О последовании Господу нашему Иисусу Христу

“Whoever serves Me, let him follow Me” (John 12:26), said the Lord. Every Christian, through the vows made at holy baptism, has taken upon himself the obligation to be a slave and servant of the Lord Jesus Christ: every Christian must certainly follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Calling Himself the shepherd of the sheep, the Lord said that “the sheep hear the voice of this Shepherd... and the sheep follow Him, as they are led by His voice” (John 10:3-4). The Voice of Christ is His teaching; the voice of Christ is the Gospel; walking in the footsteps of Christ along the path of earthly wandering is an activity entirely directed according to His commandments. To follow Christ, one must know His voice. Study the Gospel, and you will be able to follow Christ with your life. Whoever, having been born according to the flesh, enters into “rebirth” (Titus 3:5) through holy baptism, and maintains the state brought by baptism through living according to the Gospel: he will be “saved.” He will “enter” into the godly realm of earthly life through spiritual birth, “and will depart” from this realm with a blessed death, and in eternity will find the most abundant, sweetest, spiritual “pasture” (John 10:9). “Whoever serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, my servant also will be: And if anyone serves Me, My Father will honor him” (John 12:26). Where was the Lord when He spoke these words? As humanity united with Divinity, He was among men, on earth, in the vale of their exile and suffering, remaining Divine and where He was from the beginningless beginning. “The word is with God” (John 1:1) and in God. This Word declared about Himself: “The Father is in Me, and I in Him” (John 10:38). The follower of Christ also reaches there: “who confessed” with his lips, heart and deeds, “for Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him, and He in God” (1 John 4:15). “If anyone serves Me, My Father will honor him: to him who overcomes world and sin and follows Me in earthly life, I will grant in eternal life to sit with Me on My throne, just as I also conquered and sat with My Father on His throne” (Apoc. 3:21). Renunciation of the world precedes following Christ. The second does not take place in the soul unless the first is accomplished in it first. “Whoever wants,” said the Lord, “to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me. Whoever wants to save his soul will destroy it; and whoever loses his soul for the sake of Me and the Gospel, he will save it” (Mark 8:34–35). “Unless anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, and also his own soul, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and comes after Me, cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26–27). Many approach the Lord, but few decide to follow Him. Many read the Gospel, delight, and admire the height and holiness of its teaching; few decide to direct their behavior according to the rules laid down by the Gospel. The Lord, to all who come to Him and wish to become assimilated to Him, declares: “If anyone comes to Me” and does not renounce the world and himself, “My disciple cannot be.” “This word is cruel,” even people who were outwardly His followers and were considered His disciples said about the Savior’s teaching: “Who can listen to him?” (John 6:60). This is how carnal wisdom judges the word of God out of its disastrous mood. The Word of God is “life” (John 6:63), eternal life, essential life. This word mortifies “carnal wisdom” (Rom. 8:6), born from eternal death, which supports eternal death in people: the word of God, for those who are destroyed by carnal wisdom and will to perish from it, “foolishness is.” It is “the power of God to those who are being saved” (1 Cor. 1:18). Sin has become so internalized to us through the fall that all properties, all movements of the soul are saturated with it. The rejection of sin, which was akin to the soul, became a rejection of the soul. Such rejection of the soul is necessary for the salvation of the soul. Rejection of the nature defiled by sin is necessary for the assimilation of the nature renewed by Christ. Throw out all food from the vessel when it is poisoned; The vessel is thoroughly washed, then the food that is to be consumed is put into it. Food poisoned by poison is, in all fairness, called poison itself. In order to follow Christ, let us first renounce our reason and our will. Both the mind and will of the fallen nature are completely damaged by sin; they will never be reconciled with the mind and will of God. He who rejects his own reason becomes capable of assimilating the mind of God; He who renounces the fulfillment of his will is made capable of fulfilling the will of God. To follow Christ, “let us take up our cross.” Taking up one's cross is called voluntary, reverent submission to the judgment of God, in the face of all sorrows sent and tolerated by God's providence. Murmuring and indignation during sorrows and adversity is a renunciation of the cross. Only one who has “taken up his cross” can follow Christ: he is submissive to the will of God, humbly recognizing himself as worthy of judgment, condemnation, and punishment. The Lord, who commanded us to self-sacrifice, renounce the world and wear the cross, gives us the strength to fulfill His commandment. He who decides to fulfill this commandment and tries to fulfill it immediately sees the need for it. The teaching, which seemed cruel at a superficial and erroneous glance from carnal wisdom, is the most reasonable, full of goodness: it calls the lost to salvation, the killed to life, buried in hell to heaven. Those who do not dare to arbitrarily renounce themselves and the world are forcibly forced to do both. When inexorable and irresistible death comes, then they part with everything to which they were attached: self-denial extends to the point that they throw off their very body, cast it down, leave it on the earth as food for worms and decay. Self-love and attachment to the temporary and vain are the fruits of self-delusion, blindness, and spiritual death. Self-love is perverted self-love. This love is crazy and destructive. A self-loving person, partial to the vain and transitory, to sinful pleasures, is his own enemy. He is a suicide: thinking to love himself and please himself, he hates and destroys himself, kills himself with eternal death. Let us look around, entertained, foggy, deceived by the bustle! Let us come to our senses, intoxicated by vanity, deprived of correct self-view! Let us cope with the experiments that are constantly taking place before our eyes. What happens before us will certainly happen to us. The one who spent his whole life earning honors, did he take them with him into eternity? Didn’t he leave here the loud titles, insignia, all the splendor with which he surrounded himself? Didn’t only man go into eternity with his deeds, with the qualities acquired during earthly life? The one who used his life to acquire wealth, who accumulated a lot of money, acquired vast expanses of land for his own possession, established various institutions that provided abundant income, lived in palaces shining with gold and marble, rode around in magnificent chariots and horses - did he take this into eternity? No! he left everything on earth, satisfying the last needs of the body with the smallest piece of earth, which is equally needed and equally satisfied by all the dead. Those who, during their earthly life, were engaged in carnal amusements and pleasures, spent time with friends in games and other amusements, and feasted on sumptuous meals, are finally removed by necessity itself from the usual kind of life. The time of old age and sickness comes, and after them the hour of separation of the soul from the body. Then it becomes known, but too late, that serving whims and passions is self-delusion, that life for the flesh and sin is life without meaning. The desire for earthly prosperity, how strange, how monstrous! It searches with frenzy. As soon as he finds it, what he found loses its value, and the search is aroused with renewed vigor. It is dissatisfied with nothing present: it lives only in the future, it thirsts only for what it does not have. Objects of desire lure the seeker’s heart to itself with the dream and hope of satisfaction: deceived, constantly deceived, he chases after them throughout the entire field of earthly life, until unexpected death delights him. How and with what can we explain this seeking, which treats everyone like an inhuman traitor, and dominates everyone, captivates everyone? – The desire for endless benefits is implanted in our souls. But we have fallen, and the heart, blinded by the fall, seeks in time and on earth for what exists in eternity and in heaven. The fate that befell my fathers and brothers will befall me too. They died: I will die too. I will leave my cell, I will leave in it my books, and my clothes, and my desk, at which I spent many hours; I will leave behind everything that I needed or thought I needed during my earthly life. They will take my body out of these cells in which I live, as if on the threshold of another life and country; They will take out my body and commit it to the earth, which served as the beginning for the human body. Exactly the same thing will happen to you, brothers, who are reading these lines. You too will die: you will leave everything earthly on earth; With your souls alone you will enter eternity. The human soul acquires qualities corresponding to its activity. Just as a mirror depicts the objects against which it will be placed, so the soul is imprinted with impressions in accordance with its activities and deeds, in accordance with its surroundings. In an insensitive mirror, images disappear when objects are removed from the mirror; impressions remain in the verbal soul. They can be erased and replaced by others, but this requires both work and time. The impressions that constitute the property of the soul at the hour of its death remain its property forever, serving as a guarantee of either its eternal bliss or its eternal disaster. “You cannot work for God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), the Savior said to fallen people, having revealed before people the state into which they were brought by the fall. So the doctor will tell the patient the state into which he is brought by the disease and which the patient himself cannot understand. Due to our mental disorder, we need timely self-sacrifice and renunciation of the world for salvation. “No one can work for two masters: either he will love one and hate the other: or he will hold on to one, but will begin to be careless about his friends” (Matthew 6:24). Experiences constantly confirm the validity of that view of the moral morbidity of people, which was expressed by the all-holy Physician in the words we cited, spoken with decisive certainty: the satisfaction of vain and sinful desires is always followed by a passion for them; after infatuation comes captivity, death for everything spiritual. Those who allowed themselves to follow their own wishes and carnal wisdom were carried away by them, enslaved by them, forgot God and eternity, spent their earthly life in vain, and perished in eternal destruction. There is no possibility of fulfilling one’s will and the will of God together: from the fulfillment of the first, the fulfillment of the second is desecrated and made obscene. Thus, the fragrant, precious myrrh loses its dignity from an insignificant admixture of stench. Then only, God proclaims through the great Prophet, “you will destroy the good of the earth” when you willfully “listen to Me. If you do not want, you will listen to Me; you will girdle the sword: the mouth of the Lord speaks this” (Is. 1:19-20). There is no way to acquire the mind of God while remaining in carnal wisdom. “The wisdom of the flesh,” said the Apostle, “is death... The wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, for it can do less” (Rom. 8:6-7). What is carnal wisdom? - A way of thinking that arose from the state into which people were brought by the fall, directing them to act on earth as if they were eternal on it, exalting everything corruptible and temporary, humiliating God and everything related to pleasing God, taking away salvation from people. Let us renounce our souls, according to the will of the Savior, in order to win our souls! let us voluntarily renounce the vicious state into which they are brought by arbitrary renunciation of God, in order to receive from God the holy state of renewed human nature by God incarnate! Let us replace our will and the will of the demons, to which our will submitted and with which it merged, with the will of God, declared to us in the Gospel; We will replace carnal wisdom, common to fallen spirits and people, with the mind of God, shining from the Gospel. Let us renounce our possessions in order to gain the ability to follow our Lord Jesus Christ! Renunciation of property is carried out on the basis of the correct concept of it. The correct concept of material property is delivered by the Gospel (Luke 16:1–31); when it is delivered, then the human mind involuntarily realizes all its correctness. Earthly property is not our property, as those who have never thought about this subject mistakenly think: otherwise it would always be and would forever remain ours. It passes from hand to hand, and thereby testifies to itself that it is given only for holding. God owns property; a person is only an urgent administrator of property. A faithful steward accurately fulfills the will of the one who has entrusted him with the order. And we, managing the material property handed over for a period of time, strive to manage it according to the will of God. Let us not use it as a means of satisfying our whims and passions, as a means of our eternal destruction: let us use it for the benefit of humanity, which needs so much, suffers so much, let us use it as a means of our salvation. Those who desire Christian perfection completely abandon earthly acquisitions (Matthew 19:16–30); those who want to be saved must give whatever alms they can (Luke 11:41) and refrain from abusing money. Let us renounce the love of fame and ambition! Let us not chase after honors and ranks, or use inappropriate and humiliating methods to gain them, involving the violation of God’s law, conscience, and the good of our neighbors. Such methods are most used by seekers to acquire earthly greatness. Infected and carried away by vanity, an insatiable seeker of human glory, is incapable of faith in Christ: “How can you believe,” Christ said to the ambitious people of His time, “receiving glory from one another, and seeking not glory that is from the one God?” (John 5:44). If God's providence has provided us with earthly power and authority, then through their mediation we will become benefactors of humanity. Let us reject the fierce poison that is so dangerous to the human spirit: stupid and despicable egoism, which transforms people infected with it into animals and demons, making these people the scourge of humanity, their own villains. Let us love the will of God above all; let us prefer it to everything; We will hate everything that is contrary to it with pious and God-pleasing hatred. When our nature, damaged by sin, rebels against the gospel teaching, we will express our hatred of nature by rejecting the wishes and demands of nature. The more decisive the expression of hatred, the more decisive will be the victory over sin and over the nature that sin possesses; the faster and stronger our spiritual progress will be. When people close to us in the flesh set out to distract us from following the will of God, we will show them holy hatred, similar to that shown to wolves by lambs who do not transform into wolves and do not defend themselves from wolves with their teeth 3 . Holy hatred of one’s neighbors consists in maintaining loyalty to God, in not consenting to the vicious will of people, even if these people were closest relatives, in generous patience with the insults they inflict, in prayer for their salvation - not in slander and not in actions similar to slander, which express the hatred of the fallen nature, hatred that is contrary to God. “Do not imagine,” said the Savior, “that he has come to bring peace to the earth; he has not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to separate a man from his father, and a daughter from her mother, and a bride from her mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:34-35). “I have come,” St. John Climacus explains the quoted words of the Lord, “to separate” the God-loving from the peace-loving; carnal from spiritual; the glory-loving from the humble: “God is pleased with division and separation when it is done for the sake of love for Him” 4 . The prophet called the earth the place of “his coming” (Ps. 119:54), and himself a stranger and stranger on it: “I am a sojourner with You,” he said in his prayer to God, “and a stranger like all my fathers” (Ps. 39:13). An obvious, tangible truth! a truth that people forget, despite its obviousness! I am a “stranger” on earth: I entered by birth; I will go out by death. I am a “settler” on earth: I was transferred to it from paradise, where I desecrated and disfigured myself with sin. I will also move from the earth, from this urgent exile of mine, into which I was placed by my God, so that I come to my senses, cleanse myself of sinfulness, and again become capable of living in paradise. For my stubborn, final incorrigibility, I must be cast down forever into the dungeons of hell. I am a “wanderer” on earth: my journey begins in the cradle and ends in the coffin: I wander through the ages from childhood to old age, I wander through various earthly circumstances and situations. I am “a stranger and a wanderer, like all my fathers.” My fathers were strangers and pilgrims on earth: having entered it by birth, they departed from its face by death. There were no exceptions: none of the people remained on earth forever. I'll leave too. I am already beginning to depart, my strength diminishing, submitting to old age. I will leave, I will leave here according to the immutable law and powerful establishment of my Creator and God. Let us make sure that we are strangers on earth. Only from this conviction can we make unmistakable calculations and orders for our earthly life; Only from this conviction can we give it the right direction, use it to acquire a blissful eternity, not for empty and vain things, not for the destruction of ourselves. Our fall has and continues to blind us! and we are forced by force, over a long period of time, to convince ourselves of the clearest truths, which, due to their clarity, do not need convincing. A wanderer, when he stops along the way in a hospitable house, does not pay special attention to this house. Why attention when he is sheltered in the house for the shortest possible time? He is content with only what is necessary; tries not to spend the money that he needs to continue his journey and to maintain himself in the great city to which he is marching; he endures disadvantages and inconveniences generously, knowing that they are an accident to which all travelers are exposed, and that inviolable calm awaits him in the place where he strives. He does not become attached with his heart to any object in the hotel, no matter how attractive the object may seem. He does not waste time on extraneous activities: he needs it to complete a difficult journey. He was constantly deep in thought about the magnificent royal capital to which he was heading, about the significant obstacles that must be overcome, about the means that could make the journey easier, about the robber ambushes that plague the path, about the unfortunate fate of those who did not manage to complete this journey safely, about the happiest situation of those who completed it with the desired success. Having spent the required time in the hotel, he thanks the owner for the hospitality shown to him, and, having left, forgets about the hotel or remembers it superficially, because his heart was cold towards it. Let us also acquire such a relationship with the earth. Let us not madly waste the abilities of soul and body; Let us not sacrifice them to vanity and corruption. Let us protect ourselves from attachment to the temporal and material, so that it does not prevent us from acquiring the eternal, the heavenly. Let us protect ourselves from satisfying our unsatisfiable and insatiable whims, from the satisfaction of which our downfall develops and reaches terrible proportions. Let us protect ourselves from excesses, contenting ourselves only with what is essential. Let us direct all our attention to the afterlife awaiting us, which no longer has an end. Let us know God, who commanded us to know Him and who bestows this knowledge by His word and His grace. Let us become assimilated to God during our earthly life. He provided us with the closest connection with Himself, and gave us a period of time to complete this greatest work - earthly life. There is no other time, except the time determined by earthly life, in which a miraculous assimilation could take place: if it does not happen at this time, it will never happen. Let us gain the friendship of the inhabitants of heaven, holy angels and departed holy men, so that they will receive us “into eternal shelters” (Luke 16:9). Let us acquire knowledge of the fallen spirits, these fierce and insidious enemies of the human race, in order to avoid their snares and cohabitation with them in the flames of hell. Let the word of God be a lamp on our life’s path (Ps. 119:105). Let us glorify and thank God for the abundant blessings with which our temporary shelter, the earth, is filled to satisfy our needs. With purity of mind let us penetrate into the meaning of these goods: they are weak images of eternal goods. Eternal blessings are depicted by them as weakly and insufficiently as the objects from which it falls are depicted as a shadow. Granting us earthly blessings, God mysteriously announces: “People! Your temporary shelter is equipped with various, countless benefits, captivating, delighting both your eyes and your heart, satisfying your needs to the fullest: conclude from this about the benefits with which your eternal home is equipped. Understand the infinite, incomprehensible goodness of God towards you and, having honored earthly blessings with pious understanding and contemplation of them, do not act foolishly: do not enslave yourself to them, do not destroy yourself with them. Using them as much as you need and should, strive with all your might to acquire heavenly blessings.” Let us remove from ourselves all false teachings and activities based on them: the sheep of Christ “do not follow a strange voice, but flee from it, because they do not know the strange voice” (John 10:5). Let us definitely become familiar with the voice of Christ, so that we can immediately recognize it when we hear it and immediately follow His command. Having acquired in the spirit sympathy for this voice, we will acquire in the spirit alienation from the alien voice, which is emitted by carnal wisdom in a variety of sounds. As soon as we hear an alien voice, we will run, we will flee from it, according to the nature of Christ’s sheep, who flee from an alien voice by flight: by decisive inattention to it. Attention to him is already dangerous: after attention, seduction creeps in, and after seduction, death. The fall of our forefathers began with the foremother's attention to an alien voice. Our Shepherd not only calls us with his voice, but also guides us through His way of life: He “walks before His sheep” (John 10:4). He commanded us to renounce the world, to renounce ourselves, to take up and bear our cross: He did all this before our eyes. “Christ suffered for us; leave us an image, that we may follow His steps” (1 Peter 2:21). He deigned to take upon Himself humanity, although from the royal tribe, but descended by its position into the category of the common people. His birth took place during the wanderings of His Most Holy Mother, for whom there was no place in human homes. The birth took place in a den containing livestock; the manger served as the cradle for the Newborn. As soon as the news of the birth spread, a murder plot was formed. The baby is already being chased! The baby is being sought for murder! A baby flees through the desert to Egypt from an enraged killer! The God-man spent His childhood in obedience to his parents, betrothed father and natural Mother, setting an example of humility to people who died from pride and the disobedience it produces. The Lord devoted his manly years to preaching the Gospel, wandering from city to city, from city to city, without having his own shelter. His clothing consisted of a tunic and a robe. While He proclaimed salvation to people and showered divine blessings on them, people hated Him, plotted and more than once attempted to kill Him. Finally they executed Him as a criminal. He allowed them to commit the most terrible crime, which their hearts craved, because he wanted to deliver the criminal human race from the oath and eternal punishment by the execution of the All-Holy One. The earthly life of the God-man was painful: it ended with a suffering death. Following the Lord, all the saints followed the Lord into blessed eternity; they walked a narrow and sorrowful path, denying themselves the glory and pleasures of the world, curbing carnal desires with exploits, crucifying the spirit on the cross of Christ, which constitutes the commandments of the Gospel for the fallen human spirit, being subjected to various hardships, persecuted by evil spirits, persecuted by their brethren - men. Let us follow Christ and the host of saints who followed Him! The God-man “having made purification for our sins, he is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). There He calls His followers: “Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you” (Matthew 25:34). Amen. (Matthew 10:16). See the life of the Great Martyr Barbara. Chetya Menaion, December on the 4th day. You might be interested in: