РОСА УЗОРЕШИТЕЛЬСТВА

Thou hast resolved the human union of ancient condemnation, therefore I pray to Thee, Mother of God, resolve every evil union of my heart, having bound me, O Most Holy One, with the Divine love of the Creator (Octoechus, tone 2, at Compline, hymn 8) Near Chernigov there is a village called Kholyavin. From this village, a demon-possessed man named Ermola was brought to the miraculous icon of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Elias Monastery, where, on the day of the Holy Spirit, after the liturgy, he, due to the very great demonic power that was in him, tied to the church porch, was freed by the power of the Mother of God from the binding and entangling of the demonic. Does anyone who is in chains want to break free and become free? Hear: Mary loosens bonds, She gives freedom. Holofernes once tied Achior to a tree with arms and legs, and who set him free? - City of Bethulia. The sons of Israel, leaving Bethulia, came to him and, untying him, brought him to Bethulia (Judith 6). Bethulia is an image of the Virgin Mary. Just as that city was not overcome by enemies, so the Mother of God is not overcome by those who blaspheme Her. And just as a woman’s hand from Bethulia beheaded the head of Holofernes, so the Mother of God beheaded the prince of darkness. And just as the inhabitants of Bethulia free Achior from the tree, so the prayers of the Mother of God free everyone bound by the hellish Holofernes. It is good for you, Achior, although you were bound, yet you were near Bethulia, a prototype of the Mother of Jesus: you accepted renunciation only by Her shadow. It is also good for us who are approaching the Mother of God Herself: through her tea we will be freed from our bonds. Our invisible enemy binds more than one of us: sometimes with some illness, sometimes with passions. Knits with illness, like Yermolai; and in the Gospel one reads about a certain wife bound by Satan for many years: “And this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, should not she have been freed from these bonds?” (Luke 13:16). The enemy binds us with passions, spreading his nets over the whole world, from earth even to heaven, as Saint Anthony saw, and with them he catches us like a bird. Saint Ambrose says: “Like a bird, so our soul is caught in various ways: a noose is in gold, a net is in silver, chains are in estates, bonds are in fornication. When we collect gold, we are caught; when we look for silver, we are caught; when we inherit property, we are chained; when someone is seduced by a woman’s beauty, it binds him.” That is why Jeremiah cries: “My enemies tried in every possible way to catch me like a bird, without any reason” (Lamentations 3:52). In such bonds, what will we do? Let us cry out to the Mother of God, by Her, like Achior Bethulia, we will be set free. Bethulia is translated as Virgin. And what virgin is so powerful in resolving ties as the Virgin Mary? She has the power to knit and decide. But who is She knitting? Who will decide? She knitted the Son of God on earth with swaddling clothes, and knits him in heaven with prayers, so that, as he was bound on earth, so he would be bound in heaven. And He is so bound in heaven with prayers that He cannot even raise His hands to strike the sinner with punishment. And if She had not bound Him with her mother’s prayers, our soul would have already entered hell. “If you hadn’t stood praying for us, who would have saved us from such troubles? Who would have kept us free until now? (Troparion of the canon). Whom does That Pattern Maker allow? Us bound by sins. So we pray to Her: “Resolve the darkness of my sins, Bride of God” (Troparion of the canon, canto 5), for, being the Mother of freedom, she does not tolerate seeing the human race bound. We were bound by the original oath, which was made by the foremother Eve, - it was resolved by the Virgin Mary: “Rejoice, her oath will disappear. Rejoice, proclamation to fallen Adam” (Akathist, ikos 1). Her parents, Joachim and Anna, were bound by infertility, and She resolved these ties: “On the day of childlessness, the ties are resolved, God heard Joachim and Anna, and more than the hope of giving birth, He promises the Virgin Mary” (Troparion, December 9). And we, like a barren fig tree, do not bear the fruits of virtue, for we are bound by the bonds of love of sin. Let us diligently seek permission from the Pattern Maker, having received liberation through Her prayers, we will bear spiritual fruit: “Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, mercy, faith, meekness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). O Mental Bethulia! Release me, bound by the captivity of sins, so that I may create fruits worthy of repentance. The enemy binds us not only with his intricately woven ropes, but also with our own. When we, having loved a passion, hold on to it ourselves, kindly thinking about it and sweetly holding that thought in our hearts, not only wanting to fulfill it with action, but also looking for a good time for it and giving ourselves a reason to sin. That’s why the tributary says: “Everyone is held in the bonds of his sins” (Proverbs 5:22). A certain young man asked the elder to pray for him, so that his passions would be alleviated, for “they torment me so much,” he said, “I can’t stand it.” The saint prayed for a considerable time, with fasting and vigil. The young man comes again, saying that he has no relief from the enemy’s slander. The monk was surprised: how come his prayers were not successful? And he added fast to fast, vigil to vigil, labor to labor, praying to the Lord to drive away the tempter. Then a demon appeared to him and said: “Why are you toiling, old man, about that young man? When you began to pray for him, I retreated from him, but he is his own demon: he eats and drinks without time, and sleeps contentedly, resting his body, living in idleness and graciously accepting bad thoughts, holding them and enjoying them - and this arouses passions in him, conceives iniquity and gives birth to sin.” See how the father of lies speaks the truth. It is true that from ourselves, from our own will, lawlessness is often committed, according to what has been said: “What they do in secret is shameful even to speak of” (Eph. 5:12). We ourselves, by our own free will, are many times to blame for our destruction. Let us hate our sins, let us cut off our passions, let us not accept bad thoughts, let us not keep them in our hearts. Let us be abstinent in food and drink, awake in sleep, not lazy in action - so let us loose the captivity of our sins, “let us break their bonds and throw off their yoke from us” (Ps. 2:3). And let us heed the apostle, who advises: “Let sin not reign in your mortal body, so that you should obey it in its lusts; And do not yield up your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. Sin should not dominate you. Just as you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness, for wicked works, so now present your members as slaves for righteousness, for holy works” (Rom. 6:12-14, 19). Even though he was bound, the Warrior of Christ was not defeated, and was not harmed by a nasty wife. Saint Jerome, writing down the life of St. Paul of Thebes, first recalls a certain Egyptian youth - in the Prologue he is called the Philosopher, and Drixelius calls him Nikita. He suffered for Christ in the kingdom of Decius. The tormentor could not turn him away from Christ with flattering words and planned to corrupt his virginity with cunning. In a beautiful vertograd (garden), among fragrant flowers and ringing springs, among trees rustling with a quiet wind, and singing birds, he ordered to prepare a bed covered with purple and fine linen. On it they laid the holy youth facing the sky, tying his hands and feet with soft silk scarves, so that he could not move. Having done this, everyone left, leaving him lying there. Then a young wife with a bright face came from the garden. Seeing her, the young man closed his eyes, and she began to seduce him with good words, inclining him to fornication. Receiving no answer, she dared to kiss him, tempting him with touch to evoke a lustful fire in his young body. Not knowing what to do, for he could neither reject her from himself, nor turn his face away from a nasty kiss, nor block his ears from her inappropriate words, nor even dodge her hands, like the once chaste Joseph in Egypt from Pentephria - look what the courageous sufferer does: tightly clenching his tongue with his teeth, he cuts it off and spits it out in the face of the harlot. Severe pain and an outpouring of blood extinguished his flame, but the woman, seeing something unprecedented and even unheard of, ran away in horror. And realizing that he could not defeat the invincible warrior of Christ, the tormentor cut off his head with a sword... Oh, what an incomprehensible image of preserving purity and chastity! You might be interested in: