Речь в Великий пяток, сказанная в Киево-Софийском соборе в 1842 году.

“We pray according to Christ, as we pray to God, we pray according to Christ: be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). We are at the tomb of our Savior; before us is the universal Sacrifice offered on Calvary for our reconciliation with God. What should a minister of the Church tell Christians about here, if not about: “make your peace with God, make your peace with God”?... But here it is not enough to just broadcast.... At the sight of such a great Sacrifice, it is necessary to even pray to them, to pray on behalf of the Lord himself, who died on the cross for their reconciliation with God, and on behalf of the Heavenly Father himself, who “was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). “According to Christ we pray” to you, brothers, “as I pray to God with us, we pray according to Christ: be reconciled to God.” Look at what it cost our dearest Redeemer the great work of reconciling us with the eternal righteousness of God. How much of His deepest self-sacrifice was revealed here for us sinners, His boundless goodness and love for the human race! For this reason, He, the King of kings and Lord of lords, “the angels do not dare to look upon him,” was not ashamed to take upon Himself the image of a slave, the image of the last and most unworthy of slaves, who angered Him with his disobedience and self-will. For this, He, the “God of glory” (Psalm 28:3) and the “God of all joy” (2 Cor. 1:3), deigned to lower Himself to the extreme degree of humiliation, and voluntarily, “instead of the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, being careless for our shame” (Heb. 12:2), “he was wounded for our sins, and was tormented.” be for our iniquities” (Is. 53:5). And what else were His greatest torments? We know the terrible power of sin; we know that the first crime of our forefather exposed all his countless descendants to an endless series of disasters; We know that every sinner will suffer forever beyond the grave for his own sins. How much did our Lord have to endure, having suffered not for just one, but for all our sins, not for one, but for all the sinners who were, are and will be on earth, and who suffered, without a doubt, in proportion to the severity of all these sins!... Oh, it was not without reason that He, the God-man, prayed to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane until he sweated blood: “My Father, if it is possible for him to eat, let him pass by from Me.” this cup,” and even before that, revealing his inner suffering to his beloved disciples, he said: “My soul is sorrowful unto death” (Matthew 26:38-39)! It was not without reason that He, filled with unbearably sorrowful feelings, could not help but cry out with a “great voice” on the cross: “My God, My God, you have forsaken Me everywhere” (Matthew 27:46). His torment was such as no one has endured since the ages and no one will endure, either in time or in eternity. These were the “diseases of hell” (Psalm 17:6), which were equal to the eternal torment of every single descendant of the fallen Adam. Notice what this extraordinary Sacrifice cost for the Heavenly Father himself. It is sad for us to see the suffering and sorrow of our neighbor; the more tragic the closer the sufferer is to our hearts; the more unfortunate we are, the more confident we are of his innocence; the more regrettable it is, the stronger and deeper his suffering and grief. What was it like for the heavenly Father to see his only begotten and only Son (and what father or mother can love his child so endlessly?...), what was it like for the Father to see “the Son of his love” in reproach and ulcer “belittled and dishonored more than all the sons of men” (Is. 53:3)? What was it like for Him to see this Man of sickness and sorrow, the holiest of holies, suffering and enduring the most unbearable torment, to see His most blasphemous death on the cross, and to hear His last astonishing cry, forced by the weight of torment, from which heaven and earth shook? Meanwhile, all this happened by the will of the Father himself. He himself did not spare his beloved Son; He himself gave Him up for us to torment and death, and completely “thou shalt commit sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be God’s righteousness in Him” (2 Cor. 5:20); He himself poured out the whole cup of his wrath on Him, so that “through Him he might reconcile us to himself, having pacified us through the blood of His cross, whether on earth or in heaven” (Col. 1:20). Oh, in truth, “the Lord is good to everyone, and His compassion is in all His works” (Psalm 144:9): but to whom and when was He so good as to us – unworthy, when “reconciled” us “to yourself in the body of the flesh” of your Son “by His death” (Col. 1:22)? “You see,” you see, “what kind of love the Father has given us, that we may be called children of God and become” (1 John 3:1)! Is this the kind of Sacrifice offered by the Son of God to reconcile us with the eternal Truth? Is this the kind of Sacrifice offered for this purpose by the Heavenly Father himself, which will not touch our hearts and will not move us to the gracious invocation of the Trinitarian? Will we refuse to answer Him in that great matter that concerns us and our eternal salvation? And how much is required of us here?... For this, Christ the Savior had to suffer and die on the cross; The Heavenly Father had to slay his beloved Son; and for you and me, beloved brother, it is enough to cry out to the most merciful Lord, like the prodigal son: “Father, those who have sinned in heaven and before You” - cry out from the depths of the heart, with sincere contrition for our iniquities and with a firm, unshakable determination to live holy - and we are already forgiven, we are already reconciled with God... Oh, yes, everyone speaks these short words of us with the spirit of true repentance at the tomb of the Divine Sufferer! May every sinner now make this small sacrifice of himself to please the One Who voluntarily deigned to become the universal Sacrifice! “According to Christ we pray” to you, brothers, “as I pray to God with us, we pray according to Christ: be reconciled to God.” Amen. You might be interested in: