119. Слово в день Святителя Алексия, во вторник сырныя недели

(Said on the 12th day of February, in the Cathedral Church of the Miracle Monastery; printed in the Christian Reading of 1836 and meetings of 1844 and 1848) Because I have suffered from nothing useful, I must tell you and teach you before people and in the house, testifying by Jew and Greek to repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. (Acts 20:20–21). On this day the Church has gathered us for pious joy. But this week it prepares us for godly sorrow. Which of these opposite directions should we now preferentially follow, or how can they be reconciled with each other? Righteous is the pious joy of the righteous, perfected, glorified, who was the lamp of this church during his life on earth, and after death continues to be a heavenly luminary for her. We need pious sadness for our untruths and sins that darken life, block the light of grace, and block the path to perfection and bliss. “For sorrow, like God, brings unrepentant repentance to salvation” (2 Cor. 7:10). The Holy Apostle Paul, by his own example, shows us the possibility of reconciling and uniting the apparently opposite feelings of spiritual joy and spiritual sadness. “Now I rejoice,” he writes to the Corinthian Christians, “not because I was soon offended, but because I was offended in repentance: for I was offended by God” (2 Cor. 7:9). The wisdom of men of God is the same. Therefore, I think that Saint Alexy will not only not consider the joy of his day to be disrupted, but will now rejoice over us if he sees us entering the saving sorrow of repentance. So let’s talk about repentance, and firstly, about the need for it, and then, according to the demands of these days, about preparation for it. When speaking to Orthodox Christians, I can take it as a basis for reasoning that the need for any work will be proven, as soon as it is shown that this work is required by true Christianity, and is essentially connected with it. Therefore, it is necessary to see in what relation repentance has to Christianity. Let's go back to the beginning of Christianity. John the Baptist was the morning star before the rising of the Sun - Christ. The teaching of John was the dawn of the teaching of Christ. What did John teach? - Repentance. “John baptized in the wilderness, and preached a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” (Mark 1:4). “Baptism of repentance,” no matter how you interpret this expression, makes it clear that repentance in John’s teaching was the main feature, a necessary need, as the Gospel explains itself when John’s entire sermon concludes in the following words: “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 3:2). The Sun of Truth has risen. The day of the coming of Christ has arrived. Having enlightened His baptism in the Jordan, having sanctified by His example the great Lenten period of fasting in the desert, Jesus appears in Galilee in order, as the Evangelist notes, to fulfill the prophecy: “the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and to those who sit in the land and shadow of death, light has come to them” (Matthew 4:16). What kind of light is this? – The words of the Evangelist following the above prophecy show that he points to the light of the Divine preaching of Christ: “from there Jesus began to preach.” What was this Divine and Luminous sermon about? - About repentance. “From there Jesus began to preach and say: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 4:17). The light of Christ must spread. The twelve Apostles became his rays. They were sent to spread the light: “their ambassadors were to preach the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:2). What kind of light do they bring to people? What is the preaching of the kingdom of God? – It’s still the same light; the same sermon is repentance. “Having gone out,” says Saint Mark, “let me preach, let them repent” (Mark 6:12). Let us follow the movement of the Sun of Truth, through a terrible hour, when the forces of darkness thought to eclipse it forever with death on the cross, but malice, deceived by Providence, became a blind instrument for the discovery of a new, powerful light of the resurrection of Christ, to which, without a doubt, this vision and prophecy of the Prophet refers: “the light of the sun will be sevenfold in that day” (Is. 30:26). After the new Pentecost once again enlightened the Apostles, when the risen Christ “appeared to them for forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3); then, as the fiery tongues of the Holy Spirit illuminated them, who, according to the promise of Christ, was to “teach them all things” (John 14:26), “guide them into all truth” (John 16:13); - then, as a multitude of people, struck by the miracle of the descent of the Holy Spirit, Peter’s denunciation of the Murder of Christ and the testimony of the Resurrection of Christ, ready to accept Christianity, asked Peter and the other Apostles: “What shall we do, brethren” (Acts 2:37)? – What new light do you think will shine from Peter’s lips? What teaching will be shed? What kind of sermon will roar? - always the same light, always the same saving teaching, always the same necessary preaching - repentance. “Peter said to them: Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:37–38). If it occurred to anyone that Peter had a special reason at this time to preach repentance; because he preached to those whom at the same time he denounced for the murder of Christ by the hands of the lawless: to correct this one-sided view of this case, it should be noted that Peter’s listeners were, without a doubt, all the surprised witnesses of the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of tongues revealed in the Apostles, and among them were many strangers of different nations - Parthians, Medes, Egyptians, The Romans, and others, who had no reason to participate either in the malice of the Pharisees, or in the rebellious cries of the Jerusalemites, deceived by false concern for the safety of the city and their land; but even to those the Apostle did not offer any other sermon than the common sermon of repentance for all. Likewise, the Apostle Paul presents the preaching of repentance as a universal need and the main work of the Apostles, when he says about himself: “I was not opposed to the heavenly vision” (that is, the one who called to the Apostleship), “but to those who were in Damascus first, and in Jerusalem, and in every country of the Jews, and with a tongue, I preach to repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance” ( Acts 26:19–20). Can anyone else say that John the Baptist, Christ Himself, and the Apostles preached repentance to people being prepared and called to Christianity; and we, by the grace of God, are already Christians from infancy; and therefore it is a special question how the obligation of repentance extends to us. And truly, the Apostle Paul refers to “repentance from dead works” not to the “completion” of Christianity, but to the “foundation,” or initial leadership and teaching thereof (Heb. 6:1). However, he also shows us that this guidance and teaching takes place and is used not only on the eve of Christianity, but also upon entry into it. For to whom did he express his pleasure about the repentance provided for when he wrote in the letter: “Now I rejoice, not because sorrow was quick, but because I was offended in repentance”? To whom? - “The Church of God which is in Corinth,” as indicated at the beginning of the letter (2 Cor. 1:1, 7:9). So you see not only some Christians, but the whole Christian Church entering into repentance, and the Apostle rejoicing over her entry into repentance. Didn’t the Apostle James already write to actual Christians: “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16)? To those who have received the remission of their sins in baptism, does not the Apostle John proclaim a new remission of sins in repentance when he says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, and may forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9)? And if those who, in the first times of Christianity, at full age, with the free use of reason, according to inner conviction, having first and decisively repented renouncing all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, passed through the all-purifying bath of baptism - if after that, over time, more or less dark spots appeared on the robe of the soul, requiring a new cleansing power of repentance: then what can we say about us, whom the grace of baptism visited, without our knowledge, not met with repentance, not accompanied by gratitude? An important advantage is to be protected by the shrine of baptism before the innate seed of sin develops and grows in voluntary sins: but did our parents, successors, educators, and finally, we ourselves take advantage of this advantage quite correctly? Have we not lived for a long time without thinking at all about the importance of carrying the shrine of baptism within ourselves? Do we not have a greater need for repentance after baptism, the less repentance has been accomplished in us before baptism? But to solve the matter more briefly, it is enough to ask one question: do we have sin on ourselves? - If, more than aspirations, who says: no; To such an one I say without hesitation: no 554, you are deceiving yourself, there is no truth in you; or better to say, it’s not me, Saint John the Theologian says: “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). But if, whether you want it or not, you have to admit that there is a sin on us; then what do you want next? Should I die in sin? For “a sinful act gives birth to death” (James 1:15). If you don’t want this, then choose repentance; for there is no other way out of the realm of sin and death. Enough about the need for repentance. Let us say something, as required by the present day, about the procedure for preparing for it. “If the Lord sees iniquity, the Lord, who can stand” (Ps. 129:3)? - If this saying of the Psalmist, from the time of the first sin of the first man, is true for everyone and always; just as there is no person who does not need repentance, so there is no time in which it would be unnecessary. This is how the Church thinks, which daily asks us from the Lord to “end the rest of our life in peace and repentance.” But although, therefore, the entire life of a Christian should be conducted in the spirit of repentance, however, confession of sins before the minister of the sacrament, and acceptance of grace-filled resolution of them, and spiritual instruction to protect oneself from them, can only be done from time to time. If the use of the sacrament of repentance were left only to the private feeling of need and the arbitrariness of each person, then not only would the careless person not have encouragement, but also the attentive person would not have enough help. Therefore, it was necessary to establish some order and determine times. The care that the Church takes for the purity of the clothing of your soul can be likened to the care that you take for the cleanliness of the clothing of your body. If you happened to fall into the mud, would you hasten to wash your clothes? So, if you fell into grave sin, the sooner you cleared your conscience by repentance, the better; The Church is ready to receive you at any time. But if the whiteness of your asshole doesn’t change much due to sweat and dust: you continue to wear it for a while, and before some urgent day, for example, a holiday, you replace it with a completely clean one. In this case, the example of order and the unkempt encourages one to imitate the neat. Likewise, the Church, from time to time, before the holidays, especially before the great remembrance of the saving sufferings, death on the cross and resurrection of Christ, in order to celebrate in greater purity, as if urgently invites you to whiten the robe of your souls with repentance and the mysterious blood of the Lamb, who takes away the sins of the world, thus encouraging the attentive and small ashes of the sins of ignorance, oblivion, absent-mindedness, suddenness, to shake from the soul - and the inattentive, attracting to cleansing by the example of the attentive. She calls for fasting to help repentance; adapts Divine services to arouse repentant feelings; and she extends her maternal concern for us to such an extent that, in order to more easily lead us into the feats of fasting, she made this week the threshold of it, prescribing for it something between fasting and meat-eating, and the first, infrequent experiences of fasting kneeling. Seeing such condescending maternal care of the saints of the Church for her children, how painful it is, brethren, to see at the same time such far-reaching inattention to the intentions of a child-loving mother, and even the transformation of her wise and beneficent orders! The Church wants to prepare us for abstinence: and at this very time, incontinence in food and drink reigns more than usual among us. The Church thinks to accustom us to the work of kneeling: but among us many abandon their ordinary work, not taking up church work, or, more than with work, they burden and tire themselves with untimely eating and drinking, continuous fun and amusements. The Church thinks, more accurately, by purifying the senses through abstinence, to lead us to the spiritual contemplation of the Lord’s pilgrimage, the immortal table, the saving wounds of the Lord, the animal tomb, the luminous resurrection: but we intensively dissipate ourselves and aggravate our feelings with an exquisite variety of excesses, as if we need to block, and not open for ourselves, the entrance to the realm of pure spiritual contemplation of saving and Divine objects. The closer the post approaches; the more these disorders multiply: and the days that should be especially quiet, as those closest to the silence of fasting and repentance, are perhaps the noisiest of the year, and the least protected from sin and vanity. Is this obedience to the Church? Is this the eve of Lent? Is this preparation for repentance? What patient would deliberately increase his illness today because he intends to be treated tomorrow? Children of the Church! Remember that her true children are, according to the Apostle, “children of obedience” (1 Pet. 1:14). Listen sincerely to her maternal invitation to repentance. Follow her direction in preparing for repentance. If you do not suddenly strengthen yourself to fulfill everything that she demands of you: at least do not repent with such servility of vanity, excess and disorder. May the Heavenly Forces protect you, may they strengthen you, may they guide you on the path of purification, and may the prayers of St. Alexis, who has now gathered you, and preside over this humble word. Amen. This word is not found in the Author's manuscript. You might be interested in: