Word for the fifteenth week

Drawing your mind and heart to the words of the Lord, imprinted in His St. In the Gospels, we find in them, in the source of Divine Wisdom, inexhaustible and always new content and teaching. In them, as in the deep blue of the sky, new stars light up for us, kindled by the Divine Thought and illuminate our life, path, and destiny before us. The words of the Lord are pure words, silver is kindled, tempted from the earth, purified by the sevenfold (Ps. 11:7). Each word of the Lord is fraught with immeasurable meaning, radiating in all directions, and individual rays of this meaning illuminate our soul. It is impossible to sufficiently interpret or exhaust the Eternal Book, but one can and should always fall before its life-giving waters. Such stars of eternal life, visible to the naked eye, burn and sparkle in the now revered Gospel: (Matthew 22:35–40). The lawyer wanted to tempt the Lord with a question about the greatest commandment in the law. His thought was double-minded and insincere: he thought in advance that no matter how the Lord answered him, he would object to Him and argue with Him, but this means that he himself did not know such a greatest commandment, and could not know it, because to him, a lawyer, all commandments seemed equally important and greatest. Violation of the law in any commandment was considered equally disastrous. And the law of Moses contained ritual, moral, and social decrees, and to them the lawyers created a fence of the law, about which the indignant prophet speaks: “They became the word of the Lord: commandment not commandment, commandment upon commandment, rule upon rule, rule upon rule, here a little and there a little” (Isa. 27:10.13). The lawyer who tempted Him wanted to draw the Lord onto this shaky ground by questioning Him. With His answer, the Lord overthrew this pathetic device. To the question posed by human cunning, the Wisdom of God responded with the word of wisdom, which exhausts all the commandments and determines the whole life of a person. Whom did the lawyer want to tempt? The One whose Word and Wisdom gave this very law and commandments for the filial education of the chosen people - “in the law of the shadow and the scriptures we see the image of faith.” And in this law, among its many and varied prescriptions, Divine Wisdom also included that commandment, which is not one of many commandments, along with all, but is the one and only all-commandment, which embraces, fills, and justifies everything. And this one commandment, although written in the law, but also, as it were, hidden among its many commandments, is indicated by the finger of Divine Wisdom Herself. This “first and greatest commandment” in combination with the “second similar to it” is such that without it all other commandments lose their meaning and become burdensome and unnecessary, as the prophet Isaiah testified to this in his sermon: “Why do I need your multitude of sacrifices?... smoking is disgusting to me, new moons and Saturdays, holiday gatherings I cannot tolerate: lawlessness and celebration... and when you stretch out your hands, I close my eyes from you; and when you multiply your prayers, I do not hear” (Isa. 1:11-15). But all these institutions were given by God, they seemed as sacred and indestructible as our current worship. And yet the Lord counted all this ritual piety into nothing for the hardness of the heart. And then our Christian conscience involuntarily begins to ask itself in confusion: could these words also apply to us, proud, perhaps, of our ritual piety? And the more intently she wants to delve into what the Lord Himself reveals as the immutable foundation of all our salvation. This commandment is simple, clear and accessible, it contains in a nutshell the whole law and all the wisdom of life, invested in us by the creative Wisdom of God: love God, love with all your being: “with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Love God whole and inseparably, with all the strength of your soul: with your heart, in which there is the focus of an indivisible spiritual life and from which good and evil thoughts emanate, and with all the feelings of your passionate human nature, which can be dedicated to God and transformed from carnal lust to spiritual life; and with all the thought, with all the powers of the knowing, understanding mind, which, stripped of satanic self-deception, becomes the “mind of Christ,” enlightened by the Holy Spirit into all truth”; and with all the strength of one’s will, which is directed not towards self-affirmation of pride and not towards fulfilling one’s lust, but towards fulfilling the will of God. No power of the human soul is detached from the love of God, and none is condemned to non-existence by this detachment, and none is killed: all God-created human nature with all the powers of the God-like spirit is called to the love of God and is blessed to it in the inseparability of the human being. And the whole life of a person, in which these gifts of his are revealed: the mind, passionate nature and will, which dominates the human heart, the seat of love, are called to the love of God. In all his life, deeds and creativity, a person must seek the love of God, create and live in the name of God, not for himself, but for the Lord. His whole life can and should become a single work of this love, no matter what it is revealed in: everything for the Lord, nothing without the Lord. Love for God is not one of the deeds or one of the tasks of a person, existing along with others, it is one single content of all life, capable of filling it all, comprehending it, sanctifying it. Everything is established on it, and nothing exists outside of it. Dedication and sanctification of all human life in all its manifestations, doing everything for the glory of God, or, even more sharply, everything for God and nothing for oneself, in one’s own name - this is the commandment, not particular, but universal, not temporary, but eternal. But this commandment fills us with confusion and fear, and we are unresponsible before it, for we know all our weakness, all our unworthiness, all our uncalledness to such a commandment. And yet they are called by God Himself, Who is Love and Wisdom. He put it into our hearts and into our entire being, not as an externally given law and prescription, but as an internal necessity rooted in the very nature of our God-created nature. For Himself, for His love, God created and called man, and the human soul cannot rest until it finds itself in the love of God. For her, spiritual life is love for God, and outside of this love there is no other life - there is only love for God, and outside of this love there is no other life, but only death. This commandment contains everything that is sublime in man, everything that is truly human in him, as the highest calling, and no other love, no other goal is unworthy of it. Only such a truly human life in the love of God is worthy of a person, and he is honored by the calling to it by the commandment of God. And only everything that is connected in life with the love of God lifts a person from a natural animal life, even where there is service to the “unknown God” after the darkening of the true knowledge. Therefore, the commandment of love for God is not an external command that could not exist; it is the inner law of the life of man, created in the image of God and called to the love of God. In it there is life and bliss, outside of it there is death and hellish torment, emptiness and insignificance. And yet, we fear the commandment of God’s love, we are embarrassed and ashamed, for we realize how it exposes our emptiness and spiritual laziness. Should we, cold, hard-hearted, calculating, and lacking in faith, heed this commandment? And yet, can we, dare we reject this commandment from ourselves? Doesn’t our heart also burn and inflame with love for the Lord when we are consumed by thoughts of Him? The nature of love is such that you can never love enough, love is insatiable, it always flares up and demands more, it never fits into the human heart, it is always not enough, it is always dissatisfied with itself, it is always lost in the emptiness of its heart. The Lord honors His creation by giving man an inconceivable commandment: love God with all the strength of your soul, be holy, for our heavenly Father is holy, be merciful, for your heavenly Father is merciful, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. They seem terrible, addressed to our emptiness, they seem strange, addressed to our insignificance, they seem inappropriate in the face of our laziness and idleness. However, why should we be afraid if these commandments are given to us by our heavenly Father? God gives us an unfulfillable commandment in order to fulfill it with His gracious power, not without us, but for us. For what is impossible for man is possible for God. There is no need to be afraid of the impossibility of human power to achieve what exceeds them, but you need to want what is possible for man. The commandment of love for God does not mean that we should accomplish within ourselves with one desire, contain this inconceivable love; it wants from us the feat of this love, its labor, its path, the struggle with our sinful, lazy, passionate, selfish, proud human nature. Tireless and non-slothful work, resistance to sin, vision and conduct of oneself in one’s sins, unceasing remembrance of God and sanctification in His name of all deeds and movements of our soul, unceasing heartfelt prayer, struggle with sinful deeds and thoughts - this is the unpayable debt of love for God. Deeds of love and the path of love indicated by St. Paul in ch. XIII 1st Cor., is our work of the Lord. Our spiritual weakness and laziness, our sinful nature resists the love of God, but this love - and a Christian must remember this - is always mutual, for he who loves or wants to love God will always recognize His reciprocal love for man. Love for God never remains unrequited and flares up with the flame of fire that the Lord came to bring to earth. Love is a miracle. But how can you love God? We can still love a person, although few, close and dear, we are attached to various goods, carnal and spiritual, because we have seen and know them. But how can we love – and with all-encompassing love – God, whom we do not see and do not know and, at best, only believe, constantly strengthening our faith in the fight against unbelief? Is it possible to love an abstract thought? And yet Truth itself knew when it proclaimed the first and greatest commandment as the exhaustive truth about life: both faith and knowledge of God are revealed to love, for both faith and hope will pass away, but love alone endures. Man is given to love God, he is called and created for this love, invested in him by God Himself along with the image of God, but he must want this love by seeking God, by doing the commandments, by devoting all his work and doing to God, by tirelessly and unremittingly exerting the forces of a vigilant spirit. And this love, like any love, exists in the image of a single love, only in it does it find its meaning and purpose. She is selfless, she seeks God only for God and not even for the sake of salvation or any spiritual benefits, for love is not self-interest. And yet the nature of this love and its power are such that it contains within itself salvation, bliss, and eternal life in the knowledge of God, for this knowledge is given only by love. Love for God is a feat of life, it is work, it is a path of ascension that knows many steps. The path is endless, and each step is as far from the highest goal as the previous one, and like a drop of water differs from the immeasurable abysses of the sea. But the path is important, the stepwise ascent is important, for the divine descent is taking place towards it, and the candle, barely flickering in the heart, is lit from the flame of Divine Love. Love for God is hatred of the world, which is in evil, a fight against it in one’s own heart, a dividing sword. And yet, love is fire, pouring out from an inflamed heart to everything within its reach. Love for God, like a kind of stormy breath, rushes to that which bears His stamp, to all of God’s creation, especially to man, the crown of creation, the image of God in him. This is only the revelation of love, its direct consequence: another commandment similar to it - similar, that is, essentially identical. It is easier and more natural for us to love a person than God, because we see a person, but we do not see God, at least in our fallen state (for our ancestors saw Him before their fall). And love for man can also be in us a path to love for God, if it is done for the Lord, and not with resistance to Him, because then it is only a disguised struggle against God. Love is inseparable and united, as is revealed at the Last Judgment, where the Lord attribute all good and evil deeds done to man directly to Himself. Loving God, it is impossible not to love a person with true, non-animal and non-passionate love, without loving him in God, without loving God in him. And this is an endless path, this is eternal life, here, in time, predetermined. And the Lord points out this same connection to the lawyer who tempted Him in the present beginning of the Gospel, when a series of questions forces him to admit that He Who is considered the son of David, but David is called, by inspiration, Lord, is God and Man (Matthew 22:41-46). And in this question lies the answer why there is such a connection between God and man and why the second commandment is similar to the first. God revealed himself to people through the incarnation of God in Christ the Savior, in whom the divine and human nature, God and Man, were inseparably and inextricably united. And loving Christ, we love in Him God in man and man in God, and this love is inseparable and unconditional, for this is also the love of God Himself - the Heavenly Father for God and together for Man, the incarnate Son of God. The Lord gives us - all together and each individually - the commandment of love, as if not noticing what we so painfully and embarrassedly notice, how unworthy we are of this commandment, how inapplicable it seems to be to the darkness and coldness of our life, to the poverty of our hearts. But the Lord, in the immensity of His love and His condescension for creation, turns His commandment precisely to us as we are, knowing and seeing us better than we ourselves. He consoles us with this call, testifying that the infinitely great exists in the infinitely small, and somehow the power of the entire ocean is present in a drop. Love Love is given faith, hope and joy in the Lord, the sweet fruit of hope. But since the commandment, when conceived, gives birth to sin, the Lord, with His commandment of love, shows us in all its strength our sin against love. He awakens in us a conscience of love, which judges us, but not only judges, but also corrects, and there is nothing that conscience needs most. Therefore, the Lord truly answered the lawyer’s question; He gave a single commandment that contained everything. May we be judged by the conscience of love before we appear before the judgment of Love, which will then say with the voice of Truth: go away, I do not know you. But let us be among those whom a demanding conscience has protected from seeing themselves and self-delusion, and who will humbly answer the call of Love: Lord, when did we see You suffering and love You?