saturday evening. Lay down your work, take off your work dress, put on your holiday attire. Look - the evening is approaching, and the setting sun is shining with a quiet light over the hills and groves of your village. The plowman leaves his plow, the last sheaves are piled on the threshing floor, and the herd returns home from the field. The wind has died down: every leaf on the tree stands motionless and shines through the sun with the emerald light of young greenery; every blade of grass on the ground, hanging its head, awaits the evening dew; each ear of corn on an unharvested field rests, bathed in the golden light of the evening rays. You hear - the evening bell rang in the still air, you see - people flocked to the church in a motley crowd. Come, quiet wind, and blow on my young grove! Wake up, my green garden, gather and shed your aromas to meet the desired groom. He walks - my heart does not sleep - and choo! The lover's voice hits the door. tempi passati (Italian) – past tenses, past. In Khlebny Lane in Moscow there was a house owned by the Pobedonostsevs, in which K.P. Pobedonostsev spent his childhood. We are talking about the parish church of the Pobedonostsev family. Letters to S. A. Rachinsky // Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Russian National Library. F. 861. 1893. March - April. L. 43. See: Exodus. Ch. 20. Art. 10. stichera - church hymns, usually preceded by verses from the Psalter. irmos is the name of a liturgical song that is part of the morning canon and serves in it as a connection between the songs of Holy Scripture and the troparia. Osmoglasie is a system of church singing existing in Orthodoxy consisting of 8 voices (tunes), each week a voice with its texts is sung, after 8 weeks (weeks) and the entire cycle (circle, pillar) of singing is repeated. David - King of Judah and Israel ca. 1004–965 BC e. According to biblical tradition, 73 psalms of the Psalter are attributed to him (according to the Septuagint, Greek translation, even 83). In Khlebny Lane in Moscow there was a small wooden house belonging to the Pobedonostsev family. K. P. Pobedonostsev’s life in Moscow was connected with this house. According to the Orthodox church calendar, June 20 according to the old style is the feast day of the Holy Martyr Methodius, Bishop of Patara, the holy martyrs Aristoclius the Presbyter, Demetrius the Deacon and Athanasius the Reader, the holy martyrs Inna, Pinia and Rimma, and St. Leucius the Confessor. Leva (Aramic abba 'father') is a childish word with which Jesus addressed his father while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the early Christian community it expresses the filial attitude of Christians towards God. According to the Orthodox church calendar, August 10, according to the old style, is the day of the slinger of the holy martyr and archdeacon Lawrence, the holy hieromartyr Sixtus Pope, and with him the two deacons Felicissimo and Agapitus. According to the Orthodox church calendar, November 21, old style, is the day of the Feast of the Entry of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the Church. Herod I the Great - king of the Judean state in 40/37–4. BC e. In the New Testament he is considered the culprit of the massacre of the infants in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a city 7 km away. south of Jerusalem in the region of the tribe of Judah, the homeland of the royal family of David, is considered the birthplace of Jesus. Book of Ecclesiastes. Ch. 3. Art. 1. Samuel is a great prophet in the Old Testament traditions, the last judge of the Israelites during the transition to the era of kings ca. 1000 BC e. See: First Book of Samuel. Ch. 3. Art. 4. According to the Orthodox church calendar, December 25 according to the old style is the day of remembrance of the victory of Russia in the Patriotic War of 1812. Liturgy is the main Christian service at which the sacrament of communion is celebrated. Choir - in the churches of the Russian Orthodox Church, a raised platform in front of the iconostasis, on which readers and singers are located during the service, as well as clergy who do not directly participate in the service, but help in reading and singing. Litany - a type of prayers and petitions included in Orthodox worship. We are talking about the bell of the parish church of the Pobedonostsev family - the Moscow church in the name of St. Simeon the Stylite. We are talking about the Apostle Paul. See: Acts of St. apostles Ch. 20. Art. 22. See: Acts of St. apostles Ch. 20. Art. 24. Jacob - according to Old Testament tradition, the son of Isaac and Rebekah, the twin brother of Esau, the third patriarch after Abraham and Isaac, the forefather of the Israelites. He fraudulently obtained the blessing of Isaac instead of his older twin brother Esau. Harran is an ancient city in Northern Mesopotamia southeast of Urfa (Odessa) on Belikha, a left tributary of the Euphrates. According to the Orthodox church calendar, January 5 according to the old style is the day of the feast of the martyrs Theopempt and Feona. The Jordan is the largest river in Palestine. It originates from numerous springs of the Erion mountain range and flows into Lake Khule. See: Gospel of Luke. Ch. 3. Art. 15. Messiah (Greek form of Hebrew “mashiach” - “anointed one”) - in the New Testament is always conveyed by the corresponding Greek word “Christ”. Pari, high priests and sometimes prophets were anointed with sacred oil when consecrated to the ministry, which was believed to confer upon them the grace of God. Therefore, the title “anointed of the Lord” (“Messiah”) was borne by all the legitimate kings of Judah. Since the time of the prophets, the idea of ​​the Messiah as an ideal king, which is associated primarily with David, has been projected onto an as yet unappeared divine person who will save not only Israel, as the chosen people, but all nations. Gospel of Matthew. Ch. 4. Art. 17. Moses, the leader of the Israeli people during their wanderings in the desert, who led them from slavery in Egypt to independence, is revered as the great prophet and legislator of the Israelites, the founder of the religion of Yahweh and the creator of the union of Jewish tribes. According to the Orthodox church calendar, January 6 according to the old style is the day of the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Sinai is the mountain where the law was given and the covenant between God and the Israelites was made. The exact location of Sinai is not specified in the Old Testament. Yahweh. Yahvs, Yahweh (Heb. YHWH) in Judaism is the unpronounceable name of God. According to the Old Testament tradition, it was revealed by God to Moses in an epiphany at Mount Horeb. In accordance with the prohibition in the practice of Judaism on pronouncing the name of God “in vanity”, the name Yahweh, written according to the laws of Jewish writing with four consonant letters YHWH (the so-called Tetragrammaton), for a long time, according to legend, was pronounced aloud inaudibly for others once a year (on the day of Purification) by the high priest, and the secret of its sound was orally transmitted along the senior line of the high priestly family. From the 3rd century. BC e. the pronunciation of this name was completely taboo, and where it appears in the texts, Adonai is pronounced instead (in the Russian translation, coming from the Greek translation of the Bible, the so-called Septuagint, rendered as “Lord”). This led to the fact that when the biblical text was vocalized in the 7th century. n. e. The Masoretes, the sacred tetragram of YHWH, found in the Bible about 7 thousand times, gave vowel sounds to the word “Adonai”. From here, in the late Middle Ages, the reading “Jehovah” arose among Christian theologians. Elijah - prophet of the 9th century. BC e. from the East Jordanian town of Fesva in the Gilead region; during the reign of King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, the most prominent representative of faith in Yahweh in the fight against the cult of Baal. Baal or Baal, Bel (from Hebrew means “lord”, “lord”, “strong”) is the supreme god of the Canaanites, who was also worshiped by the Israelites who betrayed their faith. See: 1st book of Kings. Ch. 19. Art. 4. Mount Horeb, Horeb - God's mountain, another name for Sinai, the mountain on which the law was given to Moses. See: 1st book of Kings. Ch. 19. Art. 11. See: Gospel of Matthew. Ch. 12. Art. 20. See: The Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Ch. 42. Art. 1–3. Gospel of John. Ch. 1. Art. 36. According to the Orthodox church calendar, February 2 according to the old style is the day of the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ. We are talking about Elder Simeon, who was predicted by the Holy Spirit that he would not wash himself until he saw the Messiah. See: Gospel of Luke. Ch. 2. Art. 29. Gospel of Matthew. Ch. 21. Art. 9. See: Gospel of John. Ch. 18. Art. 15–16. Cm.; Gospel of John. Ch. 19. Art. 26. Isaac is the second Old Testament patriarch, the son of the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah. To test Abraham's obedience, God required him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. Jonah is the fifth of the minor prophets. He lived in the Northern Kingdom of Israel before and during the reign of King Jeroboam II (787–747 BC). Elisha is one of the biblical prophets, whose name is associated with many miracles. Zarephath is a Phoenician city north of Tire. The Prophet Elijah of Thesvah, during his persecution by Queen Jezebel, found refuge with a widow in Zarephath, whose terminally ill son he saved. Nebuchadnezzar II is the most famous king of the Babylonian-Chaldean dynasty, the son and successor of Nabopolassar. See: Exodus. Ch. 15. Art. 21. The Apostle is a liturgical book that includes almost the entire New Testament, with the exception of the Gospels. Divided into chapters that are read in church during the liturgy. shroud - a cloth depicting the body of Jesus Christ after his removal from the cross. On Great Friday (the Friday before Easter), the shroud is solemnly taken from the altar to the middle of the church for the worship of believers and remains there until Easter midnight, after which it returns to the altar. See: Gospel of Matthew. Ch. 28. Art. 1. chandelier - a large chandelier or multi-slot (more than 20 slots) candlestick in a church. In accordance with the Orthodox church calendar, Easter was celebrated on April 12, 1859. Shiloh (Shilo) is a place in the mountains of Ephraim north of Bethel on the road leading from Bethel to Shechem. After the conquest of Canaan, the Israelites made Shiloh their main sanctuary, installed the Ark of the Covenant there, and held their annual festivals here. The youth Samuel, under the supervision of the high priest Elijah, performed a service here at the Siloam altar. God told Samuel that he would destroy the house of Elijah because of the sins of his sons Phiness and Hophni. After the defeat of the Israelites in the battle against the Philistines at Eben-Jeger, when the Ark of the Covenant fell into the hands of their enemies, the Philistines also destroyed the sanctuary at Shiloh. See: Gospel of John. Ch. 20. Art. 17. See: Gospel of Luke. Ch. 24. Art. 31. Thomas is one of the twelve apostles. When the risen Christ first appeared before his disciples, Thomas was absent and did not want to believe their stories: “unless I see the wounds of the nails in His hands, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” When Christ appeared the second time, he said to Thomas: “Put your finger here and see my hands; give me your hand and place it in my side; and do not be an unbeliever, but a believer” (see: Gospel of John. Chapter 20. Art. 25–27). See: Acts of St. apostles Ch. 1. Art. 6. See: Gospel of John. Ch. 7. Art. 5. Judas Iscariot is one of the twelve apostles, a traitor of Christ, who revealed to the Sanhedrin the night residence of the last days of Jesus. The Gospels testify that Judas Iscariot had fun, repenting that he had betrayed Christ. The book of the Acts of the Apostles tends to see supernatural retribution at the end of Judas’ life: he stumbled and “his belly was split open and all his entrails fell out.” antiphon - in church services, alternating singing of two choirs (half-choirs), one of the oldest forms of church singing. See: Gospel of Matthew. Ch. 22. Art. 32.