Слово в среду недели 4-й Великого поста

“Remember me, Lord, when you come into Your Kingdom”! (Luke 23:42). The Holy Church treats us as mothers treat babies when they teach them to speak. For this purpose, mothers force babies to repeat after themselves the names of persons and the names of objects that are most necessary for conversation. The Church does this too. since repentance is most needed for us sinners, in order to teach us to repent of our sins, she forces us in these days to repeat, after her, the repentant psalm of David: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy” (Ps. 50:1); then the touching song of the Israelites: “On the rivers of Babylon, there was a gray horse and a mourner” (Ps. 137:1); then the contrite prayer of Saint Ephraim the Syrian: Lord and Master of my life; that real touching appeal to the Savior of the thief who repented on the cross: “Remember me, Lord, when You come in Your Kingdom”! (Luke 23:42). Since for these last words the one who spoke them was told by the Savior Himself: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43), it is not surprising that they became especially precious for all sinners, and whenever they are proclaimed in church, they produce a universal visible impression, expressed by making the sign of the cross and bowing the head. Everyone feels that this appeal of the repentant thief contains, as it were, some kind of key to the gates of heaven. And truly, this is the key to the Kingdom; only in order to give them what they want, you must not only have it in your hands, but be able to act with it as it should. Otherwise, what would we ourselves think about the Kingdom of Heaven if we only had to say a few words to enter it? If they opened heaven to the robber, it was because with these small words in his mouth, he had very much connected in his heart. Without this, the thief, no matter how many times he repeated them on his cross, would not have heard that longed-for answer with which the Savior of the world deigned to bestow upon him. To whom, you ask, can they open heaven? To him, firstly, who has the same living and firm faith in the Lord Jesus as the thief had on the cross. Look how he believes! He believes as many of His closest disciples did not believe at the hour of the Lord’s death. For Peter himself denied Him three times at that time, and moreover with an oath. Peter is rejected, and the thief recognizes Him, rejected by everyone, Him who was martyred, crucified along with the evildoers, abandoned, apparently, by His Father Himself as having not done a single evil, calling Him His Lord and Master, and brings Him a humble prayer not to be forgotten from Him in His future Kingdom!.. What can you imagine higher and stronger than such faith? After this, judge for yourself whether you are able to internalize the confession of a thief? If you feel the presence of his faith in yourself; if, contrary to all the wisdom of the false mind, which to this day, blinded, continues to see in Jesus the Son not of God, but only of Mary, you constantly see in Him Christ, God’s power and God’s wisdom; if you are ready to stay with Him even when everyone else leaves Him; if neither His Cross, carried for you, nor yours, lifted for Him, seduces you in the least, but even more binds your soul and heart to Him: then boldly open your lips and say: “Remember me, Lord, when you come in Your Kingdom!” Your voice will be heard, and the doors of heaven will not be closed to your faith! Who can worthily pronounce the words of a robber? One who, like him, not only sincerely acknowledges his sins, but also complacently endures their unfortunate consequences. The robber, despite his repentance, suffered on earth everything that a criminal of the law can suffer from human justice: he is now dying on the Cross in terrible agony. But look how he endures these torments! When his ill-fated minion indulges in useless murmuring, he humbly preaches, “as if by what I have done (us) he has been accepted” (Luke 23:41). As if he were saying this: why are you complaining? What happens to us is exactly what should happen: sinners like us must necessarily suffer and suffer. This shows that a decisive change of thoughts occurred in him, that he felt all the badness of his actions, received a heartfelt disgust for sin and looks at it as such an enemy to man, from which it does not mean much to be freed even by the torment of the cross. Is this why, perhaps, he does not even ask the Savior for relief from his suffering, even for courage to endure it; that is, he wants to drink the cup of torment to the bottom, in order to be cleansed by its bitterness from all the former corrupting sweets of sin? His entire gaze is directed to one future, to eternal life beyond the grave. There he wants to begin a new existence and a new activity, pure and holy; and he prays to Jesus so that his sins do not hinder him in this good intention: “Remember me, Lord, when you come in Your Kingdom!” That is, cover my sins before the court of God’s righteousness, supplement from Your merits what is missing in the execution I suffered: so that in Your Kingdom I will not be rejected from Your presence, just as I am now honored to approach You through my cross! Such is the humility, devotion and hope of a repentant thief! Do you, sinner, want to gain the good part of him? Improve his feelings first. Do not limit yourself to the feeble confession that you are a sinner: what sinner does not have it? But show that you feel all the abomination of your sins. What to show? Firstly, by giving up sin forever; and secondly, by complacent patience with those disasters that, like a shadow behind the body, always follow sin. Has human justice subjected you to the punishment you deserve? - Carry it without grumbling, saying, like a robber: “According to my deed, I received it.” Has your sinful life caused harm and evil of its own accord, for example, illness, deprivation of property, dishonor? - Be patient with good-naturedness, saying: “According to the deeds, I will accept it.” A truly repentant person, having felt the abomination of sin, not only does not try to avoid punishment for it, but seeks it and often asks for it as mercy; not finding it in others, he invents punishment for himself. When you put yourself in such a frame of mind, then open your lips in faith and say: “Remember me, Lord, when you come in Your Kingdom!” Your voice will be heard, and you will not be forgotten by the Lord of Paradise. Who can pronounce the words of a robber with dignity? He who, like this thief, not only himself feels disgusted with sin, ceases to sin; but he also tries to bring sinners like himself to repentance, especially those with whom he participated in iniquities. This is the holy duty of a repentant sinner: he must use everything to not only return to the right path himself, but also to return to it those who have been seduced from it by his passions. How touchingly the thief repenting on the cross fulfills this duty in relation to his crucified brother! Perhaps it was not he who tempted him to sin, but he himself was tempted by it: but since the atrocities were common, he wants to share his repentance with him. “Aren’t you afraid of God?” he says, having heard his blasphemy against Jesus; “We have received it according to our deeds: but this one shall not do a single evil thing” (Luke 23:41). Not many words, but what kind of self-sacrifice did it take to utter them for someone who himself was torn apart by the torment of the cross? That is why the repentant thief does not even finish his sermon to his brother, but, interrupting it, with weak lips turns to the Savior with the prayer: “Remember me, Lord, when you come in Your Kingdom!” - wanting, not with words alone, but also with his example, to convey to his poor brother what he needs to do. So, repentant sinner, if you want to internalize this prayer, then do not stop at your conversion. You were not the only one who sinned, and you are not the only one who must repent. Do not hide your conversion, as some do, before the friends and minions of your iniquity: everyone has seen that you are a sinner, let everyone see that you are a repentant sinner. No matter how one of your former minions, like the crucified minion of a repentant thief, madly mocked the work of salvation, you should not be upset by this, but do your job. Advise, ask, beg, conjure, but try to return your accomplices to the right path! For only in this way will you be like a prudent thief and can shamelessly speak to your Savior: “Remember me, Lord, when you come in Your Kingdom!” In general, my brothers, we should not think that when we utter a few words with a sigh—whether David’s, a publican’s, a thief’s, or a penitent’s—we already have the right to pardon and can continue to sin carelessly, as before. No, that would be the grossest delusion. In this case, these very words will serve to condemn us. “You knew and knew,” they will once say to us, “how one should repent; for your mouth uttered the words of repentance of David, or of the thief on the cross. Why, when using their words, did you not imitate their actions? Why did he take their image and not acquire their spirit and heart? So, begging the Lord, together with the thief, that He remember us “in His Kingdom,” let us make sure that there is something for the Lord to remember about us, so that we, and those remembered, do not become worse from the very remembrance of us, that is, from our untruths and our unrepentance for sin. Amen. You might be interested in: