НЕДЕЛЯ 9-Я ПО ПЯТИДЕСЯТНИЦЕ

About the miracle of the Lord's walking on the Sea of ​​Galilee At one time, Jesus Christ commanded His disciples to get into a boat and sail to the opposite side of Lake Galilee. Obedient to the voice of their Teacher, the apostles sailed away from the shore, but He Himself remained on the shore to pray alone. It was already dark, and Jesus Christ still did not return to the disciples. The apostles had already reached the middle of the sea, a strong wind was blowing towards them, the sea was agitated, and raging waves beat directly into their boat. Morning came, and suddenly the disciples saw the Savior walking on the water towards them. Amazed by this miracle, they were embarrassed and, mistaking the Savior for a ghost, they were afraid. But Jesus Christ told them: “Calm down, it is I, and do not be afraid!” Then the Apostle Peter exclaimed: Lord! if it is You, then command me to come to You on the water. “Go,” said the Savior (cf. Matthew 14:28–29). And Peter, getting out of the boat, went to Jesus Christ. Faith in the Omnipotence of the Son of God initially supported him, so that he walked unhindered on the waves of the sea. But a strong gust of wind prompted him to pay attention to the depths of the sea and gave rise to his fear that he might drown. As soon as he doubted God’s help, he began to drown and cried out in fear: Lord! save me. Jesus Christ immediately extended his hand to him and said: You of little faith! Why did you doubt? (cf. Matthew 14:30–31). With these words, the Savior, together with the Apostle Peter, entered the boat with the disciples. The apostles marveled at what they saw and, approaching Jesus Christ, bowed down, saying to Him: “Truly You are the Son of God!” (Matthew 14:33) Who among us has not been in various kinds of dangers? Who has not suffered sorrows and disasters that even threatened to take their lives? But do we ourselves act as the Apostle Peter did at a dangerous moment in his life? Do we resort to calling on the saving name of God when we are in danger and do not see a quick deliverance ahead from the disasters that have befallen us? Do we humble ourselves under the strong hand of God in the dark and difficult days of temptation? What a pity that some, instead of humbly praying to the Lord for help, instead of complacently enduring the misfortune that has befallen them, torment themselves with anger and vexation and even indulge in disastrous despair. Indeed, such people aggravate their sorrowful state and deprive themselves of the saving hope of speedy deliverance. If anyone suffers in you, says the holy Apostle James, let him pray (James 5:13). Indeed, prayer pronounced with faith and hope has great power. It is always useful to a Christian, and especially in times of anger and adversity, when a formidable cloud of disasters has broken over us, sent to us either through the punishing hand of a formidable Judge, or at the suggestion and action of the culprit of all evil - the devil. In fact, where and from where can an unfortunate sufferer get help and consolation? Our friends for the most part remain faithful and devoted to us only in the bright days of our prosperity, and in times of trouble and misfortune they most often leave us to our fate. Even if we have friends who are ready to help us, they often do not have the strength and means to save us from troubles; in other cases we need special, non-human help. The Lord is the only refuge and strength in our misfortunes, the only Helper in the sorrows that befall us. There is no grief in which the Lord cannot comfort us; There is no such trouble that the Heavenly Father would refuse to help us with. He hears and graciously accepts every movement of our heart and is ready to provide timely help to all who call on Him in truth. He unexpectedly and unexpectedly for people puts their sorrow into joy and their sorrow into joy. In this regard, the Holy Great Martyr Eustathius can serve as an example for us. He was a Roman commander, had enormous wealth, and many slaves. But grief after grief, trouble after trouble began to haunt him, so that from a rich man he became poor, and from a happy family man he became lonely. Unkind people robbed his houses and took away his property; wild animals carried away his two sons, and finally, to top off his misfortunes, robbers took away his good and pious wife. But even amid such terrible and seemingly irreparable disasters, Eustathius did not despair, did not lose his comforting faith in the Lord Provider and hope in His mercy. “I cry as a man, Lord,” he said, “but in You, my Provider and Builder of my path, I am affirmed, and I trust in You, and with Your love, like cold dew, and with Your desire, like sweetness, I delight the sorrow of my troubles.” Some time passed, and he was consoled: he found his wife and children miraculously preserved, became rich again and became noble. Thus, in difficult circumstances we must not forget the One on whom our whole life depends. So, in the most hopeless situation there is no need to despair, but to ask and pray, for, as Saint Demetrius of Rostov says, “the leader of good receipt is petition, and prayer is the intercessor.” Much in life depends on our faith The miraculous journey of the Apostle Peter across the sea shows us what extraordinary works pious and courageous faith can accomplish in a person if it does not weaken in its action, and how much in our life in general depends on the strength of faith or its weakness. The general side of the phenomenon of the Apostle Peter walking on the sea is not that it was an exceptional case in his life, and he decided to do this only because he saw his Teacher walking on water. The general side of the phenomenon is that the Apostle, carrying in his soul the determination of faith, walked with it unharmed in the midst of danger, but when he began to lose heart, he began to perish and was supported only by the direct help of the Savior in a moment of extremity. It was not a storm of water that threatened him with death, but a storm of doubtful thoughts within him, as the Holy Church puts it; just as on the water it was not the density of the water that held him, but the strength of his faith. This can be applied to everyone who is called to walk the path of faith. On the other hand, cases of such a predicament in which the Apostle Peter found himself can be encountered in the moral life of everyone. These cases are different. In one of the liturgical songs, the Holy Church compares the position of drowning Peter with the position of a man drowned by the abyss of sins, and puts a prayer into the mouth of this latter, where he asks Christ the Savior to give him a helping hand, as he once did to Peter. He who sleeps in sinful self-forgetfulness and does not at all think of getting out of this situation, obviously cannot be compared here: he does not fight the danger, but directly becomes its victim. But when a person, realizing his disastrous situation, begins to break out, so to speak, and take the high path of repentant faith, it is immediately revealed to him how many more difficulties he will need to overcome and how much he will have to struggle with himself in order to finally come completely to the Savior. And then sometimes he has to see himself in great extremes: previous skills, acquired inclinations, the germs of sinful impulses hidden in the soul - all this outrages the bright mood of his faith and agitates an uncontrollable storm in his soul. In these difficult moments, a person is busy not with the strength of character to restrain the impulses of passion in the soul and attune it to the silence of faith, but with somehow holding on and not completely destroying the good beginning. Of course, if he succeeds in this, he will gradually receive the power to pacify the movements of passions. In one of the songs, the Church calls the real life of a person “the sea of ​​life,” which is agitated by “storms of adversity,” that is, various sorrows and vicissitudes, although here, too, the main fault is the same general misfortune of sin that has befallen the human race. Everyday sorrows are experienced by all of us, but most often and most strongly those people who consciously, for moral purposes, begin to struggle with this captivating movement of accidents have to experience them. Trying to follow the firm and straight path of pleasing God and to rise above the seductive lures of life, a person finds trouble for himself in the very thing that at first flattered him with the hope of earthly pleasure; enters into inevitable clashes with people who unsuccessfully sought to lure him into a criminal commonwealth, suffers various hardships in life, failures, and finally, deliberate temptations sent by God to test him. Here again, sometimes a person has to see himself in a difficult situation when, according to the word of the Psalmist, his soul disappears (cf. Ps. 107:5) in sorrows and his very faith begins to waver: this happens in moments of some strong, unexpected misfortunes, as they say, blows of fate; This also happens among small everyday troubles and anxieties, which, sometimes accumulating around a person, exhaust his patience in their multitude and, like small, quickly moving waves, cause the strength of his constancy to fluctuate. Finally, there are times when a person has thoughts that are actually “dubious,” i.e. thoughts of doubt regarding certain objects of faith. They appear at a time when a person has finally established his convictions in obedience to faith and has consciously assimilated its suggestions to himself, they appear in exactly the same way as in moral terms - the good rules of life accepted into the soul sometimes slip away from attention, and in their place old bad aspirations abandoned by the person arise, challenging him to fight against them. But most of all, a person suffers from a tormenting spirit of doubt when, although he has already acquired a general consciousness of the dignity of truth, he has not yet properly assimilated its particular content; in a word, when his convictions, as they say, are still in a transitional state. In all these cases, the only way for a person to preserve the spirit of faith in himself and preserve the last remnants of it is to turn to the Savior with a prayer for help and express to Him the extremity of his situation: He is always close and ready to give quick assistance to a person who is falling in spirit, to impart a new, strong excitement to his faith. Sincere, even brief, prayer in this case is a very important matter; consciousness of the lack of one’s faith can replace the strength of faith itself, because it will serve as its own feasible expression. We have many bad habits, customs, and rituals left over from ancient times, when our ancestors were still pagans. But what is characteristic of pagans is indecent for us Christians. For example, many of us suffer from a fear of ghosts. They are afraid to be alone in the room at night, they are afraid even to leave the house on a dark night; in every dark corner they see a monster. And in those places where a dead man lay a few days ago, or when passing through a cemetery at night, such fear knows no bounds. Also, how much timidity and fear they experience when entering a forest or some secluded place! “Fear has big eyes,” says the Russian proverb; therefore, the slightest noise or rustle in a secluded place, especially at night, an echo in the forest, the shadow of a tree shaken by the wind - all this brings the soul into an indescribable shudder. That is why it often happens that they see extraordinary phenomena where in reality they do not exist at all. This fear of ghosts, common to many adults, is often passed on to children. It even happens that others themselves, perhaps, do not have a superstitious fear and do not believe in ghosts or apparitions, but they often scare children with them. Wanting to calm down a crying child, they point him to a dark corner, threatening that a monster will come out of there, or often in the evenings they entertain children with stories about various ghosts that allegedly appeared to people. All this greatly inflames the child’s already ardent imagination and roots a superstitious fear in his soul, from which he then cannot get rid of it throughout his entire life. Such people are for the most part cowardly and indecisive; they are unable to undertake any difficult feats or to face the dangers and hardships of life with courage. These are the harmful consequences that superstitious fear leads to. And in general, the fear of some kind of ghosts is indecent for a Christian. After all, this is a remnant of the religious beliefs of our pagan ancestors. They believed that the souls of dead people wander like shadows both in the cemetery and in the places where these people lived; they believed in countless spirits living in houses and stables, in forests and swamps, rivers and lakes; They believed that all these creatures could harm a person when they met, and therefore were in slavish fear of them. It is these errors of our ancestors that have passed on to us Christians. This is why we are afraid of various brownies, goblins and are afraid of ghosts. But how unforgivable is this superstitious fear for a Christian! Think carefully about what a Christian can be afraid of when he is under the protection and providence of the Omniscient, All-Good and Almighty God! Each of us can say with the prophet David: The Lord is my enlightenment and my Savior, whom will I fear? The Lord is the Protector of my life, from whom shall I fear? Even if a regiment takes up arms against me, my heart will not fear, even if it rises up to fight me, I will trust in Him (see: Ps. 27:1-3). If there is anyone a Christian can be afraid of, it is evil spirits, but even they, without God’s permission, cannot cause him the slightest harm. Moreover, it is also in our power to remove evil spirits from ourselves. God has given us reliable means against the devil: prayer, fasting and a virtuous life. After all, demons have power over unbelieving and vicious people. The holy martyr Tryphon at a young age healed illnesses and cast out demons. The Roman Emperor Gordian, from whose daughter the holy martyr cast out a demon, wished to see the cast out demon with his own eyes. Saint Tryphon commanded the demon to appear, and everyone saw him in the form of a black dog with fiery eyes. The holy martyr asked the demon: “Who sent you to become a young woman?” The demon answered: “The Father, the ruler of all evil, who sits in hell.” “Who gave you such power?” – asked Saint Tryphon. The demon answered: “We have no power over those who know God and believe in the Only Begotten Son of God, only, by God’s permission, we inflict light temptations on them; and we have complete power over those who do not believe in God, walk in their own lusts and do what pleases us; the things that are pleasing to us are: idolatry, blasphemy, adultery, envy, murder, and so on. These people are entangled in sins like nets; they are our friends, and their fate awaits us alone.” So, if you want, Christian, not to be afraid of evil spirits, then lead a godly and pious life. As for the fear of the dead, this fear is also unfounded. Our faith teaches that the souls of fathers and brothers who have departed from us find rest in the places assigned to them by God, and do not at all wander through cemeteries or former dwellings. True, dead people live a special life in the next world; they can, by the will of God, appear to us sinners on earth. But what’s so terrible if our close relatives appear to us in a dream? Apart from joy and consolation, such phenomena will not bring us anything. There are many examples of how not only saints, but also sinners appeared to those living on earth to admonish them and assure them of a future life, and these phenomena did not arouse in people such superstitious fear as many of us feel from some imaginary ghosts in cemeteries. Let us give one story from our national history. In 1812, our Fatherland suffered a terrible disaster: hordes of enemies led by Napoleon moved into Russia and caused terrible devastation along the way. And so, when Napoleon captured Moscow, Prince Eugene, the Italian Viceroy, set out with a detachment of troops from Moscow to Zvenigorod. He occupied rooms in the monastery of St. Savva of Storozhevsky, a disciple of St. Sergius of Radonezh. About ten o'clock, without undressing, the prince lay down and fell asleep, but in reality or in a dream, he does not know, he sees a man in long black clothes entering the room, coming up to him so close that he could see his facial features in the moonlight; he seemed old, with a gray beard. This man said: “Do not order your army to plunder the monastery, especially to carry away anything from the church; if you fulfill my request, then God will have mercy on you and you will return home safe and sound.” The prince gave the order in the morning for the detachment to return to Moscow, and he himself went to church and, at the shrine of St. Savva, saw the image of the one who appeared to him at night, and, having learned whose image it was, he reverently bowed to the relics and wrote it down in his book. All of Napoleon's other military leaders ended their lives unsuccessfully, but Eugene remained unharmed and was not wounded anywhere in the battles after that. He bequeathed to his son Maximilian that if he were in Russia, he would venerate the relics of St. Sava. The son came to Russia in 1839 under Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich and after maneuvers on the Borodino field he asked where the monastery of St. Savva was, came there and bowed to the saint. The appearance of dead people, especially the righteous, is so beneficial for us living on earth! Judge for yourself after this, is there any reason to be afraid of the dead?! If sometimes dead people appear in a dream, they will not be able to cause us harm, but will only bring benefit, that is, they will convince us of the truth of the immortality of our souls, convict us of sin and guide us on the path of truth. Therefore, such phenomena should be treasured and not feared. The ancient Jews had a proverb: “God created seven lakes in the land of Canaan, but He chose only one—the Lake of Galilee—for Himself.” The Jews said so because this lake lies in an area that, both in terms of climate and the beauty of nature, could in ancient times be called an earthly paradise. Palm trees, fig trees, all kinds of nuts, oranges, lemons, dates, almonds and grapes grew here in abundance. It was a continuous garden for fifty miles along the course of the Jordan and along the shores of the lake, which is about 25 miles long and 7 to 10 miles wide. Fruits on the trees here could be seen for ten whole months of the year. The warm, almost hot climate was cooled by the proximity and abundance of water, and the air was full of the aroma of gardens. That is why the shores of the Sea of ​​Galilee were very densely populated: cities and villages stretched here almost without interruption, and Roman warships, clumsy fishing boats, and gilded ships from Herod’s palace, which stood in Tiberias on the very shore of the lake, glided in all directions along its transparent waves. Yes, it was an earthly paradise, which is why the Jews said that God chose Lake Galilee for Himself. But for us Christians, this Jewish proverb has a completely different – ​​deeper meaning; we have more reason to say that the Lord chose this lake-sea for Himself; we know that our Lord Jesus Christ loved the surroundings of this lake, loved to stay here, loved to talk with the people here and pray in the silence of the night... How many miracles of mercy He performed here! Here, on the northern shores of the Sea of ​​Galilee, was the humble Bethsaida - the homeland of the first-called apostles - Andrew, Peter (Simon) and Philip. Here He called Simon and Andrew, the sons of Jonah, and then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, to great apostolic service and from simple village fishermen made them great theologians and fishers of men. Here, from the boat, He taught the crowds of people standing on the shore, and here for the first time people heard His divinely simple and deeply instructive parables about the sower, about the cast-out net, and many others. Here, above these waves, His divine prohibition to the stormy wind was heard: be silent, stop! and there was great silence... (Mark 4:39). One night a boat with His disciples was sailing on this lake, and now they see in the darkness of the night: their Divine Teacher is walking on these waves, as if on dry land, they see and do not believe their eyes; Thinking that it was a ghost, they cried out in fear... But the Lord gives them His encouraging voice: “Be of good cheer, I am, do not be afraid!” “Then the fiery Apostle Peter volunteers to go to meet Him. The Lord allows it, and now Simon walks on the water, but he walks with unsteady feet: seeing the wind strong, he was afraid and began to drown, crying out, saying: Lord, save me! (Matthew 14:30). And the Lord extends his hand to him, that merciful hand that still helps us, sinners, in our difficult voyage across the sea of ​​life, raised by misfortunes and storms... More than once, here, according to the word of Christ, fishermen-apostles retrieved miraculously filled ponds after they had worked all night in vain: what an instructive lesson for all workers, that without God’s help they work in vain, which means that all work requires God’s blessing and God’s help! On the shores of this lake was Capernaum, called in scripture the city of the Savior - that Capernaum to which the Lord spoke a terrible word: and you, Capernaum, who ascended to heaven, will descend to hell! (Luke 10:15). And this terrible saying came true: there are no more traces of Capernaum, and scientists argue about the very place where it was located. And there, on the eastern shore, rises a steep cliff: when looking at it, one involuntarily recalls the story of the healing of a demoniac, which ended with a huge herd of Gadarene pigs rushing from this cliff into the sea and dying in its waves. It is difficult to count all the memories of our Savior dear to the heart of a Christian, connected with the name of the Sea of ​​Galilee. The Lord loved this lake and was pleased to appear on its shores to His disciples after His luminous Resurrection. What a wonderful, touching picture! Early morning; It’s still dark, it’s barely starting to get light. Tired fishermen-apostles swim to the shore after a sleepless night and futile labors. Their nets are empty... But a Man is visible on the shore. Who would it be?.. “Children! - heard from the shore, - do you have anything edible? “No,” they answer sadly (John 21:5). Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will catch it (cf. John 21:6), says the One who appeared. They cast and can barely drag from the multitude of fish. This involuntarily reminds them of the previous, wonderful fishing, and John’s loving heart tells him who it is standing on the shore. This is the Lord (John 21:7), John whispers to Peter, and the ardent-hearted Peter quickly girds himself with clothes, throws himself into the water, swims across a space of fifty fathoms and, all wet, falls at the feet of Jesus... Meanwhile, the other disciples are sailing on a boat, dragging a tightly stretched net filled with fish... And on the shore there was already a fire, there was bread, and fish was already being baked on the burning coals for the tired fishermen. The Lord tells them to bring the fish they just caught. Peter went and with his strong hands helped to pull the net ashore, which contained 153 large fish. Now everyone saw that it was the Lord... “Come here and have lunch!” - He told them. And silently they reclined around the Lord and began to dine. And at this meal the Lord asks Simon three times: Simon of Jonas, do you love Me more than these? (John 21:15). And three times the humble Apostle confesses his love for the Lord, and with this three-fold confession he atones for his three-fold renunciation... The shores of the sacred Lake of Gennesaret are now deserted. With the exception of the small town of Tiberias and the wild village of El Majel - ancient Magdala (the birthplace of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene), there is not a single inhabited place on its shores. There are no more luxurious gardens. On the eastern shore there are exposed rocks, cut by gloomy ravines. For a long time, no boat has glided across the waters of the lake and is not revived by the movement of this dead desert. Only in the middle of the lake stretches a light silvery ribbon of the fast Jordan, which flows into the lake in the north, cuts it from north to south and continues its flow further to the Dead Sea. Everywhere the same palm trees, the same green fields and babbling streams; only next to them the gray heaps of ruins look gloomily... 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