5. Слово в великий пяток.

(Spoken in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra; published separately and in collections of 1820, 1821, 1844 and 1848) What now do you, the hearers, expect from the ministers of the word? There is no more word. The Word, co-originating with the Father and the Spirit, born for our salvation, the beginning of every “living and active” word, fell silent, died, buried and sealed. In order to tell people more intelligibly and convincingly “the ways of life” (Psalm 15:11), this Word bowed 52 the heavens and became flesh: but people did not want to listen to the Word; they tore His flesh to pieces; and behold, “His life was taken out of the earth” (Isa. 53:8). Who will now give us the word of life and salvation? Let us hasten to confess the mystery of the Word, which must disarm His persecutors and which returns Him to souls ready to accept It. The Word of God is not bound by death. Just as the spoken word of man does not completely die at the moment when its sound ceases, but even more so then receives new power and, having passed through feeling, dwells in the minds and hearts of those who hear it: so the Hypostatic Word of God, the Son of God, in His saving incarnation, dying in the flesh, at the same time “fulfills all things” (Eph. 4:10) with His spirit and power. Therefore, when Jesus Christ becomes weak and falls silent on the cross, then both heaven and earth give Him their voice, and the dead preach the resurrection of the Crucified One, and the stone itself cries out for Him. “And the sun grew darker, and the veil of the church was torn..., and the earth shook, and the stone was disintegrated..., and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep rose up” (Luke 23:45; Matthew 27:51–52). Christians! The Incarnate Word remains silent only in order to speak to us more powerfully and effectively; is hidden in order to internally “dwell in us” (John 1:14); dies to give us His inheritance. Having been gathered by the church to talk with the deceased Jesus, you hear the “living word” (Heb. 4:12) of the deceased; hear the testament given to you by Him: “I bequeath to you, as My Father has bequeathed to Me a kingdom” (Luke 22:29). But, lest untimely dreams of the greatness of this inheritance divert our gaze from the Crucified Jesus prescribed before us in these great days, let us take more carefully, Christians, that after His death His first heirs did not find any other treasure than the wood of the cross on which He suffered and died, and this only cross, in imitative images, was given to all who wished to participate in the inheritance of the kingdom. What does this mean? – That, just as it was “fitting for Christ to suffer” in order then to “be brought into glory” (Luke 24:26), which “He had with the Father,” so it is fitting for a Christian “through many tribulations to be brought into the kingdom” (Acts 14:22), which Christ bequeathed to him; that just as the cross of Christ is the door of the kingdom for everyone, so the cross of Christians is the key of the kingdom for every son of the kingdom. This is an abbreviation of the great “word of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18), so immense to the mind, so pleasing to faith, so powerful in God. Let us bring it, like a drop of peace, to the tomb of the Life-Giving Word. Before the Son of God, who became man, accepted and bore His cross, this cross belonged to men. In its beginning it was made “from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The first man thought to experience only its fruit; but he barely touched it when the entire weight of the forbidden tree, with all its branches and branches, fell on the back of the violator of the Lord’s commandment. Darkness, sorrow, horror, labor, illness, death, poverty, humiliation, the enmity of all nature - in a word, all the destructive forces, as if erupting from the fatal tree, took up arms against him: and the son of wrath would have fallen forever into hell, if Mercy, according to the eternal advice, had not stretched out her hand to him and had not kept him in his fall. The Son of God took upon Himself the burden that oppresses man 53 ; adopted his cross for himself and allowed him only to hold on to this cross, no doubt, not so that he would help the Almighty with regard to the burden, but so that he himself, and with the small cross of his own left to him, would be carried by the power of the great cross, just as a boat is drawn by the movement of a ship. Thus the cross of anger is transformed into the cross of love; the cross that blocked heaven becomes a ladder to heaven; the cross, born from the terrible “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” through irrigation with Divine blood, is reborn “into the tree of life” (Gen. 2:9). The Son of God accepts our nature, and “through suffering makes” in Himself the “principal of our salvation”; “he is tempted in all sorts of ways,” and “he helps those who are tempted”; walks with the cross, and “leads his followers into glory” (Heb. 2:10, 18). Who will measure this worldwide cross, borne by the Leader of our salvation? Who will weigh its weight? Who can count the diverse multitude of crosses from which it is made up, like drops in the sea? - This cross was carried not only from Jerusalem to Golgotha, with the help of Simon of Cyrene. It is carried from Gethsemane to Jerusalem, and to Gethsemane from Bethlehem itself. The whole life of Jesus was one cross; and no one touched his burden, except to aggravate it: “Only he trod out the winepress” of the wrath of God, “and from the tongue there was no man with Him” (Is. 63:3). The Divine 54 unites with humanity, the eternal with the temporal, the all-perfect with the limited, the uncreated with its creation, the self-existent with the insignificant: what an immense and incomprehensible cross is already made up of this! The God-man, whose descent to earth the heavens glorify, appears here at the most humble age of humanity, in the smallest city of the smallest of the kingdoms of the earth; there is neither home nor cradle for Him; Apart from poor parents, barely a few shepherds are involved in His birth. They count the beginningless eight days of new existence - and enslave Him to the bloody law of circumcision. The Lord of the church “is brought into the church to set Him before the Lord” (Luke 2:22), and he who came to redeem the world is redeemed by “two chicks” (Luke 2:24). While He is still silent, the weapon of the word of the godfather is already sharpened against Him in the mouth of Simeon and pierces the heart of His mother (Luke 2:34-35). Some foreigners come to exalt Him with the name of the king of the Jews; but this small glory arouses the anger of the king of the Jews against Him, makes Him the innocent guilt of bloodshed and forces Him to withdraw from the people of God into the country of idolaters. The all-encompassing Wisdom of God, only with age, “grows in wisdom... among God and men” (Luke 2:52). The source and giver of grace “receives grace.” For thirty years the Lord of heaven and the King of glory hid from heaven and earth in deep obedience to two mortals whom He honored to call His parents. What did Jesus then not endure from the day of His entry into the solemn service of saving the human race 55 . The Holy One of God, coming to sanctify people, together with sinners seeking purification, bows under the hand of man and receives baptism: truly baptism, listeners, that is, immersion not so much in the waters as in the abundance of the cross! He who searches hearts and bellies is Himself put “in temptation.” The bread of heaven is given over to earthly greed. He, before whom every knee must bow... of those in heaven, on earth and under the earth, allows the prince of the graves to demand “worship” from Himself (Matthew 4:9). The Intercessor of God and men reveals Himself to men; but they either don’t recognize Him or don’t want to recognize Him. His teaching is considered blasphemous (Matthew 9:3), His deeds are considered lawless (John IX. 16), His miracles are considered to be Beelzebub's (Matthew 12:24). If He works miracles and does good on the Sabbath, He is called a Sabbath breaker. If He converts the erring and accepts the repentant, He is condemned as “the friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19). There they seek to catch Him with a word (Matthew 22:15); here they lead Him to the top of the mountain in order to cast Him down (Luke 4:29); someday they will throw stones on Him (John 8:59); nowhere do they allow Him to bow His head (Matthew 8:20). He resurrects the dead; envious people conspire to put Him to death (John 11:43, 44, 46, 53). The people at the gates of Jerusalem greet Him as king; all earthly authorities rise up to condemn Him as a criminal. In the chosen host of His friends He sees an ungrateful traitor and the first instrument of His death; the best of them serve Him as a “temptation”, thinking about human things while He goes to the work of God (Matthew 16:23). Do You rest, Divine Crusader, even for just a moment from the yoke that is constantly growing on Your shoulders? Do you rest, if not to renew Your strength for new exploits, at least out of condescension for the weakness of Your followers? - So, approaching Golgotha, You will rest on Tabor. Come to this mountain of glory; may Your face be illuminated with heavenly light; let Your garments be white; let the law and the prophets come to acknowledge their fulfillment in You; let the voice of the Father’s blessing be heard! – But don’t you, listeners, notice how the cross follows Jesus to Tabor itself, and the word of the cross is not separated from the word of glorification? What are Moses and Elijah talking about with Jesus in the midst of so much glory? “They talk about His cross and death. “The speaker is His departure” (Luke 9:31). Jesus carried His cross for a long time, as if not feeling its weight: finally “he was given over to him like a lion, so that he might break all His bones” (Is. 38:13). Let us follow Him with Peter and the sons of Zebedee to the heirloom of Gethsemane and penetrate with a vigilant eye into the darkness of His last night on earth. He no longer hides the cross that crushed His soul: “My soul is sorrowful even unto death” (Matthew 26:38). And prayerful conversation with the consubstantial Father does not free Him, but holds Him under the weight of suffering: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by from Me: not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). “He who bears all kinds of strength” (Heb. 1:3) now needs “strengthening from the Angel” (Luke 22:43). Perhaps the mortal sorrow of Jesus seems to some of us unworthy of the impassive. May they know that this sorrow is not the action of human impatience, but of Divine justice. Could “the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) run away from its altar? He, “Whose Father hath sanctified and sent into the world” (John 10:36), He Who from the ages has taken upon Himself the ministry of reconciling men with God, could he be shaken in the work of this ministry by the sole thought of suffering? If He could have any impatience, then perhaps it was impatience to accomplish our salvation and make us blessed. “The imam is baptized with baptism,” He says, “and as long as I hold on, they will die” (Luke 12:50). So, if He grieves, then He grieves not with His own, but with our sorrow; if we see Him “being in labor, and in an ulcer from God, and in embitterment,” then He “bears our sins, and is sick for us” (Is. 53:4); The cup that His Father gives Him is the cup of all the iniquities we have committed, and of all the executions prepared for us, which would have drowned the whole world if He alone had not accepted, held it, and dried it up. It was dissolved first by the disobedience of Adam, then by the corruption of the “first world” (Gen. 6:12; 2 Pet. 2:5), the pride and wickedness of Babylon, the bitterness and unrepentance of Egypt, the betrayals of Jerusalem, “which killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to her” (Matthew 23:37), the anger of the Synagogue, and superstitions. paganism, the riot of the sages and, finally (since the Redeemer bore the future sins of the world), temptations in Christianity itself: divisions of the single flock of the One Shepherd, the daring wisdom of false teachers, the impoverishment of faith and love in the kingdom of faith and love, the revival of godlessness in the depths of piety itself. Let us add to this everything that we find in ourselves and around ourselves worthy of disgust and the wrath of God, and also everything that we try to hide from our conscience under the clever name of “weaknesses” - frivolity and criminal pleasures of youth, rigidity of old age, oblivion of Providence in happiness, grumbling in misfortunes, vanity in charity, greed in hard work, slowness in correction, repeated falls after rebellion, carelessness and inaction characteristic of the reign of luxury, the self-will of an age arrogant with the dream of enlightenment: all these streams of iniquity merged for Jesus into a single cup of sorrow and suffering; all hell rushed upon this heavenly soul; and is it amazing that “she was “regrettable 57 even to death.” Our word is exhausted, listeners, to accompany the still great Sufferer from Gethsemane to Jerusalem and Golgotha, from the internal cross to the external. But the mysteries now being performed by the Church have already written this path and this final cross for you. He is so sick that the sun could not look upon him, and so heavy that the earth shook under him. To endure in the purest integrity all torments, internal and external, the most severe and the most blasphemous, and to endure instead of being rewarded for the good deeds done; to suffer the All-Holy from the most wicked, the Creator from the creatures; to suffer for the unworthy, the ungrateful, for the very culprits of suffering; to suffer for the glory of God, and to be abandoned by God - what an immeasurable abyss of suffering! “Our God! Our God! Where have you forsaken” (Matthew 27:46) Thy Beloved? - Yes, Lord! You left Him behind, so as not to leave us forever, who have left You. From now on He “reigns; clothed with beauty, girded with strength, and strengthens the world, let it not be moved” (Psalm 92:1). “Lifted up from the earth” by the cross, He extends it to the earth, and “draws all things to Himself” to heaven (John 12:32). But no matter how great and Divine the all-attracting power of Jesus Christ is, He can only “draw us into His footsteps” (Song. 1:3) other than by planting His cross in us and pairing our Cross with His cross. “Whoever wants to follow Me,” He says, “let him take up his cross and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). For although with His covenant blood and His cross He accomplished the cleansing from sins and the redemption of the whole world from curses, and opened for us the entrance into the Holy of Holies; but since nothing enters there except the priest and the sacrifice, we must, like a sacrifice, surrender ourselves into the hands of this great, “according to the order of Melchizedek,” Priest; since an oath is the fruit of sin, and sin is affirmed by its root in free will, then, in order to assimilate for ourselves the purification and redemption of the truth and blessing of Christ, we must freely surrender our will to the action of Christ on the cross in us. For this reason, those who have truly comprehended the power of God contained “in the word of the cross” so often teach us by example and word 58 “to be crucified with Christ, to be crucified to the world, to crucify the flesh with passions and lusts, not to live for ourselves, to fulfill the deprivation of the sorrows of Christ in our flesh” (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 6:14, 5:24; Rom. 14:7; Col. 1:24). The more unremittingly and patiently we bear the burden of our cross, the more abundantly the gifts of God acquired by the cross of Christ are given to us: “as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also our consolation abounds in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:5). The sinner who, from strenuously carrying his cross, finally proceeds to crucifixion himself on it, with complete obedience undergoing all the actions of cleansing justice in the face of the crucified Jesus, will soon hear His joyful voice with the thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Suffering in the presence of Christ, and in His image, is the threshold of heaven. Just as the visible, material cross is the sovereign sign of the visible kingdom of Christ, so the mysterious cross is the seal and distinction of the true and chosen servants of the invisible kingdom of God. He is the precious pledge of God’s love, the Father’s rod, not so much punishing and crushing as “shepherding and comforting” (Psalm 2:9, 22:4), the cleansing fire of faith, the companion of hope, the tamer of sensuality, the conqueror of passions, the inciter to prayer, the guardian of purity, the father of humility, the mentor of wisdom, the nurturer of the sons of the kingdom. Where were all the great Angels, leaders and guardians of the Church raised - Josephs, Moses, Daniels, Pauls? - At the School of the Cross. When has it been more blessed for the entire Church to grow, prosper, and bear fruit in holiness? - Then, as the entire field of the Lord was constantly torn apart by the cross and soldered with the blood of martyrs. Who are they who surround the glorious throne of the Lamb? John was asked in a vision. - “Who are these clothed in white robes, and where did they come from?” (Rev. 7:13) and when he could not recognize them in this Divine glory, he was told that they were sealed with the cross: “these are they who came from great tribulation” (Rev. 7:14). Who are those who wish to “make void the cross of Christ” (1 Cor. 1:17) and imagine “to understand the power of His resurrection without the communication of His passion” (Phil. 3:10)? If Christ alone is both “the life and the way” (John 14:6) to the life, then how can they reach the life of Christ without following His path? Can these effeminate members be in the union of the body, which the “Head” crowned with thorns “makes for itself” (Eph. 4:15–16)? Is it possible for members to be at peace and carefree when the head is in labor, and in ulcers, and in embitterment; to be forgotten in noisy joys when she is overwhelmed by mortal illnesses; to drink from the full cup of worldly pleasures when she thirsts and tastes the ocet; exalt when she bows; not to want to ache for a minute about her own sins and iniquities, when she suffers and dies for someone else’s; to live on the world and the flesh when she gives up her spirit to God? O man, drawn by the grace of your Lord to heaven, but wallowing in the flesh in the world! see your image in a man immersed in the waters and resisting the drowning: he continually renews the image of the cross in his members, and thus overcomes the hostile waves. Look at the bird when it wants to ascend from the ground: it extends into the cross and flies away. Seek in the cross a means to escape from the world and ascend to God. “The word of the cross... it is the power of God to those who are saved” (1 Cor. 1:18). Amen. bowed down - In the department. ed. and in collection 1820, 1821 and 1844: “left.” suppressing a person - In the department. ed. and in collection 1820 and 1821: “his overwhelming.” Divine - In the department. ed. and in collection 1820 and 1821: "Divinity". In the department ed.: “The human race.” does not free Him, but holds Him back - In the section. ed. and in collection 1820 and 1821: “does not ease Him, but only holds Him back.” In the department ed. and in collection 1820 and 1821: “she was confused, torn to pieces, “deplorable”." In the department ed.: “Only often do they command us.” You might be interested in: