383. Слово на Рождество Христово

(It was said on the third day of this holiday, in the Trinity Church, that in the house of the synodal chief prosecutor, Prince Alexander Nikolaevich Golitsyn; published separately and in collections of 1820 and 1821) “And behold a sign for you: you will find a midwife lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12). The third day, as the glorifying Church, both at the altars and in the houses, proclaims to us this sign, “I have given birth to the Savior who has come” 919 (Luke 2:11). The Bethlehem shepherds, who, perhaps for no more than three moments heard the heavenly news and doxology about Him, that same night hastened to find Him according to the sign given to them: “deciding one to another: let us go to Bethlehem, and we see this verb that the Lord spoke to us" (Luke 2:15). We, who have been proclaimed by glory for a long time and many times, and ourselves called to the glorification of the born Christ: “Christ is born, glorify” - we, almost drawn to meet the one descending from heaven: “Christ from heaven, bring down” 920 - have we finally reached Bethlehem and did you see this former verb that the Lord told us? But how can we get to Bethlehem, say those who have neither the simple-hearted faith of the shepherds of Bethlehem, nor the wisdom of the wise men from the east? – Is it possible for us, Christians, to remain at a greater distance from our born Savior than the pagan sages, and in greater ignorance about him than the shepherds who deal only with the foolish? The Church, of course, is not deceived when it cries in our ears: “Christ from heaven, pull down!” Of course, Christ is still descending from heaven, and in such close proximity to us that we, like shepherds or wise men, can arrive in good time to the place of his Divine appearance. "Let's go to Bethlehem." “Bethlehem” means “house of bread” - what if not “the bread of the living creatures that comes down from heaven” (John 6:51)? Every Christian soul must go to this Bethlehem, or, more importantly, become this Bethlehem, in order to then be brought in and be transformed “into the new Jerusalem, into the tabernacle of God” (Rev. 21:2-3). God wants to “reveal His Son” in all of us (Gal.1:16) through our grace-filled birth. So that the path to the born Savior does not remain unknown or doubtful for us, and so that instead of Bethlehem of the new birth we do not become stagnant in that old Jerusalem, which on the day of salvation is troubled with its Herod to its destruction - let us dare to test 921 what sign could confirm us in our approach to Christ, in the truth of our rebirth? In the Gospel we see two paths to the born Christ: the path of the Magi and the path of the shepherds. The path of the Magi is a path of light and knowledge, guided by the clear sign of the star that they saw in the east and which led them to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The path of the shepherds is the path of shadow and mystery, the path of faith, and not vision, which, after a brief illumination by the glory of the Lord, is accepted into the night watch, is carried out without a leader and is not provided with any special sign, except for the easily disputed sign of “the baby is midwifed, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12). Who would not have thought that the bright path of the Magi should be safer, more convenient and shorter? On the contrary, it was longer, more difficult, and more dangerous than the dark path of the shepherds. Instead of Bethlehem, the wise men first appear in Jerusalem: here the knowledge they preach serves no purpose except to general confusion; they fall into bewilderment about continuing their path; the instruction of the heavenly sign becomes incomprehensible to them; and the Divine Child, before whom they wanted to bow down in reverence, is almost thrown into the hands of wickedness. Shepherds cross the path of darkness and, having reached Bethlehem, achieve the fact that the glory of the Lord, which once shone upon them from heaven, now invisibly dwells in them: “the shepherd returned glorifying and praising God” (Luke 2:20). Let us glorify the one who glorified the path of the Magi; Let us not despise the ways of the shepherds. If the bright path of guidance attracts our eyes, let us not forget that we should not be traveling spectators, but “prudent travelers” 922. While our eyes are lost in the contemplation of the majestic views that present themselves to us, it may easily happen that we will not notice stones, nets and abysses under our feet, or we will stop on our path when we should have stretched to the front. And therefore, bright insights of the mind cannot always be taken as immutable signs of approaching Christ and as true indications of the true path of rebirth. There are enlightened spirits, like transparent bodies, which receive and transmit light, but do not feel it themselves, and even produce a flame in others, but themselves remain cold and dead. The highest human wisdom is such a luminary, which, since it itself follows an uncertain path, cannot be a reliable guide, and which, the more glorious in its radiance, the more terrible in its eclipse. How can you wish for better? True and living vision is not actually the lot of our real life; its very bliss lies in belief: “by faith... we walk, and not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7): “it is blessedness for those who have not seen and yet believed” (John 20:29). Let us follow in the footsteps of the shepherds of Bethlehem, onto the hay-mysterious path of faith; and the more hidden and invisible it is, the more we strive to notice it with the tactile sign characteristic of it. Only he can leave clear and undoubted signs for travelers on a new and unknown path for them, who has passed it, experienced it, measured it. And who can more perfectly know, and reveal, and signify the course of pure birth, “not of blood and flesh” (John 1:13), but He who alone was not born in sins, but “by the flow of the Holy Spirit and the shadow of the power of the Most High” (Luke 1:35) 923, and Who is one to all who receive Him “let... the region be children to be God's (John 1:12)? For this reason, listen, He was born on earth, in order to reveal here the heavenly birth, He was born visibly, in order to set before the eyes of the invisible birth, and since the one born in purity and holiness had no need to ascend to another better birth, He made His very birth according to the flesh only a transparent “veil” (Heb. 10:20), through which we can look 924 to a new and the living path of our spiritual birth. Do not ask, you who take up your souls to the Lord, do not ask again with David: “Tell me, Lord, the way, where I will go” (Ps. 143:8): this unknown path, in the hearing of the flesh itself, is now spoken by the incarnate Word of God: “I am the way” (John 14:6). Wise ones on high! Do not imagine in your heart any other ascensions to God, except for the degrees by which the Son of God descends to man: “This... let him be wise in you, even in Christ Jesus, who is in the form of God,... not to be equal with God, but having exhausted himself, having received the form of a servant, having become in the likeness of mankind, and being found in the likeness of man” ( Phil.2:5-7). Do not hastily pass by the sign that was revealed with such unadorned simplicity in Bethlehem of Judea; This very simplicity captures the mystery of your own Bethlehem: in the outer sign of the born Savior lies the inner sign of saving rebirth. And, firstly, “This is a sign for you: you will find a child” (Luke 2:12). – The pride of the star, incarnate in man, grew him into a giant, for whom “the narrow gate and the strait path that enters the belly” (Matthew 7:14) became impassable: the Son of God, in order to renew this path with his flesh, constrains his immense greatness in the meager age of infancy, and sets it as the measure to which we would arrive when entering the path belly and approaching the gates of the kingdom. What He once said to His disciples in response to their question: “Who... is sick in the kingdom of heaven,” had previously been preached by His silent infancy: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:1, 3). So, whoever wants to find the way of Jesus, let him seek His infancy. The baby rests in his mother's arms; thinks with her mind; governed by her will; feeds on her food; lives her life: if you, in childlike simplicity, rest in the arms of Providence; if your mind forgets itself in reverent humility before the destinies of the Wisdom of God; if you do the will of God as if it were your will; “If you have desired or... verbal and unflattering milk” (1 Pet. 2:2), not only as a delight, but also as food, restoration and revitalization of the spirit, then bless God, who confirmed in you the living sign of the Savior’s birth. Secondly, “This is a sign for you: you will find a baby midwife.” – The sign of being wrapped in shrouds is explained to us by one of the ancient “Christian” teachers 925 (Tert. adv. Marcion, cap. IV). Wrapped in swaddling clothes, he says, Jesus begins his burial. In fact, the baby's shrouds and the dead man's shroud were first woven by the same artist; the cradle and the coffin have the same inventor. If sin had not invented the tomb and the shroud, then there would also have been no swaddling clothes and cradle. Just as the infirmities of birth are the first fruits of death, so the cradle is the forerunner of the tomb, and the shrouds are the first edge of the gradually developed funeral shroud. Why is it that the Son of God, deigning to be wrapped in swaddling clothes, prefigures with them a life of constant mortification. Whoever you are, who want to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, you must also pass through the shadow of death on the path of birth into the eternal life. Every weapon of temptation must be “truncated” (Matthew 18:8), every movement of property restrained and stopped, “every earthly lust bound and mortified: “put to death... your evils that are on the earth” (Col. 3:5)” 926. You must, like one wrapped in swaddling clothes, maintain freedom, open your eyes only in order to get into the habit of calmly looking at the bonds of your old man, and thus kill your very sight; you must save your lips only to breathe the sighs of prayer. Thus, the faithful followers of the Lord “whether he was dead or dead in his body, and died all the days” (2 Cor. 4:10; 1 Cor. 15:31), but in this very death they drew new life: “as we are dying, and behold we live” (2 Cor. 6:9). The life of mortification is an indisputable sign of the path of Christ, and the tomb of the old is the true cradle of the new man. Finally, “this is a sign for you: you will find a midwife lying in a manger.” If the infancy and swaddling clothes of the God-Man are signs of His deep humility and mortification, then His manger is an image of incomprehensible exhaustion. He has already humbled himself before the Angels with his humanity, with his infancy and swaddling clothes he has taken upon himself that which is most humble in men: He descends again, and the word inseparably “which is with God” (John 1:1) is imputed with the wordless. Oh, how before this sign of Divine exhaustion everything exalted in people, everything glorious in the world, is not humiliated and diminished, but collapses, disappears, and hides in its natural insignificance! And blessed is he who reveres the manger of the God-man just as he does before the throne of His Majesty - who, prostrating himself before them, sees them above him at the same height as the sky! Let him lose the whole world, lose himself in the infinite depth of his insignificance: this infinity is the limit of communication with the infinite Divinity. Let, according to the saying of the Psalmist, “his soul disappear: it” disappears “for salvation” (Ps. 119:81). You see, listen, how the Bethlehem sign of the born Savior was given not only to the Bethlehem shepherds, but also to each of us, in order to guide our spiritual path to Christ the Savior. Let's ask one more time; Have we gone as far as Bethlehem, and have we found what our soul naturally seeks as strictly, unhindered, and faithfully as these faithful shepherds in their simplicity - “they came with haste and found it” (Luke 2:16)? Oh, infant Jesus! How difficult it seems to us to be reduced to this meager measure of Thy! We do not love to pray with You, but to grow in ourselves - to grow in our own wisdom, to grow in lusts, to grow in false glory. O belly, entwined in burial! How often do we trample on foot and boldly rend Your shrouds! We would rather live in order to die than die in order to live! O wisdom and Word of God, who now teaches us from Thy manger! how little do we heed the great preaching of Your silence! As if the signs of the Son of God on earth were small and low for us; as if we are waiting for “the sign of the Son of man to appear in heaven” (Matthew 24:30)! It "will appear"; but then there will be no time to celebrate or learn: “then all the tribes of the earth will mourn” (Matthew 24:30). Let us hasten, Christians, to walk the dark path of faith, lest the light of the day of judgment suddenly blind us. Let us meet with the love of Christ descending from heaven, so that He may meet us with mercy as we ascend into heaven. And if anyone has already come to him with shepherds, let him always return with them from glorious signs to the simplicity of faith, ascribing glory to the one God. If someone with the wise men came to hidden Bethlehem from noisy Jerusalem: “let him not return to Herod” (Matthew 2:12) to boast of his acquisition; May the mystery of the King of glory not become the weapon of the ruler of the darkness of this age, who “seeks the Children and destroys Him” (Matthew 2:13). Amen. In the department ed. Instead of "Savior" there is "Savior" everywhere. Christmas. Irmos of the 1st song of the canon. In the department ed. added: “listening.” In the department ed.: “visionary travelers.” “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” - AB. In the department ed.: “to see the light.” In the department ed.: “every lust is bound and defeated: “do not touch, do not taste, do not touch” (Col. 2:21).” You might be interested in: