Чаша Христова

Two beloved disciples asked the Lord for the thrones of glory, and He gave them “His Cup” (Matthew 20:23). The cup of Christ is suffering. The cup of Christ grants to its participants on earth participation in the grace-filled kingdom of Christ, prepares for them thrones of eternal glory in Heaven. We are all unresponsive before the Chalice of Christ; no one can complain about it, refuse it: because He who commanded the eating of it Himself drank it first of all. Tree of the knowledge of good and evil! You killed our ancestors in paradise, seducing them with the charms of sensual pleasure and the charms of the mind. Christ, the Redeemer of the lost, brought His saving Chalice to earth, to the fallen and exiled. The bitterness of this Cup destroys the criminal, murderous pleasure of sin in the heart; by the humility that flows abundantly from it, the proud carnal mind is mortified; to those who drink it with faith and patience, the eternal life is returned, taken away and taken away from us by eating the fruit of the forbidden. The cup of Christ, “I will accept the cup of salvation!” (Ps. 116:4). The Cup is accepted when a Christian endures earthly sorrows with humility borrowed from the Gospel. Saint Peter rushed with a drawn sword to defend the God-man, surrounded by villains: but the meek Lord Jesus said to Peter: “Plunge the knife into the scissor, the cup that the Father has given me, shall not the imam drink it?” (John 18:11). And you, when adversity surrounds you, say for the consolation and strengthening of your soul: “The cup that the Father gave me, shall I not drink it?” Bitter Chalice; with one glance at her, all human considerations are lost. Replace considerations with faith, and drink courageously the bitter Cup: the All-Good and All-Wise Father gives it to you. It was not the Pharisees, not Caiaphas, not Judas who prepared it, not Pilate and his soldiers who served it! “The cup that the Father has given me, shall not the imam drink it?” The Pharisees plot evil, Judas betrays, Pilate commands lawless murder, and the hegemon’s soldiers commit it. All of them prepared for themselves certain destruction with their atrocities; Do not prepare for your own destruction, just as certain, by memory of malice, desire and dream of revenge, indignation at your enemies. The Heavenly Father is omnipotent, all-seeing: He sees your sorrows, and if He found it necessary and useful to turn the Cup away from you, He would certainly do it. The Lord, as both Scripture and Church History testify, in many cases allowed sorrow to His beloved, and in many cases rejected sorrow from His beloved, in accordance with His incomprehensible destinies. When the Cup appears before you, do not look at the people who are giving it to you; lift your eyes to Heaven and say: “The cup that the Father gave me, shall I not drink it?” “I will accept the cup of salvation.” I cannot reject the Cup - a pledge of heavenly, eternal blessings. The Apostle of Christ instructs me in patience: “through many tribulations,” he says, “it is fitting for us to enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Should I really reject the Cup - a means to achieve, to develop this kingdom in myself! I will accept the Cup - a gift from God. The cup of Christ is a gift from God. “You have been given,” wrote the great Paul to the Philippians, “to not only believe in Christ, but also to suffer for Him” (Phil. 1:29). You accept the Cup, apparently from human hands. What do you care whether these people act righteously or lawlessly? Your job is to act righteously, according to the duty of a follower of Jesus: with thanksgiving to God, with living faith, accept the Cup, and courageously drink it to the dregs. When accepting the Cup from human hands, remember that it is the Cup not only of the Innocent, but also of the All-Holy. Remembering this, repeat about yourself and about suffering sinners like you, the words of the blessed and prudent sinner, which he uttered when he was crucified at the right hand of the crucified God-man: “we... are worthy of our deeds... Remember me, Lord, when you come into this kingdom” (Luke 23:41-42). Then, turning to people, tell them (if they are not able to understand and accept your words, then, without throwing the honest pearls of humility under the feet of those who are unable to appreciate them, say with your thoughts and hearts): “Blessed are you, instruments of the truth and mercy of God, blessed from now to eternity!” This will only fulfill the commandment of the Gospel, which says: “Love your enemies, bless him who swears” (Matthew 5:44). Pray to the Lord for them, so that for the insults and insults inflicted on you, they will be rewarded with temporary and eternal rewards, so that what was done to you will be counted by those who committed them, at the judgment of Christ, as virtue. Even if your heart does not want to do this, force it: because only those who force their hearts to fulfill the Gospel commandments can inherit Heaven (Matthew 11:12). If you don’t want to do this, then you don’t want to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Carefully delve into yourself and look around: have you found another teacher, have you not obeyed him? The teacher of hatred is the devil. It is a terrible crime to offend and oppress others; The most terrible crime is murder. But whoever hates his persecutor, slanderer, traitor, murderer, is angry with them, takes revenge on them, his sin is very close to their sin. In vain he seems to himself and others to be righteous. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15), declared the beloved disciple of Christ. Living faith in Christ instructs us to accept the Cup of Christ: and the Cup of Christ pours hope in Christ into the hearts of its participants; hope in Christ gives strength and consolation to the heart. What torment, what hellish torment - to complain, to grumble about the Cup predetermined from above! Sinners before God are murmuring, impatience, cowardice, and especially despair - the ugly children of criminal unbelief. It is sinful to grumble against our neighbors when they are instruments of our suffering; it is all the more sinful when the Chalice descends to us directly from Heaven, from the right hand of God. He who drinks the Cup with thanksgiving to God, with the blessing of his neighbors: he has reached sacred peace, the grace-filled peace of Christ, and henceforth already enjoys in the spiritual paradise of God. Temporary suffering in itself does not mean anything: we give it meaning by our attachment to the earth and everything perishable, by our coldness towards Christ and eternity. You endure the bitterness and disgusting taste of medicinal mixtures; you endure painful cutting and burning of your limbs; you endure prolonged languor of hunger, prolonged confinement in a room; you endure all this to restore lost health to the body, which, having been healed, will certainly get sick again, will certainly die and decay. Endure the bitterness of the Cup of Christ, which brings healing and eternal bliss to your immortal soul. If the Cup seems unbearable and deadly to you, it convicts you: although you are called Christ’s, you are not Christ’s. For true followers of Christ, the Cup of Christ is a cup of joy. So the holy apostles, after they were beaten before a meeting of the elders of the Jews, “went rejoicing on behalf of the council, because for the name of the Lord Jesus they were counted worthy to receive dishonor” (Acts 5:41). Righteous Job heard the bitter news. Message after message came to strike his hard heart. The last of the news was the most difficult: the battle of all his sons and all his daughters with a violent, sudden, cruel death. Out of intense sadness, righteous Job tore his robe to pieces, sprinkled ashes on his head, - from the action of the submissive faith that lived in him, he fell to the ground, bowed to the Lord and said: “Naked I expired from my mother’s womb, naked I will depart there: the Lord is given, the Lord is taken away. As the Lord willed, so it will be: blessed be the name of the Lord forever!” ( Job 1:21 ). Trust in the simplicity of your heart to the One with whom even the hair of your head is numbered: He knows what size the healing Cup should be given to you. Look often at Jesus: He is before His murderers like a silent lamb before its shearers; He is put to death like an unresponsive sheep to the slaughter. Don’t take your eyes off Him - and your suffering will dissolve with heavenly, spiritual sweetness; By the stripes of Jesus the wounds of your heart will be healed. “Stop!” said the Lord to those who wanted to protect Him in the garden of Gethsemane, and He healed the cut off ear of those who came to bind Him (Luke 22:51). “Or do you think,” the Lord objected to the one who tried to turn the Cup away from Him with a weapon, “that I cannot now pray to My Father, and an Angel will present to Me a greater legion than twelve?” (Matthew 26:53). In times of adversity, do not seek human help; do not waste precious time, do not exhaust the strength of your soul searching for this powerless help. Expect help from God: by His wave, in due time, people will come and help you. The Lord remained silent before Pilate and Herod and did not utter any justification. And you imitate this holy and wise silence when you see that your enemies are judging you with the intention of condemning you without fail, judging you only in order to cover up their malicious intent with the guise of judgment. Whether preceded and preceded by gradually accumulating clouds, or suddenly, carried by a fierce whirlwind, the Cup appears before you, speak to God about it: “Thy will be done.” You are a disciple, follower and servant of Jesus. Jesus said: “Whoever serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, he also will be My servant” (John 12:26). But Jesus spent his earthly life in suffering: He was persecuted from birth to the grave; malice, from His very shrouds, prepared for Him a violent death. Having reached her goal, she was not satisfied: she tried to eradicate His very memory from the face of the earth. Along the path of temporary suffering, all His chosen ones followed the Lord into blissful eternity. It is impossible for us, while being in carnal pleasures, to remain in a spiritual state. That is why the Lord constantly teaches His beloved His Cup, with it He maintains in them deadness to the world and the ability to live the life of the Spirit. The Monk Isaac of Syria said: “a person for whom God especially cares is known by the sorrows that are constantly sent to him” 543. Pray to God to turn away from you every attack, every temptation. One should not boldly rush into the abyss of sorrows: this is prideful arrogance. But when sorrows come by themselves, do not be afraid of them, do not think that they came by chance, by coincidence. No, they were allowed by the incomprehensible Providence of God. Full of faith and the courage and generosity it engenders, sail fearlessly through the darkness and howling storm to the quiet haven of eternity: you are invisibly guided by Jesus Himself. With pious, deep meditation, study the prayer of the Lord, which He offered to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane during the difficult hours that preceded His suffering and death on the cross. With this prayer, meet and overcome all sorrow. “My Father,” the Savior prayed, “even if it is possible, this Cup passes by from Me: not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). Pray to God to remove adversity from you, and together renounce your will as a sinful will, a blind will; surrender yourself, your soul and body, your circumstances, both present and future, surrender those close to your hearts to the will of God, the all-holy and wise. “Watch and pray, so that you do not enter into adversity: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). When you are surrounded by sorrow, you need to increase your prayers in order to attract the special grace of God to yourself. Only with the help of special grace can we trample upon all temporary disasters. Having received the gift of patience from above, carefully watch over yourself in order to preserve and retain the grace of God with you. Otherwise, sin will quietly creep into the soul or body and drive God’s grace away from us. If, through negligence and absent-mindedness, you allow sin into yourself, especially that to which our weak flesh is so prone, which defiles both body and soul, then grace will retreat from you, leaving you alone and naked. Then sorrow, allowed for your salvation and perfection, will come upon you harshly, erasing you with sadness, despondency, despair, as someone who contains the gift of God without due reverence for the gift. Hasten through sincere and decisive repentance to restore purity to your heart, and through purity the gift of patience: because it, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, rests in only the pure. The holy martyrs sang a joyful song in the midst of a blazing furnace, walking on nails, on the edges of swords, sitting in cauldrons of boiling water or oil. So your heart, having attracted grace-filled consolation to itself through prayer, keeping it close to itself with vigilance over itself, will sing, in the midst of misfortunes and severe misfortunes, a joyful song of praise and thanksgiving to God. The mind, purified by the Chalice of Christ, becomes a spectator of spiritual visions: it begins to see the all-encompassing providence of God, invisible to carnal minds, to see the law of corruption in everything corruptible, to see the vast eternity close to all, to see God in His great works - in the creation and re-creation of the world. Earthly life seems to him like a soon-ending wandering, its events - like dreams, its blessings - a short-term deception of the eyes, a short-term, harmful deception of the mind and heart. What is the fruit of temporary sorrows that they bear for eternity? When Heaven was shown to the holy Apostle John, one of the celestials asked him, pointing to the countless gathering of luminous Belorians who were celebrating their salvation and bliss before the throne of God: “These clothed in white robes, who are they, and where did they come from? “And I rebuked him,” says John the Theologian: “Lord, you weigh.” Then the celestial being said to the Theologian: “These are the ones who came out of great sorrow and asked for their garments, and made their garments white in the Blood of the Lamb. For this reason, they are before the Throne of God and serve Him day and night in His Church: and He who sits on the Throne will dwell in them. They will not hunger, they will thirst, and the sun will not be allowed to fall on them, and all heat will not fall upon them: for as the Lamb in the midst of the Throne will I feed and guide them to the springs of animal waters, and God will take away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:13-17). Alienation from God, eternal torment in hell, eternal communication with devils and devil-like people, fire, cold, darkness of Gehenna - this is what is worthy of being called sorrow! This is for sure - great, terrible, unbearable sorrow. Earthly pleasures lead to great eternal sorrow. The Cup of Christ protects and saves from this sorrow, when the drinker drinks it with thanksgiving to God, with the glorification of the all-good God, who gives man His boundless, eternal mercy in the bitter Cup of temporary sorrows. You might be interested in: