256. Беседа в неделю вторую по Пятдесятнице и в день рождения Благочестивейшаго Государя Императора Николая Павловича

(Said in the Assumption Cathedral on July 25th; printed in the Works of the Holy Father of 1850 and in the collection of 1861) And the verb is: He is coming after me, and I will make you a fisher of man (Matthew 4:19). In Bethlehem we know the cradle of Christ: and if we look for the cradle of Christianity, then, it seems, we will find it on the shore of the Sea of ​​Galilee. After Bethlehem and Egypt, in ignorant Nazareth, from infancy to the age of a perfect husband, the Son of Mary lived almost unknown. Apart from her, Joseph, Simeon and, perhaps, a few others, no one knew that this Jesus was the Christ foretold by the Prophets, that this imaginary son of Joseph was the true Only Begotten Son of God. On the day of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, John pointed out in Him “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), or, without allegory, Christ the Savior of the world, and the voice of God the Father from heaven proclaimed to the earth His beloved Son. Following this, Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael found and recognized the Son of God in Jesus Christ, followed Him, saw in Cana of Galilee the firstfruits of His miracles, believed in Him: but, apparently, they still understood little of what was going on, and returned to their inherited business - to fishing. This is the nature of the sons of Adam: it strives to arise from the sensual to the spiritual, just as sometimes a fish rushes from water to air: but just as easily and quickly, like a fish into water, it plunges back into sensuality; only Christ, by the power of grace, can decisively elevate it, renew it, revive it, and give it constant spiritual direction. Here He is walking along the shore of the Sea of ​​Galilee. Peter and Andrew, James and John are found busy catching fish and fishing nets. He extends His spiritual space over them - a sovereign, prophetic, creative word: follow Me; I will make you fishers of men. The power of this word immediately appeared: they abandoned everything, two of them even left their father, so as never again to leave Jesus Christ and the work entrusted to them by Him. Now the intention of Christ was revealed to attract people to Himself, to catch, gather, unite with certain bonds, that is, as He explained later, to “create the Church” (Matthew 16:18) Christian: and not only the intention was revealed, but the work itself began; because He himself caught the four first and most noble among the future fishers of men. So, one might say, the fishing vessel was the cradle of Christianity, and His midwives were fishing nets. If I were surrounded most by those to whom God’s chosen fishers of men handed over the continuation of their work: then I would present to them in Peter, Andrew, James, John, a wonderful and admirable example of readiness to follow the calling of God, selflessness, self-sacrifice. However, their example contains a lesson for everyone. If from the Gospel, from a reflective mind, from conscience, from anywhere, you hear a voice calling you to the work of God, to the work of faith, to the work of virtue, to prayer, to taming the flesh, to the rejection of vanity: and this voice penetrates deeply into your heart: know that Christ passes by invisibly and looks at you and calls you. The sooner and more decisively you follow His voice, the more you will please Him; the more you will have the right to His help. But the more inattentive and inert you show yourself, the more you remove the Caller and the hope of His return from yourself. It is not forbidden for you to engage in earthly affairs in order to satisfy the needs of earthly life, but there is also an obligation to work, and God’s command, so that “in the sweat of your brow you may eat your bread” (Gen. 3:19): but beware so as not to neglect the work of heaven, the eternal salvation of your soul, while you are pursuing earthly gain, or sensual pleasure, or human glory. Even if the earthly father, who does not heed truth and righteousness, had to be left in order to fulfill the will of the Heavenly Father: do not be at a loss as to which one to prefer. Your earthly father will not lead you to heaven if he manages to turn you away from the path of your Heavenly Father: on the contrary, the Heavenly Father, through your self-sacrifice and obedience to His will, will not only bring you to heaven, but can also draw your resisting earthly father there with your faith. I return to the word of the Lord about fishers of men. When He, looking at the fishing of fish, in the likeness of this, appointed Peter and the others to be fishers of men: then through this very thing He appointed men to fish in the likeness of fish. Will not some of us say to this: “What is this parable?” (Luke 1:33) In what sea are we immersed like fish? Why do you need to catch us? Is it better for us to be caught in a more or less constraining environment than to float freely in the space of the sea? Some resolution of these questions may not be useless so that we do not run away from the trapping world of Christ, or those caught do not try to escape from it. Like a fish in water, as I have already partly noted before, the human spirit, as a result of original sin, is immersed in the flesh, in sensuality, in the sea of ​​life, in the sensory world, which is also damaged by Adam’s fall, “lies in evil,” overwhelmed as by the winds, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the hair, the pride of life” (1 John 5:19, 2:16). Then the waters of sorrows reach the human soul; then he drowns in pleasures; sometimes he is agitated by passions; then he gets carried away by the flow of vanity, not finding peace, and not recognizing himself and his purpose. But, what’s worse, in the depths of the sea of ​​life lurks the serpent of the abyss, constantly hungry to devour a person, like a big small fish. From this we can guess why Christ wants to catch people in the sea of ​​life. But He makes this more understandable, expressing it in another case with the same parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea and gathered together from every kind” (Matthew 13:47). You see that He ensnares people in order to draw them into the kingdom of heaven. Between the words of truth and saving commandments, He embraces them, collects them, protects them, and with the grace-filled power of the cross, with free obedience, draws them, as if from water into the air and onto the shore, from carnal to spiritual life, from sin to holiness, from the overwhelm of passions to the silence of dispassion, from the current to the permanent, from the corruptible to the incorruptible, from the temporal to the eternal, from the earthly to the heavenly, from the world to God and His ever-blessed kingdom. After this, is it possible not to say: happy is the one who is caught in the dream of Christ and willingly follows its attraction? Or, on the contrary, will anyone complain that the Gospel net is crowded? Let us not deny this: for Christ himself not only did not deny, but also proclaimed that “thou shalt bring a narrow gate and a strait path into the life” (Matthew 7:13). But think, whoever complains about the narrowness of the path of Christ, will it be more spacious for you if, deviating from the depths of the Gospel, or breaking out of it, you play for a few days 708 in the vastness of the sea of ​​life, and then you fall forever into the jaws of the deep serpent? Think that the cramped space of Christ draws you to the boundless expanse of paradise and heaven, before which this world, seducing you with its vastness, is cramped 709 and worse than the fishermen’s wilderness. Think that the world also has many nets of its own with which it catches you, oppresses you, and destroys you. If it is sometimes spacious for the flesh, then much more cramped for the spirit. On the contrary, in the realm of the Gospel, if it is somewhat cramped for the flesh, at the same time it is spacious 710 for the spirit, since the bridled and tamed flesh by the Gospel commandments does not prevent the spirit from flying 711 from the waters of sensuality to the heavenly air. “Blessed are you, O Christ our God, who are wise fishers of phenomena, having sent down upon them the Holy Spirit, and with them caught the universe!” 712 For us, brethren, especially blessed in Christ is the fisher of Christ, Andrew the First-Called, who on the Dnieper Mountains laid the bait of the Cross as a pledge and an omen that it would later catch Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir and his people. Blessed is also the memory of Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir, who first captured the people of Kiev, and then all the Russians, to Christ, and left the image to our most pious Autocrats in order to further the cause of spiritual hunters, and to place the first good of his people in Christian piety. May the pious zeal and beneficial power now be blessed by the grace of God of our reigning Autocrat Nikolai Pavlovich, who not only in his kingdom promotes the spread and establishment of the kingdom of Christ, and brings new catches to Christ with well-governed fishers, but also outside the fatherland, where the rebellious peoples, having dissolved the rule of Christ, dissolved the bonds of obedience and human legitimate authority, called by God to restore the divinely established order, act with a strong hand and a high muscle. May everyone see these blessed footprints. Those who are called to continue the feat of spiritual fishers: let them not be negligent in attracting souls to Christ with the word of truth, and let those who are not carried away by the word “capture” by good “life” and prayer. Let no one, without exception, be negligent in understanding and acquiring the high good of being Christ’s trap. Let us voluntarily limit our deeds, desires, thoughts, and aspirations to the limits of the commandments of the Gospel. Let us follow the attraction of grace with faith and love; so that finally, when the “net” of Christ is “filled” with the predetermined number of those being saved, and is “drawn to the edge” of times, we could find ourselves with a “good” catch and be gathered “into heavenly vessels” (Matthew 13:48) and immersed in the sea of ​​light and eternal bliss. Amen. In the author’s manuscript, these words are placed instead of those crossed out in pencil: “several days.” In the author's manuscript, instead of this word there was: “less.” In the author’s manuscript it says “spacious”. In the author’s manuscript it is written: “to arise” - a word corrected from another - probably “to fly up”. You might be interested in: