21. Слово в неделю крестопоклонную

(Spoken at the Cathedral Miracle Monastery, March 5th; printed in meetings of 1822, 1835, 1844 and 1848) If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself, and he will take up his cross and come after Me. Mark 8:34. Jesus Christ once called Himself “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). Now, according to the first of these names, He shows us the way. “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me.” The Evangelist notes with these words that Jesus Christ uttered them, “calling the nations to be His disciples.” This shows that His proclamation does not apply to some especially chosen ones, but to everyone without exception. Whoever you are, listening to this, you also need to think about the path. In the visible and temporary world in which you live, there is nothing motionless, but everything moves and passes. And your life goes on and on; You sometimes seem to be at rest with your body, but your innermost thoughts, your secret desires are constantly in motion: and therefore, if you do not follow the path of salvation, then you are faithfully walking the path of destruction, or, if you do not walk, then you fall - you fall from spiritual life to carnal life, from human life to bestial life, and before you know it, you will fall into hellish life, into ultimate death - irrevocably! Think about your path! As the leader and king of the free, Jesus Christ does not force anyone to follow the path that He shows, but invites those who want to enter it: “Whoever wants to follow Me.” Ask yourself, Christian, ask yourself in such a way as to answer decisively, do you want to follow Jesus Christ? Should a Christian not want to follow Christ? What a ridiculous thought! How she contradicts herself! However, there are people who understand how absurd this idea is, but do not feel how criminal this matter is. Why are we Christians if we do not follow Christ? “We are Christians,” some will say, having listened to the words of the original Christian teaching, but not understanding their power, “we are Christians because we believe in Christ.” - Fine. But if you believe in Christ; then of course you believe in the word of Christ: for both are one. If you believe in the word of Christ; then you must act according to this word: for to believe in the word and not act on it is destructive insolence and madness. Let us explain this with an example: if someone were to say to you, wandering in unknown and dangerous places: here is the path along which you can come to a safe place; and if you, having no reason to doubt this instruction, began to hesitate, or went in the opposite direction, perhaps to meet an animal or a robber: wouldn’t that be destructive insolence and madness? - But what does the word of Jesus Christ tell you, in whom and in whom you believe? - “If you want to be perfect, follow in the footsteps of Me.” (Matthew 19:21). After this, how will you respond to following Jesus Christ? Is it because you don't strive for perfection? But this is exactly what He in Whom you believe requires of you: “Be ye perfect,” He says; and how? “As your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). If you renounce the striving for perfection, then He will take away from you the hope of the kingdom of heaven: “Unless your righteousness comes to pass except the scribe and the Pharisee, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). If you don’t want to be with Him, how can you be with Him if you don’t act according to His word and follow Him in everything? - then He recognizes you as His enemy, and denies you before the face of heaven and earth: “Whatever is not with Me is on Me” (Matthew 12:30); “If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38). And so one of two things: either you must follow Christ, follow 142 His word and His example; or are you calling yourself a Christian in vain? It would not be difficult to recognize and accept the obligation to follow Christ if the thought did not stop us: where to go after Him? Where to? - Let's see where He goes. “Behold, we are ascending,” He proclaims to those following in His footsteps (Mk. 10:33, 34), “Behold, we are ascending to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be betrayed by the high priest and the scribe, and they will condemn Him to death, and betray Him with the tongue, and mock Him, and hurt Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him.” Truly terrible is the path of Christ! The Apostles themselves, who, being directly led by Him, followed Him, could not calmly walk this path. “Byahu,” the Evangelist narrates, “on the way ascending to Jerusalem; And when Jesus was watching them, he was terrified, and as he followed them, he was afraid” (Mark 10:32). And what else? There is a race on this path that Jesus Christ Himself passed through, not without horror: “they began to be terrified and tormented” (Mark 14:33). But is it not in vain that I reveal all the horror of the path of Christ, which many already fear? - No, Christians, “our consolation,” let’s say with the Apostle, “is not from delusion, nor from uncleanness, nor flattery” (1 Thess. 2:3). We do not want to hide from you the difficulty that is inevitable: but from the difficulty itself you can see that it is not difficult to overcome it. Why was Jesus Christ horrified, but everyone fears and trembles at Him, Who has no one to fear, because there is no power that could be terrible for the Almighty? Why did He, who is the source of joy and bliss for everything that can be involved in joy and bliss, grieve? It is obvious that this horror and this hardship was not actually His: but He was subjected to it because “He accepted our illnesses, and bore our illnesses” (Matthew 8:17). But why did He accept and bear our ailments and illnesses, if not in order to heal them, or at least, to the point of complete healing, to alleviate them so as not to leave us “to be tempted beyond our might” (1 Cor. 10:13)? Consequently, horror and sorrow, if not completely taken away from the path of Christ, are greatly reduced by the fact that He has already completed this path and paved it for us. Therefore, the Apostles were not always, as in the beginning, afraid to follow Christ; but a time came later when they walked the same terrible and sorrowful path with joy. They, writes the narrator of their deeds, “went rejoicing, because for the name of the Lord Jesus they were deemed worthy to receive dishonor” (Acts 5:41). How could it be that the same people, on the same path, were at first afraid and then rejoiced? They were afraid when Jesus Christ had not yet completed this journey and brought him to safety; they rejoiced when He walked this path and carried away its difficulties on Himself. They were afraid when they looked only at these difficulties, without penetrating further; but they rejoiced when they clearly saw the end of Christ’s path. For where does this path finally lead? He leads to heaven, to God the Father Himself, as Jesus Christ Himself, depicting His entire path, from beginning to end, says: “I departed from the Father, and came into the world, and again I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28). This path leads into the Divine glory: “it is fitting for Christ to suffer and to be brought into His glory” (Luke 24:26). Will we really, say one who does not understand the mysteries of Christ, really be elevated to God the Father Himself, and enter into the glory of the Only Begotten Son of God? Yes, brothers! For He is faithful who said: “Where I am, there also will My servant be” (John 12:26). So, if our Lord goes to God His Father, then He will bring us with Him. If Christ enters into His Divine glory, then He will bring Christians with Him, and will make, as the Apostle explains, “partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Do not say that such a height is unattainable for those born on earth: we must only with firm determination enter into that part of the path of Christ that He walked and paved for us on earth; when it is necessary to ascend above the earthly and ascend to the heavenly and Divine, then He Himself will lift us up, like “an eagle on the wing” (Ex. 19:4), according to His great promise: “if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to Himself” (John 12:32). With these reflections, we hope for you, brothers, that your heart says to your Leader and Savior: “Lord! I will follow You, even if you are walking” (Matthew 8:19); Only You, Master of the Heart, do not reject this desire, as you once rejected it in the mouth of someone, no doubt because it was not poured out from the fullness of the heart. If you want to follow Christ, then it is time to tell you how you should follow Him. “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me.” Firstly, whoever wants to follow Christ must “deny himself,” that is, deny his self-love, not be attached to his own honor, his own benefit and his own pleasure, but, in the image of a traveler, meet all this in passing, and soon leave behind him; in all things act according to this instruction of the Apostle: “let them that have have things be as they have not: and they that weep, as though they were not weeping: and them that rejoice, as though they were not rejoicing; and them that buy, as though they had not substance: and them that demanded this world, as though they did not require it” (1 Cor. 7:29-31). How can one, they say, reach such selflessness? It is possible, just as a warrior renounces the pleasures of home life when he goes out onto the battlefield; how he renounces life itself when he enters into battle, without which renunciation he could not be either courageous or victorious. If this can be done for a perishable crown and temporal glory: what cannot and should not be done for an incorruptible crown and eternal glory? Secondly, to follow Christ one must “take up one’s cross.” The Cross of Christ consists of “His sufferings, temptations and murder” (Mark 8:31). Having endured all this for us alone, He has the perfect right to demand that each of us endure all this for Him. But in order not to crush us with the weight of this burden, under which He Himself appeared exhausted, He does not lay His great cross on us, but only commands us to take up our own, that is, to be ready to endure as much suffering, temptations, external, internal, as the punishing, cleansing, and at the same time merciful fate of the ruling Providence will bring upon each one in particular. Is this really inevitable? pampered souls cry out. - Calm down and reason. If “it is fitting for Christ,” the sinless and omnipotent, to suffer, in order to “bring into His glory”: how can we, defiled and weakened by sin, reach this glory without being cleansed by temptations and strengthened by suffering? For what lives in us now? If pride prevents recognition: let us expose ourselves by admitting the Apostle: “No good thing dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18). Since the time of the first sin, the old Adam has lived in us, with his passions and lusts: how can one be taken off from him and put on the new man - which is the goal of our striving - I do not say, without suffering, but even without death? We must take up the cross not only to struggle in wearing it, but to finally completely “crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24), “put to death our souls that are on the earth” (Col. 3:5), “die” mysteriously, so that our “life” will be “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). This, Christians, is the teaching of the cross, a teaching so necessary and essential in Christianity that the Church, not content to often proclaim it with a voice, even more often presents it in images and signs. At baptism itself, she places an image of a cross on us; at every prayer he commands us to put on ourselves the sign of the cross; and from time to time, as on this day, he solemnly offers us the sign of the cross for worship and kissing. Let's be careful; Let us accept, not as from the lips of men, but as from the lips of our crucified Savior Himself, this commandment, that “let us deny ourselves, and take up our cross, and follow Him.” Amen. In collection 1822 and 1835: to follow in everything... You might be interested in: