Дума на берегу моря

Who is a Christian like who endures the sorrows of earthly life with true spiritual intelligence? – He can be likened to a wanderer who stands on the shore of a stormy sea. Fiercely gray waves approach the wanderer’s feet and, hitting the sand, crumble into small splashes at his feet. The sea, bickering with the whirlwind, roars, becomes waves like mountains, boils, bubbles. Waves give birth and consume one another; their heads are crowned with snow-white foam; the sea covered with them represents one immense mouth of a terrible monster, lined with teeth. The mysterious wanderer looks at this formidable spectacle with calm thought. His only eyes are on the sea, but where is his thought, where is his heart? His thought is at the gates of death; the heart is at the judgment of Christ. Here he already faces with his mind, here he faces with his sensations, here are his worries, here is his fear: from this fear the fear of earthly temptations flees. The winds will subside, the sea will calm down. Where the angry waves mounded: there the motionless surface of the storm-weary waters will spread. After intense anxiety, they will calm down in dead silence; in their transparent mirror the evening sun will be reflected when it rises over Kronstadt and sends its rays along the Gulf of Finland, to meet the streams of the Neva, towards St. Petersburg. A picturesque sight familiar to the inhabitants of the Sergius Hermitage! How many times have you seen this sky, this shore, these buildings, crowned with foam, proud, fierce waves? And they all passed, they all lay down in the silence of the coffin and grave. And those walking by will calm down too! What is so unsteady, so short-lived, like crowns of wet foam! Looking from the quiet monastery haven at the sea of ​​life, raised by a storm of passions, I thank You, my King and my God! You brought me to the fence of the holy monastery! He hid me “in the secret of Your face from the rebellion of man!” covered me with “sheltered tongue from bickering!” (Ps.30:21). My soul is only sad about this, about this I am embarrassed by the unknown: will I pass from here, from the shore of the world’s rotating, unfaithful sea, “to the place of a wondrous settlement, even to the house of God, in the voice of joy and confession of the noise of the celebration” (Ps. 41: 5), will I dwell there forever and ever? As for earthly sorrows, “I have trusted in God; I will not be afraid; whatever man will do to me” (Ps. 55:12). 1843. Sergius Desert. You might be interested in: