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“And have mercy on everyone with reasoning, and save on everyone with fear, admiringly from the fire...”. ( Jude 1:22–23 ). Isn’t this the same thing, brethren, that the Holy Church is doing today? Some of its members allowed themselves to be embraced by the pernicious flame of heresies against God; and so she raises her voice like a trumpet and strikes them with the fear of anathema, “as God will give them repentance into the mind of truth, and they will arise from the devil’s snare...”. ( 2 Tim. 2:25–26 ). The remedy is truly one of the most effective! The mere thought that people like us are being thrown out of the society of believers, outside of which there is and cannot be salvation, this one thought involuntarily shakes the heart and sets the feeling in motion. What kind of fear should be struck by someone for whom others should fear so much? It is all the more regrettable, brethren, for the Church that the feeling of saving fear, which she tries to instill in her children through the sacred rite now performed, is often disfigured, and sometimes completely suppressed by other, reprehensible feelings. Some, arrogant in their minds, or even more so in their foolishness, try to destroy in their thoughts everything that is striking in the current rite for the erring, and imagine it as an idle action of church authority that has no influence on the eternal fate of the condemned. These are proud people who consider themselves above the judgment of the Church, in the blindness that the sanctuary of their conscience, where perhaps “the abomination of desolation stands... in a holy place” (Matthew 24:15), is the only place in which judgment should be pronounced on their opinions about the faith. Others go to the opposite extreme: a feeling of fear when hearing an anathema, combined with a feeling of regret for those affected by it, turns in the heart into a secret murmur against the supposedly immoderate severity of church rules. “Why,” they think, “the Church now exchanges, so close to her, the voice of love for terrifying curses?” These are people of little faith, who have the weakness to think that the Church of Christ could ever act contrary to the law of love, which constitutes the main basis of all its rules and laws. There is no need, brethren, to investigate whether there is anyone among us here who harbors this or that error. We must wish that what we say is one of fortune-telling. But everyone will agree that this fortune-telling is very close to experience, and is almost justified in reality. So, if not to eradicate, then to avert the above-mentioned errors, let us delve into the spirit of the current rite and show: 1) that the judgment pronounced now by the Church is a terrible judgment: this will overthrow the frivolity of those who are present at it without any feeling; 2) that the judgment pronounced now by the Church is a judgment filled with love: this will calm the lack of faith of those who think to see in it excessive severity. 1. The judgment pronounced now by the Church is a terrible judgment. How do they usually look, brethren, at that person who has had the misfortune of earning a bad opinion in society? Some despise him, others shun him, others regret him. He considers himself the most unfortunate person. Some cannot survive this misfortune. Public opinion is so scary! If the sentence of any society has such force, then, brethren, is the Church alone such a society whose sentence can be neglected? On the contrary, the verdict of the Church for a sane person should be much more important than any so-called public opinion, if only because the Church is the most permanent, extensive and best of all human societies: the most permanent, for the Church has existed from the beginning of the world and will exist until its end; the most extensive, for the members of the Church of Christ are scattered throughout the whole world, found in every language, people and tribe (Rev. 5:9); the best, for it represents the visible Kingdom of God on earth, and serves as a preparation for the eternal Kingdom of God in heaven. To neglect the judgment of such a society means to have no respect for the entire human race; sin against humanity: what does it mean to sin against humanity? To be a monster of humanity!.. Thus, brethren, if the judgment pronounced now by the Church is to be imagined as completely human, then it is very important and terrible, since there is a judgment - of the Universal Church! But this alone is not the importance of the sentences pronounced today by the Church. It is established on a foundation that is even deeper and more immutable. What if God Himself appeared before the most arrogant freethinker, as He once did before Job, and called him to His judgment? ( Job 40:1–2 ). Would he not have melted in fear from His splendor and glory? The mere thought that the Creator calls creation to judgment contains everything that can be amazing for a creature: God’s judgment is always terrible! But whose court is the Church judging now? Yours or God's? God's, brothers, God's! The True Church has never acquired any power other than that which it has been endowed with by its Divine Founder. If she now pronounces “anathema” on the stubborn enemies of the truth, it is because the Lord Himself commanded her to do so. Here are His own words: “If... whoever disobeys the Church, let you be like a pagan and a publican”! (Matthew 18:17). Those now condemned have disobeyed the voice of the Church and have not heeded her admonitions: and now she, following exactly the words of the Lord, deprives them of the name of Christians, casts them out of her bosom as pagans. She binds them on earth: but at the same time, according to immutable judgment God, they are bound in heaven. No visible bonds are imposed on them, but the heaviest bonds of curse are imposed. Only those who do not believe the words of the Lord, who said: “If you bind them on earth, they will be bound in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). So, tremble, stubborn opponent of truth! The judgment now pronounced upon you is, in its origin, the Judgment of God. And who is being condemned now? Are they not those people who were previously condemned by God Himself in His word? Those who reject the existence of God and His Providence are condemned; But didn’t God Himself, even through the mouth of David, call the one crazy who said in his heart (only in the Heart!): “There is no God”! (Ps. 13:1). Those who do not recognize the immortality of the human soul and the future judgment are condemned; but it is not God Himself and through the Wise One who threatens with destruction those who said: “We were born by chance, and therefore we will be as if we had never been... the body will be ashes, and our spirit will flow like soft air”! (Wis. 2:2–3). Those who consider the coming of the Son of God in the flesh unnecessary for the salvation of the human race are condemned; But isn’t it on the person of God that Saint John says: “Every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ in the flesh is not from God: and this one is the Antichrist”! (1 John 4:3). Opponents of royal power are condemned; but was it not at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the Apostle Paul wrote: “For there is no authority except from God... Moreover, he who resists the authority of God resists the commandment”! (Rom. 13:1, 2). “But some sentences,” someone will say, “are not contained in the Holy Scriptures.” Tell me better, beloved, that there are many more of them there. “If anyone,” says the Apostle Paul, “does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cursed” (1 Cor. 16:22). What error, what wickedness does not this curse strike? For with the name of the Lord Jesus Christ all virtues are connected. This means that the Church spares even weak consciences when it strikes with a curse only some - obvious and gross - heresies and crimes. So, tremble, stubborn opponent of truth! The judgment that is now being pronounced on you, by its very subject, is the Judgment of God! The consequences of this Last Judgment will be revealed in full beyond the boundaries of this life; There, those condemned by the Church will know with all their might how grave the curse of the bride of Christ is! But even in this life, these consequences are such that they can terrify anyone who is not completely ossified in the blindness of the mind. For imagine what a person who has been subjected to anathema loses: he loses, firstly, the name of a Christian and becomes a pagan - a great loss! Of the ancient Christians, many answered all the tormentors’ questions about their origin, rank, name: “I am a Christian.” They valued this name so much! Along with the name, the thing is lost: the one who has been anathematized no longer ceases to be in union with the mysterious body of the Church; he is a severed member, a branch taken from the tree. Great loss! For outside the Church there are no Sacraments that revive us into eternal life, there are no merits of Jesus Christ, without which man is an enemy of God; there is no Spirit of God: outside the Church there is the realm of the spirit of malice. In the Apostolic Church, the devil struck with visible torment those whose vices deserved excommunication from the Church; without a doubt, even now this enemy of human salvation does not sleep in the destruction of these unfortunates, and since they are deprived of the grace-filled protection of the Church, he rules over their souls with the same ferocity, although not so visible. Tell me, is it possible to imagine such a state without horror? Saint Chrysostom mourned the once unhappy state of those who passed on to the future life without purifying themselves with repentance: “Who,” he said, “will pray for them there? Who will sacrifice for them? There is no priest and no victim." Ah, he who has been anathematized will in this life experience the misfortune that unrepentant sinners are destined to endure beyond the grave! There are priests here, a bloodless sacrifice for sins is (always) made, but those excommunicated do not participate in this sacrifice: their name is blotted out (excluded) from the list of believers, the Church does not remember them in its prayers, they are the living dead! It would be in vain for someone excommunicated from the Church to reassure his conscience with the fact that even outside the Church there is no impossibility of earning God’s mercy, that the Creator’s mercy is limitless, that “in every nation... doing righteousness is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:35). So! There is no partiality in God; He is the God of Christians and pagans, He rewards everyone according to their deeds. But due to the very fact that there is no partiality in God, He cannot look with the eye of favor on one who is expelled from the Church. How? God, in His infinite mercy, grafted you (Rom. 11:24) like a wild branch into the life-giving “olive tree” - Jesus Christ; But you, instead of clinging to its root with all your strength and, drinking in the juice of life and bearing the fruits of righteousness, with your superstitious wisdom you broke off from this olive tree - and the Heavenly Worker will tolerate you in His garden? Won't you order me to throw you into the fire? Where will His justice, His impartiality be? Do not say that you, being outside the Church, can bear the fruit of virtue. Where there is no soul, there is no life; the soul - Jesus Christ - only in the body, in the Church; This means that you, even with your imaginary virtues, are dead before God. “Whatever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23); And you, excommunicated one, what kind of faith do you have? Is it “demonic” (James 3:15). A pagan is better than you with God; he was not awarded those gifts that you neglected; he was not a son of the Church, and therefore will not be judged as a criminal son. “Heretics,” Saint Cyprian once wrote, “think that God will have mercy on them too. He will not have mercy until they turn to the Church. He who does not have the Church as a mother cannot have God as a father.” But, if the fate of those excommunicated from the Church is so deplorable, then isn’t their excommunication violating the law of love, which commands us to spare the lost? Not at all. 2. The judgment pronounced now by the Church, being a terrible judgment, is also a judgment of love. The quality of each action, brothers, is known from the motives that disposed one to act, the means used, and the purpose for which it was undertaken. So, what prompts the Church, this loving mother who daily calls upon her most obstinate children the blessings of God, what prompts her to now utter curses? Firstly, the need to show your fallen children the depth of evil into which their superstition has plunged them. Being tolerant in the depths of the Church, they could calm their conscience with the fact that their errors do not yet imply inevitable destruction for their souls, that their way of thinking can still be combined with the spirit of the Gospel, that they, at least, have not strayed so far from the common path as to be considered completely lost. Their pride could still find food for itself in the fact that they, belonging to the society of Christians, think, however, about the objects of faith differently from other Christians. After this, what could the Church do? This is exactly what she is doing now: to strike superstition with the horror and ignominy of anathema! By bringing the lost to shame, the Church thereby takes away from errors the charm of the special wisdom with which they deceive; striking them with the name of God, it takes away hope for safety; contrasting the confession of the Universal Church with the superstition of private people, exposes the insignificance of the latter. Let the lost continue to nourish, if you like, their delusions - the Church does not bind their minds, but she did her job, showed them the abyss in which they are, pronounced judgment on them in advance, which, in case of unrepentance, will befall them beyond the grave. Thus, anathema is the last warning voice of the Church to those who are in error. But the voice of warning, brothers, no matter how loud it may be, is not the voice of love? What else prompts the Church to pronounce curses today? The need to warn your faithful children from falling. It is known that errors in the mouths and writings of “pernicious people” (John 17:12) often have the most seductive appearance: all dangerous sides are skillfully covered; on the contrary, their supposedly beneficial consequences, which exist only in words, are depicted with all attractiveness, so that the simple mind is involuntarily and imperceptibly seduced by them. Detailed, learned refutations of these errors (although there is no shortage of them for those in the know) would be beyond the understanding of many members of the Church. After this, what was left for the Church to do? What she does now is to expose errors to shame in their disgusting nakedness and, bringing their vileness before the eyes of everyone, strike them with a curse. After this, if you wish, allow your imagination to be seduced by the flowers with which delusions are adorned: the Church has taught you what kind of vipers are hidden under these flowers; she is innocent if you die from their poison. But perhaps the means used by the Church to admonish those who have fallen and warn those who stand are too cruel? This remedy is anathema. So what is anathema? Anathema is one of the spiritual punishments, the most recent and therefore the most severe. To pronounce an anathema on someone means to excommunicate him completely from the society of believers, to deprive him of all the benefits of a Christian, to declare him a person repugnant to God, condemned, if he does not repent, to destruction, worthy of everyone avoiding him like a plague. In this mind, the Apostle Paul uses the word anathema when he says: “If anyone preaches the gospel to you more than he has already eaten, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:9), that is, look at him as an enemy of God. The same meaning of the word anathema is found in Justin the Martyr (Response 21 to the Orthodox), St. Chrysostom (Conversation 16, on the Epistle to the Romans), Blessed Theodoret (In the interpretation of 1 Cor. 16:22), Theophylact and other Church Fathers. Thus, anathema is, as we said, the most terrible action of church authority: it is, in a sense, spiritual execution, for the one who has been cursed is dead to the Church. But this execution is by no means the same as physical execution. After a physical execution one is not resurrected for this life, but after this spiritual execution one can always be resurrected for a spiritual life through true repentance. Thus, anathema, even as an execution, is dissolved by Christian love. Those who are excommunicated are not deprived of the means to repent; they are in the greatest danger, for they are deprived of the cover of grace, but for them all is not lost. The doors of mercy, which had been opened for them so many times in vain, may still be open. Leave your delusion, turn to the Church with sincere repentance, and she will not reject the prayers of the repentant. And how can the Church reject them, when this, precisely the conversion of the lost, is the main goal of the curses now pronounced? O you, who are tempted by the imaginary severity of church rules, may your pride not be offended - you are both blind and deaf. Exactly like that! Otherwise, you would see how the Church now with all her children kneels before the Lord Jesus; He would have heard how, through his own merits, he begs Him to give the spirit of repentance to those who are subject to anathema for their unrepentance. For with what does the Church begin the solemn rite now performed? Prayers for the conversion of the lost. How does it end? The same prayers. Yielding to necessity, like a judge, she pronounces condemnation; submitting to love, like a mother, she calls on the Spirit of God on the condemned. The damned might fall under the weight of the oath; and so, the power of the curse, so to speak, is protected on all sides by the powers of prayer, so that the former acts no more than what is necessary for the salvation of the condemned. So, brethren, instead of disputing the present judgment of the Church and considering it either invalid or overly strict, each member of the Church is now obliged to pay attention to himself and consider his conscience. “You,” the Apostle Paul once wrote to the Corinthians, “are looking for evidence as to whether Christ is speaking by me. Test yourselves better, are you in the faith? For us, I hope, you will know that we are what we ought to be” (2 Cor. 13:3, 5-6). The same thing, brethren, the Church now has the right to say to some of her children. You, little-faithful or unfaithful children, are you looking for evidence as to whether Christ is now speaking by me, when I I pronounce anathema, am I not in this case deviating from the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of peace and love? Test yourself better: are you in faith? Are you in faith when you are not confirmed in the thought that the Church, “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), can never be shaken in its foundation, which has always been and will be love? Are you in faith, who harbor a reprehensible desire that the Church no longer raise her voice to defeat errors, when the enemies of truth stretch out their blasphemous lips almost to heaven to utter reproach and temptations? “Examine yourselves, are you in the faith?” (2 Cor. 13:5). This is why I am now celebrating the Triumph of Orthodoxy, this is why I proclaim in the ears of everyone the confession of the Universal Church, so that you consider your conscience, whether the deposit of faith given to you at Baptism remains intact in it, whether its integrity is not violated by ungodly thoughts about faith, especially by ungodly life and cold deeds? “Examine yourselves, are you in the faith?” (2 Cor. 13:5). When you are rooted in faith, as you should be, when the spirit of true, living Christian love animates you: then, I hope, without any evidence, you will learn about me that I am what I should be - a judge and mother, an intercessor before God for the repentant and a herald of God’s Judgment over the unrepentant. Do you wish, Christian, to see more clearly what the Church requires of you, calling you now to participate in the sacred rite performed by it? Listen! The judgment pronounced now by the Church is a terrible judgment. So, do not remain a cold-blooded listener to it, carefully consider your faith and your life, whether, directly or indirectly, the curse of the Church does not fall on you. Do not limit the power of these curses to brazen delusions of the mind alone: ​​a sinful life deserves even more damnation than a wrong faith. Remember what the Apostle said: “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema!” (1 Cor. 16:22). But anyone who leads an unclean life obviously does not love the Lord Jesus. So, be careful that this anathema does not strike you too—your sins, your non-Christian life. The judgment pronounced now by the Church is a terrible judgment. So, Christian, run away as much as possible, run away from those people who harbor errors condemned by the Church, avoid those meetings and conversations in which wickedness is preached and wrong rumors about the faith are disseminated, look with disgust at the writings that contain such superstitions, try to pry them out of the hands of those who are subject to your control. The judgment pronounced now by the Church is the judgment of love. So, look at him with the eyes of love, listen to him with the ears of love. Share with the Church her prayers for the lost, do not forget to mention them in your own prayer conversations with God; ask them for a spirit of repentance and humility. In this way you will show your true love for your erring brothers in humanity, and not by contradicting the saving severity of church rules. Amen. You might be interested in: