Слово во вторник 23-й недели. Объяснение молитвы Господней «Отче наш»

Borrowed from the patristic writings, mainly from the 9th interview of St. Cassian the Roman Prayer, being the precious property of all Christians, is the main occupation of the holy desert dwellers. She is their food; she is their book; she is their science, she is their life. The great desert dweller John, the Forerunner of the Lord, was a worker of prayer; he was also her teacher. This great science, which brings man union with God, was taught by the holy Forerunner to his disciples, as we heard today in the Gospel (Luke 11:1-4; Matt. 6:9-13). The Lord's disciples wished to learn prayer from the Lord Himself. A solid, fair desire! Of true prayer, the true teacher is God alone, 145 holy teachers - men give only the initial concepts of prayer, indicate the correct mood in which the grace-filled teaching about prayer can be communicated by delivering supernatural, spiritual thoughts and sensations. These thoughts and sensations come from the Holy Spirit and are communicated by the Holy Spirit. The Lord fulfilled the wise request, a request essential for soul edification and salvation, the request of His disciples: He taught them a prayer that only God could teach. What has been said will be proven by the explanation of this prayer, called, in contrast to the prayer books compiled by holy people, the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer begins with the invocation: “Our Father.” Which of the holy men would allow himself and his brethren, sinful, rejected people, held captive by the devil and eternal death, such an appeal to God? Apparently no one. Only God could allow this. He allowed; if He allowed, then He granted. The Son of God, having become man, made men sons of God, His brothers. He refers to God the Father by right of nature: “Our Father!” and he grants us the grace-filled right to approach God as the Father, to begin our prayer to Him with a wonderful, astonishing beginning, which no one would dare to think of: “Our Father!” The beginning of the Lord's Prayer is the gift of the Lord, the gift of infinite price, the gift of the Redeemer to the redeemed, the Savior to the saved. The petitions that make up the Lord’s Prayer are petitions for spiritual gifts acquired for humanity through redemption. There is no word in prayer about the carnal, temporary needs of a person. He who commanded us to seek only the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, who promised to add everything necessary temporarily to those who seek this kingdom 146, teaches prayer in accordance with the commandment and promise. Following the proclamation and to the proclamation “Our Father” itself, an indication is immediately added to the place where the Father resides, unencompassed by any place, omnipresent, embracing everything: “Our Father who art in heaven.” By indicating the location of the Father in heaven, the praying Son is elevated to heaven. Forget everything earthly; ignore the earth - this shelter given to you for the shortest time; leave without attention all the accessories of the shelter, which will be taken away from you after the shortest possible time; turn all your concerns to your fatherland, to heaven, taken away by the fall, returned by redemption; Bring a prayer for the granting of eternal, spiritual, all-holy, divine blessings to you, exceeding in their immense dignity not only the comprehension of men, but also the comprehension of angels. They, these benefits, are already prepared for you; they are already waiting for you. The justice of God, inseparable from His goodness, requires that your will to accept heavenly treasures be revealed through your prayer and your life. All the servants of the Lord, without exception, will be bewildered by the greatness of the Lord’s Prayer. Divine bounties are scattered by the right hand of God. And the most righteous person recognizes himself as unworthy of them, and their request is impermissible for himself. All the more bewilderment will strike a sinner who recognizes himself as worthy only of executions. This bewilderment is resolved by an explanation that leads from bewilderment to bewilderment. The Lord's Prayer was given to people before their redemption was finally completed; they are called sons and called to the rights of sons before adoption, before regeneration by Baptism, before participation in the Last Supper, before renewal by the Holy Spirit. The Lord's Prayer is given to sinners 147. Where God acts, everything is possible and everything is incomprehensible. The Lord's Prayer is given to sinners, and first of all they learn to ask God, their Father, “hallowed be His name.” In this request of a person lies the consciousness of sinfulness, of fall. This petition contains a request for the granting of sincere repentance. “Hallowed be Thy name” in my spiritual church! I ask this because I don’t find it in myself. I find the opposite: I am in sad enslavement to sin and to fallen spirits who invented sin, infected me with sin, enslaved me and kept me enslaved through sin. Criminal, stinking thoughts and sensations hover in my soul. Whether they enter it from the outside, or are born in it, I don’t know; I know that they are unrestrained and powerful, that I have no power to expel them from myself and vomit them out. These thoughts and sensations make God angry; the all-holy God turns away from them; God is blasphemed by them; with them I remain a stranger to God. I need a cleanse! I need repentance! Grant me, my Heavenly Father, powerful repentance, which would cleanse my inner church from all impurities and stench, would make me capable of accepting the adoption You have given, would make me, even during my earthly journey, a resident of heaven. Until now I have been crawling on the ground. May true knowledge of God enter my soul! May it sanctify my mind, my heart, and all my activities: “hallowed be Your name in me” (Matthew 5:8). This is the meaning of this petition. We can desire repentance and purity; we can and must use all means within our power to achieve them; but acquiring them does not depend on us. It is a gift from God. We must first of all pray to the heavenly Father that He would send us the gift of repentance from His spiritual treasuries, that through repentance he would cleanse us from sinful defilement, and adorned us with the blessed purity that beholds God (Matthew 5:8), which alone is capable of receiving true knowledge of God. “Hallowed be Thy name!” “Thy kingdom come!” “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). What a wonderful sequence in the Lord's Prayer! This sequence depicts consistency, gradualism, a sublime and holy system of spiritual progress. After asking for the gift of perfect knowledge of God, the Lord teaches a person adopted by God to ask for the Kingdom of God to descend into his soul. He commands us to ask for this kingdom with the humble but strong prayer of faith. It is impossible for a believer not to receive it. It is promised by the Word of God: “If you have My commandments and keep them, you will love Me; in whom My name is hallowed, he is the one who loves Me: and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father” (John 14:21). “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; If anyone loves Me, My name will be hallowed in him, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him” (John 14:23). “Thy kingdom come!” Wonderful petition; a wonderful desire is aroused by petition; Bold prayer is inspired by a supernatural desire! And this prayer is fulfilled. It is being fulfilled: experiments that demonstrate its fulfillment serve as proof of this. To what else can we attribute the great signs that were performed by the saints of God, if not to the fact that God abided and acted in them? To what else can we attribute the ability for prophecy, for the revelation of secrets hidden in the depths of their hearts and minds, which was revealed in the saints of God, if not to the fact that God was present in them and spoke through them, looking at the distant future as at the present, a God for whom there are no secrets? The saints themselves testified to this. The Apostle Paul wrote about himself to the Galatians: “I live as no one, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20); He wrote to the Corinthians: “Seeking temptations, Christ speaking in me” (2 Cor. 13:3). When the apostles Peter and John healed a man lame from birth at the red gates of the Jerusalem temple, and the surprised people crowded around the apostles, they said to him: “Men of Israel, why are you marveling at this? or why do you look at us, as if we made him walk by our own strength or by piety? The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, God our Father, glorified His servant Jesus” (Acts 3:12–13). In the book of the Acts of the Apostles we read an amazing event: Jerusalem Christians, in fulfillment of the Lord’s will, sold their property and contributed the proceeds for the general use of the Church, in which, for this reason, there was not a single beggar. A certain Ananias acted like the others with his wife Sapphira. They sold the village that belonged to them, but, with mutual agreement, they hid part of the money received for the village. According to the accepted custom, Ananias brought the money, as if in full, and laid it at the feet of the apostles, thinking to deceive the Spirit-Bearers. Then Saint Peter said to him: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and hide from the price of the village? what is yours is not yours, and what is sold is not in your power? Why have you put this thing in your hearts? You did not lie to man, but to God.” Ananias, having heard these words, fell dead. Sapphira suffered the same fate, wanting to support her husband’s action and taking part in his sin before the Holy Spirit who dwelt in the apostles (Acts 5:1–10). In all centuries of Christianity, the tablets of church history have recorded experiences that are revealed in the holy actions of God, transcending human nature, belonging not to human nature, but to God, who dwelt and reigned in holy men. The Monk Macarius of Egypt says: “In those whom the grace of the Divine Spirit has shone and settled in the depths of their minds, the Lord is like a soul.” Again this great one among the Fathers says: “The action and power of the Holy Spirit abides in the renewed man” 148 . He who has felt the Kingdom of God within himself becomes alien to a world hostile to God. He who has felt the Kingdom of God within himself can desire, out of true love for his neighbors, that the Kingdom of God will open in all of them. He can honestly desire that the visible Kingdom of God will come on earth, consume sin from the face of the earth, and establish the rule of Truth on it. From this state, Saint John the Theologian prayerfully responded to the Lord, who talked with him in his spiritual delight, who promised to come soon for the final decision of the destinies of the world: “By come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20): the earth is full of iniquities, in need of cleansing and renewal. Unsatisfactorily prepared, seeing his spiritual church still in a sad emptiness, without an inhabitant - God, asks otherwise. He asks for the gift of time to complete the feat, like that heli-grader who begged the master who ordered the cutting of the barren, mysterious fig tree: “Lord, leave her this summer, until I will dig around her, separating her from the addictions that deplete her strength, and sprinkle her with pus” - with humility and repentance (Luke 13:8). “Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth.” The inhabitants of heaven are called heaven: by them the will of God is accomplished immaculately, unfailingly. They no longer mix their own will with the will of God! They no longer have a separate will! Their will merged with the will of God. For them, what the Savior of the World asked from God the Father was fulfilled for the disciples and for all His followers, people: “I pray not only for these apostles, but also for those who believe their word in Me: that they may all be one: As You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us... that they may be one, as We are one: I am in them, and You in Me: that they may be perfect in one” (John 17:20–23). “Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth.” Christians are called earth. Each of us will not sin if, when pronouncing this petition, he understands his heart by the name “earth”, without separating the body from the heart 149. Whatever direction the forces of the heart take, the forces of the body rush in that direction, and the attraction of the body is transformed, in accordance with the attraction of the heart, from carnal and bestial to spiritual, holy, angelic. The complete union of the human will with the will of God is a state of perfection that only a rational creation of God can achieve. Angels have this perfection. Our Savior is pleased that we, weak and unfortunate people, taken from the earth, wandering and restless on earth for the shortest possible time, and after it has passed, descending into the earth, acquire what the holiest heavenly spirits have. He commands us to seek a perfection that is still incomprehensible to us. He who has felt the Kingdom of God within himself learns not to be satisfied with it; he learns not to indulge in carelessness and inaction; learns to strive for the most abundant development in himself of the dominion of the Divine. May the will of God act exclusively in the entire being of man, in all his component parts, in spirit, soul and body, uniting within himself and within himself the will of these parts separated by the fall! Only by the will of God can the human will, poisoned by sin, be healed; only in the will of God and through its mediation can the wishes of the constituent parts of man, which have taken different directions opposite to each other 150, move from disagreement to agreement and unite into one desire; Only the human will, revived by the will of God, can be torn away from the earth and ascend to heaven. “Brethren,” says the holy Apostle Paul, “I have not attained to myself: but I have forgotten what is behind, but stretching forward to what is before, I pursue with zeal for the honor of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Having done as much as we have done, let us be wise in these things” (Phil. 3:13–15). “Give us this day our daily bread.” We are not talking about food that perishes here! “Do not worry about those who say what pits, or what we drink, or what we wear” (Matthew 6:31); it speaks of food that gives eternal life and endures forever, about new food that was given to people by the Son of God made man, about the bread of life that came down from heaven, about the bread of God, capable of satisfying and giving eternal life to the whole world (John 6:27, 33). The word “daily” means that this bread is superior in quality to everything existing 151. His greatness and holiness are infinite, incomprehensible; the sanctification and dignity brought by eating it are immense and inexplicable. The bread given by the Son of God is His all-holy flesh, which He gave for the “life of the world” (John 6:51). The wonderful food is accompanied by equally wonderful drink. The flesh of the God-man is given for food to believers, His blood for drink. The God-man was no different from other people, being a perfect man; but He was also perfect God: by appearance everyone saw and felt the man in Him, and by their actions they knew God. Likewise, He deigned that His all-holy body and His all-holy blood should be covered with the substance of bread and wine: the bread and wine are seen and eaten, but the Body and Blood of the Lord is received and consumed in them. There are no words, no means to depict the state into which the partakers of the body and blood of the God-Man are elevated. The God-man depicted this state as follows: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56). The state depicted and explained by these words remains incomprehensible and inexplicable: these words depict a height of state inaccessible to the human mind. It is known to the one God: “no one knows who the Son is, only the Father” (Luke 10:22), and he who is united with the Son is completely incomprehensible neither to his neighbors nor to himself; satisfactorily comprehensible for God alone. According to the dignity of food, according to the effect that occurs from eating in those who partake, the Lord called His Flesh the only true food, and His Blood the only true drink of man renewed by the redemption (John 6:55). The ordinary food of the sons of the old Adam, common to them with dumb animals, destroyed by digestion and unable to eliminate death, this “perishing food” (John 6:27), is unworthy of the name of food, when daily bread appeared, the bread of heaven, the bread that destroys death, teaching eternal life (John 6:58). “Our daily bread - this is how the petition is written by the holy evangelist Luke - give us every day” (Luke 11:3). Combined with the petition is a commandment that imposes on Christians the obligation, now so lost, of daily communion with the Holy Mysteries. “Having said “every day,” the Lord expressed by this that without this bread we are unable to spend a single day in spiritual life. By saying “today,” he expressed that it should be eaten daily, that teaching it on the past day is not enough if it is not taught to us again on the current day. The daily need for it requires that we make this petition more frequent and bring it at all times: there is no day on which it would not be necessary for us to strengthen the heart of our inner man by using and communion with it” 152. “And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors.” Having granted sinners the most sublime blessings, blessings of the highest price, exceeding any price, bestowing them according to His infinite mercy, the Lord also demands from us mercy towards our neighbors. The mystery of atonement is based on mercy. It is a manifestation of God’s mercy towards fallen humanity and can be accepted only by the disposition of the soul, completely attuned to mercy towards fallen humanity. We cannot accept the redemption given to us by God, except by having compassion on ourselves and on humanity, by realizing our sinfulness, our fall, our destruction; as having realized the sinfulness, fall, and destruction of all mankind; as having realized the general, all-perfect need for God’s mercy. Leaving our neighbors for their sins and their debts is our own need: without doing this, we will never acquire a mood capable of accepting redemption. Hardness of the heart is like an iron, tightly closed gate! It will not allow the divine gift into our hearts. Explaining this property of atonement and the reason for the condition in the petition, the Lord said: “If you forgive men their sins, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you: If you do not forgive man their sins, your Father will forgive you your sins” (Matthew 6:14–15). A Christian must pay special attention to the mental illness of memory malice, drive it out at the first appearance, and not allow it to nest in the soul under any pretext, no matter how righteous this pretext may seem at first glance at it. If we allow memory to act, it will devastate the soul, make all our deeds and virtues fruitless, and deprive us of God’s mercy. Our abandonment of the sins of our neighbors is a sign that the Spirit of God has taken possession of us, reigns in us, controls, guides our will. Until that time, a special personal effort is needed to resist the passion of memory malice. God will secretly help our struggle against this passion, stopping the obvious help, so that our will can be expressed with certainty. Memory malice is based on pride. Pride lurks even in God’s chosen ones sanctified by grace 153 . It is also necessary for them to be vigilant against this internal poison and against the murder of the soul generated by it through memory malice. By forgiving the brethren of their debts, we attract the grace of God into ourselves: we retain it within ourselves, constantly leaving debts to our neighbors. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The second half of the petition explains the first. Temptations are here called those true accidents and disasters when, for our own arbitrary desire for sin, we surrender to the power of the devil and perish, as Judas Iscariot was subjected to this. “Satan is in there,” says Scripture about him (John 13:27). The petition does not teach us to reject the sorrows necessary for our salvation, which protect us from our passions and demons 154. “I am well pleased,” says the Apostle about the grave sorrows to which he was subjected, “I am well pleased in weaknesses, in annoyances, in troubles, in exiles, in troubles in Christ: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). These sorrows were allowed by the Providence of God for the Apostle, as he himself explains, in order to protect him from arrogance (2 Cor. 12:7). The Lord gave His followers as an inheritance, for the entire time of their earthly wandering, sorrow. “You will be sorrowful in the world” (John 16:33), He said to the apostles, and with them to all Christians: “If you were quicker from the world, the world would love its own. As you are not from the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you” (John 15:19). “You will be hated by everyone for My name’s sake. Through your patience you will gain your souls” (Luke 21:17, 19). Together with the dogmas of the Christian faith, the holy Apostle Paul preached to the universe, “that through many tribulations it is fitting for us to enter into the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostle says that all those who pleased God were subjected to punishment and admonition from the Lord, that those who were not subjected to it were rejected by God as strangers to Him (Heb. 12:8). “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one!” Not only do not allow passions to dominate us, through which we submit to the devil, but also deliver us from the captivity in which we are with the devil due to our fall! Do not allow us to be carried away by our sinful will, by the fulfillment of which we deceive and destroy ourselves! Do not allow yourself to be deceived by false thoughts and teachings! Don’t let yourself be overcome by the love of money, the love of fame, the love of power! Do not allow us to be enslaved to voluptuousness and voluptuousness when we are abundant in earthly blessings, but to cowardice and murmuring when we are surrounded by deprivations! Don't let us sin! Do not allow pride to overtake us when we lead a virtuous life, and do not allow hopelessness and despair to consume us when we stumble. The beginning of the Lord's Prayer, by which a person is allowed to relate to God as a father, explains the reason for the most sublime petitions that make up the prayer. The son can ask the father for everything the father has. And we, in the Lord’s Prayer, ask God to give Himself to us as our inalienable property, to live in us, to establish His kingdom in us, so that through this we may mutually live in Him—to reign through Him over everything. The beginning corresponds to the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer. The immensity of petitions is based on the infinite goodness of God towards humanity; The conviction in hearing and receiving petitions is based on the omnipotence of God. “For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen." The Lord's Prayer is sealed with such words of faith! They recognize and confess a single essential, all-encompassing power - the power of God. By confessing it, a Christian becomes free, just as the Lord declared to the blind Pilate, who boasted of his power over Him: “Have no power over Me except it be given from Above” (John 19:11). Spiritual freedom is the property of perfect Christians. The Apostle said about her: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). 155 When the omnipotence of God is revealed before the eyes of the mind, purified by repentance and enlightened by grace, then the power of both angels and men descends into insignificance (1 Cor. 7:21-23), then the believer and praying confesses the great truth “that” to one God belongs “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.” The Lord's Prayer does not eliminate a long stay in prayer: the example of long and all-night prayer, which is so necessary and useful for us, was given by the Lord Himself (Luke 11:1, 9:18, 6:12). The Lord's Prayer does not make other prayers accepted and established by the Holy Church unnecessary or superfluous: it constitutes their essence; it serves as a rule for them; it teaches us that in our other prayers we must ask God for some spiritual blessings 156. All prayers written by the holy fathers and used in the Holy Church satisfy this holy requirement: the source of all of them is the Holy Spirit, who speaks abundantly in the Lord’s Prayer. It is not pleasing to our Redeemer, who redeemed us at the price of His priceless blood for a blessed eternity, for us to complain to Him about anything perishable and temporary 157 . If necessity forces us to approach the greatness of the Divine with a petition for our temporary need, then let us do this with caution and reverence, without enthusiasm and heat, without eloquence, in a few humble words, concluding the prayer by submitting ourselves and our petition to the will of God. Carnal verbosity and floridity in prayer are forbidden to us; petitions for earthly blessings and advantages are prohibited, petitions with which alone the prayers of pagans and carnal people similar to pagans are filled, caring about only earthly and temporary things, having forgotten concerns about the eternal 158. “When you pray, speak as often as the pagans,” the Lord commanded us, establishing and giving us the Lord’s Prayer, “for they think that in their many words they will be heard. Do not be like them: for your Father knows what you require before you ask” (Matthew 6:7–8). “Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, that divine righteousness that leads into it, and all this, all the needs of earthly life, will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Amen. Ladder. Word 28th, ch. 64 (Matthew 6:33); Reverend Cassian Venerable Barsanuphius the Great. Answer 71 Ladder. Word 28th, ch. 61 “The flesh has its own will,” i.e. his wish, said the Monk Mark the Ascetic, referring to the Apostle (Eph. 2:3). Word 4 Venerable Cassian, Coll. 9, cap. 21 Reverend Cassian. Coll. 9, cap. 21. This explanation of daily bread does not make it at all strange to read the Lord’s Prayer before the meal, according to the monastic rule: material bread serves as an image of the bread that came down from heaven_ Venerable Macarius the Great. Conversation 7, ch. 4 Reverend Cassian. Coll. 9, cap. 23; Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 5th Spiritual freedom has nothing to do with freedom according to the flesh; spiritual freedom is not influenced by civil slavery, and vice versa, civil freedom does not prevent one from remaining a slave in the spiritual sense Reverend Cassian. Coll. 9, cap. 24 You might be interested in: