Speeches on the communion of mentors and students of the Academy

Contents On Saturday of the 1st week of Lent, 1866 March 10 days of 1867 April 13, 1867 March 8 days of 1869 April 17, 1869 February 28, 1870 April 9, 1870 February 13, 1871 March 25, 1871 April 13 1872 February 24, 1873 April 5, 1873 February 15, 1874 On Saturday of the 1st week of Lent, 1866 Greetings to you, participants in the Lord's Table and friends of Christ! I do not take upon myself to be your teacher now. The Apostle John the Theologian wrote to the believers: You do not demand, but who are you who teach? But the anointing itself teaches you about everything. At the present time, not only should this sacred anointing speak more powerfully in you, after you have cleansed your soul by repentance, but you have received into yourself in the mystery of your communion the Lord Himself, who enlightens every person coming into the world. Let's just be careful. Let us increase our attention to ourselves and try to preserve, as long as possible, the good mood of spirit in which we received the sacrament. Inner prayer, meditation, reading the word of God will help us to support it within ourselves. In prayer and meditation our voice to the Lord will be heard; – in reading the word of God and our good intentions, the voice of the Lord Himself, our Savior, will be heard. It is especially appropriate now to start remembering and reading the last conversation of Christ the Savior. She will tell everyone about what the Lord wants to be for us, and what we should be for Him. And to testify our gratitude to our Lord and Savior, and to seal the vows given to us at Holy Communion - I will not kiss you like Judas - let us kiss His Holy Cross with the love and fidelity of His true disciples. When the Lord, after His resurrection, hiding behind the image of the One from the strangers of Jerusalem, walked with His disciples to Emmaus and had a conversation with them about the great events that had happened to the Son of Man, their eyes held on to Him, but they did not know Him, says the Evangelist, but their hearts burned in them and through His sweet words they recognized their Divine Teacher. Now He comes with you from this church to your dwelling, not in order to leave you in a few hours, like the travelers of Emmaussia, but so that, having united with you, He will never be separated. Under the cover of the Most Holy Sacrament, He dwelled in you, so that by truly communing with His flesh and blood, as He partook of our flesh and blood, you would become one spirit with the Lord. Enlarge your hearts for the Divine Redeemer, do not contain Him too closely; listen to His word: He came to tell you the word of salvation. Even now He is not silent: He is God – the Word. Let your whole soul and your heart go out into His word. Everything that is bright in your mind, pure in your heart, in your holy desire - all these will be His mysterious verbs. In these hours, after the recent self-examination, when the words of the Lord are heard in the soul during the harvest, it is most opportune for everyone to take care of his inner state, for everyone to ask himself how much he has accomplished in spiritual life and what he should do to eliminate previous falls and stumblings for further improvement. And to these questions, proposed by reverent prayer and meditation, the Lord speaks to him with such suggestions that can give life a new direction, strengthen the beginnings of good rules operating in us, and destroy the seeds of evil that still exist in us. Be according to this verb. This cup is the new covenant through My blood (Luke 22:20). Thus spoke the Lord to His disciples, giving them the cup of His Most Pure and God-creating blood. The sons of Israel, who entered into the first covenant with God at Sinai, understood what the words mean here: a new covenant. There they accepted the law from Jehovah and vowed to keep it inviolably. Jehovah, for his part, having clothed them with the title of His chosen people, promised them His protection on the land given to their forefathers, and all His mercies. And as a sign of the faithful fulfillment of the promises, on the other hand, the book of the covenant and the people were sprinkled with the blood of the slain. This is the blood of the covenant, said Moses, which the Lord commanded unto you concerning all these words (Ex. 24:8). The New Testament is based on faith in God the Redeemer and unconditional obedience to His Holy commandments. For His part, Christ the Redeemer promised His followers participation in the Kingdom, which the Father bequeathed to Himself, as the Intercessor of the human race. And I bequeath to you, the Lord said to them at the supper, just as the Father has bequeathed to me a kingdom (Luke 22:29). And the holiness of this covenant is strengthened by the blood, no longer sacrificial, but by the most pure blood of the Lamb Christ Himself, and not only by sprinkling, but by the acceptance and fusion of the blood of the covenant with the blood of those entering into the covenant. This cup is a new covenant with My blood. That's all from her. How much higher is the promise of the new covenant, how much more sacred is the mediation of the Divine Blood, how much more sincere is our participation in it, so much more obligatory for us is the keeping of the covenant, so much more zealous we must be in observing its conditions. By the goodness of God, we have now commemorated our entry into the new covenant, not only in words, but imitatively and actively. Let us firmly remember what we have committed ourselves to and what has been promised to us. Watch and pray, the Lord said to the first participants in the new covenant. The more precious the treasure entrusted to us, the more vigilance we need in guarding it. The less we can rely on our own strength, the more we must ask ourselves for help from above. If we considered it necessary to spend the days preparing for the reception of the Holy Sacrament with special attention, then should we be less careful about ourselves after receiving the penniless deposit? Will not our absent-mindedness, our cooling towards Christ the Savior and His covenant, be a sign of an ungrateful soul, a soul careless of its own temporal and eternal good? Can we really hope with this short-term preparation, so to speak, to lure God out of everything He promised and then consider ourselves entitled to behave as we please? No - disciples of Christ! The blood of Christ is in you. The life of Christ must also be in you. The work of Christian life is composed of three great actions: purification, enlightenment and Divine unity. The feat of a Christian begins with purification, that is, voluntary renunciation of everything sinful and all-powerful, with the help of Divine grace, cutting off all earthly attachments, sin-loving inclinations, ungodly passions, consuming in oneself the very root of evil - self-love. This feat is undertaken and accomplished under the guidance of faith, which reveals to us the secrets of Divine love that transcends reason, which did not spare the blood of the Only Begotten Son for the salvation of a sinner, and instructs us in the law that determines our relationship to our neighbors and to God. From now on, the fire of love or desire for unity with God, our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, is kindled in the soul. The highest degree of unity that a Christian can achieve on earth is given to us by the goodness of God in Holy Communion. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, He abides in Me and I in him (John 6:58). So what? Does this mean that we, who are now worthy to approach the Chalice of the Lord, have successfully passed all the previous stages of spiritual purification and enlightenment? It's true for you, Lord, but it's a shame for us. You have done everything for our sake, but we still barely understand what we must do for Your sake. No, not dignity, not success, but only boldness, the last sense of goodness, which the soul of the son has not yet lost, having squandered the inherited part of His Father’s estate, and not yet doubting His infinite goodness, this alone boldness led us to Your altar. Your Apostle told us: let us approach the throne of grace with boldness (Heb. 4.16). You Yourself, Lord, in the days of Your flesh, you encouraged all those who needed You, repeatedly repeating to them: dare, child, - dare, daughter, - dare, I have overcome the world.” Inspired by this boldness, even now, we repeat from the depths of our souls, still struggling with sin, still struggling with the darkness of lack of faith, we repeat; “Let it be like fire for us and like Light, Your body and blood, our most honorable Savior, scorching the sinful substance, burning the thorns of passions, and all of us - our mind and heart, and enlightening our will to worship Your Divinity.” Leaving the church with this Sacred Fire, let us be careful in every way, so that through attentiveness or some kind of passion we do not extinguish it again in ourselves and so as not to fall into the former darkness and coldness. With spiritual joy, with a feeling of lively gratitude to our Lord and Savior, let us leave the upper room of Zion, in which He vouchsafed us to partake of His God-giving Table; let us not forget, as a warning to ourselves, what soon became of the first communicants of the Lord’s Supper. Foreseeing His impending suffering, the Lord took the three leaders in the face of the Apostles with Him to the Garden of Gethsemane and commanded them, for their own safety, to strengthen their spirit in the upcoming trials, to watch and pray. But they soon fell asleep - they fell asleep in the sight of the Lord, praying with a strong cry and tears. They promised to die for Him, armed themselves with knives against their enemies, but did not prevail over one of the deadliest enemies at home - sleep. They were forewarned of the danger that it would come before the rooster crowed, but they could not endure the feat of vigil and prayer and a single Hour. And the Lord, with a gentle reproach, said to them: “Are you not able to spend even one hour with Me—with Me as your Mentor, your friend, who shared everything with you, who gave you His very flesh and blood. Let us not forget, I say, this woeful incident, which repentant love was not ashamed to write down on the tablets of the Gospel, in memory of subsequent generations, to expose itself before the whole world. Such self-forgetfulness will be even more unforgivable for us than for the first disciples of Christ. They had not yet seen or understood what awaited them and how it would all end... While imagining their particularly difficult situation in apology for the Apostles, let us not forget that although they fell asleep, they were not completely deaf and blind to everything around them. They conveyed to their brethren, and they to us, the heart-rending words of the prayer of the grieving Lord and not only retained the beginning of the prayer in their memory, but with precise certainty they noticed how the first prayer differed from the second and third, how, with the intensification of the feat of prayer, the spirit of the Suffering One gradually rose above the abyss of the suffering that overwhelmed Him. They saw how an Angel from heaven strengthened the Son of Man, abandoned by everyone, even by his friends, in His spiritual struggle. They saw drops of blood falling, instead of sweat, from a tired and exhausted body. Apparently there were those among them about whom one could say that the mysterious Bride Song of Songs said about herself: I sleep, but my heart watches (5:2). It is enough to remember that John was among them. So, let the example of the Apostles serve us not only as a warning, but also as a real example of how to observe ourselves in the midst of peace, and in the midst of any extraneous activity, so as not to forget our main task. I sleep, I walk along the paths of the city, I work on earthly affairs - but let my heart not sleep, let it not be occupied with anything earthly to the point of insensibility for the heavenly. I am sleeping, but my heart is vigilant. Let us remember this day and night, in days of sorrow and in days of joy; We will always be with the Lord and then we will show ourselves worthy partakers of the Divine Supper. The Apostle Paul, warning those approaching the Lord's Table against unworthy communion, demands that everyone first test himself well to see whether he has feelings and dispositions worthy of the great Sacrament, and carefully, as if he himself were subject to the same danger, adds: if we reasoned with ourselves, we would not be judged, but we are punished by the Lord, lest we be condemned with the world (1 Corinth. 11:31–32). The warning and care of the Apostle are no less significant for those who worthily partake, or at least for those who, by the goodness of Jesus Christ, are honored with the communion of His most pure mysteries. What does the Apostle want to inspire us with? He points out three types of judgment that we must certainly keep in mind: firstly, the judgment of everyone over himself; secondly, the judgment of the Lord over those who partake inattentively and irreverently, and thirdly, the judgment of the Lord, or better yet, the condemnation along with the world of those who do not take advantage of either the first or the second judgment. If only they would think to themselves: this is the first trial! The judgment is grave, the judgment of your conscience; if an outsider is allowed here, it is only as a witness before the Lord, in your favor. This judgment, or attention to oneself, casting oneself down, self-conviction, is necessary both after accepting heavenly gifts, and so before acceptance. Our nature is so weak, our good habits are so unstable, the rules of life are so little understood that we can easily forget ourselves, forget our vow: I will not give you a kiss like Judas, forget the promise of self-correction, forget who came and moved into us and why He came to us; forget your God-given dignity and again wallow in sins. And such a giant of virtue and holiness as the Apostle Paul was, he said about himself: I am nothing in myself, but I will not be justified in any way (1 Corinthians 4:4). What can we say about us, with our hourly falls? How much care and caution do you need to have so as not to get completely lost? – Sacred antiquity came up with a good rule for such observation and self-examination: it is expressed in the words of the Royal Psalmist, albeit on frequent occasions: when you are angry, do not sin, he said, “meditate in your hearts on your beds, and be moved (Psalm 4:5). This rule requires, at the end of each day, to check all your actions, your words and heart movements that you experienced during the day. Reflect on your beds - this is a rule that pagan wisdom also foreshadowed in the types of moral self-confidence. It would be strange if to a Christian, whose whole life should consist of striving for this improvement, it seemed unnecessary or burdensome - Tempt yourself, the Apostle reinforces, tempt yourself, or you don’t understand it. for Jesus Christ is in you (2 Corinthians 13:5). Whoever is not attentive enough to take advantage of the conveniences of this protective and saving court, or self-reasoning, is healed by the Lord with His corrective courts. Judged by the Lord, we are punished. Here is the second trial! How are we punishing this? The apostle points to sickness and death. The Holy Bread of Life is, without a doubt, an all-healing power that heals your mental and physical ailments: but, as a strong medicine on a spoiled body, it can act, according to the destinies of God, destructively. So the message of the Gospel was for some water of life into the belly, and for others water of death into death (2 Corinthians 2:16). But the goodness of God does not suddenly allow the full weight of judgment to fall upon the culprit, does not suddenly strike with death, but sends illness. For this reason, says the Apostle, many of you are weak and sickly. Perhaps we do not notice this cause of our illnesses at all and, according to our custom, attribute them to one or another extraneous cause. Nevertheless, they have the right to remind us of themselves that they were sent from God for our admonition - and the court of mercy reduces its punishment by another degree. The Apostle adds that those who partake inattentively are enough and die. Death with devotion to the all-good will of God, although punishing, is also still a judgment of mercy. But the Apostle also speaks of a third type of judgment; Let us not be condemned by the world. The very mention of him is terrible.... Judas died and went to his place (Acts 1:25), We touched upon these judgments not in order to darken your joy, but in order to keep it in your heart for a longer time. Let us more often, according to the word of the Apostle James, penetrate into the mirror of the law of perfect freedom and see various shortcomings in our moral character, and correct them in time (James 1 24:25). I partake of the cup of Christ, having washed away my sins with the purest blood of Christ and having already tasted the power of the coming age, we bid you farewell with the sign of Christ’s suffering. May the power of Christ, who through the cross defeated sin and the author of sin, strengthen you in the fight against sin within you and outside you. With many of those who have now come to the Lord's Table, we have already for the last time, according to the Apostolic expression, broken the life-giving and sanctifying bread. May your love know that this sacred celebration has always been a subject of special spiritual consolation for us, not for the sake of noticing the special zeal of preparation for it (the Lord sees the soul of everyone), but for the sake of the fact that in the souls of young people, not yet drowned in the bustle of life, still sensitive to the voice of truth, with fresh strength and aspirations for the common good, we have always assumed that John’s ability to feel that here on this At the supper the Lord truly revealed himself to those who loved his own being in the world to the end. But this last supper will not be our last. The Lord's Table will always unite us in Christ our Savior. For we will all and everywhere partake of the one and the same bread, of the same and the same cup. Most sincerely, may the Lord grant us all to partake of the great and most sacred Pascha in the unevening days of His Kingdom. “It is good for us to be here,” exclaimed the disciple of Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, delighted with the glory in which he saw His Divine Teacher, and was ready to stay here forever with Him and with the Celestials, reveling in heavenly bliss. But his bliss did not last long. The light of divine glory was hidden, and the Lord soon brought down his disciples from Tabor. And there, under the Mount of Transfiguration - again peace with its enmity against the disciples of Christ; there is the unfortunate one, possessed by the spirit of malice, which they cannot cast out without Christ; there again are lessons about the inconceivable mysteries of the kingdom of God, again lessons about prayer and fasting - while on the mountain everything seemed easy, bright, and joyful! Brothers and participants in the Lord's Table! Were we not now witnesses of some glorious Transfiguration on this holy mountain? Isn’t the Mount of the Second Refiguration this church in which, before the eyes of believers, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is so tannously performed? 'Only there, on Tabor, the invisible shone out from the visible, as if through the rarefaction of the earth's shell: but here in the visible The invisible Divine is established through the mysterious transformation of the earthly into the heavenly, the perishable into the imperishable. There the image changes, not the being; here is a being, not an image. Bread is brought to the altar, the body of Christ is presented from the altar; wine, dissolved in water, was brought to the altar, the blood of Christ, flowing from His most pure rib, was given from the altar. And doesn’t the Second Refiguration of Tabor explain to us the mystery of the Divine Eucharist? The Transfiguration of the Lord was a temporary revelation for a few of the secrets of the being of the God-man, covered with flesh. In him, His most pure flesh appears all enveloped in glory and power; it showed that it is not temporary, like lightning, that the rays of Divinity erupt from the Divine nature into the flesh of the God-Man, but that all of His humanity is inseparably permeated with the power and glory of the Divine. Our faith is based on this, that in the humble form of bread and wine we partake of the truly divine, or deified flesh and blood of the Son of God! – Therefore, don’t we have the right to exclaim together with the Supreme Apostle: it is good for us to be here! Truly good, and not only good, but it is also necessary for us to be inseparably with Christ everywhere and always. Therefore, He, the All-Good One, not only allowed us to be partakers of His glory with our sight, but also with our being, spiritually and physically, to partake of His transfigured death and resurrection of Divine flesh and blood; He himself deigned to dwell in us, and does not want to ever be separated from us. It is good for us to be with Him, but because of His love for us, which brought Him down to the most painful suffering for us, we dare to say, as if it would not have been good for Him without us, for whom He took upon Himself this flesh. He is the pain of our heart. We cannot love Him as much as He loves us. It's good to be here. But our Lord did not remain on the Mount of Transfiguration alone, nor with his disciples. Peter's enthusiastic desire, aroused in a bright moment, was not fulfilled. The Lord descends and brings His disciples with Him from blissful contemplation - to action, to work, to the fight against unbelief. And our lot is no more blessed than Petrov’s. We, too, go with Christ to the difficult work of life to which we are called. Let us remember and try, as much as possible, to prolong for ourselves the pleasure of those joyful moments, in which the glory of the Divine love of the Redeemer of the world and the glory of His Divinity, united with our nature, shone clearer to our spirit, but without stopping for contemplation, or better yet, with the illumination of this Divine light hidden in us, we will be active. according to His commandment, to work on oneself, so that later, by His grace, one can work for others to save oneself and them. And we are faced with the same lessons from the Divine Word about the mysteries of the kingdom of God, the same commandments about prayer and fasting, and before you is the same world full of evil and requiring grace-filled healing. One of the goals of the incarnation of the Son of God was to make us, who believe in His name, partakers of His Divine flesh and blood: because without this it was impossible to save humanity infected with sin and doomed to death, according to the immutable word of the Lord Himself: unless you bear the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you do not have life in Yourself. Now the Lord has given us extreme joy: to celebrate the accomplishment of the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God, according to the Archangel’s gospel, and to enjoy the Life-giving and God-creating flesh and blood of the Son of man. Now we too can exclaim with the Evangelist: The Word became flesh and dwelt in us: He dwelt in us with His Divine flesh. 0, if we could, with the same fullness of meaning, say the following: and we saw His glory, glory as the Only Begotten from the Father. When will this be possible for us? When will that which I have spoken be fulfilled upon us? The Theologian - Evangelist with the words: in that life is life, and life is the light of man. When the life of Christ penetrates everywhere where sin, the cause of death, reigned, when the light of Christ burns through the darkness of spiritual ignorance brought by sin into our soul, then we will be honored to say from our own experience: we have seen His glory, glory as the Only Begotten from the Father. Then we will see Him as He is. The path to the glorification of the Son of Man lies through Golgotha; and He did not show us any other way. His flesh and His blood constantly cry out to us: take up your cross every day and, with the cross of self-sacrifice and love, kill sin within yourself and the root of sin - self-love. Then we will see light and life. When I was thinking about what to say to the participants of the Lord's Table, the prophetic word of Christ to the disciples at the last supper came to my mind: only one of you will betray Me (Matthew 26:21). Not daring to apply this word to anyone, before the grace of the Lord, who was worthy of the Lord’s Supper, I turned it to myself, to my conscience. I told you, the Lord says this to you, I said to my soul. And knowing my repeated failures, my unfulfilled vows of correction, my unfaithfulness to the Lord, which did not decrease over the years, but was felt more and more deeply, I did not dare to deny the fair, although painfully piercing, word: only from you, not anyone else, but you, with your new sins, new violations of your vows, will betray Me. If you deviate from My word, you will give yourself over to the side of My enemies. When the Lord said this heavy word among His disciples, they all became confused. None of them, except one Judas, had any treacherous thoughts in their souls. They did not even imagine that it would be possible to find such a person - But I, remembering myself, had before me my inner and outer life, what can I say to this? My conscience repeats to me: I don’t need John to ask the Lord to whom His accusatory word is most likely addressed here. This is you, who dipped your hand in salt together with the Teacher. You came here - for supper - but at home you left unbroken all ties with the enemies of God, with your passions and sinful inclinations. In vain do you ask in bewilderment: Am I food, Lord? “You speak,” He answers you. 0, what confusion the soul is struck by when encountering this terrible thought! What if I really lied when I spoke before the Lord, in His Church: and I will give kisses like Judas! - May the Lord grant you, brethren, more just boldness - to freely confess your unwavering fidelity. For me, covered with the shame of repeated infidelity, ask once again for forgiveness from the One who shed His blood for our sins - And those who sympathize with me, and together with me seek refuge only in the infinite goodness of our Merciful Redeemer - I invite you, turning to Him more often, to pray to Him: Thy mercy, my Savior, preceded me when I was still lying unconscious in sins. Your mercy awaited me until I awakened and went to You. Your mercy meets me and embraces me with the arms of my stepfathers when I approach You. May Your mercy follow me wherever I go, and even if I stray far from You, may it lead me along the paths I know to You into Your glorious Kingdom. The Apostle of Christ Paul, in support of his fellow tribesmen, who wavered between the Old Testament institutions and the New Testament grace, wrote to them: the imams of the oltar, from whom they have no power, eat the servants of the canopy (Heb. 1S: 10). What altar is this? From the words of the Apostle, first of all, it is clear that from this altar something is taught as consecrated - for the sanctification of those who receive it, it is taught for consumption - but not everything, that exactly the servants of the vestibule, that is, the ministers of the tabernacle or the church, that is, the Levitical priests, cannot use this right. The Levitical priests had the exclusive right to the showbread in the church: but they were not taught from the altar. The altar consecrated the actual sacrifices, in which the priests were given their part. Accordingly, and in the covenant of fulfilling the vestibule, the Christian altar, from which those who still serve the vestibule do not have the power to eat, must also offer a sacred Sacrifice. The Christian knows the One Sacrifice, sanctifying everything, knows that it, once for all time, was offered on the altar of the cross, on Calvary, by the Eternal High Priest, the Son of God, for the cleansing of the sins of the whole world. He Himself said: the bread which I will give, this is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world (John 6:51), and at the last supper He gave bread to His disciples, transforming it into His own flesh; and He Himself then lifted up His flesh on the cross - the Altar of the Cross, in the sacred service of the Apostles, of necessity, had to be transformed into the Holy Meal; - and here we are now, like the first partakers of the body and blood of Christ - the Apostles, from the same altar, the same bloodless Sacrifice, by the grace of God, we partook. Glory and thanksgiving and praise to the grace of Christ! We shared the sacrifice, the propitiatory sacrifice offered for us, which cleansed us from all sins, reconciled us with God the Father, and bestowed the promise of a blessed eternity. The flesh and blood of the Son of God are in us: therefore, we already have His life in us. Let us keep this heavenly treasure in our meager vessels: our whole life is in it. But the Apostle, removing the canopy from the Christian altar, at the same time says as a warning to the participants of this altar: do not attach yourself to strange and different teachings: for it is good to strengthen the hearts through grace, and not waste, from which those who walked in them received no benefit (verse 9). The word - this should especially attract the attention of those who are called to participate and, according to their duty, must be engaged not only in the one true teaching of Christ. but also with different and strange teachings, that is, alien to the spirit of Christ. Contemporary to the Apostle, Judaizing Christians sought special holiness in a certain kind of food, and with it they wanted to strengthen their hearts. The Apostle says that those who study such subjects will receive absolutely no benefit from this. The current various and strange teachings will not, of course, lead anyone to Judaizing pickiness in food; but they themselves can become very harmful food for young minds and hearts; - not those lessons that are taught to guide the thoughts, feelings and will of the listeners; but those with whom, out of good will and out of necessity, we have to get acquainted in order to act with benefit and instill in the environment that surrounds us; those opinions and teachings circulating in society and in literature that are supported and spread by the spirit of the time and so-called science, along with true and useful teachings. Do not attach yourself to such strange teachings, the Apostle says to us. Just as we renounced all our sins in repentance, desiring to approach the altar of the Lord, so we must protect ourselves from pernicious teachings. It is good to strengthen hearts with grace, not waste. May the Word of grace, the Word of Christ, as an eternal and all-satisfying truth, the word of our salvation about the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, be a constant affirmation of our most reliable anchor of our faith. – Let us always keep in our memory and mind the answer of the Supreme Apostle. After the sermon in the synagogue of Capernaum about flesh and blood, which the Lord promised to give instead of the bread or manna from heaven desired by the sensual people, when there was hesitation in His listeners, and many even of the disciples completely left their Teacher, the Lord asked His Apostles: food and do you want to go? Then fiery Peter alone answered for everyone: Lord, to whom are we going? You are the verbs of the life of the eternal imashi. And we by faith and by knowledge, that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God {John. 6 68:69). At the last supper of the Savior with the disciples, one of them, deducing from the course of the matter and from the words of the Savior that He must leave them for a while and be with His Father, but then will come to them again, appear to them and then be with them inseparably, asked His Divine Mentor in surprise: Lord, what will happen, since You willed to appear to us, and not the world (John 14 ,22Y' It was not love for the world that made the disciple of Christ an intercessor for the world, but the hopes of the Jews still lingering in the minds of the disciples, united with the name of the Messiah and His kingdom, or the external understanding of the great work of Christ, which consists in the redemption of people, in establishing holiness and truth among them and uniting them with God and among themselves. The Lord did not answer the disciple’s question directly, but from His answer it was clear why He could not. appear to the world. Jesus answered and said to him: If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him (v. 23). His kingdom is not of this world; it must be within us (Luke 17:21), must be based on the inner, spiritual, closest union of the members of this kingdom with Him and with the Father; and at the same time, the Lord promises them such closeness to Him and to the Father that He and the Father Himself will dwell in them, in their heart, in their entire being; He will not unite with them for a short time, as now, but forever: we will create an abode with him. He will be so close to everyone that everyone will have their own abode. The only necessary condition on their part should be that those who desire such communion with Him and with the Father should love His Lord and Redeemer with all the strength of their strength and preserve His word inviolably, the word of faith and life, the word that teaches us how to understand our relationship to Him, our Lord and Redeemer, and to God the Father, and how to behave, how to live. Brothers and partners in the Lord's table! The Lord fulfilled His word. appeared His disciples and settled in them, and not only the disciples, but expanded His kingdom among all nations and extended His dominion for all times, until the end of the age, and came to us, so that He could dwell with us and in us forever. We are now from the Lord's table. Now we, all the same, as His chosen disciples, have not only accepted the pledge of communion with Him, but have partaken of His very God-human being, His life-giving flesh and blood. He is in us, and we are with Him and with the Father. 0 divine, oh dear, oh your sweetest voice, Christ: we will come to him and make our abode with him. Faithful in His promises, He did not exceed the promise of an incredible deed - the one who was called did not hesitate - He divided Himself among those who called. and settled in everyone’s heart. But brothers, how did we attract Him to us? Is it that love for Him that He set as the first condition for His dwelling in us? Is it the faithful observance of His word that should be the consequence of true love? – Remembering our sins, our frequent betrayals of the Divine word and commandments, our infidelities before our Lord and Redeemer, do we dare to say that it was precisely by this love and fidelity that we attracted the Lord to ourselves? - Lord, we are just learning to love You: but even here at every step we stumble and fall, we stumble and fall. No, because we only did it because You know how to love us more than we love ourselves. What are we talking about? Lord, You have given us to see in the faces of Your disciples living images of pure and always faithful love. and love fallen and repentant: in Your Apostles John and III. You foresaw the fall of Peter and did not reject him from Your Divine table, because You saw his repentance and bitter tears. And Your Peter, despite the grave fall, could tell You, the Knower of the Heart, from a pure heart: Lord, You know how I love You - And now You did not look upon our fallen love, came to us, came to us again, and settled with us and in you. Grant us to cling to You with a love that never falls away. Stay with us, not as a traveler passing by, today here, tomorrow stopping there, but as our King and Lord, as our Father, Our love, our hope in this life and in the future: May Your life-giving body always remind us of whom we carry within us - and may Your most pure blood cry out to us: what have we become, redeemed by You, and may it protect us from irrevocable falls. Starting to break the mysterious Bread. sanctified by the power and action of the Holy Spirit, we cried: Holy to saints! - and you answered: One is holy, One is Lord Jesus Christ! We proclaimed: “Holy to the Saints,” and we were the first to approach the Holy Place, not in the consciousness that we considered ourselves worthy of the calling, but in the spirit of that disciple of Christ, who had to choose: either, out of a feeling of self-condemnation, to completely lose a part with Christ, or, out of a feeling of unconditional devotion to the will of His Savior, with all our unworthiness, to remain silent before His inscrutable self-abasement and receive a cleansing bath from Him; We began in the consciousness that even if, due to our unworthiness, we had to disappear from touching the Divine flame, it is better to burn in this flame, like a moth on a candle, than to deprive ourselves of even an instantaneous feeling of Divine power, sanctification, the sweetness of unity with Christ... You answered: One is holy, One is Lord Jesus Christ! - of course, in such a sense that among those born as humans there is not one who would deserve the title of Saint, except the One God-Man. And so we all, despite the fact that we are not saints, approached the All-Holy, partook of His most holy flesh and blood: and, thanks to the all-forgiving love of Christ! – not scorched, but watered with grace. “An unclean man,” says one of God’s friends, “hate the unclean like him: but You, Lord, are holy, our sins do not outrage You” (Ephraim Sir. 6, p. 211). - Watered with grace: if your friend at the present moment melts away in quiet tenderness from the consciousness of his unworthiness, is filled with a feeling of the deepest reverence for the all-holy - joy before the Lord, - gratitude to the Merciful, the most friendly dispositions towards his fellow men, then this is precisely the dew of grace - the faithful action in you of the life-giving power of the sacrament. The voice of the cold is thin - and there is the Lord. Once again, my brothers, we approached the holy meal with nothing less than a promise - to no longer be slaves to sin, not to betray Our Lord. Otherwise, we would not have received permission to begin the sacrament. And in this sacrament we sought a cure for our spiritual ailments: this means that we ourselves have already declared our desire for recovery. And when approaching the holy cup, each of us repeated: I will not tell the secret to your enemies, but I will give you the kiss of Judas. What secret? This is the mystery of faith, which, according to the Apostle, must be preserved in a clear conscience (1 Tim. 3:9); This is the great mystery of piety: God appeared in the flesh (v. 16), which He serves us at His Holy table. The Ancient Church, in the fight against Jewish and pagan unbelief, in the fight against heresies, found it necessary to remind those approaching communion every time about the special keeping of this secret, pointing to the unfortunate example of the traitor, and commanded it to be openly confessed in the words: I believe, Lord, and I confess that you are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, from whom I am the first. az. I also believe that this is Your most pure body and this is Your most honest blood. Amid the unbelief of the new age, amid the temptations of life, smoldering in the lusts of the seductive, returning to the pleasures and passions of paganism, is it less necessary to remind everyone not to betray the secrets of faith and piety to the enemies of Christ, but to keep it in a clear conscience? But it seems to me that, in addition to this general meaning of the mystery of God, I can also point out here a special type of it, which lies in that general meaning. This is the secret that the Lord revealed to whom about his personal relationship with Him. He cares for everyone to make him a partaker of His grace and salvation, and everyone in his life, even with little attention, can apply how the Lord, who embraces everyone with His love, called him now by one or another circumstance - to the path of salvation, how he revealed to him His love, His care over him, how he provided saving means for his conversion and establishment on the path of truth. This secret is between us and our God, each has his own - We will be faithful to it if we keep it inviolably in the memory of our hearts, we will not profane it, give it to the enemies of our salvation, if we reverently guard in our souls this small experience of our conscious communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us to the end, we will not, either by deed or word, offend this mysterious union of ours with our Savior. To betray him with doubt, coldness, and an unworthy life is also criminal. how disgusting it is to see the treachery of friendship, and even more disastrous. So, to seal the vows we made at Holy Communion: I will not kiss you, like Judas - let us kiss Him crucified on the cross for us, with the love and fidelity of His sincere disciples. “These speeches were delivered by A. V. Gorsky when he came out to the communicants of St. secrets with a cross.