466. Слово по освящении храма во имя Святителя Димитрия Ростовского Чудотворца в Борисоглебском общежительном Монастыре

(Said September 12 days 957). What word do those who live in this wilderness now expect from those who come from the city? Don’t they, perhaps, as usual, want to hear what’s going on in the city? It is a pity if those who in solitude can taste the sweetness of silence, and see the pure light of God in the undisturbed air, voluntarily allow their desires and thoughts to wander in crowds, where through the noise and dust they hear and see vanity! Whoever feels a thirst for curiosity, or, more accurately, who suffers from the disease of addiction (for just as there is no excessive thirst without heat, so there is no curiosity without addiction): to him, as a medicine, we offer the city news, which, although it was written over two thousand years ago, and did not come from our cities, however, even now, and here, unfortunately, it presents a rather similar image of the city: “I saw lawlessness and bickering in the city. Day and night it will haunt its walls: iniquity and labor are in its midst, and wickedness; and from its hundreds of usury and flattery will not fail” (Ps. 54:10-12). Do not demand that we add to this eyewitness testimony what we also saw in the city. We came here from the worries of the city to seek the pleasures of the desert, and we want better to say something about the desert among those living in the desert. I think it would be useful for the new inhabitants of this desert to hear and see some ancient lover of the desert, who, by his example, would confirm their love for the desert and instruct them in the image of desert living. Let them hear him and see how he portrays himself: “and reh: who will give me a krill like a dove? and I will fly and rest. He went away running and settled in the desert. I trust God to save me from cowardice and from the storm” (Ps. 54:7–9). True, the one who said this in the Psalm was only a temporary visitor to the desert out of need, and not a permanent resident of it by vow: but this does not prevent us from seeing in his words the features of a good desert dweller; and even more attractive is his love for the desert and his correct depiction of desert life. The Spirit of God, which hovered over David from the day of his anointing by Samuel, led him through various external states precisely in order to show us instructive images of spiritual states in them. So, the first trait of a good desert dweller is the desire for the desert, or zeal for desert living. “Who will give me a krill like a dove and fly and rest?” Desire is the seed or embryo of every free action when it must begin, and its soul when it continues. Just as life, strength and dignity of the body depend on the soul, so life, strength and dignity of every deed depend on desire. If the desire is not pure: the deed is not worthy. If the desire is weak, then it is not very important to achieve one’s perfection. If there is no desire, the matter is dead. Things that we do without sincere desire do not console ourselves and do not bring pleasure to others. If this is how people judge and feel, who only see deeds and only guess about desires: what can we say about the judgment of the all-seeing God, who searches hearts and wombs? “The Lord will give you according to your heart” (Ps. 19:5), and not according to your outward deeds. Therefore, anyone who wants to live in the desert with consolation for himself and pleasing God must both begin this work with sincere desire and continue it with unremitting zeal. It is necessary that while still in the world he should say: “Whoever gives me a krill like a dove and I will fly and rest.” And when a pure and fiery desire, indeed, as on the wings of a dove, brings him into the desert: he must often again motivate himself, expand and set in motion these wings, so that they have enough lightness and strength to carry him from the desert to heaven. Another feature of a good desert dweller is a decisive and complete withdrawal from the world. “Behold, I went away running.” If there was no need to move away from the world, then why settle in the desert, preferably to the ordinary way of life, civil and family? Didn’t God, who created the desert, create and preserve cities, and didn’t He create the desert itself in order to populate it? Do not His servants also live in cities, of whom the desert is not worthy, just as on the contrary others, of whom “the whole world is not worthy, wander in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in the pits of the earth” (Heb. 11:38)? Did He not Himself dwell in the city, as well as in the desert, and did He not give His temple to Jerusalem, just as He gave His tabernacle to the desert? Is it not possible to establish an abode for Him in the soul in every place, and to worship Him in spirit and in truth? “In every place of His dominion, bless the Lord my soul” (Ps. 102:22)! But what should I do if I repeat this blessed invitation to bless the Lord everywhere and always without success because the world at the same time announces and deafens it with its various voices of demands, reprimands, seductions, confusion, entertainment, needs, worries, lusts, and it does not find sufficient strength to resist them, or tired of this confrontation yearns to approach God without obstacles from creatures, and to serve Him without entertainment? In this case, there is no choice but to dissolve all ties that tie us to the world, flee from it as from Egypt, as from Sodom, and establish for ourselves in the desert a new residence of voluntary exile, in which everything around us would tell us, “For the city that abides not here is not imams, but the one to come we seek” (Heb. 13:14). Thus, true desert living is also true removal and complete renunciation of the world, according to the commandment of the Apostle: “Do not love the world, nor those who are in the world” (1 John 2:15). Whoever comes to the desert as a settler who wants to transfer here the benefits of his previous residence or replace them with others, and not as a fugitive who has abandoned everything just to get rid of what was the reason for his flight: he is not a true desert dweller. Whoever in the desert grumbles about poverty, and, taking advantage of what is necessary, demands what is unnecessary under the plausible name of consolation; he has not yet moved away from the luxury of the world; he is like the Israelites who groaned in the desert for the flesh of Egypt, and must remember that there were some who, having escaped from perishing Egypt, perished in the saving desert, in the tombs of lust. Whoever in desert life wants to command more than to obey has not yet moved away from the pride and ambition of the world, and he needs to remember the rebellious host of Korah, whose end showed that the pure desert land does not want to bear power-hungry rebels. Whoever in a desert community wants to have something of his own, separately and, worst of all, secretly from society: he has not yet moved away from the greed of the world, and such will find his image in the disciple of Elisha, who, having wanted to secretly appropriate Naaman’s gold, clearly inherited his leprosy. Whoever, having left the world into the desert, looks back at him with a partial eye under the pretext of innocent love for relatives and friends, it is useful for him to look at Lot’s wife, who looked at Sodom, from which she came, and, as Wisdom says, “there stands a pillar of glory, an image of unfaithful souls” (Wisdom 10:7). The third characteristic of a good desert dweller is trust in God. “I hope for God to save me from cowardice and from the storm.” The image of desert living would be very terrible if such a harsh feature of it, which is the complete renunciation of the world, was not softened and covered by the pleasant and bright feature of perfect trust in God the Savior. It even happens that those who have withdrawn from the world in order to avoid difficulties and dangers for the soul, beyond their expectations, encounter new difficulties and the very dangers for it in the desert. This shouldn't be surprising. The Israelites in the desert endured more varied difficulties and saw more dangers than in the family. The very Author of our salvation and the most perfect image of it for us, where did he experience the strongest warfare against the enemy of souls, if not in the desert? Where have you endured more spiritual suffering than in the solitude of the Garden of Gethsemane? Why, they will say, move away from the world into the desert, from difficulties to difficulties, from dangers to even greater dangers? For the same reason why the Israelites left Egypt into the desert: for in the desert they experienced difficulties and dangers, but they were purified, learned and saved, and in Egypt they would have died in slavery and in the abominations of paganism; If they had not gone out into the desert, they would not have come to a land flowing with honey and milk. For the same reason, I repeat, why the Savior was raised into the desert by the Holy Spirit, and why He withdrew to Gethsemane, for in the desert He defeated the hitherto undefeated enemy of our souls, and in Gethsemane He offered, for the disobedience of men, a spiritual sacrifice of obedience to God the Father, and a strong prayer for our salvation, in which “and was heard... with reverence” (Heb. 5:7). So it is for us, if the desert is difficult and even dangerous: but there is a reason to flee into it from the pernicious world. And in order to overcome difficulties and dangers unharmed, for this nothing more is required than not to be impatient, not to be discouraged, not to despair, but no matter how difficult and unreliable our condition may seem, to constantly “wait on God to save us from cowardice and from the storm.” If we do not interrupt this aspiration through our own inconstancy or impatience, “hope... will not be put to shame” (Rom. 5:5), and help from above will certainly come then, and to the extent that this is necessary for those who sincerely desire salvation and for the glory of the Savior. Those living in this desert, if they still encounter special difficulties due to the news of their residence, then by the goodness of God they also have special obvious incentives to trust in God the Savior, who in a short time, with apparently small means and human methods, organized this place, and established, and sanctified, and spreads, and adorns. Take heed to yourself and your calling, sisters in the Lord, and walk worthy of this good care of the Heavenly Father. Love the desert that He blesses, forget the world from which He protects and provides for you from day to day, motivate yourself to unremitting deeds for the salvation of your souls through hope in God the Savior. And for us, who, after a short conversation in the desert about the desert, must return to the rumors of the city, “who” and when “will give... a krill like a dove, so that we may eat and rest?” When will we be relieved of the burdens of others in order to turn all our care to lightening our own sinful burden? Oh, Who gives to some the krill of the dove to fly into the desert, and to others the babbling voice of the kokoshi, to gather Your chicks under Your krill in the city and desert! Gather yourself and keep us all under the wings of Your goodness, and whether through hailstorms or desert paths, finally bring everyone to an eternally safe city, from which there will be no need to flee to any desert. Amen. In the collections of 1844 and 1848 there was placed “a word on the consecration of the Church of the Appearance of the Mother of God to St. Sergius, built over the relics of St. Micah in the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius”, from the middle similar to what is proposed here; In view of the complete difference at the beginning and end, we print both, each in its own place. You might be interested in: