104. Слово 510 по освящении храма Святыя Великомученицы Екатерины, при Московской Екатерининской больнице

(Spoken on the 20th day of August; printed separately, in the Christian Reading of 1833 and the meetings of 1835, 1844 and 1848.) There is in Jerusalem a sheep font, as the Hebrew says Bethesda, having five porches. In those places there are many sick, blind, lame, dry people waiting for the movement of water. ( John 5:2-3 ). In these words of the Gospel we see the oldest of the city hospitals. Let us praise the philanthropy of the Jews, who created five “narthexes” or galleries for the multitude of sick people, and gave a name appropriate to this place: “Bethesda,” that is, “house of mercy”; although we don’t know whether the government or the people should get this praise. There was only one medical remedy: a bath prepared by human skill in a sheep's font. Instead of a doctor, an Angel came to this hospital. “The angel of the Lord is descending.” This extraordinary doctor healed decisively, and not a single patient was recorded on his list of incurables. “You were in good health, but you were overcome with illness” (John 5:4). Isn't it true that this was a wonderful establishment? But we will also show that side of it, which is not so bright. The heavenly doctor visited the hospital assigned to him not every day, like earthly doctors, but only once a year. “For the angel of the Lord descends every summer.” The healing was decisive, but every year only one person received it. “He who was the first to rise when the waters were troubled was made healthy” (John 5:4). Not every patient had the strength to reach the disturbed water, much less forestall others. There were not enough servants or compassionate people to help the powerless. Because of this, a certain weakened man lay uselessly in this hospital for thirty-eight years, until the Lord of the elements, times and Angels appeared, Who did not need to muddy the waters, or wait for a year, or call on an Angel, but was enough to say to the weakened man: “Arise, take up your bed, and walk” (John 5:8). “What kind of healing is this image? What sacrament is revealed to us? - asks Saint Chrysostom, pointing to the Gospel story about the sheep font. And whoever allows more courage to his natural mind, which loves to interfere in the affairs of Providence, which is higher than him: he can also say: what a strange combination of both miraculous power that heals every incurable disease, and the poverty of sowing power, which does not extend beyond the healing of one person; and generosity, which prepares a whole reservoir of healing, and frugality, which does not give more than one, rare dose of onago; - both the Angel and water, as if the healing power of the Angel needs water, which, however, as everyone knows, is not universal healing. But let us listen to Saint Chrysostom’s answer to this perplexity. “It’s not just that,” he says, “and it’s not written in vain: but he writes to us the future things like in an image and image: so that a very unusual and unexpected thing does not damage the strength of faith of many. What the hell is he going to write? Baptism was once given, containing much power and a great gift, baptism cleansing all sins, and making the dead alive instead of the dead. And so all this through the font, and through many other waters, as if through an image, is clearly signified.” Until here is Saint Chrysostom (On John Conversations 36). Let us dare to continue this explanation. It was necessary to demonstrate through experience immersion in water, which destroys all disease, in order to prepare minds for the discovery of baptism in water, which destroys all sins. It was necessary to notice in the tangible phenomenon of the movement of water the beneficial action of the Angelic spirit over it, in order to make the new-created and regenerative action of a higher Spirit in the water of baptism less incredible than the Angelic, the Spirit of God itself. It was necessary that the beneficial power of the sheep's font be given only to those who, with a zealous desire for healing, leave behind all others: so that in this too the image of the baptismal font would be revealed, with which the saving power is given only to those who, with the desire of faith for the heavenly and Divine, leave behind everything earthly. It was necessary to imagine the Angelic action as limited, it was necessary to keep the weakened man close to the Angel for thirty-eight years without healing, so that when Christ heals him with a single word, it would be obvious from this that this Healer 511 is without comparison higher than the Angels, that His power is unlimited, that He is the Hypostatic Word of God and the true God. If anyone were to complain that a lot of money has been used for one purpose - a lot of sick people, a lot of years, a lot of annual angelic miracles for one thought about Christ and baptism: I answer this: this goal is quite great in itself, and important for humanity, so as to make any complaint about the waste of means used to achieve this goal inconspicuous. If the explorers of nature carry out lengthy work, build busy tools, use enormous expenses in order to discover or explain some particular and subordinate natural truth: then of course it was worth the effort to build in Jerusalem a sheep font with its accessories, as a small “model” of the great font in which the whole Christian world was reborn - as an intelligible indicator of the high truth and incomprehensible sacrament of Christ the Savior and God. But enough about the Christian sacraments, which are better and more worthily honored by the humble silence of faith than by the ascending test of reason. Let's just return from the Jerusalem hospital to the Moscow hospital. With joy, with a feeling of inner conviction, we can pay a debt of praise and gratitude to our most pious Autocrats, who, both in every virtue and in every kindness, and in caring for the sick, majestically precede the people by their example. Based on them, we can remember with gratitude some of the subjects who, in their deeds of philanthropy, followed the Tsar’s example quite closely. You can count in this city more than five, not “narthexes,” but magnificent houses that represent the virtue of mercy in deeds, all the better because they do not show it in their names. Father of Mercy! look upon these deeds with the eye of grace; and let those who show mercy be shown mercy; let there be, according to the immutable promise, “the blessings of mercy” (Matthew 5:7). No, it’s true, there is a font here that is sufficient against any ailment, and the doctors here are not Angels. In considering this, I can only point out to our flesh-bearing doctors the example of the disembodied Jerusalem doctor for their reflection. Doesn’t this example show the closeness of the spiritual to the physical, the possibility of a union between spiritual power and a material means of healing, the healing influence of the spiritual on the physical, when the spiritual is pure and accessible to the Divine? And if this is so: then can’t—shouldn’t a doctor, if he doesn’t want to be a craftsman working only with material tools on matter—shouldn’t, I say, also use the spiritual as an aid to bodily healing, recognize pure will as an important part in the composition of medical means, and through fervent prayer seek light and strength in those cases where science gropes in the dark and stumbles? But if there is not enough Angel here, then not a single sick person here, as in Jerusalem, will be reduced to the need to complain: “I am not an imam of a man” (John 5:7); but everyone will find here a person who heals, and a person who serves the weak, and, when necessary, a person who brings them closer to the beneficial influences of a spiritual source. To the glory of God, who in Christianity is generous with saving means, it must be said that the place where we stand now cannot envy the font of the sheep, having now become a repository of power, higher and more beneficial than there. Not an Angel once a year, but the King of Angels, carried by the angelic ranks, comes here as often as a person called to this boldness dares to call upon Him; and abides here with the power by which everything was created, and everything is preserved, healed, and perfected. There is a universal source of healing here: oh, if only those who were sick and those who heal were able to discover it for themselves with a believing heart! But as those who listen to me are not sick, then I will say again: oh, if only the healthy would flow more zealously into this sanctuary of strength, as into a physician’s clinic of souls, almost always, as I think, not painless internally? If the Church, as evidenced by the structure of this place, is recognized as necessary for the sick, who for the most part do not have the strength to come to it: is it less necessary for the healthy, who can come to it? Who would dare to assert this incongruity? Don’t we often see this inconsistency in practice, that is, that the healthy think less about the Church than the sick? You can, they say, pray to God at home, in spirit. There is no dispute about this. But people who knew how to pray in the spirit better than us did not run away from the church, but ran to it with joy. “We rejoiced at those who said to me: Let us go to the house of the Lord” (Psalm 122:1). Daniel the Prophet, “the man of desires” (Dan. 10:11), a man who lived by prayer, when he could not go to the temple of Jerusalem, because he was in Babylon, and because the church was destroyed, tried to bring himself closer to at least the place and, so to speak, the shadow of the former church, standing in prayer in front of the window open to Jerusalem, and in those hours in which sacrifice was made in the church before its destruction. “The doors were opened to him in his upper room opposite Jerusalem; At three times a day he bowed his knees, praying and confessing to his God” (Dan.6:10). Or is Daniel superstitious? Or do you want to be more spiritual than Daniel? - No! It must be admitted that those who do not attend church under the pretext of praying in the spirit either do not care about prayer at all, or do not understand this matter at all. If someone, recognizing his negligence and inattention, becomes exhausted in his zeal for the church because, when visiting it, he does not quite feel the assistance for the better: we assure him with St. Chrysostom that “he will gain and receive some benefit; although not such that he could feel it, he will nevertheless accept it. For if someone passed by the world-maker, or if someone was often in houses similar to her; even if he would not even be fragrant with a pleasant stench: how much more does a person go to church? “It is not possible,” he also says, “that he who converses with God, and he who listens to God conversing, should not gain something” (on John Conversations 53). Let us not, brethren, be careless about the health of our souls, but let us carefully use the physician of souls, the Church, and the Physician of souls, Christ, while He walks among us as a Physician, healing every disease of sin, and until, through patience, He delays to appear as a Judge, having to decide our lot for eternal death, if not for eternal life. Amen. In the department ed. and in collection 1835: Conversation... You might be interested in: