Слово в неделю вторую Великого поста, сказанное в Предтеченской церкви архиерейского дома 16 февраля 1858 года.

“Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5). They brought the paralytic to the Lord Jesus - they brought him with full faith that He would heal this unfortunate man, as He healed countless others of all kinds from all kinds of diseases. And what do they hear from the Lord? First of all, they hear His words to the paralytic: “Son, your sins are forgiven.” And then, when some of the witnesses began to doubt His Divine power to forgive sins, He added: “But let me tell you that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins, I say to you: Arise, and take up your bed, and go to your house” (Mark 2:10-11). What thought is hidden in this action and in these sayings of our Savior? The one that between our illnesses and our sins is the closest internal connection, that our illnesses depend on our sins, and therefore, on the other hand, should serve as a means for us against our sins, for our moral good. This is exactly what a Christian’s view of human illness should be. Man came out of the hands of his Creator perfect in soul and body, sinless and painless. But as soon as our first parents sinned, they were also subject to disease (Gen. 3:14). What is sin? This is disobedience, resistance to the will of the Creator, it is a violation of the moral law laid down in our nature, it is the deviation of our soul, rationally free, from its high purpose. This means that sin is an unnatural action. And therefore, as an unnatural action, it inevitably had to corrupt and damage all the powers of our soul, and due to the close connection of the soul with the body, it inevitably corrupted and damaged all the powers of our body, introducing into it the seeds of disorder and disease; he poisoned our entire being with his poison at once. In ancestral sin we are conceived and born, we come into the world with the seeds of disease; and then, when we ourselves begin to sin, we develop these seeds more and more and taste bitter fruits from them. There are examples, obvious to everyone, of how people who indulge in intemperance, drunkenness, dissolute life and other vices gradually exhaust and weaken their body, infect it with numerous diseases and approach the grave prematurely. But even in those cases where this connection between sins and illnesses is less obvious, it undoubtedly exists. Do not point out to the righteous that they often suffer illnesses, even serious ones, like the righteous Job: the righteous are not strangers to ancestral sin, and the righteous sometimes fall seven times a day. Do not point out those sinners who, no matter how much they indulge in iniquities, still enjoy health: sins do not always quickly and not in everyone produce obvious illness, but they always upset a person’s strength, and sooner or later this ever-increasing disorder can end in such illnesses as are not expected, which is often repeated before our eyes. True, there are a lot of diseases that depend not on us, but on the hostile influence of the nature around us and on other external causes and circumstances. But I ask: why does nature act so hostilely on us? Is it not because we ourselves have placed ourselves in a hostile, unnatural attitude towards her through our sins, stepping out of the rank in which the Creator placed us? Is it not because she was initially “cursed in the deeds” of man (Gen. 3:17)? Why is our body so susceptible to the harmful influences of nature? Is it not because it is upset, weakened by sin, and does not have enough strength within itself to resist them? And most importantly, who controls our lives, and the nature around us, and all the circumstances from which our illnesses often arise - who, if not God? But when God sends or allows illnesses to strike us, then, without a doubt, it is not because of our good deeds - God is infinitely just and all-good. So, all our illnesses are either natural consequences of our sins, or positive punishments of God for our sins. But thanks be to the Almighty! He also wants to extract, if possible, moral benefit for us from natural evil, and when punishing us, he has goals in mind that are beneficial for us. He strikes us with illnesses so that we realize and feel how harmful our sins are for us, how we anger our Lord, and then hasten to cleanse ourselves of sins and correct ourselves: in such cases, illnesses become, as it were, cures against sins and incentives to virtue. At other times, He allows illnesses on us, sometimes lasting for whole years and decades, in order to prevent us from committing those greatest, perhaps, atrocities that we would have committed if we had remained healthy, and which He, as the omniscient, foresees: illnesses then serve as protection for us from sins. Finally, the Lord often visits the righteous themselves with illnesses, like Job and true Christians, so that in the midst of suffering he can test and purify them, as gold is purified in a crucible, so that in the midst of suffering their faith can rise even more, their hope strengthened, their love for God become unshakable, and all their good qualities can be revealed throughout the world: illnesses in such cases contribute to the moral success of the righteous and to the exaltation of their future glory (2 Cor. 4, 16–17). Now it is already determined by itself how we should behave in relation to diseases. When illness comes to us, we usually greet it with sorrow, and sometimes with murmur. It is natural to grieve here, but it is unfair to grumble: because illnesses depend on us, and if they are sent to us by God, then for our own moral good. Therefore, on the contrary, we must meet them with gratitude to God and kiss the right hand that punishes us. When illness takes hold of us, we mostly turn to doctors and use their medicines. This is good: because God gave both the doctor and the medicine. But this is only half the story. At the same time, we need to turn to doctors and spiritual healing in order to eradicate the very cause of our illnesses, we need to cleanse our souls from sins in the sacrament of repentance, taste the source of life and health in the sacrament of the Eucharist, fulfill the commandment of the Apostle: “If anyone is sick in you, let him call the elders of the church and let him pray over him, anointing him with oil, in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up: and even if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him” (James 5:14-15). This is how Christian healing of diseases will be! When our illness passes, we almost always forget about it and only occasionally try to protect ourselves from what, in our opinion, produced this illness in us. Meanwhile, after each illness, our duty is to take care of correcting our moral life, in order to thereby thank the Lord for our healing and protect ourselves in the future from other illnesses. My brothers! Now we have a time of saving fasting and repentance. Let us try to take advantage of this time, so that we may be worthy to hear from the Lord the longed-for words: “Son, your sins are forgiven you,” so that His subsequent words can then be fulfilled on us: “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” Amen. You might be interested in: