Слово в Понедельник Святой Пасхи

“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century.” This is what we say daily in the Creed. We let everyone know that we are not one of those pitiful people who think that everything ends in death for a person and the person himself. We, on the contrary, believe and confess that only temporary, earthly, perishable life ends with death; and eternal life, immortal, painless, perfect, just begins with death. “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century.” The hope is great and glorious! Confession is the brightest and most comforting! -What do they produce in us? The property of any expectation is such that it has a strong effect on the expectant and forces him to act. Look at the farmer: he awaits the emergence of the sown seeds and the future harvest - and this expectation occupies him all; he goes to bed and gets up with the thought that something will happen to his field and cornfield. More than once he had been on it and looked: was the greenery beginning to sprout, and what was it like? He talked about this, about the future harvest, in any case, the whole winter. Everything is preparing for this. This is what produces aspiration in the farmer! Look at the person who is “acting to buy”: he has released the goods to a certain place, and is waiting for what will happen in the marketplace; how busy he is waiting! Any news from that place touches him; every change in the weather affects him: sometimes it saddens, sometimes it makes him happy, so that on his face you can read what’s in the yard and what’s happening with nature. This is how aspiration affects a merchant! Look at a person devoted to science, who aspires to achieve an academic degree or distinction: what does he not sacrifice to achieve this aspiration? He often sacrifices his very life. And how many nights spent awake reading books! How much work has been transferred! This is what accompanies every aspiration in earthly affairs! It forces a person to work, not to regret, so to speak, to kill himself. We hope for eternal life: such a hope, before which all other earthly hopes are very small and, one might say, insignificant. Judging by the greatness of this aspiration, how great its action should be! Shouldn't it occupy our entire soul, spread throughout our entire life, penetrate and revive all our activities? So it was with those for whom the hope of eternal life was not on the tongue, but in the heart, whose whole life was ordered according to this hope - was, so to speak, a direct and constant echo of it. What produces the hope of eternal life in us? What are we doing for him? - And, firstly, is our whole life consistent with this expectation, as required by the greatness and importance of the expectation itself? That is, do we live the way people should live, expecting blissful immortality and life in God? – Can we point out in our life and say: I undertook this precisely because I expect eternal life; and that’s why this was left by me? - And how many of these are there? Can everyone say: for the sake of eternal life, I have made peace with such and such and left enmity, for in eternal life there is only love, but there is no enmity? Can anyone say: for the sake of eternal life, I gave up such a great, but unrighteous gain, because in eternal life this is intolerable: it requires only truth? Can anyone say: I, for the sake of eternal life, patiently endure the deprivation of my children, the death of my relatives: for what if they are taken quickly? Didn't they go where everyone should go? And isn’t it better for them there, with the Lord, than here, with us, among the sea of ​​temptations and temptations? Many similar questions could be proposed: but those proposed are enough for the attentive listener to ask himself: does the expectation of eternal life affect him, his character and life? We, instead of further questions, will offer one remark and say that of all our expectations and aspirations, the aspiration of eternal life remains idle, almost without any action. In words they say: I hope for eternal life, but in reality everyone acts as if life is only temporary and there is no eternal life. Who loses by this - eternal life or us? Eternal life loses nothing: it will come in due time and will disgrace its bad expectants. But on our part it is a great loss, irreparable. For if we were imbued with the hope of eternal life, then, firstly, we would be a hundred times better - both in thoughts, and in feelings, and in morals, and in actions, and this itself would be a great reward. And besides, secondly, the bad expectation of eternal life makes real life gloomy, painful, and bitter. There are many inevitable hardships, sufferings, and losses in life. A living expectation of eternal life could make all this easier and sweeter, but now this is not the case. The especially blessed hope of immortality could sweeten our sad moments of life, for example, during illness, before death. Now how do we die? Death is the greatest disaster for us. Here we learn how we expect eternal life and how we love to wait. We show ourselves. For if they firmly hoped, then how would they fear what they teated? This is an obvious contradiction! Look at the faithful - for them the Angel of Death was the favorite messenger of the return to the Fatherland! Let us stop, beloved, from depriving ourselves of the greatest good! Let us try to revive in ourselves the hope of immortality, and it, revived, will revive us completely and make us courageous in the midst of the most severe temptations, cheerful on our deathbed. Amen. You might be interested in: