19. Слово на Рождество Христово и на воспоминание освобождения Церкви и Державы Российския от нашествия Галлов

(Spoken at the Cathedral Miracle Monastery; printed separately and in collections of 1822, 1835, 1844 and 1848) And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of howls from heaven, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest. Luke 2:13. Now the Angels are preaching to you, Christians, and the Angels are showing you what you should do according to their preaching: what could be better than this teaching, and is another one needed after this? An angel appears and preaches to people: “Behold the great joy that is brought to you, which will be to all people, because today a Savior has been born to you” (Luke 2:10–11). At this joyful sermon, people should exclaim, “Amen,” and glorify God for this gospel. But with the Angel preacher, the Angels are also listeners. “And suddenly,” that is, as soon as he preached a sermon on the Nativity of Christ, they exclaimed as a whole army: “Glory to God in the highest!” They exclaim in such a way that not only the heavenly monasteries that belong to them, but also the world below are resounding with their praise. For what? Without a doubt, so that the world below would follow the world above, so that human praise would be added to the angelic praise. Let us therefore obey the teaching of the angels. “Come, let us rejoice in the Lord, let us shout to God our Savior” (Psalm 94:1). "Gloria!" But you have already come to rejoice in the Nativity of the Savior; the doxology that the Church adopted from the Angels rings out not only into the churches of God, but also into your dwellings; The Angel's sermon, despite the fact that it was delivered over so many centuries, has still exerted its power; the deed seems to be done. Now it would behoove the earthly ministers of the word to be silent and calm down when the heavenly preachers act. But their sermon is short and meaningful, their doxology is sudden, involuntarily arousing to surprise, and through surprise to study and reflection. Moreover, the thought arises that when the heavenly Powers preached and celebrated the Nativity of our Savior, except for a few shepherds, the entire world below was immersed in sleep, and did not hear their preaching and praise. Really, some will probably say, can we really doze off the great doxology of the Church in the midst of the clear day of the Lord? - Without reproaching anyone, I will only remind you that David, who, without a doubt, was more vigilant than us in praise, sometimes found it necessary to awaken his glory: “Arise my glory” (Psalm 56:9)! Let us also try, by reflecting on the glory of God in the birth of our Savior, to awaken our glory, or, more clearly, our zeal for the glory of God. Not before, as at the birth of Jesus Christ, does the earth hear this Angelic praise: why not before? And did not God previously have glory in the highest? So! God had the highest glory from all eternity. According to the saying of one clairvoyant of His glory, He is “the God of glory” (Acts 7:2), that is, glory is connected with His very name, with His very being, so that He would not be God if He did not have glory. Glory is a revelation, a manifestation, a reflection, a vestment of inner perfection. God has been revealed to Himself from eternity in the eternal birth of His consubstantial Son, and in the eternal procession of His consubstantial Spirit; and thus His unity in the Holy Trinity shines with essential, imperishable and unchangeable glory. God the Father is the “Father of glory” (Eph. 1:17); The Son of God is “the radiance of His glory” (Heb. 1:3) and He Himself “has glory with His Father, before the world was not” (John 17:5); likewise, the Spirit of God is “the Spirit of glory” (1 Peter 4:14). In this own, inner 137 glory, the blessed God lives above all glory, so that He does not require any witnesses in it, and cannot have any participants. But how, out of His infinite goodness and love, He desires to communicate His bliss, to have gracious 138 partakers of His glory: then He strives for His infinite perfections, and they are revealed 139 in His creations; His glory appears to the heavenly powers, is reflected in man, clothed in the splendor of the 140 visible world; it is given from Him, accepted by the participants, returns to Him, and in this, so to speak, circulation of the glory of God, consists the blessed life and well-being of creatures. So the Cherubim stand before the throne of the Lord, in the fullness of His glory, and in the glory of the Most Holy Trinity they cry out to each other the thrice-holy song: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6:3); they “cover their faces” because the essential glory of God is “an unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16) also for the creatures above; they are “full of eyes around and inside,” because the desire to partake of the glory of God through contemplation makes their whole being an eye; they “have no rest day and night” (Rev. 4:8), not because rest was forbidden to them, but because the bliss that fills them with the contemplation and communion of the glory of God, as if from an overflowing vessel, is constantly poured out in the joyful murmur of praise, and thus “the glory that is from the only God” (John 5:44) returns to God. So man, in his primitive state, was “the image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7), and without clothes he did not know nakedness, being clothed with this glory. So the visible heavens “will tell the glory of God; day and day the word burps out about her, and the mind proclaims night to night” (Psalm 19:2-3). But if in this way the glory of God abides in God from eternity; and in the very creatures, not only in the invisible, but even in the visible, it has been proclaimed for a long time and incessantly: why, at the Nativity of Jesus Christ, is it proclaimed from heaven to earth in a new and unexpected way, as something unknown and unheard of? Christian! here is your turn to be an “eye”, and especially “inside”, become kind and contemplate: here there is glory and mystery - glory contained in mystery, mystery revealed in glory. Man stopped the ever-animal circulation of the glory of God in himself, deciding not to return it to God, but to appropriate it for himself, in the hope, according to the promise of the seducer, to “be like God” (Gen. 3:5). From this, something happened in the spiritual man similar to what happens in the sensual man when the circulation of the blood stops. Man spiritually died for the glory of God, or at least became dead in such a way that in him there remained weak, in comparison with the previous state, movements of spiritual life, darkened, naked, painful and corruptible. Since throughout the entire visible world the glory of God spread primarily through man, being reflected in him as in the image of God: then, having been hidden from man, it no longer shines as clearly as in the beginning in the entire visible world. Although the Psalmist, who had purified his senses, even after this heard the verb “the heavens telling the glory of God,” and their sound 141 passing throughout the whole earth: but this sound, without a doubt, is no longer as high and magnificent as it was in the beginning; for then only the majestic and sweet sounds of life and harmony were heard, but now they are mixed with the tearing sounds of suffering and the noise of destruction. This sad eclipse of the glory of God in the world was completed by people darkened by sin by immersing all their desires and thoughts in creatures, “changing the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and four-footed, and creeping” (Rom. 1:23). The “God of glory,” knowing that without His glory there is no bliss for His creatures, used, let’s say in human terms, many different and extraordinary efforts in order to again manifest it in people: but these efforts for a long time seemed futile, and in fact were only more or less distant and particular preparations for the real, universal, the only possible manifestation of His glory among those who are “deprived of it” because “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23). In the very first minutes of man’s separation from the glory of God, God sought him in order to return him to it: “Adam, where are you?” (Gen. 3:9) but the sinner could not bear her presence; ran and hid from her. Afterwards, in order to make it accessible to people, God sometimes clothed it in the appearance of His Angels: but even this terrified human nature, and could not mediate its communication with the glory of God. “Woe is me, Lord, Lord,” cries Gideon, “for I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face” (Judges 6:22). “Let us die to death,” cries Manoah, “as we have seen God” (Judges 13:22). The people of Israel, no matter how carefully, according to the instructions of God Himself, through Moses, were prepared for the manifestation of the glory of God on Sinai, even standing at a distance, they could not withstand this phenomenon; “And he said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and let not God speak unto us, lest we die” (Ex. 20:19). What can we say about those manifestations of the glory of God when, after the fulfillment of the measure of human iniquities, to the cry ascending to God, He could not, without betraying His holiness, respond with the voice of love and mercy, but responded with the terrible and punishing destinies of His justice, as was, for example, in the condemnation of Cain, in the global flood, in the destruction of Sodom? – “The God of glory thundered” (Psalm 28:3); the earth trembled; the man disappeared: where was there to rejoice? Who should we praise? What finally does God, who is inexhaustible in the means of mercy and salvation, do in order to restore man “to the hope of glory”? Because man did not dare to draw closer to God and partake of His glory: God draws near to man, and partakes of his humiliation. So that the sinner no longer runs away from the presence of God, the Son of God appears to him “in the likeness of the flesh of sin” (Rom. 8:3). So that the weak creation does not disappear from the glory of the omnipotent Creator, He no longer “puts on confession and grandeur” (Psalm 103:1), but in weak and speechless infancy and in wretched shrouds. Like a skilled doctor, seeing that the sick person is afraid of strong healing, he hides this healing under a different guise; and thus the healing is accepted, and the sick person is saved: so the Heavenly Physician of souls and bodies, seeing that humanity, infected with the deadly disease of sin, fears the Divine, while nothing can be cured except the Divine, encloses His Divinity in the image of humanity, and thus the human race, before it knew, actually tasted the Divine, all-healing healing of grace. How quickly the Divinity is in humanity: then “all His Divine powers have been given to us, even for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3); and therefore our weakness will be filled by the power of God; our unrighteousness will be blotted out by the righteousness of God; our darkness will be enlightened by the light of God; our death will be abolished by the life of God; in the very hiding of the glory of God for us, we receive the hope of glory; and when this glory is revealed, it will not blind, will not frighten, will not destroy us, but, having shone in us, it will enlighten the whole world in which we have eclipsed it. “Christ in you is the hope of glory” (2 Cor. 13:5), the Apostle encourages. Behold the glorious mystery and mysterious glory of the present day! The heavenly servants of light saw the dawn of sowing glory before us, and immediately, turning to us, exclaimed: “Glory to God in the highest!” Now is no longer the dawn, but the full day of sowing glory: let our glory also arise; let him ascend in return to the celestials; may he ascend in joyful admiration of hearts to the very throne of the Most High: “Glory to God in the highest!” Brethren! Think that the Angels so solemnly glorify God not for their salvation, but for ours. With what zeal should we glorify Him for ourselves! Who will give me a spark of heavenly fire, Angelic love for God, so that I can kindle your hearts with it to the Angelic, incessant, restless praise? For I know that the world is already preparing to drown out in your soul the echo of the angelic praise, with the noise of those celebrating, with vain conversations, with singing that corrupts the purity of the spirit, “to burden your hearts with gluttony and drunkenness” (Luke 21:34). Beware that you do not offend God your Savior, glorified by the word in the church, by deeds in the house. “Only those who glorify Me will I glorify,” He says, “and those who disparage Me will be dishonored” (1 Samuel 2:30). And have we not recently experienced this dishonor through a painful experience, so that the Lord not only gave over our houses to theft and fire, but also degraded His churches? Why else, if not because we, with a life unworthy of His glory, humiliated Him in our homes, and through negligence about piety we humiliated Him in churches? But behold, He has again had mercy and glorified us: let us glorify Him, so as not to again provoke His indignation, with which such an unusually restless order of nature already threatens us. “Give glory to God” (Ps. 67:35)! “Glorify God in all your bodies and in your souls” (1 Cor. 6:20)! Amen. In the department ed. and in collection 1822 this word does not exist. In collection 1822: further open... 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