120. Слово в неделю крестопоклонную

(Printed in the 1844 and 1848 collections) And having called the nations with his disciples, he said to them: If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me. (Mark 8:34). I want to show you the sign of the present day in the Church, and at the same time offer a part of Christian teaching, the fulfillment of which every day is necessary and salutary. Having honored this day by worshiping the cross, honor it by paying attention to the Lord’s commandment of self-sacrifice and cross-bearing. Let's look in the Gospel under what circumstances this commandment was spoken. Our Lord Jesus Christ, passing through the field of earthly life and preaching the truth, approached the suffering and death on the cross provided for Him for our salvation. According to His Divine omniscience, He saw this closeness; and found it necessary to warn his disciples about the upcoming terrible events, which, if completely unexpected, could not only shake their faith, but also completely destroy them. Therefore, to the twelve Apostles, as more worthy and capable of receiving His mysteries, He said clearly: “For it is fitting for the Son of man to suffer much, and to be tempted by an elder and a bishop and a scribe, and to be killed, and to rise on the third day” (Mark 8:31). But since the Apostolic Faith at this time is not yet ripe for this great mystery; and the first of the Apostles, Peter, dared to contradict this prediction, so that it was necessary to block his lips with a strict reproach: then, without a doubt, it was not the time to speak so clearly about this to the people; and yet, in order to establish faith, it was necessary for the people to have evidence in advance that the Lord foresaw his suffering and was going to his free death. Therefore, He said to the disciples in front of the people, and to the people, as if in advance: “Whoever wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me.” He does not say: I will bear the cross and suffer on it: but when he commands his follower to bear the cross; and to follow means to imitate, to do the same thing as the previous one does; this makes it clear that he himself will bear the cross; and consequently he will be crucified; for there was no reason to bear the cross if not for crucifixion. So the riddle was asked publicly: and although the people could not guess it at the same time; but, after the event of the Lord’s crucifixion, he had to understand the prediction he had heard, and be convinced of the Divinity of the Foreteller, and believe in the saving mystery of our redemption through the suffering and death on the cross of the God-Man. We now, brethren, are passing through the field of fasting, and are approaching the solemn remembrance of the saving suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. Mother Church takes care that we do not present ourselves to this lofty and most holy spectacle unprepared and unworthy. For this reason, she stops us in the middle of the Lenten field: and with the very word with which the Lord prepared the disciples and people in advance for the event of His crucifixion, she prepares us for the reverent remembrance of His crucifixion; and in the Gospel she proclaims to us on behalf of Christ: “Whoever wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and come after Me”; and what our ears announce, the very same thing we offer to our eyes, that is, the cross of Christ, in order through the eye to continually instill in us that which cannot be repeated quite often to the ears. It seems to me that I hear this silent, but quite distinct suggestion. You are approaching the sublime and mysterious remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross, so that you can then enter into the joy of Christ’s Resurrection. Stop and think whether you are worthy of this approach, whether you are ready for this contemplation, whether you have enough faith, reverence, love, and understanding for this. Look, as if a little more from afar, as if in preparation, at the great spectacle of Christ the Cross-Bearer, Christ crucified, Christ dying and being buried; and learn how to come closer and not be rejected, how to touch the life-giving wounds of the Lord and not be condemned. Many approached, but not many were as saving as the prudent robber; many touched, and crowded out of curiosity, and cursed, and beat, and crucified, but not many were as holy as Joseph and Nicodemus. Only followers of Christ approach and touch Christ without condemnation and salvation; and His follower must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Him. This, brothers, is what the Mother Church now instills in you. This is what this day preaches to you, even without me, as through me. In order to follow this suggestion, you need to understand what it means to deny yourself and take up your cross. “To deny oneself” does not mean to abandon one’s soul and body, as one abandons a worthless thing, without attention, without care? – You can’t think like that. The soul is a very expensive thing. You have heard the correct assessment of it now in these words of the Gospel: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul” (Mark 8:36)? That is: the loss of a soul is a loss so great that it cannot be replaced by the whole world. Consequently, the soul is more valuable to a person than the whole world. How to leave her without attention? It is impossible to think that the Lord commanded us to abandon our body without any care, if we remember that the Apostle presents Him as a matter of natural law, and even as an image of the highest spiritual law, that care according to which “no one hates his own flesh, but nourishes and warms it” (Eph. 5:29); that God created our body and gave it to us as an instrument for acting in the physical world, in order to demand an account from us in its use in due time, “that everyone may accept before the judgment seat of Christ what he has done with the body, either good or evil” (2 Cor. 5:10); - that finally the body should not only be preserved and trained for necessary, useful and good deeds in the world, but can also be used for the glory of God, according to the advice of the Apostle: “glorify God in your bodies and in your souls, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20). Is it possible to neglect, as unimportant, something through which God can be glorified? So, what does it mean to deny yourself? - From what has been said, of necessity, one must conclude that this does not mean abandoning the soul and body without attention, without care, but perhaps rejecting the addiction to the body and its pleasures, to temporary life and its well-being, and even to spiritual pleasures, drawn from unclean nature, to the desires of one’s own will, to the favorite concepts of one’s own wisdom. That this understanding of the commandment of self-sacrifice is correct can be seen from the intention with which it was pronounced. What intention? - in order to make a person able to follow Christ. “Whoever wants to follow Me, let him deny himself.” Why shouldn’t someone who wants to follow Christ take this path according to his very desire, without any other preliminary requirement? Why is self-sacrifice required from him in advance? – Apparently, because without this the desire to follow Christ would remain unfulfilled. And truly, attached to the favorite concepts of his own wisdom, this attachment prevents him from ascending higher and believing the Divine truth: he is not able to follow Christ without rejecting this attachment, because without this he will not enter the path of pure faith. He who does not abandon the desires of his own will also cannot be a follower of Christ: for following consists in choosing the path not according to one’s own will, but according to the will of the one who preceded him. And he who does not want to sacrifice spiritual pleasures in obedience and devotion to the will of God is not a reliable follower of Christ, even in the case when he strives for spiritual pleasures; since he, straining all his efforts towards the flickering of light on the steep slopes of Tabor, therefore himself does not yet accompany the Lord to the saving Calvary: what can we say if he draws his spiritual pleasures from the unrefined source of fallen nature and persists when Providence and grace approach to block his streams, for the purification of the soul? – The Lord Himself spoke His judgment about this when one of the people of this kind, who expressed a desire to follow Him, and at the same time attracted by the pleasures of kindred love, answered: “No one lays his hand on the head, and in vain turns back, he is ruled in the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). That one who is partial to temporal life cannot successfully follow Christ, this is evident in the Apostles, who, after quite a long teaching with Him, and after so many miracles, not only by Him, but also by them, performed by His gift, turned from following Him into flight when on His path they encountered the danger of life. That one who is partial to the blessings of temporary life is not able to follow Christ, this sad experience is represented by the Evangelical youth, who, although he himself wanted to take the path to the eternal life, and was called by Christ Himself to follow Him, did not follow, but “departed sorrowing, for having had much gain” (Matthew 19:22), and did not want to part with them. Finally, someone who is partial to the body and its pleasures is obviously a bad follower of Christ: for pampered, burdened, weakened by them, it is difficult for him to ascend the mountain of the Lord; he would rather turn downhill, or take a nap in the flowers, and is not far from wallowing in the influence of impure passions and lusts. To put it briefly, since everything that is in the son of Adam, until it is purified, or better yet, newly created by Christ, is usually subject to partial use: then he who wants to be a true and faithful follower of Christ must leave everything that he assimilates and loves in himself, not in relation to use, but in relation to partiality. And shortening this even more, the Lord said: “Let him deny himself.” Another thing that the Lord requires from his follower is to take up his cross. What is “your cross”? – I have already said that the saying about the cross of a follower of Christ presupposes the cross of Christ Himself and points to it. And so our cross is something similar to what is called the cross of Christ. And just as by the name of the cross of Christ we mean, firstly, the instrument of His suffering and death, secondly, His very suffering and death on the cross, thirdly, in a broader sense, all the succession and variety of suffering, humiliation and gradual killing of Him, and the inner cross of sorrow, in a deep feeling, and even earlier, in anticipation of the visible cross and suffering: then by the name of our cross we should understand every the fate of God, we are faced with sorrow, deprivation, humiliation, suffering and long-suffering or disastrous death. Really, they will say, should every Christian condemn himself to all this? – The Lord’s commandment is not explained so strictly. It is not our business to designate a lot for ourselves: it is our duty to be able to accept the one that the Lord assigns to us. And Christ did not choose, and did not multiply sufferings for himself, but accepted them, and in that fullness, which, and in which, the wisdom, truth and fate of His Father provided Him, and the sons of men fulfilled them, not knowing what they were doing. How much more immodest and therefore unreliable would it be to doom ourselves to many difficult things because of our weakness, which cannot bear both the small and the easy without heavenly help. Therefore, the Lord does not say in the commandment to His follower, let him increase his suffering, let him crucify himself, but less, more condescendingly: “let him take up his cross.” What does it mean to “take up the cross!” – Do not run away from the mournful visitation; do not persist against onago; to be ready to accept it when it has not yet been comprehended, to obediently and resignedly accept it when it really comprehends it; meekly allow yourself to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, in the image of the Lamb and Shepherd Christ, if you need to suffer for the truth; unquestioningly carry wood for our own burnt offering, like Isaac, if such is the will of the Heavenly Father, for our cleansing and to bring us into the promised rebirth. These are the essence of the conditions under which a person can unerringly follow Christ, approach Him not outwardly, but inwardly, not by place, but by spirit, become in faith and love a sharer of His saving suffering and death, and in hope a sharer of His resurrection and glory. Let us examine ourselves, Christians, and let us reject everything that binds us with the bonds of addiction to ourselves, to the flesh, to the world, so that we may be free and easy to follow Christ. May we accept our cross resignedly and obediently, that is, the measure of sorrow and suffering, no doubt infallibly measured for us by Providence, according to the need for our correction, purification and perfection. It is true that we follow Christ through self-sacrifice and the cross; and let us surely enter into the joy of our Lord. Amen. You might be interested in: