126. Слово по освящении храма святителя Иакова, в первоклассном Ставропигиальном Иаковлевском монастыре

(Said on the 14th day of June; printed in Christ. Readings of 1836 and in collections of 1844 and 1848) Should I talk here? Should I spend the seed of the word for the neighboring field, the supply of which in my small pot is too meager to sow the plot of land that the Heavenly Farmer actually indicated to me? Am I not boldly opening my lips, here, where, it seems, the spiritual and ornate word of St. Demetrius has not yet completely fallen silent, where his deeds, and his only honorable predecessors, James, Ignatius, Isaiah, Leontius, speak louder than any word - not only the instructive deeds of a holy and hierarchal life, but even more wonderful deeds performed in the midst of the grave rest? Isn’t it better to look in reverent silence at this holy land, so long ago, at this ancient helix and hotbed of holiness and reverence, where Abramius flourished early, from where Sergius, abundant in virtues and talents, many-branched with his disciples, was transplanted, from where Job grew to the previously unknown heights of the Patriarchate in the North, where the ancestor of the Kings presided, and was preparing to support the shocked primate throne in Russia? And so shut up? But didn’t the Word of God itself express the law of human speech: “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34)? Didn’t the word once boast of the freedom of sincerity before God Himself: “Behold, I will not forbid my lips; Lord, You understood; I have not hidden Your righteousness in my heart, I have not hidden Your truth and Your salvation, I have not hidden Your mercy and Your truth from the multitude; preach great righteousness to the church" (Ps. 39:10-11)? No, do not forbid my weak lips, ministers and creators of the word, mighty by God, but rather, by the grace given to you, heal my weakness, make up for my poverty, both for a few minutes of the present word, and for the entire remainder of my unworthy service to the word, if any is still preserved for me by the long-suffering and kindness of the Heavenly Shepherd. “Behold, I will not hinder my lips.” “Out of the abundance of the heart my mouth shall speak.” The river is “Thy truth and Thy salvation,” Lord. Blessed be God, Who gives His church to man! – Don’t think that I let slip a word. Precisely, God gives his church to man when, apparently, man builds a church to God. “Which house will you build Mi?” - God asks through the Prophet (Is.66:1). And a person cannot find an answer to this. How can you create a home for the Infinite, the Incontainable? How to determine a special dwelling for the Omnipresent and the Fulfilling everything? A church without the presence of the Divine would in vain be called the church of God: but how to introduce the presence of the heavenly God into the earthly church, into the visible and invisible, into the material and the most sublimely spiritual? The human mind, through natural reasoning, would not have reached the solution to this problem, no matter how strongly it felt the need for the closest and most convenient communication with God, as the source of all good, if the wisdom of God, hidden in mystery, had not resolved it. The infinite God Himself applied Himself to the measure of limited man; descended (not by being, but by action) from eternity to time, from omnipresence to place, revealed his presence in grace-filled signs and actions, as for example to Jacob in the vision of a ladder connecting earth with heaven: and the thought of a special place of God’s presence was born, and the house of God was founded, as this is precisely evident in the words of Jacob: “there is the Lord in seven places; this place is terrible: this is not, but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven; and Jacob called the name of that place: the house of God” (Gen. 28:16–17, 19). So the “house of God,” by the grace of God, appeared among people, first in the altars, then in the tabernacle of Moses, then in the Temple of Solomon, and finally with an abundance of grace appears in Christian churches. Blessed is our Lord Jesus Christ, who with special abundance reveals His mercy, and His truth, and His salvation, in the churches of His New Testament! Once upon a time there was only one church of the true God in the whole world; but our Lord did something similar to the parable with which he depicted Himself: “Even if a grain of wheat falls on the earth and dies, it remains alone; And if he dies, he will produce much fruit” (John 12:24). The judgment of God over the Old Testament Church brought down to the earth the only church in the world, once pleasing to God and blessed with grace, and the old grain died: but instead, the grace of the New Testament grew countless Christian churches throughout the earth. Once upon a time, only David dared to desire the creation of a temple, and Solomon alone was given the gift to fulfill this: what a mercy of the Lord that now many, according to their diligence, with the blessing of the Church hierarchy, can participate in Solomon’s work, and one person can unite in himself both David’s desire and Solomon’s fulfillment! How generously the Founder of Christianity scatters New Testament churches across the earth: just as generously he places in them the treasures of grace and salvation. “Even as Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1) in the temple, in Jerusalem, throughout all Judea and Galilee, in synagogues and houses, in villages and in deserts - doesn’t all this continue and repeat in our churches through the reading of the Gospel: I am not exaggerating when I say: it continues and is repeated through the reading of the Gospel; for this is not just a word and a legend, but together power and action - a word that then, coming out of the mouth of Jesus, for example, cast out demons, and now, coming out of the Gospel, also terrifies them, punishes and puts them to flight. What is marvelous and heavenly is the upper room of the Lord’s Last Supper, and the house of the descent of the Holy Spirit: aren’t our churches holy in the same way, where Christ still comes to commune His Body and Blood, for the communion of His Body and Blood, of course, cannot take place in His absence; - where else does the Holy Spirit descend, sanctifying the ministers of the word and sacraments, and the sacraments they perform, for just as through the ordination of the Apostles the descent of the Holy Spirit on those being ordained continued, so to this day the ordination of the priesthood continues in the ordination of the priesthood? Let us gratefully bless the Lord for the fact that, having bestowed the high grace of His Divine, savingly effective presence on the churches of His new covenant, He thoughtfully added to this the intermediary gift of grace - the communion of Saints. For if even in the heavenly Hierarchy, as God-enlightened contemplatives will tell us, not everyone is still able to directly receive the Divine Light, but the blessed spirits of the highest ranks transmit it to the blessed spirits of the lower degrees; then how much more for us who are on earth, it can be useful and beneficial, under the one supreme Intercessor of God and men, the God-man Jesus, the subordinate grace-filled mediation of the Saints, so that the highest grace of God, often inaccessible to us, due to the lack of purity of mind and exaltation of the heart, due to the burdening of the spirit by the flesh, due to the incommunicability of the highest purity of God with nature uncleaned from sin - so that the grace of God itself descends to our baseness, and is more closely adapted to our particular and gradual needs, through the private and gradual gifts that the Holy Spirit shares with the Saints. For this reason, I think, and in this sense, the primal Church clearly recognized the “communion of Saints” as a member of the faith, as can be seen from some ancient creeds. For this reason, I think, the Apostle, as an important advantage of the Christian Church, points to its communion with the heavenly Church. “Come,” he says, “to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and ten thousand angels, the triumph, and the church of the firstborn in heaven, and God the Judge of all, and the righteous in the Spirit” (Heb. 12:22-23). But if someone were to ask us when and where we have approached, or are approaching, the triumphant heavenly Church, what it is like and what our communion with it is marked by; then this test cannot be satisfied more obviously and simply than by pointing to the Christian church, rightly and significantly called “Church,” not only because it collects the earthly Church, but also because it unites it with the heavenly Church. It not only reverently honors the memory of the Saints, and calls upon their prayerful intercession with such constancy and order that, one might say, all the luminaries of the spiritual sky in certain circles of time turn around the Church existing on earth; but the manifold grace given to the Saints, as if in some treasury from all times and places, is collected, preserved intact, and generously used for the benefit of everyone. Here, even to this day, the Holy Spirit strikes the strings of David’s Psalter, and announces to you its God-moving sounds. Even to this day, Moses, Anna, Habakkuk, Isaiah, Jonah, Daniel, Zechariah, sing their prophetic songs with us, and breathe upon us the spirit of their prayer. Even to this day, every day, the Most Holy Virgin herself opens her heart, filled with Divine love, to our hearts, and proclaims her supreme seraphim magnification of the Lord. Even to this day, Basil and Chrysostom put their sacred verbs into the mouths of our clergy. Even to this day, here Ephraim teaches, Damascene hymns together and theologizes, Saint Savva directs the rite of Church prayers, and - in order to remember at least one of our once fellow-earths, and now celestials, apparently connecting the earthly Church with the heavenly - Demetrius every day calls on the Saints to show us their God-pleasing life and deeds for imitation. What can we say about the ancient sacred institution of placing parts of the bodies of the holy Martyrs and other Saints in the most sacred place of the church? Doesn’t this represent a tangible point of grace-filled contact between the earthly Church and the heavenly Church, of which one belongs to the spirit of the accomplished righteous, and the other still possesses his body, which is not alien to the spirit, because it exerts actions to the highest degree of life, which are the essence of healing? What can we say about another Church custom, according to which a church, always dedicated to God itself, is sometimes attributed to the name of one of the Saints, just as the now consecrated church is attributed to the name of St. James? Is this just a custom? Is naming for differentiation only and memory? - No. The God-wise founders of Church customs could not act without thought; There is nothing meaningless in the Church. In all its manifestations lives a hidden power of grace; in every word the spirit is spoken. If, during the consecration, we named this church the church of St. James, then we thereby entrusted him with the church, reverently invited this Saint to be its patron and leader; and the Saint, who lives in God as a lover of mankind, out of love for mankind, without a doubt, did not refuse this invitation. What a statement to the church! What help to us who serve weakly and unworthily! What a consolation to you for what is to come! The perfect righteous man invisibly presides here among us; he, as worthy, more widely opens the currents of grace, more or less blocked by our unworthiness; he strengthens our weak ministry, and complements our weaknesses; He offers our and your unspoken prayers to the heavenly altar of God. Blessed be God, marvelous in His Saints! Finally, brethren of this holy church and this monastery, let us gratefully bless God for this newly created church itself: for “unless the Lord builds it, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1). He blesses the undertaking and grants completion. He, the ruler of hearts devoted to Him, moves the hand that has no need in your church to help your need. He sealed the goodness of the deed, the goodness of the offerings, and the good intentions for our salvation with the newly sent sanctification. Will I hide the rest in my heart? - “Bless my soul the Lord, and all that is within me, His holy name” (Ps. 102:1). Blessed are you of the Lord, Saints James and Demetrius, who with your blessings and prayers have made me worthy not only to attend your shrine, but also to serve as a priest under your hierarchy. To all who have now heard my small thoughts about the great and manifold grace of God in the church, I say in the word of the Apostles: “may the imams have the grace” so generously given to us; and “by this let us serve God cheerfully, with reverence and fear” (Heb. 12:28). Amen. You might be interested in: