Поучение в неделю о слепорожденном. О самомнении и смиренномудрии

Beloved brothers! Our Lord Jesus Christ, after healing a man born blind, which we heard about today in the Holy Gospel, said: “I came into this world for judgment, that those who do not see may see, and those who see will be blind” (John 9:39). The proud sages and righteous people of the world, such as the Jewish Pharisees, could not listen to these words of the Lord indifferently. Their pride and high opinion of themselves admitted that they were offended. They responded to the Lord’s words with a question in which they expressed indignation, conceit, mockery, and hatred of the Lord, combined with contempt for Him. “When are we blind?” - they said. In answer to the Pharisees’ question, the Lord depicted to them their state of mind, which served as the initial reason for the question. “Even if you were blind,” He told them, “you would no longer have sin, but now you say, as we see, your sin remains” (John 9:40–41). What a terrible mental illness - conceit! In human affairs it deprives the proud of the help and advice of their neighbors, and in the work of God, in the matter of salvation, it deprived and is depriving the arrogant Pharisees of the most precious treasure - the gift of God brought from heaven by the Son of God, it has deprived and is depriving the Divine Revelation and the most blessed communion with God associated with the acceptance of this Revelation. The Pharisees recognized themselves as seeing, that is, satisfactorily and highly acquainted with the true knowledge of God, not in need of any further progress and teaching, and on this basis they rejected the teaching about God that was taught directly by God. The virtue opposite to pride and its special expression in the human spirit itself—conceit—is humility. Just as pride is primarily an illness of our spirit, a sin of the mind, so humility is a good and blissful state of spirit, and is primarily a virtue of the mind. For this reason, it is very often called humility in the Holy Scriptures and in the writings of the Holy Fathers. What is humility? Humility is a person’s correct concept of humanity, therefore, it is a person’s correct concept of himself. The direct effect of humility, or humility of mind, is that a person’s correct concept of humanity and of himself reconciles a person with himself, with human society, with its passions, shortcomings, abuses, with private and public circumstances - reconciles him with earth and heaven. Virtue - humility - received its name from the inner peace of the heart that it gives birth to. When we mean one calming, joyful, blissful state produced in us by virtue, we call it humility. When we intend, along with the state, to point out the source of the state, then we call it humility. Do not think, beloved brethren, that the definition we have given, in which humility is called the correct way of thinking of a person in general about humanity and in particular about himself, was an arbitrary definition. This definition of humility and humbleness of mind was indicated by the Lord Himself. He said: “If you understand the truth, then the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). But what is spiritual freedom, taught by the Truth, if not holy, grace-filled peace of the soul, if not holy humility, if not evangelical humility? Divine Truth is our Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6). He announced: “Learn from Me, from Divine Truth, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). Humility is a person’s way of thinking about himself and about humanity, instilled and inspired by Divine Truth 113 . Conceit is a sad and destructive self-delusion, it is a murderous deception with which blinded humanity deceives itself and with which its demons deceive it. The views and foundations of human pride and human conceit are false. The proud person looks at himself as an original being, and not as a creation of God; earthly life seems to him endless, death and eternity - non-existent. There is no providence of God for him: he recognizes human reason as the ruler of the world. All his thoughts creep on the earth; his life was sacrificed entirely to the earth, on which he would like to establish unceasing pleasure in sin. And the blind Pharisee and Sadducee strive towards this insane, unrealizable goal with all their might. On the contrary, the memory of death accompanies the humble man on the path of earthly life, instructs him to act on earth for eternity and, wonderfully, his very actions inspire him with special beneficence. The humble person acts for virtue, and not prompted by passions and not to satisfy passions; therefore, his actions cannot but be beneficial for human society. The humble-wise sees himself as an insignificant speck of dust among the vast universe, among times, generations and human events, past and future. The mind and heart of a humble person are capable of accepting Divine Christian teaching and continually excelling in Christian virtues; the mind and heart of the humble man see and feel the fall of human nature and are therefore able to recognize and accept the Redeemer. Humility does not see merit in fallen human nature; it contemplates humanity as an excellent creation of God, but at the same time it contemplates sin, which has penetrated into the entire being of man, poisoning this being; humility, recognizing the splendor of God’s creation, also recognizes the ugliness of the creation, distorted by sin; it constantly laments about this disaster. It looks at the earth as the country of its exile, and strives through repentance to regain Heaven, lost by conceit. But pride and conceit, having demanded the fall and destruction of humanity, do not see and do not recognize the fall in human nature: they see in it only virtues, only perfection and grace; The very illnesses of the soul, the very passions are considered virtues. Such a view of humanity makes the thought of a Redeemer completely unnecessary and alien. The vision of the proud is terrible blindness; and the blindness of the humble is the ability to see the Truth. This is what the Lord’s words refer to: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see will be blind.” The humble accepted the Lord and were enlightened by the Divine Light; The proud, pleased with themselves, rejected him, and were even more darkened by the rejection and blasphemy of God. Countless stars shine brightly in the clear sky at night, bickering with each other with an abundance of light; but when the sun appears, the stars disappear - disappear, as if becoming completely non-existent, although in essence they all remain in their places. So human virtues, when compared one with another, have their own light; when the good of the Divine appears, they disappear before the Light of the Divine. The Apostle, talking about the virtues of the patriarch Abraham, said that Abraham “has praise, but not from God; But regarding God, Abraham had faith in God, and it was imputed to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:2–3). This is what the Pharisees should have done, boasting of their descent in the flesh from Abraham, but alienated from him in spirit. In contrast to the way Abraham acted, they wanted to retain for themselves the imaginary virtues of the old man and through this they became incapable of self-knowledge and knowledge of God; they heard the terrible sentence of the Lord: “If you had been blind, that is, if you had admitted your blindness, you would no longer have had sin, but now, being blind, you say, as if we see: your sin abides.” You have internalized it and imprinted it on yourself with your self-esteem. In his youth, the holy Apostle Paul was a pupil of the Pharisees; but he did not follow the bitterness and conceit of the Pharisees. He was, as he will tell about himself for our edification, “a Jew from Jew, according to the law a Pharisee, but in the truth of the law he was blameless. But even if I took these gains,” he says, “I counted them as vanity for Christ’s sake.” But I count all the loss of existence for the surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:5–8). Beloved brothers! Let us imitate the holy Apostle Paul and other saints of God: let us approach God, completely rejecting destructive self-conceit, through humility. Through humility let us cleave to God; Let us attract to ourselves through humility the attention and mercy of our God, Who said: “On whom I will look, even to him who is meek and lowly and trembles at My words” (Isa. 66:2). By seeing and realizing our sins, let us include ourselves among the sinners beloved of God; by rejecting self-conceit, we will exclude ourselves from the number of false righteous, otherwise God, who said: “For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). May our heart be set up with humility as a spiritual altar to God, 114 and may the priest of the Most High God – our mind – offer up spiritual sacrifices to Him, may he offer up a sacrifice of tenderness, a sacrifice of repentance, a sacrifice of confession, a sacrifice of prayer, a sacrifice of mercy, filling every sacrifice with humility: for “God will not despise a contrite and humble heart” (Ps. 50:19). Amen. “The lips of the humble man speak the truth,” said St. Mark the Ascetic. See the Word on the Spiritual Law, ch. 9 The Monk Pimen the Great said: “In only one place were the Israelis allowed to make sacrifices and perform public worship. In a spiritual sense, this is a place of humility.” Alphabetical Patericon You might be interested in: