Поучение 1-е в 25-ю неделю. О любви к Богу

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul: and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind” (Luke 10:27; Matt. 22:37). Beloved brothers! It is characteristic of love to often remember and think about the beloved; It is characteristic of love to often direct and strive with heart and soul towards the beloved. To constantly remember and think about your beloved, to constantly feel yourself attracted to your beloved is characteristic of perfect love. God wants us to love Him with such perfect love. This is natural. God is perfect, and He must be loved with perfect love. Considering ourselves impartially, we do not find in ourselves such love for God, nor the ability for such love. What does it mean? This means that the property of love was damaged in us by the Fall, just as our other properties were damaged by it. This means that we must cultivate love for God in ourselves, to the extent that God’s commandment requires of us. The Holy Apostle Paul says that the love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). The apostle says this about perfect love. Exactly the same should be said about other virtues. Faith, humility, meekness, patience, and courage can only achieve perfection in us when our hearts are renewed by the Holy Spirit. We prove our desire to acquire virtues by cultivating virtues that depend on us and by fervent prayer for receiving them 159 . The method of cultivating love for God is indicated in the very commandment about it: “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.” It is obvious: in order to direct your heart, soul, and mind entirely to God, you must first of all leave a sinful life. “Turn away from evil,” the Holy Spirit teaches each of us, “and do good” (Ps. 33:15); turn away from evil, and only then will you become capable of cultivating virtues within yourself. There is no way to serve God and sin together. He who serves sin takes into himself the poison of sin, becomes imbued with it, and becomes defiled by it: for this reason he cannot be assimilated to God. If purity of heart is necessary for vision (Matthew 5:8), then all the more necessary is it for union with God. Divine love, by the good will of the all-good God, unites His rational creation - man - with Him, “and be joined to the Lord; you are one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6:17). Cold, superficial service to God, mixed with service to the passions, confession of God with the lips, without confession through the activity and hidden life of the heart, while merely performing some external rituals and church decrees, is recognized as empty, soul-destructive hypocrisy. “Hypocrites,” this is how the Savior of the world denounced those who neglected the commandments of God and who with petty precision adhered to old-age traditions, who preferred traditions to commandments, “hypocrites, Isaiah prophesied well about you, saying: These people draw near to Me and with their lips they honor Me, but their heart is far from Me. But they honor me in vain, teaching me the commandment of men” (Matthew 15:7–9). Church decrees are very useful and necessary both for every Christian and for Christian society, providing order and rules to behavior; order and rules contribute to a pious life, but the commandments must be the soul of every Christian and Christian society. The Savior of the world gave due place, due value to both the traditions of the fathers and the commandments of God. “These, that is, the traditions of the fathers, should be done properly,” He said, “and these, that is, the commandments of God, should not be abandoned” (Matthew 23:23). By observing the decrees of the Holy Church, fulfilling the commandments becomes especially convenient, and by living according to the commandments, strict observance of church decrees is protected from vanity, hypocrisy and carnal wisdom. The law of God is “spiritual” (Rom. 7:14); Gospel commandments “They are the Spirit and the life” (John 6:63). But since a person consists of soul and body, external rituals and regulations turned out to be necessary. They are united with the spirit of the Law. He who is content with fulfilling only church decrees and rituals, while neglecting or insufficiently paying attention to the Gospel commandments, reduces, through his feeble-mindedness, the Law from the height of spiritual significance, takes away from it for himself its spiritual dignity, its entire essence, and perishes in his carnal wisdom and because of his carnal wisdom (Rom. 8:6). “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” We are obliged to direct all our will to God. Just as we take care to fulfill the desires of our loved ones, and for this we try to find out their desires and study their inclinations, so we must do the same with respect to God. We must become thoroughly and thoroughly familiar with the will of God. The will of God is revealed to us in the Law of God, which is the Gospel. “Blessed is the man,” says the Prophet, “who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, and does not stand in the way of sinners, and does not sit in the seat of the destroyers, but his will is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he learns day and night” (Ps. 1:1-2). “Do not be conformed to this world,” the Apostle bequeaths, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, if you are tempted, that this is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2). Having learned the will of God, we must fulfill it, because love requires this. She is not content with studying the will of her loved ones: she longs to fulfill it. She devotes herself to study for fulfillment; Having studied it, he indulges in execution. Studying and doing the will of God is recognized by God Himself as a sure sign of love for God. “Have My commandments,” said the Savior, “and keep them, that is, you love Me. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. If you do not love Me, you will not keep My words” (John 14:21, 23, 24). “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart”; this is not enough: “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul.” Destroy all division in yourself: let the whole person be united into one and completely directed towards God. May this desire be preserved from double-mindedness and hesitation; May it be kept from deviating into any kind of addiction, even if this addiction seems to be the most insignificant. One insignificant passion can keep a Christian chained to the earth and completely rob him of spiritual prosperity. Oh, how weak we are! How our fall has perverted and blinded us! We see that all our brethren, gradually, each in his turn, are called into eternity by the command of God, which is impossible to resist or contradict. When leaving the earth, this inn, this prison, this exile, everyone is sure to leave behind everything that belongs to the earth. We see this; we know for sure that our turn will come; but we spend our lives as if we had never seen anyone dying, never heard of the existence of death; as if we were destined, unlike others, to remain on earth forever. We bind ourselves with countless passions; Our love is wasted on many objects, but we do not care about acquiring love for God, about assimilating ourselves to Him, we think less. What a terrible deception of ourselves! When we leave here with naked souls, then, upon entering the new world, the only hope, the only consolation for us can be the assimilation to God acquired during earthly life. Having acquired this assimilation here, we will take it with us there. There it will serve as a guarantee for us, a reason for receiving eternal, ineffable benefits. What does God not give to those who have become His own? What can He give to those who spontaneously, not heeding His calling voice, have alienated themselves from Him, become unable to remain with Him, unable to receive His precious and eternal gifts? Eternal bliss is spiritual, Divine. He can only inherit this bliss who has previously broken communion with sin, who has previously entered into holy communion with God. Anyone who has acquired, on the contrary, a hostile disposition towards God and everything that is favorable to God must, of necessity, be rejected from the presence of God, cast down to where all the enemies of God have been cast down. “Love the Lord your God with all your strength”: not only may all the forces of the soul be directed towards God, but the body itself will take part in this striving. The body is capable of this desire. The lust for God was from the beginning natural to our body, created with the lust of God. The lust for God is spiritual and holy; the body was also spiritual and holy. It became infected with whiteness and decay due to the fall; it became infected with bestial lusts due to the fall. The Redeemer restored to him the ability for spiritual lust, and the true followers of the Redeemer took advantage of this gift, expelling passionate desires from their bodies and acquiring holy lust. Our bodies are characterized by divine love. Having been freed from the disease of sinfulness, which is unnatural and hostile to them, even during their earthly wanderings they are constantly drawn to God, in accordance with their nature and the action of the Holy Spirit, who overshadows a purified nature; they are drawn to God with all their strength, uniting their strength with the strength of the soul. After the general resurrection, the consecrated bodies, having received the consecrated souls, fly by the power of divine love, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the abode of paradise (1 Thess. 4:17); they fly to heaven, where our Lord Jesus Christ ascended with His holy flesh as the forerunner of men. The apostle says: “Present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God” (Rom. 12:1). “It is fitting for this corruptible body to put on incorruption, and for this dead body to put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53). “The natural body is sown, the spiritual body is raised” (1 Cor. 15:44). “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind.” This last part of the commandment is fulfilled by constant remembrance of God. Continuous remembrance of God seems impossible for minds unfamiliar with true service to God, and forcing oneself to such remembrance is a heavy burden, an unbearable feat. But the Gospel commandment says: “Love the Lord God with all your thoughts, with all your mind” (Mark 12:30), “with all your thoughts” (Matthew 22:37); she commands that the mind be constantly and completely directed towards God, so that the thought of God is constantly present to us. “The commandments of God are not grievous,” testified the diligent commandment-maker, the beloved disciple of the Lord (1 John 5:3). If the commandments of God are not burdensome, then the commandment that commands the servant of God to inseparably be with God in mind and thought is not burdensome. The commandment seems burdensome only because we have no skill in it, we do not have the slightest experience. It is not burdensome, it is desirable. “I will foresee the Lord before me, as he is at my right hand, so that I will not be moved” (Ps. 15:8), says the prophet. A living and constant remembrance of God is a vision of God. Forgotten by man, God becomes for man as if non-existent, hides from man: constantly remembered, as if comes to life, appears, becomes, omnipresent and omnipotent, co-present with man. The soul changes when a spiritual sensation opens in it, through which the presence of God is felt, and the Invisible becomes Visible. The soul is clothed in spiritual, victorious weapons, in unshakable courage, in faith, in patience, in vigilant vigilance. A person’s life begins to flow under the gaze of the watchful eye of God, steadily looking at everything and seeing everything that we do and happens to us. Living and acting under the gaze of God, a person is protected with special care from sins, cares with special zeal for the fulfillment of God’s commandments: he looks with coldness at passing temporary blessings, and generously endures the vicissitudes of earthly life. When the hour comes for the soul to separate from the body and enter into eternity, then a consciousness filled with joy and consolation will appear to him: the consciousness that earthly life is not spent in self-forgetfulness, not in self-delusion and infatuation with vanity and sins, not in forgetting God, but in constant remembrance of Him, in the fulfillment of His all-holy will, under His all-holy guidance. The beginning of unceasing remembrance of God already lies in a careful study of the Law of God, in careful reading of the Gospel and the entire New Testament, in reading the holy fathers of the Orthodox Church. It is impossible not to remember often during the day what you did with special attention for an hour. Fulfillment of the Gospel commandments constitutes remembrance of God. The spiritual consolation and enlightenment that comes from fulfilling the commandments arouses and warms the heart to a deep remembrance of God. A life entirely devoted to fulfilling the commandments is a constant remembrance of God. A very important aid to the constant remembrance of God is the constant fulfillment of the cell rule and frequent, if possible, visits to the church of God to participate in public worship. The time of prayer, of course, is a time of special remembrance of God, a time of unity with God. The prayerful mood received in the church of God and during the performance of the cell rule continues to accompany a person and act in him in all his activities, bringing to memory the mind and heart of God. Finally, an additional excellent means of remembering God is a prayerful appeal to God before any undertaking, asking Him for blessings, guidance, help, and mercy. This mental feat was commanded by the Lord Himself, Who announced to His disciples: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The greatest saints of God used the call of the Lord for help before every deed, before every conversation, and bequeathed this significant, holy, powerful, although invisible work, as a precious treasure and inheritance, to their disciples and to all Christians. When we are alone, we can cry out to God with our minds and lips; when we are with our neighbors, then we must relate to God with one mind. “There is nothing faster than the mind,” said the Monk Barsanuphius the Great, “bring it to God” 160 for every need encountered. Experience will not be slow to prove to the attentive worker the importance of this feat, to prove the closeness of God to us, His vigilant care for us, the faithfulness and omnipotence of the One who said: “I trust in Me, and I will deliver and: I will cover and, because I know My name, he will call on Me, and I will hear him” (Ps. 91:14-15). These are the blessed deeds by which love for God is cultivated. In the writings of the holy fathers 161 we find the teaching, based on Holy Scripture (1 John 2:5), that love for God is acquired by love for the image of God - man. Holy teaching! The teaching is true! This teaching is identical with the teaching that love for God is acquired by fulfilling the Gospel commandments, because correct love for one’s neighbor lies in fulfilling the Gospel commandments regarding him, and not at all in fulfilling the whims of the neighbor, not in acting towards him according to the desires of a fallen heart, according to the calculations and concepts of a false mind. The fulfillment of the Gospel commandments regarding people is for the most part incomprehensible and unpleasant for them; they seek and demand that their will be fulfilled, that their passions be satisfied. This they call love, and this love, full of hypocrisy, wickedness, deception, is brought by the sons of the world to those who need them in the form of earthly, carnal prosperity. This wrong love, this distortion of love, this hatred covered in the guise of love, Scripture calls man-pleasing. Man-pleasing destroys not only the love of God, but also the very remembrance of God. “God scatters the bones of people-pleasers” (Ps. 52:6) - all the strength of the soul, without which not a single virtue can be unshakable. “If he were still pleasing to man, he would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10), says the Apostle. We see the degree of our love for God with particular clarity during prayer, which serves as an expression of this love and is very correctly called in the patristic writings the mirror of spiritual prosperity 162. When, during prayer, we are subjected to constant absent-mindedness, this serves as a sign that our heart is in captivity to earthly passions and cares, which do not allow it to strive entirely towards God and abide with Him. Attentive prayer serves as a sign that the heart has broken the threads of addictions and therefore is freely directed towards God, cleaves to Him, and is assimilated to Him. The transition from distracted prayer to attentive prayer, or from the love of the world to the love of God, requires a long time, long work, many efforts, many benefits. We need help from fasting, we need help from chastity and purity, we need help from non-covetousness, we need help from faith, we need help from humility, we need help from mercy, we need help from Divine grace. With the combined effect of these benefits, the heart is rejected from love for the world; a person, freed from the invisible chains of fall and sinfulness, rushes with his whole being towards God. Having known the height and bliss of this state, he tries to be in it more often. The love of God proves to him experimentally its presence in him, and he proves his love for God by attentive, constant prayer, not squandered by thoughts about the objects and affairs of the transitory world. The first spiritual manifestation of love for God is revealed in the feeling of the fear of God, which, according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures, is “the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 1:7). What is the wisdom of God if not Divine love? It is natural for the fear of God to be the beginning of love and the first fruit of attentive prayer. What other feeling can be the feeling of a person burdened with countless sins and infirmities, when he feels the presence of God and his presence with God face to face, if not the feeling of fear and the deepest reverence? When we are invited by an earthly king, due to his special favor towards us, the first feeling that overcomes us upon presentation to him is a feeling of fear. It is inspired by the greatness of the royal dignity, and the splendor of its surroundings, and the insignificance of our importance before the king. Gradually, with a favorable reception, fear begins to fade away, giving way to feelings of pleasure and love. The same thing happens in our relationship with God. When the blissful purity in which God is seen appears in the soul, fear initially seizes the soul. The fear of God, being an action of Divine grace, has its own spiritual delight. With gradual assimilation to God, this delight intensifies and is finally transformed into love, which is the most abundant action of the same Divine grace. Human labor that is feasible is crowned with the gift of God. If labor is not preceded on the part of a person, and the correctness of will is not proven experimentally, the gift will not be sent down from Above. If the gift is not sent down, the work is in vain: it is stolen and damaged either by the careless and double-minded execution of it, or by the admixture of vanity and man-pleasing to it. May the ineffable mercy of God grant us to strive lawfully and in a godly manner to gain Divine love, and may it crown us with the gift of love for a sincere desire for love, for the correct desire for love. Love for everything that the transitory world presents as objects of love must certainly be dissolved according to the irremovable determination of God, according to which we must part with these objects in due time: he who has acquired the love of God has acquired God, who, having become here on earth, the object of love and the property of man, remains for him forever and ever. Amen. Macarius the Great. Word 7th, ch. 19 Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 55th, and other fathers Ladder. Word 28th, ch. 1 You might be interested in: