59. Слово в неделю о Фоме 325

(Printed in Christian Reading 1839 and in collections 1844 and 1848) Jesus said to him: Because you have seen Me, you have believed: you have not seen bliss, and yet you have believed. John 20:29. When, according to the word of the Prophet, “the Shepherd was slain, and the sheep of the flock were scattered” (Zechariah 13:7), that is, when Jesus Christ was betrayed to the cross and death, and His Apostles were subjected to various temptations: Thomas was the only one of His sheep, in the general dispersion, who went astray more than others. Whereas the other Apostles, although “for fear of the Jews,” nevertheless did well, that from the initial dispersion, whoever happened to be in a different direction, they soon turned to look for each other, converged in a certain place, “blessed the congregation” (John 20:19), and, without a doubt, turned the common grief into unanimous prayer; Thomas, it is unknown, due to what obstacle, or due to his own imprudence, was not there - “don’t be with them.” The first consequence of this was that the first appearance of the risen Lord to the assembled Apostles was lost for Thomas: “I was not with them when Jesus came” (John 20:24). Another consequence is that when the other Apostles, by the appearance of the Lord, were again confirmed in the faith in which they had wavered during His suffering and death, Thomas, despite the testimony of these faithful eyewitnesses, with some stubbornness affirmed himself in unbelief: “If I do not see the wound of the nails in His hand, I will put my finger into the marks of the nails, and I will put my hand into His side, I will not faith" (John 20:25). To this case, although in passing, I would especially ask the attention of those who, on special days, whether of Christian sorrows or joys, when we “are assembled,” and call on the Lord in prayer, and receive Him in the sacrament, “are not with us” in the church assembly, either due to obstacles from worldly affairs, however, for the most part not insurmountable, or only due to their negligence. Would they not be deprived of the grace-filled visit of the One who promised to be among those gathered in His name, and whose presence brings with it blissful peace and inalienable joy! By arbitrarily weakening the union 326 with other believers, which was supposed to strengthen their faith, they would not have gone from weak faith to stubborn unbelief! Let's return to Thomas. From the destruction that the unbelief that had become ossified in him was preparing for him, he was probably saved by his love for the Lord, not yet destroyed by unbelief, according to which recently he himself resolutely desired and suggested to the other Apostles, with readiness for death, not to lag behind the beloved Teacher and Lord, who was going to Judea at the obvious danger of his life: “let us also go,” said Thomas, “let us die with Him” ( John 11:16). Because in this way the love of Thomas has already joined the death of Christ; then she should have partaken of the resurrection of Christ. Attracted by her, the risen Lord appeared a second time to the assembled Apostles, actually for the sake of Thomas; gave him, as he wanted, to touch the ulcers of His hands and feet and ribs - and with this, not simple, only external tactile evidence, but with a living touch to the open, so to speak, mouths of the internal source of life, half-mortified by unbelief, the Apostle was resurrected into the life of faith. Having completed this act of mercy, the Lord added the word of truth: “When you saw Me, you believed; having not seen blessedness, yet believed” (John 20:29). Happy unbelief - this is what Thomas, who acquired a visit to the Lord, might have thought! No, says the Lord, you have received mercy mostly, but you are not mostly blessed. “Having seen Me, you believed: blessedness” - completely different. And some of us, looking at the example of Thomas, might think: why are we so unhappy that we cannot have an immediate manifestation and confirmation in faith from the Lord? No, the Lord says to us too, not to see is not a misfortune, when there are already sufficient reasons to believe; on the contrary, not seeing and believing is a special dignity of faith, and therefore a special bliss. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” It seems to me that this saying of the Lord requires a somewhat more thorough consideration. We must remember that all the Apostles, and only the Apostles, were before the face of the Lord, when He said to Thomas, with some kind of reproach: “Because you saw Me, you believed,” and to this added an indefinite saying: “They who have not seen blessings have believed.” At first glance, unexpected and extraordinary 327 seems to be what reproaches Thomas, who truly deserved the reproach by threatening not to believe if he did not see; but it reproaches so much that the same reproach seems to strike the other Apostles, for they too, although earlier than Thomas, “having seen the Lord, believed.” The appearance of extraordinaryness is increased by the satisfaction of those who did not see and believed, if we imagine that all the Apostles belong to the number of those who saw, and consequently are deprived of satisfaction. Wasn’t it said to them before: “Your hair is blessed, as they see”? (Matthew 13:16) It was necessary to notice these extraordinary things 328 in order to evade them to approach the true understanding of the Lord’s saying. If all the Apostles, seeing the Lord, believed: but in this there is a great difference between Thomas and the others. Before they had their vision, both in terms of the number of witnesses and the methods of verification, the strong testimony of the resurrection of the Lord that he had from them. They were given the vision by the will of the Lord, and not at their request. And so Thomas exclusively deserved personal reproach, because he boldly demanded a vision, after evidence completely sufficient to establish faith. All the Apostles saw the Lord: but it would be incredibly humiliating for their sacred cathedral if there were not one among them to whom the predominant blessedness proclaimed by the Lord belonged, not to see and believe. We do not want to see, and we do not dare to imagine you, God-blessed Apostles, deprived of any blessedness of believers. Show us, you yourself, which of you is “blessed, who has not seen and yet believed”? - Look, brethren, is this not what the Evangelist John reveals to us when, narrating about the visit to the Holy Sepulcher, on the morning of the Resurrection, by two disciples, he writes: “And another disciple, who had come first to the tomb, was seen and believed” (John 20:8). What did he see upon entering the tomb? Without a doubt, this is also what the first disciple saw, namely Peter: “in the form of one robe lying” (John 20:6). What did you believe? Is it what Magdalene had previously announced: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they laid Him”? ( John 20:2 ) But what was there to believe? There is no hidden truth here, and only obvious ignorance. What did the disciple, “whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2) believe? I guess, and I think, of necessity, it should be guessed that at that moment, as he entered the tomb, “in the form of a single robe lying”; an unusually living love unusually aroused faith in him; the slight thought that it was impossible to imagine a case in which the vestments, entwined with the body of the Lord with the suit, could be separated from the dead body, gave him the great thought of the resurrection 329; he saw nothing more than the absence of the buried Jesus from the tomb, but in the depths of his loving heart he felt that the Beloved lives, despite the fact that he was not prepared to believe in His resurrection even by knowledge of the Scriptures: “Seeing and believing: for it was not written that it was fitting for Him to rise from the dead” (John 20:8-9). How quickly, in this way, an example of the predominant bliss of those who do not see and believe was found among the Apostles: the Lord’s conversation with Thomas receives from this complete clarity and an accurate sign. It seems that one can see how the Lord looks at Thomas with a look of reproach and says: “having seen Me, you believed”; then he turns his gaze of approval to John, and although not openly to his name, but nevertheless clearly to his heart, continues: “those who have not seen blessings have believed.” The other Apostles remain between approval and reproach. But since the Lord proclaims the bliss of not seeing and believing, as the common bliss of many; since, after others, we were also given the grace to believe in the Lord with the Apostles, while we did not see Him with them: what will we think about ourselves? Are we really more blessed than Thomas, and even more than the other Apostles, except, perhaps, one beloved? I don’t dare congratulate you on this; I am also afraid in this case, so as not to offend the first followers of the Lord, and the general leaders in following Him, if I put the latter in front of them, and steal the priority of bliss from them. “It is sufficient for the disciple that he should be like his teacher” (Matthew 10:25): it is sufficient for us if we, the last, can be participants in bliss with the first leaders to bliss. It is enough if there are some among us to whom the blessed saying of the Lord can be attributed: “those who have not seen blessings have believed.” Some? – Do the rest of us really see and believe? - No matter how strange this may seem to some, it must be so that the degrees of bliss correspond to the degrees of faith. And now there are “those who see and believe” - those who, like Thomas, demand from faith clear evidence, tangible actions, miraculous signs. There are, on the contrary, “those who do not see and believe” - those who, even when doubts arise against evidence, tangible actions of faith are hidden, miraculous signs do not appear, nevertheless stand firmly and unshakably in faith. The Lord promised His appearance, and therefore a vision, not to the Apostles alone, but to everyone who loves. “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and show myself to him” (John 14:21). I do not undertake to explain the images of this phenomenon. Whoever sees the sun understands this phenomenon without any explanation; but to explain the vision of the sun to a blind man would be a futile effort! Let us say something solely at the request of this discussion. In your heart, an unusually living, inexplicably sweet love of God kindles, which makes every act of piety easy and pleasant for you, so that you cannot attribute it to yourself, but accept it as a gift from God: then it is easy for you to believe; you experience what you believe; you walk in the light of faith. In this case, the Lord can tell you: “When you saw Me, you believed.” Know that even then, when the fire in your heart seems to be dying out, spiritual sweetness ceases to be felt, the labor of exploits and lack of strength are felt again, if even then you do not abandon exploits, you will not doubt the grace of God, you will not give up your heart to despondency: this is the special dignity of faith! And therefore, here is a special bliss, even if it was covered with suffering: “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed!” The Lord appears to man not only in the inner, but also in the outer life, with the visible benefits of His providence, in which, according to the words of the Apostle, “it is still possible to touch him” (Acts 17:27). If He “fenced the outer” of your house, and the “inner of your house,” and “blessed His hand” (Job 1:10): it is easy for you to believe. But the devil does not believe such faith, just as he did not believe it in Job; and therefore it may happen that she will be subjected to a dangerous test. If even then, as the beneficent right hand of God hides, and poverty, or illness, or another calamity befalls you, you, like Job, “in all these who befall you do not give foolishness to God”: (Job.1:22) then the Lord will bless the “last” of your faith more than “the first” (Job.42:12). “Those who have not seen blessings have believed.” Can our faith still meet the Lord on the paths of public life, in the person of His lesser brethren, according to His word: “Before you have made one of these least of My brethren, you have been made together with Me” (Matthew 25:40). And here sometimes He is more visible, and sometimes less. For Obadiah, who fed one hundred Prophets of the Lord with bread and water, it was not difficult to imagine that the Lord Himself was “hungry” in them, and He himself “gave food to eat” (Matthew 25:35). On the contrary, how often we are tempted by the fact that, seeing the poor, we do not see Christ in them, that is, Christ’s and Christian properties and virtues! Are they really poor, we think? Are they worthy of humane participation in their way of life? Will they pray for us after receiving benefit? Do not be indignant in vain, beneficent soul! Do not cool your love with suspicions; Do not darken your faith with doubts. Isn’t it enough for you to hear from the Lord: “Do the same for me”? Why, like Thomas, do you want to see and feel Him in the one to whom you want to do good? Do good to the visible - the one who requires, and believe in the Invisible - the Receiving. “The blessed one has not seen, and yet believed.” Amen. According to Jew. collection: spoken at the Cathedral Miracle Monastery, April 25th. According to Jew. collection of your union. According to Jew. collection: strange. According to Jew. collection: oddities. In Jewish collection these words do not exist. According to Jew. collection: poverty, or dishonor, or childlessness, or... You might be interested in: