Слово в неделю XX-ю по Пятидесятнице, сказанное в Предтеченской церкви архиерейского дома 13 октября 1857 года.

“And the Lord saw mercy on her, and said to her: Weep not” (Luke 7:13). Last Sunday, brothers, we heard from the Gospel the commandment of our Savior about love for enemies; Now we hear another of His commandments about love and mercy for the unfortunate. He taught us that commandment in a word, saying: “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:35); He teaches this by his own example, showing mercy and compassion for the unfortunate widow of Nain, who lost her only son, and raising him from the dead. There is a great difference between these two commandments. The first, the commandment of love for enemies, is exclusively Christian: it is not instilled in man by the law of nature, it was not instilled and is not instilled by any of the faiths that existed and exist outside of Christianity - neither pagan in all its forms, nor Mohammedan, nor even Jewish (Matthew 5:46-47). On the contrary, the commandment of compassion for the unfortunate is loudly preached by human nature itself, the pagans knew and know, Mohammedanism sets out in detail, and Judaism even more fully. But, brethren, despite the fact that the commandment of mercy does not belong to the number of distinctive Christian commandments, we, as Christians, must be distinguished by its fulfillment more than all other people who do not profess our holy faith. faith: because, in addition to the motives for mercy common to all, we also have special, highest ones. Judge, first of all, whether we ourselves, more than all other people, benefit from the mercy and bounty of our common Lord and Master. Other people, non-Christians, participate with us only in His mercies as the Creator and Provider, while we also enjoy His mercies as the Redeemer. Great, immeasurable are the mercies of our Creator towards us: He gave us existence solely because of His infinite goodness, created our body with such perfections in which it surpasses the bodies of all other animals, revived us, and only us alone on earth, with a rational and immortal soul, adorned us with His own image, exalted us above all earthly creatures, made us kings and rulers of nature. The Lord’s mercies to us as a Provider are just as great and immeasurable: not only does He send us everything we need to support existence, He also gives us “all things richly for our enjoyment” (1 Tim. 6:17); He cares for each of us, and with such love that not even a hair of our head falls without His will (Matt. 10, 30); He also cares about entire human societies, Himself placing kings over them and governing them, Himself establishing through kings and lower authorities to create the happiness of peoples. But what do all these mercies of God mean, all these gifts of nature, available to all people, compared with those extraordinary mercies, with those gifts of grace that are available only to us Christians? Since man sinned, he has been subjected to the greatest calamities and has become the most miserable of all earthly beings. And so all the people who still do not believe in Christ remain in the midst of these misfortunes, and we are not only freed from them, but also enjoy the greatest benefits. Other people are still wandering “in darkness and the shadow of death,” they do not know the true God, they do not know how to serve Him, to please Him, they do not have the right concepts either about the world, or about themselves and their own purpose: we, called into the wonderful light of Christ, have come to know the true God and true worship of God, for our faith all the mysteries of the world and man have been resolved in Divine revelation. Other people are still in slavery to sin and the devil - they are born in sins, they live and die in sins, doing “the lusts of their father” (John 8:44), and they do not have any means to free themselves from this shameful slavery: we were all freed from it even in the sacrament of baptism, when we came out of the font completely pure and innocent, and we can be freed every time, after new sins, in sacrament of repentance. Other people hitherto, as unpurified of sins, remain “naturally children of the wrath of God” (Eph. 2:3), live at a distance from God, under His curse, and do not know any possibility of reconciliation with Him and being reunited: we have all already been reconciled with God by faith in the Son of God, who suffered for us on the cross, and have become not only close to God, but also family Him, as His sons, by grace and sincerely we unite with the Lord in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Other people, due to the weaknesses of corrupted human nature, with all their efforts and aspirations for moral perfection, are not able to achieve it: we have been granted by our Redeemer “all Divine powers, including life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), using which we can rise to the highest degrees of moral perfection. Other people, as “strangers from the covenant promise” of the Christian, pass into the afterlife without the hope of eternal blessings and the future resurrection of the dead (Eph. 2:12): we know this sweet hope, and, if we do not unworthily bear the name of the sons of God, we joyfully move into the eternal abode of our heavenly Father. After such special and extraordinary mercies as the Lord visited us, the poor and unfortunate, and which other people who do not know Christ do not yet enjoy, who else, if not we, Christians, are obliged to be distinguished primarily by mercy towards the poor and unfortunate? More than all people, we have received and accept “tune” from the Lord; Shouldn't more than everyone be distributing "tuna"? Isn’t everyone more obligated to be imitators of our most merciful Master, according to the Savior’s commandment: “Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48)?... Looking at all these greatest benefits that we enjoy in Christianity, can we not remember at what price they were purchased for us? For this reason, He is our Lord Himself, “rich” in mercy, “for the sake of our poverty, so that through His poverty we may become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). For this reason, He, being the Son of God, “humbled Himself, took on the form of a servant, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, death on the cross” (Phil. 2:7-8). For this reason, during his stay on earth, He deigned to go through the entire path of poverty and misery. He was born in poverty, and lived out his life in poverty. The poor often do not have shelter, and the Son of Man did not have “where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). The poor and needy often need food and generally assistance from others - and some pious wives served our Savior “from their possessions” (Luke 8:3). The poor and beggars often endure sorrows, deprivations, reproaches, persecutions and innocent suffering - and our Savior suffered for us on earth so many bitter sorrows, so many deprivations, reproaches and persecutions, so many innocent sufferings, as not a single person in the world endured them: his “appearance” was “dishonored, humbled more than all the sons of men” (Is. 53:3). What was the special consequence of this in relation to the poor and needy? Having experienced in Himself the full weight of the disasters that the unfortunate of every kind bear on earth, Our Lord loved them so much that He deigned to call them His “lesser brethren,” and in order to encourage His followers to give charity to the unfortunate, He even said that all mercy shown to His lesser brethren is shown to Himself (Matthew 25:40). Christians! What impulse could be stronger and more touching for us than this? Even in the Old Testament it was known that “the merciful poor gives back to God” (Prov. 19, 17); and now we know that when we give alms to the poor, we give it to our Savior Himself through them, and thus we have the opportunity, at least in part, to repay Him for all the poverty with which He acquired eternal blessings for us. But this, brothers, does not yet exhaust the special motivation for us to show mercy and charity. The time will come when the kingdom of grace on earth will end, in which we enjoy so many extraordinary mercies and bounties acquired for us by the impoverishment of our Savior; judgment will come when they will demand from us an account of how we took advantage of these graces and whether we are worthy to move into the kingdom of glory, or deserve eternal punishment. Remember how this judgment will take place, according to the image of the Savior. Then, He says, the Supreme Judge will separate the righteous from the sinners and, placing the first at His right hand, and the latter at His left, will say to the first: “Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” For what? “For you were hungry, and gave me food: you were thirsty, and you gave me to drink: I was strange, and you knew me: naked, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you visited me: you were in prison, and you came to me... Amen I say to you, since you have created one for these little brothers of mine, you have created for me” (Matt. 25, 34–36). Following this, He speaks to those who are on His side: “Depart from Me, cursed, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angel. For you were hungry, and did not give me food: you were thirsty, and did not give me anything to drink; you were strange, and did not know me; naked, and had no clothing on me; sick, and in prison, and did not visit me.... Amen I say to you, since you did not create the least of these, neither did you create for me” (Matthew 25, 41–43. 45). There is no doubt that at the general judgment all our deeds, good and evil, will be taken into account (2 Cor. 5:10), and that an impartial Judge will then reward everyone according to their deserts (Rom. 2:6). Don’t you see that works of Christian mercy will then have special significance on the scales of God’s truth, and that the final decision of our eternal fate will primarily depend on them?... Godly listeners! Nature itself inspires us with love and compassion for the unfortunate; nature itself encourages us to mercy and charity. And here is St. Faith offers us even more special, extraordinary motivations! Let us follow these deep suggestions and impulses, and we will become merciful, merciful in a Christian way. Amen. You might be interested in: