483. Слово по освящении храма Живоначальной Троицы, что на Покровке, на Грязях

(Said September 12th day) If you find grace before God, ask to find a village for the God of Jacob. Solomon built a church for Him. But the Most High does not live in churches made by hands. (Acts 7:46–48). Thus, before the congregation of Jews, Archdeacon Stephen spoke about the church of God, “a man,” according to the testimony of the Evangelist Luke, “full of faith and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5). When Saint Stephen spoke, his speech tended to denounce the stiff-necked Jews: but when Saint Luke wrote his speech in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, it, without a doubt, refers to the instruction of Christians. The instruction contained in the above words of Stephen can be timely at the present triumph of the consecration, through pious zeal of the recreated and renewed, church of God. “If you have found grace before God, ask to find a settlement for the God of Jacob.” This is what Stephen says about King David, who, as the second book of Kings narrates (2 Samuel 7:2), through the prophet Nathan asked God for permission, instead of the movable and probably already dilapidated tabernacle, to create a new, immovable church. It should be noted that the divinely inspired preacher, before he spoke about David’s intention to create a church, first mentioned the grace of God to David: “who will find grace before God.” Through this, the Holy Spirit, speaking through the mouth of Stephen, makes it clear that the very intention or desire to create the church of God, the very thought of this was not born simply, like many human thoughts and desires, but in a person blessed under the overshadowing of the Spirit of God. Consequently, we can say that the initial thought to create the church of God was the thought of God in man. “Solomon built a church for Him,” continues Saint Stephen. If the intention to create the church was a gift of grace in David: then there is no doubt that the fulfillment of this intention - the creation of the church - was also a work of grace in Solomon. God Himself appointed Solomon to this work, and said about him through Nathan: “He will build a house for My name” (2 Sam. 7:13). And in order to show that this appointment, and the appointed work, was in the highest degree gracious, God said about Solomon at the same time through the same Prophet: “I will be his Father, and she will be My son” (2 Samuel 7:14). Let us not hesitate to add to this the conclusion that if the creation of the church of God was an act of grace, then the church created is a work of grace; if its beginning was grace, then its end should be the spread of grace in people. For it is impossible to even think that the grace of God would use its effect on something that is unworthy of it, or inconsistent with its intentions for people. Christians! Between the Jewish church, to which the previous reflections originally refer, according to the guidance of the words of St. Stephen, and between the Christian church, in which we now find ourselves, the difference is that the Jewish church, in the days of the barrenness of the Church, was one in the universe, and the Christian churches, in the times of the many children of the Church, were born everywhere in abundance, and that what was hidden in the Jewish church under the cover of the canopy of ritual and prophetic fortune-telling appears in Christian churches in the light of the revealed word of God, in the power and mighty action of the Holy Spirit through the divine Sacraments. Therefore, the grace of the Jewish church belongs superiorly to the Christian church. So, good for those of us who have found in our hearts a pious desire to create or recreate and renew a church to the Christian God. In this desire, he found grace, and, having served grace by diligently fulfilling this desire, he can find “grace to reward” (John 1:16), that is, for a grace-filled feat, receive a grace-filled reward: for grace cannot but be grateful to those who serve its deeds. It is good for him who loves the created church and willingly visits it: for he loves the work of grace, visits the abode of grace; Consequently, in this love, in this zeal, he already carries within himself the seed of grace, which, being fed in the church from the sources of grace, which are the Word of God and the Divine Sacraments, can bring the abundant fruit of enlightenment, peace and spiritual salvation. Let us return to the reasoning of Saint Stephen. “Solomon created a church for Him,” he said, and immediately adds: “but the Most High does not live in churches made with hands.” What a sudden turn of thoughts! What are you saying, preacher of God? How can we understand you, or how can we bring you into agreement with yourself? If the Most High does not live in churches made with hands, why did Solomon build a church made with hands for Him, why did David desire this, why did grace inspire David with this desire, why did the Most High Himself appoint Solomon to fulfill it? True, Solomon, the creator of the church, with some bewilderment says to God: “If God truly dwells with man on earth? If heaven and heaven do not suffice You, how much more will I build this church for Your name” (1 Kings 8:27). That’s why he asked not for God’s dwelling in the church, but for grace-filled contemplation of the church: “Let your eyes be open to the church this day and night” (1 Kings 8:29). But didn’t God grant more than what humble prayer dared to achieve when “the church was filled with the glory of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:11), and when God spoke this promise about him: “My eyes and my heart will be forever” (1 Kings 9:3)? Doesn’t God live there, where His heart is all the days? To resolve these perplexities, and to correctly understand the words of Saint Stephen, let us remember that his speech, as said above, tended towards denouncing the Jews. They, seeing the wonderful cloud that overshadowed the church during its consecration, hearing the promise according to which God laid His “heart” in the church, thought that the temple of Jerusalem had become not only solid and permanent for a predetermined time, but also an indispensable settlement of God forever; that both the city of Jerusalem and the Jewish people, having a holy church, are therefore also holy, inviolable, and not subject to abandonment from God. These unfounded and crude thoughts, but covered with piety, became among the Jews the food of wickedness and lawlessness. God lives in our church, they said: and they did not care that there was no God before their eyes. Hoping for a holy place, a sinful tongue, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “people full of sins” fearlessly “added lawlessness to lawlessness” (Is. 1:4-5). When they were threatened that the sins that had multiplied among them would destroy them, they either did not heed this or were angry at this, deluding themselves with the hope that the holy place would save them. The holy men of the Jewish church long ago saw this error of their people and repeatedly denounced it with zeal. That Isaiah, whom Saint Stephen cited as a witness, refuting the daring hope of the lawless in the holy church, speaks on behalf of God Himself: “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool: what house will you build for Me? and a certain place of My resting place” (Isaiah 66:1). And instead of false hope in one visible and alien shrine, instilling true hope in the grace of God, acceptable to man in obedience, and making him himself the church of God, the prophet also adds on behalf of God: “Whom will I look at? only against him who is meek and silent, and who trembles at My words” (Isaiah 66:2). So through Jeremiah God says: “Do not trust in yourself with lying words, for they will not take advantage of you much, saying: The church of the Lord, the church of the Lord, the church of the Lord is” (Jer. 7:4). Similarly, the writer of the Book of Maccabees argues that “the Lord did not choose the language for the sake of the place, but for the sake of the language” (2 Mac. 5:19). Consequently, if the people do not use the grace of a holy place for their sanctification, then the unacceptable grace is removed, the shrine is hidden, and the abomination of desolation may appear in the place of God’s habitation. In such a spirit of reproof, Saint Stephen also said that “The Most High does not live in churches made with hands” (Acts 7:48): that is, the omnipresent being of God is not contained in churches, although grace is present in them; The grace-filled presence of God is not tied to churches, although it is granted to them; Grace does not actually live in what is made with hands in churches, but, being itself spiritual, it passes through what is made with hands and secretly seeks to revive with itself also the spiritual, that is, the inner man. If a person is stiff-necked, inattentive, insensitive, stubborn against the Holy Spirit, then even in an open church made with hands, the grace-filled dwelling of God is locked for him; the church made with hands does not sanctify and does not save the one who, on his part, does not strive to make himself a living church of the living God. But let’s stop explaining Stephen’s words. Suffice it to say: what he taught, our Divine and only Teacher teaches him the same in the following words: “The hour is coming and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father is seeking such as those who worship Him” (John 4:23). What shall we say to this, Christians? Shall we say with some: what use do we have of a church made with hands? Isn’t it enough to know one church not made with hands in your heart? Let's be careful. This would mean rushing from one extreme to another; this would mean replacing the coarse stiffness of the flesh with proud spiritual tenacity. Didn’t the Founder of the spiritual Church Himself, Christ and His Apostles, visit a church made by hand? Did He not give up man-made types of bread and wine for the celebration of the divine and God-created Sacrament of His body and blood? Do not be so rude as to stop at one man-made; but do not be so proud as to neglect the things made with hands, through which God works miracles of grace. But if someone, having stood for an appointed hour in a church made by hands in the image of Christians, allows himself to spend the rest of his life in passions and vices, in the likeness of the pagans, - who worships before a visible hand-made image of the shrine of God, but does not try to be transformed internally into the image of God by the truth and honor of the truth; who gives incense in a censer, but does not bring the fragrance of prayer to God in the fire of love; whoever hears the sounds of the word of God in church and thinks that he has fulfilled the work of the Church, carelessly forgets it; sees the service of the Sacraments, but does not thirst with his soul for communion of the grace of God through them: to everyone like this, Saint Stephen and I say: “The Most High does not live in churches made by hands”; piety and the life of grace, the life of God in man, do not consist in walls, signs, sounds, rituals; in order to find this life, it is necessary, in the enclosure of the temple, while occupied with feelings and thoughts with consecrated signs, the divine sounds of the word, the sacred rites of the Sacraments, to “worship” the heavenly Father “in spirit and truth”; and also, outside the church, devote your entire life to fulfilling the will of God, and make it a continuous service of worship. May faith, prayer and attention to the commandments of God and to our own deeds help us, brothers, “to find grace before God, and ask to find a habitation for the God of Jacob,” that is, to find the grace of a church not made with hands, or “the indwelling of Christ through faith in our hearts” (Eph. 3:17). Amen. You might be interested in: