РОСА ОЗАРЕНИЯ СМЫСЛОВ

Rejoice, thou who illumines meaning for the faithful! (Akathist, ikos 2). One man, named Lavrentiy, a resident of Chernigov, went crazy and, as is the custom among such people, ran around the city and across the field at night. One day he wanted to drown himself in the river, but was captured and brought to the miraculous icon in the Elias Monastery, where, when a monastic prayer was being said for him, the grace of the Mother of God gave him mind, meaning and intelligence. So, being healthy and sane, he returned to the house, praising the Mother of God, who brought him to reason. Flock here, all you deprived of intelligence, madmen and ignoramuses. Come here with me - behold, we have the teacher of wisdom and the giver of meaning, the Blessed Virgin. She will teach us, She will enlighten us, She will instruct us in everything. You know that everyone who is foolish is enlightened by a book, the ignorant is taught wise, the ignorant is instructed by a leader. The Most Pure Virgin is both the Book, and the Wisdom, and the Leader. The Book It is, as Damascene said: “The Book is new, and in It, in an indescribable way, God the Word is miraculously inscribed.” And Saint Andrew of Crete says: “The book is truly the Living Word of the Father, secretly inscribed with the life-giving reed of the Spirit.” This Book surpasses the understanding of the wise, and makes the wise and cunning unwise and dumb, but draws those who want to learn from It from the depths of ignorance. The damned Nestor was wise and cunning, teaching the Mother of God to call the Mother of God - he, imagining himself to be wise, went mad. The holy singer Roman was simple; he, taught by the Mother of God, wrote thousands of kontakia after the appearance of our Most Holy Lady in a dream, when, having given him a book scroll, she commanded him to eat it. And he opened his mouth, swallowed the charter and was filled with wisdom. Anyone who wants to learn seeks this Book! Seek Her, ignorant one, so that you may learn spiritual reason, for She “instructs all things to the Divine reason, enlightening the mind with the dawn” (Akathist, ikos 11). Seek Her, O proud one, so that you may learn the depth of humility, “the inconceivable and angelic eye” (Akathist, Ikos 1). Seek Her, unclean one, that you may find the treasure of purity. Angry and envious, taking with you the voluptuous, seek Her all, and learn love and spiritual poverty. Gluttonous and lazy, look for Mary and learn self-control and vigor. The Virgin Mary is “the friend of God’s wisdom” (Akathist, Ikos 9). Untaught! Learn from Her! She who says with lofty preaching: “Whoever is unreasonable, turn here!” And to those who require intelligence he says: “Come, eat my bread and drink the wine that I have dissolved; leave foolishness” (Proverbs 9:4-6). Someone marveled when he heard about wine, to which a madman is called to become wise - does wine give wisdom? Rather, it makes even the wise man mad. It is not without reason that the apostle commands not to get drunk with wine (Eph. 5:18). And if even a wise man destroys his reason with wine, why is the fool called to it? To become the craziest? But he was told not to be surprised. One wine is that which destroys the mind, and the other is that of Mary, who kept within herself the treasure of God’s wisdom. The prophet says about Her wine that it drinks not madness, but chastity: “Wine,” he says, “that gives birth to virgins” (Zech. 9:17). And what kind of virgins? Not foolish, but wise, who “together with their lamps took oil in their vessels” (Matthew 25:4). It was with this wine that even the insane once became wise. Do not doubt, my beloved, about Her guilt, but come and drink wisdom from Her with others. 5 Damascene drank from it, drawing with his truncated hand, and how wise did he become? He became like a source, flowing streams of wise songs. Listen to what the Mother of God said to his elder in a vision: “Do not block My source!” So don’t deprive yourself of such a drink. The Virgin Mary is the Leader. You ignoramuses, be instructed by Her! Gideon once instructed three hundred Israeli soldiers for the battle with Midian, and they had a strange preparation for the battle: instead of swords and spears, they held candles in their hands, and this drove away the adversary (Judges 7:20). Hellish Midian is fighting me, and I don’t know how I will drive him away. Instruct me, Mother of God, for You are a candle that has received the Light, By which the darkness of the dark regiments is driven away. Blessed and wise is he who holds this Candle instead of a strong weapon; he who does not acquire It is foolish. These five virgins, for extinguishing their lamps, earned themselves the name of madmen, but those who held candles that did not go out were called wise (Matthew 25:3-4). Having You as light, O Lady! truly wise: he that walketh in Thy light shall not stumble. He who does not have You is a fool and an ignoramus; he walks in darkness, and he who walks in darkness stumbles (John 11:9-10). The Lord commanded Moses in Exodus that the lamp in the church of testimony should never go out, but “that the lamp should burn at all times” (Ex. 27:20). This was a prototype of our Most Blessed Teacher, about whom the Tributary foretold: “Her lamp does not go out at night” (Proverbs 31:18). Her light always illuminates the mind, always enlightens the darkness, always guides all the faithful to reason. Oh, All-Light Light, enlighten my lamp! Lady Mother of God, enlighten my darkened soul! Every unrepentant sinner is mad and has no reason. The mind or reason in a person is one bright candle, dispelling the darkness of ignorance, and showing what is good and what is evil, and always instructing on the bright path of God’s commandments. When a person, having not listened to the good, within the mind that enlightens him, deviates according to his evil will, for “the thought of evil is in man from his youth” (Gen. 8:21), and follows his own lusts, doing inappropriate things (although he knows, according to the testimony of his mind, that to sin mortally is evil, for which he must be executed forever, but he does not care about this and is careless about sin), then a person loses his mind, destroys his reason and, like a madman, wanders in the darkness of his violence. The psalmist says about such people: “They have not known, they have not understood, they walk in darkness” (Ps. 81:5). And Saint Callistus: “Truly, those who live in malice and disorder do not have the light of the Divine mind, for just as the rays of the sun are covered with dark clouds, so our mind, in the soul, shining clearly as at noon, is darkened by violence, and what violence is greater than sin?” So Chrysostom says: “There is nothing more evil than sin.” He creates the insane even before the great in mind. Solomon was wise, but how mad was he when he served sin? And many other wise men perished because of sins. It is fitting to pray diligently to the Lord, so that, having driven away the riot of sin from us, he would enlighten our minds with the light of reason of the Holy Gospel. Lord, “give me understanding, and I will learn in Your law and keep it with all my heart” (Ps. 119:34). Teach me kindness, punishment and reason. The wind extinguishes the candle, sin destroys the mind, Christ is rejected by those who love gold. In the Persian region there lived a priest named Paul, who excelled in piety and many virtues. And he had the only deprivation of his mind - from the love of money. Which is what killed him. How? Listen. There was then a great persecution of Christians. And, fearing being forced into idolatry, that priest fled into the mountain desert, taking with him gold, of which he had a lot. At the same time, certain virgins, five nuns from a monastery devastated by the tormentors, were hiding in the mountains. Having found Paul there, those virgins, shining with virtues and filled with the fragrance of the Holy Spirit, settled near him. In truth, they were similar to those wise virgins whom the Divine Gospel remembers - they were also adorned with a fasting life. And they lived near Paul, sang and served with him, kept the Divine commandments day and night. But the devil, who hates goodness, not tolerating their life and the feat in which they succeeded, listen to what he has planned. He entered a certain person who knew where they were hiding, and he appeared to the prince of the Persian king and said to him: “There is one Christian presbyter who has a lot of gold, and five nuns are hiding with him. If you want to take his gold, present him to the court along with the fasting women and, if they do not want to renounce their faith, you will behead them and take the wealth.” The prince, having heard all this, immediately sent to take the presbyter with the nuns and gold and presented them before the court. Then the devil entered the presbyter’s heart, and he said to the prince: “Why are you taking away my property, since I have not offended you in any way?” He answered: “Because you are a Christian and do not keep the king’s commandments.” Paul to him: “What do you command me to do?” Prince: “If you bow to the sun, take your gold and go wherever you want.” And the accursed one, seeing his gold, bowed to the sun, and ate from those sacrificed to idols, and drank their blood. Seeing that he did not get what he wanted, the prince added: “If you make the fasting women worship the sun and take husbands for themselves, then take your gold and go wherever you want.” Paul went to the fasting women and said: “The prince took my property, and commands you to carry out the king’s order. And so, I worshiped the sun and ate what was sacrificed to idols, you will also do this.” But they, spitting on his face, unanimously said: “Oh, wretched one, you miss your destruction, and you wish the same for us! Today you are the second Judas, for just as he sold the Teacher and Master to death for the sake of gold and, taking the gold, went to hang himself, so you, a different Judas in character, turned out to be, for the sake of gold he destroyed his soul, because he deeply took into his mind the words of that rich man who said to his soul: “Soul! You have a lot of good things: eat, drink, be merry.” That’s why I heard: “Mad! this night your soul will be taken from you” (Luke 12:19–20). We tell you as before God: what was spoken about Judas and the rich man will come true in you.” And again they spat in his face as if he were an apostate. Then, by order of the prince, the holy virgins were beaten mercilessly for many hours with rods. But they repeated: “We worship our Lord Jesus Christ, we do not obey the Tsar’s command, and do whatever you want to do.” The prince tried in every possible way to seduce them, how to inherit Paul’s gold, but they did not obey, and he then ordered Paul to cut off their heads with his own hand. I thought that he wouldn’t want it, and he would get the treasure. He, the accursed one, heard this and looked back at his gold and said: “Whatever you command, I will do.” And, taking the sword, he approached them. The holy virgins, seeing him, were amazed: “Oh, damned one, he was our shepherd just yesterday, now he has come like a wolf to destroy us! Is this your teaching, which you taught us all the days, that we might die for Christ? He himself did not want to suffer for Him at all; he unnecessarily rejected Him. Did they really receive the holy Body and Blood from your unclean hand? Know that now the sword is in your hand for our eternal life. We are leaving to our Teacher Christ, but you, as they predicted, will soon destroy your soul with gold, and you will be strangled, and with Judas you will become a son of Gehenna.” After telling him this and other things, the nuns said a prayer. And their heads were beheaded by the hand of Paul. Then the prince said to him: “Know, Paul, that in none of the Christians have I found such an executor of the queen’s will as in you. Therefore, I cannot let you go, because, as soon as the king learns about you from me, he will want to bestow you with great honor. Today you rejoice with us, tomorrow we will tell the king about you.” The accursed one replied: “Be as you said.” And that same night the prince sent his slaves to strangle Paul, and in the morning, as if he had come to visit him and found him hanging, he condemned him as a suicide and ordered his corpse to be thrown out of the city for the dogs to eat, but he took the gold for himself. This is how the prophecy of the holy virgins was fulfilled over Paul, who accepted the ultimate death, like his teacher Judas... Oh, how a single mortal sin plunged the accursed into great madness! Moreover, many sins can blind and destroy even the wisest. You might be interested in: