Поучение в неделю перед Богоявлением («Глас вопиющего в пустыне: приготовьте путь Господу, прямыми сделайте стези Ему» (Мк. 1:3))

The voice that cried in the wilderness is heard in cities, preached in churches and proclaimed throughout all the heavens. It penetrates the ears of people great and small, old and young, rich and poor. He terrifies the souls of those who sit on high thrones and pierces the hearts of those who are below in the rot. The voice that cried out in the desert crushes the cedars of Lebanon, shakes the Qaddian oak groves and compares the high mountains and hills with the valleys. It is not in vain that Saint Mark is depicted with a lion, for in the first conception of his Gospel he brought a roaring lion out of the desert, Saint John, the Forerunner of Christ, who menacingly exhorts everyone, saying: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” The psalmist excites people to listen to his call, exclaiming: Now, “if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Ps. 95:7–8). Let us incline our ears to listen to this voice, and not only to listen, but also to obedience, in order to do in deed what this voice commands us. He commands that we arrange and prepare a “straight path” by which the Lord could come to us and we to the Lord. Let us seek this “straight path” or, better yet, learn to correct our crooked paths in this conversation into the right paths, “with the Lord’s assistance and the strengthening of the word” (Mark 16:20). First of all, we need to prepare the way for the Lord coming to us, according to the advice of the Forerunner: “Prepare,” he said, “the way for the Lord.” When a city, even an insignificant one, faces the coming of a king, the citizens try in every possible way to ensure that the path to them is good. They prepare and straighten the path: where there is tightness, they widen it; where there is swamp, there they build bridges. They level the heights of the hills, fill the depths of the valleys, and they turn everything unpleasant into a smooth path. When the king approaches, they open the city gates, go out to meet his coming, joyfully receive, worship and bring gifts. Our Lord, our God, for whom we are a city, wants to come to us. He is already close, and there is an urgent need to correct and prepare His way for us, for there are many obstacles on our path. There is crowding, that is, oppression of our conscience by our evil and cursed life. There are hills - proud thoughts, words and deeds, there are wilds of despair. How swampy is the swamp of our sewage? More than one complains with David: “I am mired in deep mire, and have nothing to stand on” (Ps. 68:3). All our paths are full of obstacles, not smooth, not comfortable, and, worst of all, there are no gates to our city of heart through which the Lord could enter our inner dwellings. For where there was a gate, there we created a stone wall of our bitterness and blocked the entrance of our Lord. So, let’s correct all this and prepare for our Lord’s coming to us, as the Forerunner commands: “Prepare,” he says, “the way of the Lord.” And how to prepare, he teaches and instructs, saying: “Let every valley be filled, and every mountain and hill be made low, the crooked places made straight, and the rough paths made smooth” (Luke 3:5), that is, let every inconvenience and obstacle be removed. And the apostle advises: “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and crying and slander be put away from you, along with all malice” (Eph. 4:31). The conscience is cramped, filled with all sorts of obstacles. In an evil conscience it is impossible to be in spiritual space, and not a single good thought can fit there - it is cramped for it. From this heart (that is, from an evil conscience, for the heart is the house of conscience), from this house “come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemy” (Matthew 15:19). They come from the heart because they are born in the heart, and where all the indicated evil is, there is little space for a good thing. It is hard for the good seed to be in the midst of thorns, for the thorns, having grown, suppress it. It is hard for a sheep to be among wolves, for the wolves will tear it to pieces. The chaste Susanna fell into the hands of the lawless elders, she sighed and said: “I am cramped on all sides” (Dan. 13:22). It is just as difficult for all that is good to be where all evil is born and from where it comes, and even more so for our King, Christ God, to come there and be there. This Heavenly Seed cannot fit among the thorns of our earthly lusts. The Lamb of God cannot live among our bestial malice. The Source of purity and chastity will not want to be with the bad deeds that have become old in us and will shake our dust from His holy feet, saying: “Behold, your house is left to you empty” (Matthew 23:38). So, it is necessary to expand this tightness of conscience. If this thorn is sinful, let it be plucked out by confession and burned with penitential satisfaction for sin. If they are ravenous wolves, let them be driven out by the rod of the fear of God; if they are old passions, let them be killed by self-mortification, and let every unevenness be smoothed out, for a good conscience and a pure heart can without embarrassment contain all the immeasurable greatness and space of heaven together with God, as St. Macarius of Egypt says: “The heart is a small vessel, but it receives in themselves all things: there is God, there are Angels, there is life and the kingdom, there are heavenly abodes, there are treasures of grace.” The hills and mountains of our proud thoughts, words and deeds hinder Christ’s coming to us, for the humble Christ does not come there, where there is exalted pride, according to the words of Scripture: “Everyone who is proud is abominable to the Lord” (Prov. 16:5) - for, according to the Apostle, “What fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? What does light have in common with darkness? What agreement is there between Christ and Belial? (2 Cor. 6:14–15). Pride is darkness and veliar. “Beliar” is interpreted as “blind luminary,” as if to say that he looks, but does not see. A proud person does not know himself: he considers himself bright, but in reality he is gloomy. He considers himself better than many, but in reality he is worse than everyone. He imagines himself going to heaven, while he is going to the abyss. How can Christ, our Light, live with such blind darkness, which considers itself light, without being it? Christ could not live with Belial even in heaven: He overthrew the proud, so how can He come to earth to live with him, that is, with a proud man? What agreement can there be between the humble Christ and the proud Belial? Belial, that is, the demonic pride that exists in man, is like that mountain remembered in the Divine Scripture, called Gilboa, on which “neither rain nor dew descends from heaven” and which was cursed by Saint David, since Saul and his three sons were killed on it by foreigners (see 2 Samuel 1:21; 1 Samuel 31:2). Likewise, the rain and dew of God’s grace does not fall on the proud, for Christ is crucified and killed by pride. Who hated Christ who walked in the flesh on earth? Proud princes and teachers of Jerusalem: “Did any of the rulers believe in Him?” (John 7:48). They began to be angry against Him. Who betrayed Christ to death? A proud Jewish synagogue, considering itself holy, but considering Christ a sinner: “We know that this man is a sinner” (John 9:24). Who crucified Christ? Proud Pilate. So, pride is cursed by God, like Mount Gilboa was by David, so that the dew of God’s grace and the rain of God’s mercy would not fall on it. Christ will not come there where he will see the mountain of Belial pride. So, let the mountain and hill of pride that has risen within us be humbled, let it be equal to the valley of humility. It can only be humbled by unearthing it. You need to dig it up with the hoe with which you dig a grave, that is, with the memory of death: “Remember your death” (Sir. 7:39). Nothing humbles a person more than the memory of death. Understanding this well, Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria (November 12), ordered that a coffin be built for himself, but not in a finished form, and he told the craftsmen that on all special holidays they should come to him and loudly say in front of everyone: “Your coffin, Vladyka, has not yet been finished, but order it to be finished, for death comes like a thief, and you do not know at what hour it will come.” This is how Saint John reminded himself of death and always prepared for death. If, in the same way, the mountains and hills of our pride are dug up with a shovel of sepulchral memory and leveled with low humility, then the path to us will become convenient for our Lord. Another obstacle to the coming of the Lord to us is the deep abyss of despair, for when the wicked comes into the depths of evil, he begins to be careless and, despairing of the mercy of God, falls into an even deeper abyss of lawlessness. This abyss must be filled with hope for God’s mercy, remembering what great evil befell Judas for despair, for Judas sinned more by despairing than by selling Christ. During the free suffering of the Lord, two fell away from the Lord - Judas and Peter: one sold Him, and the other denied Him three times. Both committed an equal sin, both sinned gravely, but Peter was saved and Judas perished. Why weren’t both saved and why weren’t both killed? Someone will say that Peter was saved by repentance. But the Holy Gospel says that Judas also repented: “Judas, having repented, returned the thirty pieces of silver to the high priests and elders, saying: “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matthew 27:3-4) - however, his repentance was not accepted, but Peter’s was accepted: Peter was saved, and Judas perished. Why is this so? But because Peter repented with hope and hope for the mercy of God, but Judas repented with despair. This abyss is terrible! Without a doubt, it needs to be filled with hope for God’s mercy. Pride is an evil thing, despair is also bad, and both need to be smoothed out and equalized: pride needs to be excavated like a mountain, despair needs to be raised and filled like an abyss. In "Fatherland" we read the following. There was a certain virtuous man who, being confused either by pride or despair, invented such a prudent cunning. In his inner room, inaccessible to anyone, he wrote on one wall all his sins, which happened to him, as a man, to anger God, and, in addition, he depicted the Last Judgment of God, depicted how God menacingly judges sinners and sends them to fiery hell. On the other wall he wrote his good deeds, done with repentance and tears, depicted how a merciful father accepts the prodigal son returning to him, as well as how Christ forgives all the sins of the sinful wife crying at His feet and opens paradise to the thief. When he was overcome by a proud thought, he went to the wall on which he wrote his sins, and, reading them, looked at the Last Judgment, reproached himself and condemned himself as a sinner worthy of fiery hell, humbled himself in thought, cried and sobbed, beating his breasts. When the opposite thought came, the thought of despair, he turned to the wall of his good deeds and to thinking about God’s great mercy, which all human sins cannot overcome. In this way he drove away despair, strengthening himself in hope in the Lord. The demons, unable to tolerate such a prudent invention and act of his, appeared to him in reality and said: “We don’t know how to fight you, for when we raise you to heaven, you descend to hell, and when we lower you to hell, you ascend to heaven.” Here we see how that virtuous man humbled the mountain of pride, filled the valley of despair, leveled the mountain with an abyss and the abyss with a mountain. If, like him, we always do the same in our minds, if we fill every abyss, if we humble every mountain and hill, then we will arrange for our Lord a smooth and good path to us. The considerable swamp of our uncleanness also creates an obstacle to the coming of our Lord to us. Let us dry it with abstinence, and pave the bridge with alms. “Give,” he says, “alms, then everything will be clean for you” (Luke 11:41). Alms cleanses everything, and therefore sins. We will crush the wall of our bitterness with tenderness, hitting the chest like a publican. Let us open wide the gates of our hearts with our love and zeal for the Lord, and then the King of glory will come and enter us and reign in our spiritual city. Having thus prepared the way for our Lord to come to us, we will also, at the command of the Forerunner, make his paths straight. This means that the path along which we will march towards Him must be straight in us, and not crooked. Simply put, we must not be led astray or astray from the straight path. God-inspired men have useful advice: to follow the royal path, not deviating either to the right or to the left, for both are not comfortable. To deviate to the left, to the side of the goats who will stand to the left in court, is an obvious disaster. To deviate to the right, that is, to think that you are doing something virtuous, is an unexpected, hidden misfortune. After all, our enemy is fighting against us both on the right and on the left. It is not surprising that he fights on the left, since he himself is a leftist, but what is surprising is that he also fights on the right, although he himself is alien to the right. It is not surprising, I say, that the devil tempts a person with sin, but what is surprising is that he seduces and leads us into virtue, for where he cannot overcome us with the left, he overcomes us with the right, and where he cannot defeat us with sins, he overcomes us with good deeds. Whomever he cannot defeat with impurity, he defeats with purity, having implanted in his mind the pride of purity. This enemy’s cunning was seen by Saint John Climacus, who says: “The fox pretends to be asleep, and the demon pretends to be chaste (that is, a pure person), the first - in order to grab a chicken, the second - in order to destroy the soul. It’s not a pity if someone goes to hell for impurity, but it’s a pity to go to fiery Gehenna with purity.” If the devil cannot defeat someone by overeating or drunkenness, then he will conquer by fasting, like those about whom the Gospel says: “They take on gloomy faces in order to appear to people as fasting. This is not the fast I have chosen, says the Lord” (Matthew 6:16; Isaiah 5:6). It is not surprising that a drunkard and a glutton will go to torment, but it is surprising and worthy of pity that a highly intelligent faster will not escape the same torment. It is not surprising that an overweight carnivore with a fat belly cannot squeeze into the narrow gates of heaven, but it is surprising and worthy of pity that a withered, exhausted body with long abstinence, barely having skin on his bones, will not squeeze in, will not enter the gates of heaven. The sinner will not enter because he is a sinner, and the righteous will not enter because he is highly intelligent and considers himself virtuous. That is why the Pritotnik says: “There is a way that seems right to people, but its consequences will lead to the bottom of hell” (Proverbs 4:12). So, a person needs to be careful not to deviate to the left, that is, into sinful delights, and not to deviate to the right, that is, to unnecessary, extremely severe feats, and not to come to pride. You need to follow the royal path, that is, a moderate life, moderate virtue. Saint Chrysostom gives a decent example or image of this: “When the burden of the righteous is too heavy, the boat sinks; when it is moderate, it floats safely. Our life is truly like sailing: the world is like the sea; body like a boat; the soul in the body is like a swimmer in a boat; things are the same as any cargo. If the boat is empty, the wind will rise and the boat will soon capsize in waves. If it is burdened beyond measure, then it is close to drowning even when there is no wind or waves; when the wind and waves rise, it will immediately sink. Only by investing in the boat can you sail without worry.” Think the same about exploits. If you have no good deeds, you will fall into the abyss of temptation. If you begin to lift a burden above your strength, you will soon be overwhelmed by exhaustion or pride. If you work and strive to the best of your ability, you will remain free from disasters. Know that the royal path is moderate exploits, a moderate life and a clear conscience. Thus, little by little, from virtue to virtue, you will ascend to heaven like a ladder and will be in paradise. So, walking this way, we will exclaim with Saint John the Baptist: May our Lord and our God put us on the path of repentance and may we be worthy to stand on the right hand forever. Amen.