166. Слово по освящении Богородице-Рождественского храма, что в Столечниках

(Spoken November 29th; printed separately and in collections of 1844 and 1848) 620 And Jacob arose from his sleep, and said: for the Lord is in this place, but I know not. And he was afraid, and said: How terrible is this place, this is not, but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. (Gen.28:16-17). In these words of the Forefather Jacob, and in the adventure that made him say it, there appears one of the most ancient examples of how the gracious sensation of the presence of God, experienced by a pious person in some famous place, gave rise to the thought of the holiness of that place and of the House of God, or the church of God. May they serve us as a guide to reflection, useful and timely, after the consecration of this church has now taken place. Jacob was on the road, alone with his wandering staff; - and where the setting sun left him and night overtook him, he went to sleep, instead of a bed, on the ground, instead of a head, on a stone, instead of a cover, under the high tent of the sky. There was not only nothing resembling the house of God there, but also no sign or belonging of a human dwelling. Jacob woke up. The place is the same; nothing has changed; nothing has been added: but he already finds something new and great there; finds - the presence of God. “The Lord is in this place.” With surprise, or with some sorrow, he admits that he did not know this until now. “I didn’t know.” The high level of chance strikes him. “And he was afraid, and said: How terrible is this place.” No, he exclaims; this is not at all like yesterday; “This is not, but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” And in this place where we stand now, whoever was yesterday and looked only with bodily eyes saw only stone, wood, metals, paints, works of earthly nature, the work of human hands. But now, whoever has risen with an awakened spirit to contemplate with a spiritual eye, he can and must notice “that the Lord is in this place”; must know and acknowledge that this is “the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” What kind of change is there in Jacob’s eyes? What change is there in the eyes of the spiritual man? At the place where Jacob spent the night, the presence of God was revealed to him in a dream. He saw a ladder that was established on the earth and rose to heaven; The angels of God ascended and descended along it, just as earthly servants go up the stairs to the high house of their master; at the upper end of it stood the Lord Himself, and blessed Jacob and his descendants. When Jacob woke up, the wonderful ladder still stood in his memory and imagination above his head. When he again raised his mental gaze to the upper degree of the ladder: he imagined there the door of the invisible heavenly house, from which the King of heaven came and appeared to bless His servant on earth. Thus Jacob slept, and woke up at the porch of the House of God. After this, it is clear and very natural that he exclaims: “This is not, but the House of God.” And here? – Haven’t you seen, haven’t you heard, as here, although overlaid with the imperfections of the flesh, the “merciful” servants of God were, now ascending in prayer, now descending in visible earthly service, preparing this place for the Heavenly King, and proclaiming readiness to Him: “Your throne is ready”? (Ps.92:2) Just as here, they expected His presence and called upon it: “Rise up, Lord, into Your rest”? ( Ps. 132:8 ) As here, more than once they commanded the gates to “take their princes,” that is, to open more and more in height, “so that the Most High “King of glory, the Lord of power” ( Ps. 23: 7-10 ) may come in, with His invisible glory, with the host of His heavenly powers? And what finally? Do you also notice here that the King of glory has truly come, the Lord has entered into His rest, God sits on His holy throne? Do you see in your spirit here, too, a spiritual ladder that connects earth with heaven, creation with the Creator, man with God, the lower degree of which lies on the earth, so that earthly people can stand on it; - by which the intermediate degrees can keep you higher and higher in spirit above the earth, raise you closer and closer to heaven, and mutually bring down heavenly powers to help you; - in the highest place of which the Lord Himself stands, and “speaks peace to His people, and to those who turn their hearts to Him”! ( Ps. 84:9 ) Have you here known as truly as they truly know what they see - have you recognized the presence of God? Jacob, when he recognized the presence of God in a certain place, immediately commemorated this knowledge with a visible solid monument, consecrated it with a libation of oil, forever assigned the name of the House of God to that place, and then repeatedly came there to serve God, according to the regulations of his time. “And Jacob rose up in the morning, and took a stone, and put it there for his head, and set it up on a pillar, and drink offerings of oil on top of it. And Jacob called the name of that place the House of God” (Gen. 28:18–19). And after traveling to Mesopotamia, returning from there, “Jacob set up a pillar in the place where God spoke with him, a pillar of stone, and devoured a sacrifice on it” (Gen. 35:14). Thus, the visible consecrated monument, and the name of the house of God named on it, testified that Jacob found here the invisible but real presence of God. Should we conclude from this example that the House of God that is now being filled by us testifies to the same thing about those who once erected it and consecrated it, and about those who, taking almost only an ancient stone, clothed it with new splendor, and new anointing, and consecrated it into the rank of the house of God, and helped to restore it? - “Let it be, Lord!” But - “as I say, I say to everyone”: have you really known “that the Lord is in this place”? Or, just as Jacob, having received knowledge, admitted with indignation at himself his previous ignorance, so should we still admit our present ignorance: “I did not know”? In fact, it must be admitted that the knowledge of the presence of God in a certain place is complicated not only by the ignorance of the sensual person, who does not know how to penetrate through the sensory into the spiritual, through the earthly to ascend to the heavenly, but also by another knowledge of the thinking person - the knowledge of the omnipresence of God. How can one recognize the presence of God in a certain place where the Divine is as invisible as everywhere else? How can one recognize the presence of God in a certain place, when no place can contain His presence, and no place can exclude it? The very word of God sometimes presents the presence of God as so distant that no one can reach it. “King of kings and Lord of lords, He alone has immortality, and in the light of life is unapproachable; but no one has seen Him; He is from the people who can see Him” (1 Tim. 6:15–16). And sometimes the word of God also represents the presence of God so close everywhere that it is impossible to be outside of it. “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? And do I flee from Your face? Even if I ascend to heaven, You are there; Even if I go to hell, there you are. If I take up my wings early, and dwell in the last of the seas, there Thy hand will guide me, and Thy right hand will hold me” (Ps. 139:7-10). Let us add some more indications of the presence of God in the word of God. Sometimes it indicates the presence of God in the heavens of heaven, and, as it were, completely removes it from the earth. “Heaven is the heaven of the Lord; he gave earth to the sons of men” (Ps. 113:24). But sometimes God Himself brings down His presence to earth and places it forever in His church. “My eyes and my heart will remain forever” (1 Kings 9:3). Finally, the word of God creates an even smaller and more intimate abode for the presence of God, perhaps more than many believe, in the insides of man. “For you are the living Church of God, just as God said: I will dwell in them” (2 Cor. 6:16). And so, God is in the unapproachable light, God is all over the world; God is in heaven; God is in the church; God is in man: how can such different images of knowledge be reconciled in one, self-consistent knowledge of the single presence of the One God? It is not difficult to answer this in general, that God in His inner properties, powers and actions is incomprehensible and infinite; He is the same in His external revelations and appearances: and therefore it is not at all strange, but very natural, that the revelations of His single presence are incomprehensibly different, and His appearances are infinitely diverse, and therefore cannot be embraced by one particular way of knowledge, but in all possible images of knowledge one immense knowledge of God is mysteriously manifested, and when manifested, it is left mysterious. But so that the ignorant has no reason to complain that what is unknown to him is explained by what is completely unknown: let us try, if possible, to bring the vast knowledge of God closer to the limited knowledge of man. The Word of God, the manifestation of the Divine in the world, namely, the Son of God, to whom it especially belongs to “confess” (John 1:18), that is, to reveal, to reveal the invisible Divinity, is depicted in the likeness of a beneficially shining sun: “it will shine upon you,” God says in the Prophet, “to those who fear My name, the sun of righteousness, and healing in its wings” (Mal.4:2). Likewise, in the prayers of the mystery that has now taken place, God is glorified as “the sun of the true day.” Let us use this natural similarity for some contemplation of supernatural truth. You say: the sun is in the sky. This is obvious to everyone. But consider further: what is the presence of the sun? The presence of a thing is its direct relation to others, its effect on other things. Therefore, there is the presence of the sun everywhere where it acts with its power of light, warmth, and movement. And truly, when you, standing on the ground, see a bright circle of the sun in the sky: then you cannot say that the sun is absent; then on earth there is the presence of the sun for you. But even then, when clouds hide the image of the sun from you, the daylight that comes from it is not also the real, although not so obvious, presence of the sun, which distinguishes day from night? And also, when the same solar force, which acts on the entire sunflower in general, acts in a special way and exerts its effect in some special thing, for example, in the inside of a fruit it produces tenderness, nutrition, taste, ripeness: isn’t this also the presence of the sun in power and action? Let us now dare, since it is possible, to elevate this likeness to that which is above all likeness. Just as there is an initial and essential presence of the sun in the sky, in the luminous circle of onago: so there is an initial and essential presence of the Divine in the heavens of heavens, in the unapproachable light, in His central and all-encompassing eternity, for which the focus is everywhere, and there is no surrounding. Just as the sun, without leaving its place in the sky, is actively present in all the sunflowers, since it shines, warms, and moves everywhere: so God, living in unapproachable light in the heavens of heaven, is nevertheless truly and truly present in the whole world, both invisible and visible, since “all things bear the word of His power” (Heb. 1:3). Just as for those on earth there is a special presence of the sun, when they, through the pure air, see its luminous circle, and notice how it rises, goes and sets: so for souls cleansed from the darkness of the flesh there is a special presence of God, which appears to them in wonderful images of Divine light, before the eyes of their spirit, opening, passing and again hiding. So Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up” (Is. 6:1); so Ezekiel saw, above the four living creatures, and above the fiery, animated wheels, “in the likeness of a throne, the likeness of a man” (Ezek. 1:26); so Jacob saw the Lord on the height of the ladder at the door of heaven, and many Saints in a variety of ways. However, just as those from whom the image of the sun is obscured by fog or a cloud, by ordinary daylight, and by other actions of the sun, recognize its presence: so those souls from whom either the lower darkness of their own flesh blocks, or the highest cloud of the inscrutable destinies of God obscures the extraordinary light of miraculous revelations and Divine phenomena, can, however, have a fairly clear knowledge and living sense of the presence of God, in some ways, not so a definite, not so amazing, but for the unblinded eye, the real and unclouded light of the Divine, constantly shining in the origin, growth, completion, preservation, management, renewal of creatures, especially in the providence about man, marvelous for attentive observers. Further, how there is a certain internal presence of the sun in the earthly fruit, into which it enters with its power, and imparts to it tenderness, nutrition, taste, ripeness: in a similar way - one who has experienced it knows, and one who has not experienced it to encourage himself to experience, can first guess that there is an internal presence of God in man, whom, according to his free desire, according to his faith and love, through prayer and devotion, God visits with His gracious power in the heart, internally softens, nourishes, delights, and through the action of spiritual light and warmth, truth and love, gradually leads to spiritual maturity, or perfection. We could continue the diversified applications of the analogy we have taken: but it is better not to extend too far along this path. Not everything can and should be explained: much must only be believed, because one can only believe. The visible creatures of God, according to the word of the Creator Himself, represent only His “back” (Ex. 33:23): His faces cannot be shown. The Light of created things is nothing more than a shadow of the Light of the uncreated; and the shadow, of course, cannot be as clear as the light. Creatures also have their own mysteries, the actions of which natural science cannot fail to recognize when encountering it in experience, but which it does not know how to interpret. Is it possible to be dissatisfied if the incomprehensible God offers us mysteries for which an inquisitive mind vainly refines its insight? Is this not what should be expected from the Incomprehensible God? - If I point you to a ripe grape and say that it contains the blessing of the sun, you must believe me, because even by the signs of its appearance you can notice its ripeness, and you can be convinced of it by tasting it, and you know that without the sun the grapes will not ripen: but in vain would you demand an explanation from me, or would you try to explain to yourself how the sun enters the berry, and small particles of earth, water, air, turns Grozdovo into blood. Do not test the mysteries of the Sun of spirits, do not demand an account of the actions of the grace of the Father of lights. When the Gospel and the Church introduce you to the consecrated church, as into the House of God, they bring you closer to his throne, as to the throne of grace, they point you to the water of baptism or sprinkling, and tell you that there is an overshadowing of the Spirit of God over it; point to the anointing oil and form with it the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit; They point to the mystical forms of bread and wine, and proclaim: this is the true Body of the Lord, this is the true Blood of the Lord: believe without testing, commune with the believer with love and devotion; and you will find in the visible the invisible, in the sensible the spiritual, in signs and sights truth and power, in the natural the supernatural, you will draw closer to the Divine even to “participation,” as the Apostle says, “of the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4); “taste and see,” but not with the eye of the body, “for the Lord is good” (Ps. 33:9), receive participation in “the blessedness of those who have not seen and believed” (John 20:29). With these different, but consonant with each other, and a single saving and blessed knowledge through the constituent images of knowledge, if not all, then some, have we, brethren, recognized the presence of God, not only verbally and mentally, but really and experimentally? He who truly knows the presence of God throughout the world sees the omnipotent, good and righteous hand of God over everything that happens in the world: and therefore he looks at everything, especially the most important events of the world, with reverent attention; He accepts all well-being in the world as a gift from God with thanksgiving; every disaster in the world, as an act of God’s judgment, with humility, patience and hope. But if we are generally inattentive to the affairs of God, ungrateful to God’s benefits, disobedient to God’s judgments; then we did not recognize the omnipotent presence of God; “There is no God before our eyes.” Who truly recognized the presence of God in man, and internally accepted the power of the uncreated Sun; in this, “spiritual fruit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control” continually grows and ripens (Gal. 5:22). On the contrary, if we still love and do the gross deeds of the flesh, the dark deeds of the devil, the deeds of intemperance, greed, pride, cruelty, hatred, then we have not yet known the gracious presence of God; have not yet tasted the power of the coming age; What is spoken from the Lord is still alien to us: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). He who vividly knew and felt the invisible presence of God in the visible church and its sacred signs and sacraments: he, with the Psalmist, “rejoices over those who said to him”: “Let us go to the house of the Lord” (Ps. 122:1); he, in agreement with the feeling of another church hymnist, “standing in the church of the glory of God, imagines standing in heaven.” But if we reluctantly go to the church, or even move away from it, then we must conclude one of two things, either that we do not know at all “that the Lord is in this place,” or that we are unfaithful servants running from the house of our Lord. If we stand in the church irreverently and without attention; then apparently we don’t understand, “how scary this place is”: but if it’s scary for the reverent, how scary was something like this for Jacob; then how much more terrible it must be for those guilty of fearlessness! If we stand here with thoughts not about the Divine, but about the human, and occupy ourselves with each other as if in a human house: is it not obvious that we forget the dignity of the “House of God” and offend the sovereignty of the One who lives in it? “Seek the Lord, and be strong; seek His face” (Ps. 104:4), so that He “fills you with joy with His face” (Ps. 20:7). Seek the presence of God in the world - through healthy and dispassionate reasoning about the affairs of God; in the heart - through faith, prayer, purity, humility; in the church - reverence for shrines and sacraments, and deep attention to the Word of God. “Lord of strength, be with us!” “Lord be in this place”; and “we who are ignorant” may we recognize Your holy and sanctifying presence. Amen. “And Jacob arose from his sleep, and said: For the Lord is in this place, but I know not. And he was afraid, and said: for this is a terrible place, but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:16-17). In these words of the forefather Jacob, and in the adventure that made him say it, one of the most ancient examples appears of how the gracious sensation of the presence of God, experienced by a pious person in some famous place, gave rise to the thought of the holiness of that place, and of the house of God, or the church of God. May they serve us as a guide to reflection, useful and timely, after the consecration of this Church has now taken place. Jacob was on the road, alone with his wandering staff; and where the setting sun left him and night overtook him, he lay down to sleep, instead of a bed on the ground, instead of a head on a stone, instead of a cover under the high tent of the sky. There was not only nothing resembling the house of God there, but also no sign or belonging of a human dwelling. – Jacob woke up. The place is still the same; nothing has changed; nothing has been added: but he already finds something new and great there; finds - the presence of God. “The Lord is in this place.” With surprise, or with some sorrow, he admits that he did not know this until now. “I didn’t know.” The high level of chance strikes him. “And he said: How terrible is this place.” "And I was afraid." No, he exclaims; this is not at all like yesterday; “This is not, but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” And in this place where we stand now, whoever was yesterday and looked only with bodily eyes saw only earth, stone, wood, metals, paints, works of earthly nature, the work of human hands. But now whoever has risen with an awakened spirit to contemplate with a spiritual eye can and should note, “For the Lord is in place seven”; must know and acknowledge that this is “the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” What kind of change is there in Jacob’s eyes? What change is there in the eyes of the spiritual man? At the place where Jacob spent the night, the presence of God was revealed to him in a dream. He saw a ladder that was established on the earth and rose to heaven; The angels of God ascended and descended along it, just as earthly servants walk up a high staircase to the magnificent house of their master; at the upper end of it stood the Lord Himself, and blessed Jacob and his descendants. When Jacob woke up, the wonderful ladder still stood in his imagination above his head. When he again raised his mental gaze to the upper degree of the sowing ladder: he imagined there the door of an invisible heavenly house, from which the Heavenly King came out and appeared to bless his servant on earth. Thus Jacob slept and awoke at the porch of the house of God. After this, the words he spoke, which we heard, were clear and natural. And here? “Didn’t you see, didn’t you hear, as here, although not covered with the perfections of the flesh, both the same pardoned servants of God being, now ascending in prayer, now descending in visible earthly service, prepared this place for the Heavenly King, and proclaimed their readiness to Him: “Your throne is ready”? (Ps. 92:2) How here they expected His presence and called upon it: “Rise up, Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the ark of Thy holiness”? (Ps. 132:8) As here, the gates were repeatedly commanded to “take their princes,” that is, to open more and more in height, “so that the Great and Most High “King of glory, the Lord of hosts” (Ps. 23:7–10) may come in, with His invisible glory, with the host of His heavenly powers? And what finally? Do you also notice here that the King of glory has truly come, the Lord has entered into His rest, God sits on His holy throne? Do you see here in spirit the spiritual Ladder that connects earth with Heaven, creation with the Creator, man with God? of which the lower degree lies on the earth, so that earthly people can stand on it; in which the intermediate degrees can keep you higher and higher in spirit above the earth, raise you closer and closer to heaven, and mutually bring down the heavenly powers to help you; in the highest place of which the Lord Himself stands, and “speaks peace to His people and to those who turn their hearts to Him”? ( Ps. 84:9 ) Have you here known as truly as they truly know what they see - and have you known the presence of God? Jacob, when he became aware of the presence of God in a certain place, immediately commemorated this knowledge with a visible solid monument, consecrated it with a libation of oil, forever assigned the name of the house of God to that place, and then repeatedly came to serve God, according to the regulations of his time. “And Jacob arose in the morning, and took a stone, and laid it there for his head, and set it up on a pillar, and drink pours of oil on top of it. And Jacob called the name of that place the house of God” (Gen. 28:18–19). And here, when there were people who wanted to erect this monument of grace-filled Divine appearances to people and consecrate it with mysterious anointing so that it would always be called and be the house of God: should not this sign suggest what is being signified, that is, that there were people whose hearts knew the presence of their God; Shouldn’t we at least hope that just as there the gift of knowledge from God was rewarded with the gift of a sign from man, so here the gift of a sign from man is rewarded with the gift of saving knowledge from the great-gifted God? May the God of hope fulfill this hope; and may He look down from the heights of His invisible habitation, so that He may bless His servants who bless Him from the earth “with every blessing,” especially “spiritual blessings in the heavenly things in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). But - “as I say, I say to everyone”: have you really known: “how the Lord is in this place”? Or just as Jacob, having received knowledge, admitted with indignation at himself his previous ignorance, so we must also admit our present ignorance: “I did not know.” In fact, it must be admitted that the knowledge of the presence of God in a certain place is complicated not only by the ignorance of the sensual person, who does not know how to penetrate through the sensory into the spiritual, through the earthly to ascend to the heavenly, but by another knowledge of the thinking person, the knowledge of the omnipresence of God. How can one recognize the presence of God in a certain place, when no place can contain His presence and no place can exclude it? The very word of God sometimes represents the presence of God so remote that no one can reach it. “King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He alone has immortality, and is unapproachable in the living light, but no one has seen Him; He is from man, who can see below” (1 Tim. 6:15–16). And sometimes the word of God also represents the presence of God so close everywhere that it is impossible to be outside of it. “Where shall I go from your Spirit? And do I flee from Your face? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I descend to hell, there you are. If I am taken up on the wings of the morning” or dwell in the last reaches of the western sea: “and there Your hand will guide me, and Your right hand will hold me” (Ps. 139:7-10). Let us add some more indications of the presence of God in the word of God. Sometimes it indicates the presence of God in the heavens of heaven, and, as it were, completely removes it from the earth. “Heaven is the heaven of the Lord; he gave earth to the sons of men” (Ps. 113:24). But sometimes God Himself brings down His presence to earth, and places it forever in His church. “My eyes and my heart will remain there all the days” (1 Kings 9:3). Finally, the word of God creates an even smaller and more intimate abode for the presence of God, perhaps more than many believe, in the interior of man. “For you are the living Church of God, as God said: I will dwell in them, and will walk around, and I will be God, and they will be my people” (2 Cor. 6:16). So - God in the unapproachable light, - God throughout the world; God is in heaven; God in the church; God is in man. How can such different images of knowledge be reconciled in one self-conforming knowledge of a single presence, the One God? It is not difficult to answer this in general, that God in His inner properties, powers and actions is incomprehensible and infinite; He is the same in His external revelations and appearances: and therefore it is not the least strange, but very natural, that the revelations of His one presence are infinitely diverse; therefore, they cannot be embraced by any one particular form of knowledge, but in all possible forms of knowledge, the immense knowledge of God is mysteriously manifested, and while manifesting it is left mysterious. But so that the ignorant has no reason to complain, to the imaginary justification of his ignorance, or to make him more obdurate, that the unknown is explained to him by something that is completely unknown: let us test, if possible, to bring the immense Divine knowledge closer to the limited knowledge of man. The Word of God, the manifestation of the Divine in the world, namely, the Son of God, to whom especially belongs the “confession” (John 1:18), revelation, the manifestation of the Divine, is depicted in the likeness of a beneficially shining sun: “the sun of righteousness will shine upon you,” says God in the prophet, “to those who fear My name, and healing is in its wings” (Mal.4:2). Let us use this natural similarity to express some supernatural truth. You say: the sun is in the sky. This is obvious to everyone. But consider further: what is the presence of the sun? Philosophers say that the presence of a thing is its effect on other things. Therefore, there is the presence of the sun everywhere where it acts with its power of light, warmth, and movement. And truly, when you, standing on the ground, see a bright circle of the sun in the sky: then you cannot say that the sun is absent; then on earth there is for you the presence of the sun. But even then, when clouds hide from you the image of the sun, the daylight that comes from it, is not the actual presence of the sun also? And also, when the same solar force that acts on the entire sunflower in general acts in a special way and exerts its effect in some special thing, for example, in the inside of the fruit it produces tenderness, nutritional ability, taste, ripeness, and on its surface it marks its effect with bright color and pleasant appearance: isn’t this also the real presence of the sun in power, the real presence of the sun in a sign? Let us now dare, since it is possible, to elevate this likeness to that which is above all likeness. Just as there is an initial and essential presence of the sun in the sky, in the luminous circle of it: so there is an initial and essential presence of the Divine in the heavens of heaven, in the unapproachable light, in His own, so to speak, circle of His eternity, however, as one Christian teacher happily explained, in such a circle, the center of which is everywhere, and the center is nowhere. Just as the sun, without leaving its place in the sky, is nevertheless present in all the sunflowers, since it shines, warms, and moves everywhere: so God, living in unapproachable light in the heavens of heaven, is nevertheless present in the whole world, both invisible and visible, since “all things bear the word of their power” (Heb. 1:3). Just as for those on earth there is a special presence of the sun, when they, through the pure air, see its luminous circle and notice how it rises, goes and sets: so for those purified from the darkness of carnal souls there is a special presence of God, which appears to them in wonderful images of Divine light, before the eyes of their spirit, opening, passing and again hiding: so Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne on high and exalted" (Is. 6:1), like Ezekiel saw, above the four living creatures, and the fiery animated wheels, "in the likeness of a throne, the likeness of a man" (Ezek. 1:26). So Jacob saw the Lord on the height of the ladder in heaven, and many saints in a variety of ways. However, just as those from whom the image of the sun is obscured by fog or cloud, by ordinary daylight, and by other actions of the sun, recognize its presence, so also those souls from whom either the lower darkness of their own flesh blocks, or the upper cloud of the inscrutable destinies of God blocks the extraordinary light of miraculous revelations and Divine phenomena, can nevertheless have a fairly clear knowledge and a living sense of presence God, according to some not so definite, not so amazing, however, for the eye not completely blinded, the real and unclouded light of the Divine, certainly shining in the origin, growth, completion, preservation, management, renewal of creatures, especially in the providence about man, marvelous for attentive observers? Further, how there is a certain internal presence of the sun in the earthly fruit, into which it enters with its power, and imparts to it tenderness, nutrition, taste, ripeness: in a similar way, the one who has experienced it knows, and the one who has not experienced it, to encourage himself to experience, can first guess that there is an internal presence of God in man, who, by his faith and love, by prayer and devotion, with His grace-filled power in the heart, internally softens, nourishes, delights, and through the action of spiritual light and warmth, truth and love, gradually leads to spiritual maturity, or perfection. Finally, just as the presence of the sun marks itself outwardly in a simple natural sign, when, for example, it gives an apple its ruddy color, or an ear of grain its own sunny color, and thus shows that the solar power has performed its action in these fruits to prepare them into pleasant and healthy food: in a similar way, the presence of God marks itself in mysterious grace-filled signs, which the grace of God chooses, sanctifies, fulfills with its power, even in a certain mystery transforms and transubstantiates into the signified, so that then, as the visible man is excited, attracted and cleansed by the visible shrine, the invisible man finds the longed-for invisible, enjoys the spiritual, feeds on the Divine, even to the point of “communion,” as the Apostle says, “of the Divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). He who truly knows the presence of God throughout the world sees the omnipotent, good and righteous hand of God over everything that happens in the world: and therefore he looks at everything, especially the great events of the world, with reverent attention; He accepts all well-being in the world as a gift from God with thanksgiving; every disaster in the world, as the effect of God’s judgment, with humility, with patience and hope. If we are generally not attentive to the works of God, are not grateful to God’s good deeds, and are disobedient to God’s judgments: then we have not recognized the omnipotent presence of God: “God is not before our eyes.” Whoever truly knows the presence of God in man and internally accepts the power of the uncreated sun: in him “spiritual fruit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, mercy, faith, meekness, self-control” continually grows and ripens (Gal. 5:22). On the contrary, if we still love and do the gross deeds of the flesh, the dark deeds of the devil, the deeds of intemperance, greed, cruelty, pride, hatred, then we have not yet known the gracious presence of God, have not yet tasted the power of the coming age; what was spoken from the Lord is still alien to us: “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). He who vividly knew and felt the invisible presence of God in the visible church and its sacred signs: he, with the psalmist, “rejoices over those who said to him”: “Let us go to the house of the Lord” (Ps. 122:1); he, in agreement with the feeling of another church hymnist, “thinks of standing in the church of the glory of God in heaven.” But if we do not willingly go to the church, or even move away from it, then we must conclude one of two things, either that we do not know at all “that the Lord is in this place,” or that we are indecent slaves, running away from the house of our Lord. If we stand in the church not reverently and without attention; then apparently we don’t understand, “how scary this place is”: but if it is scary for the reverent, as something like this was scary for Jacob: then how much more terrible it must be for those guilty of fearlessness! If we often occupy ourselves with each other here, as if in a human house, is it not obvious that we forget and insult the dignity of the “house of God,” and with it the dominion of those who live in it? “Seek the Lord, and be strong; seek His face” (Ps. 104:4), so that He “fills you with joy with His face” (Ps. 20:7). Seek the presence of God in the world through healthy and dispassionate reasoning about the works of God, in the heart with purity and humility, in church with prayer, reverence and undistracted attention to the word of God. “Lord of strength, be with us!” “Lord be in this place; and we who do not lead” may we recognize Your holy and sanctifying presence. Amen. According to Jew. collection: Sermon on the consecration of the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos in honor of the icon of Her Akhtyrka, spoken in the village of Akhtyrka, September 20, 1825. You might be interested in: