63. Слово в день рождения Благочестивейшаго Государя Императора Николая Павловича всея России

(Said in the Cathedral Church of the Chudov Monastery, June 25; printed separately and in collections of 1835, 1844 and 1848). Truth elevates language: but the tribes of sin detract. (Prov. 14:34). A sacred duty has now gathered us to the holy church, so as to solemnly offer thanks and prayer to God, the Author of all good things: thanksgiving for the gift sent down to our fatherland in the birth of the Sovereign, who now righteously reigns over us; a prayer for the continuation of this good deed of God, that is, for the successful continuation of the present reign. It is not difficult for the sons of the fatherland, who are not immature in mind, to understand whether I rightly call the birth of the Sovereign, who reigns lawfully and righteously, the gift of God, and especially the blessing of God, such a reign, the first day of which became the day of salvation of the royal prosperity, from the destructive whirlwind of anger, which suddenly erupted from the abysses of madness. Since it is a gift for everyone and everyone, let there be thanksgiving for it from everyone and everyone. The more salutary the benefit, the more ardent will be the prayer for its continuation. But just as prayer that is good in its visible object is not always equally favorable to God, who “gives” those who ask “according to their hearts” (Psalm 19:5), and “renders to everyone according to his deeds” (Rom. 2:6): then one must know that only then can prayer for the king and the kingdom of earth have faithful access to the throne of Grace when it is preceded or accompanied by active love for the King and the Kingdom of heaven. David, handing over the kingdom to his son Solomon, said among other things: “May the Lord confirm His word concerning me, saying: If your sons keep their ways, and walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, your husband will not be cut off from the throne of Israel” (1 Kings 2:4). This is the fate of the King and the royal tribe, which in the Word of God are presented as a model of kings and royal tribes! Solomon in his turn wrote: “truth exalts the tongue, but the tribes of sin degrade.” This is the common fate of kingdoms and peoples! In the assurance that the Most Pious Sovereign preserves and will preserve what the Word of God has bequeathed to Him for us, let us think and care about what the Word of God also commands us for Him and for us together. Anyone who is not completely darkened by gross ignorance about God does not need to be guided by evidence to this obvious truth, that God is the Supreme King of kings and kingdoms. Being an all-good, all-righteous, all-wise, all-powerful God, without a doubt, He is also the all-good, all-righteous, all-wise, all-powerful King. As the All-Good and All-Righteous King, He cannot allow that in His Kingdom truth should be humiliated before sin, so that virtue would be more miserable than vice and lawlessness; as the Wise King, He cannot lack the means to satisfy His justice and goodness; as the Almighty King, cannot be stopped by any obstacles in the affairs of His Kingdom. And how the king of the earth would have acted contrary to justice, order and the welfare of the kingdom, if, while rewarding loyalty and merit in some individuals, he had not shown special favor to the whole region, distinguished by fidelity; or, if, while punishing criminals for private crimes, he had not used means to tame an entire region that had rebelled against the laws of the kingdom: one cannot think in this way about the King of Heaven, so that He, rewarding each person according to his deeds, would not reward entire kingdoms and peoples, according to deeds of truth or sin, according to the piety or wickedness that prevails in them, according to the virtues or vices that mark the properties of this or that people, the state of one or another kingdom. It is even more convenient to imagine a person without reward for his deeds in this life, since for him there is another life in which this reward will be accomplished, than to imagine a kingdom and people, without reward for the truth or sins of the kingdom and people: for just as for earthly kingdoms and peoples there is no other royal and national existence other than the earthly one; then no other way than in this very existence of theirs should the whole work of God’s righteousness be accomplished over them. Thus, according to the properties of God operating in the Divine rule of the world, and according to the fundamental laws of the kingdom of God, it is necessary that good or evil in the moral life of the kingdom and the people should lead to good or evil in the existence of the State, so that “truth” or virtue “elevates the language,” that is, brings prosperity to the people; so that they “belittle”, that is, bring into a low and disastrous state, the “tribes of sin.” That this actually happens, this can be seen in the actual existence of kingdoms and peoples, especially those and at those times in which, and in which, truth or sins, reach a high degree of power and action. The Egyptian people, one of the strongest in antiquity, what could belittle or humiliate before the small and enslaved tribe of the Hebrews, if not the sins of oppression of the innocent and bitterness against God crying to heaven? The seven nations of the Canaanites, distinguished by their gigantic race, skilled in war, living on a land of abundance and protected by nature, what could diminish and overthrow the Jewish people, exhausted by the difficulties and disasters of the forty-year wandering, if not the sins over which, several centuries ago, Abraham saw the lifted hand of God, ready to bring down a punitive blow, but held back by long-suffering until the predetermined moment justice; “not yet,” as he was told at that time, “the sins of the Ammorites are filled to this day” (Gen. 15:16). Small and many times punished by many, the people of Judah, what made them strong under David, happy under Solomon, invincible for the victorious Assyrians under Hezekiah - what if not the piety and truth of the Kings, who, by example and power, increased righteousness among the people, and eradicated sins? On the contrary, this people chosen by God, this sacred kingdom, by what was divided, weakened, belittled, humiliated, destroyed, and almost completely overthrown from the sacred land into pagan captivity - by what, if not by many sins committed in imitation of the pagans? This is so true that the Prophet Jeremiah, foreshadowing punishment for sins to Jerusalem and Israel, does not present this as some special action of a punishing God, but as if it were only a natural action of the sins themselves; does not say: God will punish you; but he says: your sins will punish you. “Your backsliding will punish you, and your malice will expose you” (Jer. 2:19). Do I need to multiply examples? Let us ask in general: how do peoples arise from small tribes and grow, not being suppressed by their strongest neighbors, but at times overcoming the strongest, or subjugating them? How, on the contrary, do great nations, whose natural strength is increased by the arts that serve it, not always rise, but in their turn fall and crumble? – And history, not initiated into the mysteries of God’s destinies, answers this that piety, although sometimes unhappily enlightened, is sincere, rightness and kindness of morals elevate and invest the spirit of the people with victorious strength; that on the contrary, the decrease in piety among the people, the damage to morals, the predominance of vices, destroy unanimity, weaken loyalty and courage, steal the power of the laws, and, revered as means of public improvement, education and enlightenment are turned into instruments of insolence, disorder and destruction. And so, Russians! Expecting the good of Russia from the Tsar - justly, and asking from God - piously, let us also think about - impartially - how the achievement of this good can depend on ourselves. If those who pray for the Tsar and the kingdom, and especially the servants of the altar who precede others in prayer, approach God more with their lips than with their hearts and a God-pleasing life: in this case, the kingdom of the earth is not closely united with the Kingdom of heaven, and consequently the perishable and imperfect earthly is not sufficiently imparted to the perfection and solidity of the heavenly. If inattention and coldness to faith reduces reverence for the sacred oath, and thus weakens the union of fidelity connecting subjects with the Tsar and the kingdom: and cunning, to further weaken this union, is not afraid to use an oath in order to bind with it in the general composition of the State special knots of self-willed complicities and lawless assemblies: a great loss of social strength, which consists in union! If a penchant for luxury, idleness, and amusements upsets order in families, depletes their wealth, and causes children, forgotten by their parents during their upbringing, to mutually forget them after their upbringing: won’t this disorder also extend to the family? Where will be the wealth of the State, which is made up of the wealth of its subjects? Where will the sons of the fatherland be when there are no children of families? If the various states of society, due to the wrong movement of passions, like dislocation of the members of the body, go beyond their proper places and limits, are not so much concerned with their own duties as with those of others, they are squeezed into matters that do not belong to them at all, for example, a warrior wants to legislate; one who is not called to the Church sets himself up as a teacher of the faith; the villager puts his ear to the rumor about freedom, which he does not understand and which he does not know how to use; a citizen dreams of a nobility of name that does not belong to his rank, without putting at a fair price the nobility of spirit, the acquisition of which no one prevents him: what can follow from this, if not that the entire composition of the body of the State will produce discordant and unhealthy movements? If in serving the Tsar and the kingdom they clearly set the goal of personal honor and benefit: what will such a desire lead to more conveniently, to sacrificing oneself to the fatherland, or, on the contrary, to sacrificing oneself to the fatherland? “Having ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15; Luke 8:8, 15). Whose inner hearing of the heart is not blocked by spiritual insensibility; Let him hear what, during these reflections, the inner witness and judge of truth and sin, conscience, tells him: and if it denounces the lack of achievements for the “truth that elevates the tongue,” or the lack of caution against “sins that diminish the tribes”; then let us add repentance to prayer, to repentance feats of correction, so that we may receive either a good reward from the truth of God, or pardon from the mercy of God. Blessed be God, who until now has “exalted our tongue with righteousness!” May the power of His grace diminish in us the “disparaging tribes of sin!” Amen. 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