460. Слово в день обретения мощей, иже во святых Отца нашего Алексия, Митрополита Московского и всея России чудотворца

(Said in the Chudov Monastery, May 20th). Blessed are you who weep now: for you will laugh. (Luke 6:21). What does the world think when it hears these words of the Gospel, if it ever thinks about the Gospel? He loves to laugh, play, have fun, but he is advised to cry. If it is impossible to live without sadness, he wants to at least push it away as much as possible; and now they want to bring him to tears. It seems to him that being cheerful and being happy are one and the same thing: but he is assured that bliss is hidden in crying. What a strange teaching, he thinks, what an unpleasant life! What a sad faith! But what about the world? What do the children of faith think who came here to rejoice about the blessed ascetic of faith before God, Who “did not allow His venerable one to see corruption” (Acts 2:27)? What do they think if they pay attention to the fact that the Gospel on this very day of joy is not ashamed to announce them with a word of lamentation? Do they think about how it is necessary on our holidays, in the likeness of the ancients, to mix a bitter potion with sweet unleavened bread, crying to joy, so that the sweetness, not seasoned with sorrow, does not damage the spiritual taste and does not give rise to illnesses - so that crying, rejected by us, as a peaceful guide to bliss, does not comprehend us as the terrible punisher of laughter: “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will weep?” and you will mourn” (Luke 6:25). Let us think about the laughter of the world - without laughter, and about the crying of the Gospel - without despondency. By the name of laughter, the Gospel undoubtedly means more than just oral laughter, and it is not laughter itself that condemns. Who has not laughed at some point in life, except perhaps the Son of the Virgin, Whom the Gospel more than once presents as weeping, but never shows as laughing, so that His external natural actions could be an instruction for us in spiritual virtues? Sometimes modest Sarah laughed; and although she was convicted of this by the Lord, she was not punished with weeping and crying, and was not deprived of the promise; but, having received the promised son, she still boasted of laughter: “The Lord make me laugh” (Gen. 21:6). And if everyone were to be condemned for their current laughter; then there would be no one left to give bliss for tears. So, the “laughers” whom the Gospel condemns are people who are devoted to sensual pleasure in such a way that they make it the object of all desires, the goal of all activity, who, according to their explanation, more significant than how much they themselves understand, live for their own pleasure. Likewise, not all tears constitute the cry of the Gospel; for even the animals cry. The source of living water, flowing into the eternal belly, which Jesus Christ opens in man, and which forms rivers of bliss, does not come from the bodily eyes; but, according to the saying of the Lord, “they flow from the belly” (John 7:38), that is, from the inner depths of the believer’s spirit. “Those who mourn” in the spirit of the Gospel, being opposite to those who laugh in the spirit of the world, are people who find sensual pleasure coarse, low, unworthy and insignificant, to whom nothing earthly is sweet, nothing corruptible is dear, but the One God and His heavenly kingdom are beloved, the one soul and its eternal salvation are precious; who, delving into self-knowledge, feel their soul full of sins, voluntary and involuntary, known and unknown, and bitterly “cry now”, in time, condemning themselves internally, and fearing God’s eternal condemnation; they see their salvation, as if hanging by a thread, over the abyss of destruction, and they are distressed by the thought of their weakness and the uncertainty of their fate; they lower their gaze to the underworld and weep over what threatens them; they ascend to heaven and sigh for what they have already lost for a while, and may lose forever through their sins; they remember the beloved Creator, Provider and Savior, and “having refused to be comforted, their souls” (Ps. 76:3) with anything other than humble lamentation and hurting themselves at the thought of Whom they have distanced themselves from and Whom they have irritated with their sins; They contemplate grace with faith, and in it there is mercy for the sinner and forgiveness of sins, and their heart melts into sweet tears of love of dissolved repentance and grateful tenderness. Just as “those who laugh” live for pleasure, and measure the feeling of life with pleasure, these “those who cry” live, in a way, for tears and with tears they feed the life of the spirit, as one of these said about himself: “My tears were bread to me day and night” (Ps. 42:4). Having thus defined the laughter of the world and the crying of the Gospel, let us think impartially which of them is more consistent with the current state of man on earth and with his future purpose. Living with pleasure is characteristic of either a paradise or an infant state: paradise - for the reason that in paradise, just as there is no evil, there is no suffering and sorrow, and therefore there is no crying and sighing; infant - because the infant is incapable of important exercises, and does not know the highest goal of life, and therefore innocently follows the impulse of the sensual nature to avoid suffering, to cling to what pleasantly occupies the senses, to play, to laugh. But just as sin brought us all out of the paradise state, and everyone emerges from the infantile state in their own time by the path of nature and education; since we cannot now be in a heavenly state, even if we wanted to, and to be an infant after coming of age is not natural and humiliating, then think “who are laughing now” (Luke 6:25), living only with present pleasure, what a strange and inappropriate phenomenon you present yourself now, even if the future does not threaten you in any way! It is not in vain that the sage enters into a feud against laughter and joy: “I said to laughter: sin, and to joy: what are you doing?” (Eccl. 2:2): “I said to laughter: you are mad; I said to the fun: what are you doing? Having experienced pleasant things in all forms on earth, he learned what is hidden in the kind laughter of the world now, and what will be revealed from it later. “Even in the midst of laughter,” he says, the heart hurts, but the last joy turns into crying” 955 (Prov. 14:13); that is, sensual pleasure in itself is always unclean, but it is mixed with unpleasantness, and is tiresome and disastrous in its consequences; for it not only disappears, but also finally turns into the opposite. The most dangerous enemy is the flatterer, and the most dangerous flatterer is sensual pleasure. Don’t we see every day where it leads those who willingly allow it to deceive them? In later repentance, in illness, in poverty, in disgrace, in despair, in destruction. Don't we see how a laughing, luxurious life destroys people's well-being, almost more often than disastrous adventures, unforeseen and inevitable? How are light amusements more likely to destroy the health of those who play than hard work of those who work? How do voluntary slaves of sensuality become slaves to the power of habit, and finally, in the shackles of illness, under the punitive weapons of doctors, become its martyrs? But what is most terrible of all, we do not notice how people whose soul loves to rest, eat, drink, have fun - lie with this same love, but without a doubt, no longer rest even on their deathbed; with this love and thirst for sensual pleasures they go to a place where there is nothing sensual that they know and love, but everything spiritual, which they have hardly ever dreamed of? What will they find there for themselves? Even if there were no hell for them, where the fire does not go out, where the worm does not die, where there is crying and gnashing of teeth: their sensual lust, excited to the highest degree and left without the slightest satisfaction, must scorch them like fire, sharpen them like a worm, torment and torment them. This, of necessity, must be the end of people who, in the words of the Wise One, “count our belly as a game” (Wis. 15:12). “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep” (Luke 6:25). Let us be grateful to the Gospel for this menacing voice, with which it, wanting to stop us on the path of sensual pleasure, to which, by corrupt nature, we are more or less attracted, indicates the gaping abyss that will swallow us. Let us accept with faith and obedience the instruction of our Divine Teacher, by which He, through short-term crying, wants to protect us from the eternal, and prepare us for eternal joy. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” (Luke 6:21). We read in the book of Ezra that when, after the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, the Jews who returned from captivity again began to build it, then “many of the priests and the Levites, and the princes of the fatherland, and the elders, who saw the first house on its foundation, and this house before their countenances, wept with a great voice, and the people shouted with joy.” raising my voice And it is impossible for men to know the voice of the shouting of those who rejoice because of the voices of the people’s lamentation” (1 Ezra 3:12–13). A wonderful image of our state, Christians, and the disposition of spirit that the Gospel requires of us! Because “all... This,” according to the Apostle’s explanation, “image in it, and it was written for our instruction” (1 Cor. 10:11). The soul of a person who has fallen from the grace of God is the destroyed church of God. The enemies who desecrated, disfigured, devastated it and enslaved us are our sins. The Mighty King, Who “preaches release to the captives” (Luke 4:18), and gives a way to restore the destroyed living church of the living God, is our Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel sends the spirit of repentance and faith to our spiritual ruins in order to again erect the altar of prayer, kindle the fire of love for God and give us hope that we will again “live in the help of the Most High, dwell in the shelter of the heavenly God” (Ps. 91:1). Whoever you are, a citizen or a stranger of spiritual Jerusalem, a priest or a Levite, a prince of the fatherland, or one of the people of believers, if your mind is not blinded by sensuality, and can see these ruins of the past, this foundation of a new spiritual church, if your heart has not become white, like those of unbelievers, can you, in moments of calm and reverent reflection, look at your condition with a cold eye and heart? Shouldn't the past elicit from you bitter tears of repentance, the present - meek tears of repentance, the future - sweet tears of tenderness and joy? In this mysterious mixture of sadness and consolation, crying and joy, even now the bliss of those who mourn begins and is felt, which the Lord will accomplish and reveal, “finally taking away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 21:4). “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4) from the comforter of the Holy Spirit. Amen. You might be interested in: