219. Слово по освящении храма Святаго Духа, в Рождественском монастыре

(Said Sept. 18; printed in the Works of St. Ot. l848 and in the collection of 1861) Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone corrupts God's church, God will corrupt him. (1 Cor. 3:16–17). While the God-loving strive to create, or better yet, recreate, decorate, and consecrate the church of God, the Apostolic Word shows us a different kind of church of God, one that seems completely ready. And how close! In the person of every Christian, in our own body. “Do you not know,” he says, “that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you?” And again: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit living in you” (1 Cor. 6:19)? The Apostle speaks of this as a very well-known matter: “Do you not know? or don’t you know?” Don't you know? But it is doubtful whether we all quite know how a Christian is the church of God? And if this is so, and consequently we are very rich in living churches of God not made with hands: then one may ask, why do we create and consecrate churches of God made with hands? Let these questions lead us into reflection. The essence of the church of God is the special grace-filled presence of God. I say: the special grace-filled presence of God, distinguishing this from the general omnipresence of God’s creative and providential power in all created beings. This is how God Himself defined the essence of His church when, blessing the Temple of Solomon, He said: “You have sanctified this church which you have created, and set My name there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there forever” (1 Kings 9:3). “And I will dwell among the children of Israel” (1 Kings 6:13). Therefore, if it is necessary for man to be the church of God, then it is necessary for God to dwell in him and to abide in him. This is exactly how the Apostle defines the church of God in man when he says: “You are the churches of God who live, just as God said that I would dwell in them and walk around” (2 Cor. 6:16). You are the churches of the living God, because God, according to His ancient promise through Moses, has taken His gracious power to dwell in you and remains in you. But how does the gracious power of God enter and inhabit a person? – It enters through the word of God: “For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit” (Heb. 4:12). With the action of the word of God, grace-filled power enters a person through faith: because “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17); and thus “Christ dwells in hearts by faith” (Eph. 3:17). The power of grace enters into a person through holy baptism: “for if you were baptized into Christ, you put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). And how “in Christ dwells all the bodily fulfillment of the Godhead” (Col. 2:9); then in those who have put on Christ there cannot but be present a certain power from the fulfillment of the Divinity, by which a new “birth from God” takes place in them (John 1:13). The gracious power of the Holy Spirit enters a person through holy chrismation, because this sacrament, with a different external effect, has an internal effect, identical with the Apostolic laying on of hands on the newly baptized, about which it is written in the Acts of the Apostles: “laying your hand on you, and receiving the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:17); and to this sacrament should be attributed the Apostolic saying that “He who anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave the betrothal of the Spirit into our hearts” (2 Cor. 1:21-22). The gracious power of Christ enters a person through the communion of the most holy Body and Blood of Christ: Christ’s own word assures us of this: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56). The power of grace opens its entrance into man through love for God and Christ, and through observance of His word, that is, His teaching and commandments: in this we are also encouraged by Christ’s own word: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him” (John 14:23). The power of grace is received by a person with the assistance of prayer: for with prayer performed with a humble mind in the depths of the heart, undistracted, diligent, pure, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26). You see how abundantly and variedly the all-good God acts, inventing means, laying out paths, opening entrances in order to enter and dwell in man. This is because with His strongest desire He wants to make man His church. This is so that man has the fullest opportunity to become the church of God. But when God Himself, by His gracious power, so providentially creates and consecrates for Himself living churches not made by hands, and there should be as many such churches as there are Christians: why at the same time does man build and consecrate a church to God? - This is to promote the achievement of the same goal for which God Himself acts providentially - to promote the creation and sanctification of living churches of God in human souls and bodies. Man is born into a world far from being a church of God. “For the church of God is holy” (1 Cor. 3:17): and every son of fallen Adam, no matter who he is, must admit what the Prophet did not hesitate to admit: “I was conceived in iniquity, and in sins my mother gave birth to me” (Ps. 50:7). So it is not the church of God, but an unclean dwelling place of sin. The Church of God must be built in it again, all the more difficult because it must be built upon the destruction of the building of sin. For this purpose, man must be recreated, so that he is, according to the word of Scripture, “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17); or be reborn, so that he can justly be called a “new man” (Eph. 4:24). In this re-creation the Spirit of God and His gracious power operate, as the Apostle Paul says: “he is being built into a habitation of God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22). In this rebirth, the living word of God acts, as the Apostle Peter says: “It was not generated from a seed that was corrupted, but was uncorrupted by the word of the living God” (1 Pet. 1:23). But if Christ Himself represents natural birth as an image of spiritual birth; and if for a natural birth a mother’s womb is needed, then for a spiritual birth is a mother’s womb not needed, not in the literal meaning of this word, as Nicodemus thought, but in a higher sense, corresponding to the subject? – This question is both justified and resolved at once if we say that the mother’s womb and the treasury of life for the new man is Christ’s Church and Her, although made by hand, but filled with the spirit of grace, a mystical church. God gave His Church His Divine treasure, His Word, so that it, penetrating into man with its living, grace-filled power, would revive him, build him up, make him a church of God: isn’t it necessary to store this treasure a worthy treasury, separated, if possible, from ordinary earthly things, beautifully adorned, sanctified? – This is the man-made church of God. – But just as all those who seek salvation need the word of God: shouldn’t His treasury be known to all of them, open to all, accessible to all? – This is the man-made church of God. God introduced His Divine grace and saving power into the Christian sacraments, in order to introduce it into Christians through them. In the name of the “sacraments” one can see an indication partly that the gracious power of God secretly acts in them, partly that these sacred actions, out of reverence for the Divine power contained in them, should be a secret, inaccessible to the unprepared and unworthy. Both of these instructions converge at one point - in the thought of the necessary need for a consecrated sacramental church, into which the communicants of the sacraments would enter with reverence, and whose inner sanctuary would be closed from the unprepared and unworthy, and for them not to enter. And especially if the deified body of our Lord Jesus Christ is worthily exalted into a heavenly dwelling; and if this same body is given to us in the sacrament, then is it possible not to strive so that its earthly dwelling should be as little as possible, earthly, as much as possible, heavenly, in splendor, in sanctification, and in humble reverence for it? From the reflections now proposed, the one who builds a church can draw consolation - to see his sacrifice as pleasing to God, and all the more reliable for obtaining His mercy, since a church made with hands will serve for the creation and consecration of many churches not made with hands: and let all who enter the church receive instruction on how to use the church for the creation and consecration of themselves as a church to God. Having been announced and announced in the church by the word of God, having been and being partakers of the grace-filled sacraments, we can think that we ourselves have already become churches of God. Not unfair. But listen to what the Apostle says to those born of the word of the living God and to those who partake of the sacraments: “And you yourselves, like living stone, are built into a spiritual church” (1 Peter 2:5). He does not say affirmatively: you have already been created into a spiritual church, but imperatively: be created into a spiritual church. What does this mean? – The fact that both in the visitors of the church and in the participants of the sacraments, in many the spiritual church is imperfect and unfinished, because faith is imperfect; or after creation the holy church in them is desecrated and destroyed, because they do not lead a holy life, but one corrupted by sins. And this is followed by the formidable sentence of the Divine word: “if anyone corrupts God’s church, God will corrupt him.” Whoever defiles with unclean thoughts and evil desires, and destroys the spiritual church of God in his soul and in his body with deeds of sin and iniquity, and does not strive to restore and renew it through repentance and corrected life, the long-suffering but just God will finally destroy him with His righteous judgment, that is, he will allow him to remain an eternal ruin of life, trampled underfoot by dark forces. Protecting ourselves from such a disastrous fate, according to the Apostolic exhortation, “in love, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, creating holiness in the passion of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). Let us accustom ourselves to find faithful help in this feat in the correct use of the grace-filled means of the holy church and the very thought of it. When you enter the church; Bring to your mind the promise of the Lord to those who gather in His name: “there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20); and be reverent as before His face: and the grace of the presence of God will overshadow you, like the once wonderful cloud in the temple of Jerusalem. When you are in church prayer: think that the Holy Spirit is breathing in it, and restrain every movement of your own, and breathe into yourself His life-giving breath. When the word of God speaks to you here: open not only your outer hearing, but also your inner hearing; open your heart by faith; accept this heavenly Bread with a hungry desire, and feed with it not only imagination and memory, but life and activity. When you want to be a partaker of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, or at least be present at this sacrament: tear yourself away from what is visible, and cleave in thought and heart to what you believe, to the cross and tomb of the Lord, to the body of Christ, suffering, dying, buried, resurrected, deified, glorified: and the touch of your faith to Him will be more significant than the bleeding to His chasuble; and the “power” of Christ “will come out” (Luke 8:46) to purify and enhance your mental and physical strength. If ever an unclean thought and a crafty desire approaches the church of your soul, hasten to repel them with the very thought of the church. Was it not said to me among many: “This is the church of God”? I will not dare to desecrate the church of God with something that is contrary to its holiness. If, more than your aspirations, your evil desire or passion intensifies and urges your body to the work of uncleanness, sin and lawlessness: arm yourself even more powerfully with the thought of the holy church. Was it not said to me among many: “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit living in you”? How dare I, through sin and iniquity, destroy the temple of the Holy Spirit within myself? May I not offend and remove the Holy Spirit from myself! Holy Soul, proceed from the Father, and rest in the Son, then descend, and build the sanctuary, and complete the Saints, and rest in the Saints! Rest in the church consecrated by You, not originally by Your grace, and act creatively and life-giving by Your power, so that we, too, who are unworthy, may be deemed worthy to be created in the habitation of God, to the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Amen. You might be interested in: