Поучение на 54-е зачало Евангелия от Луки, читаемое в праздники Божией Матери. О телесном и душевном подвигах

The Savior of the world, during His wanderings on earth, in the vale of our exile and suffering, visited two pious wives, sisters, Martha and Mary, who lived in a village neighboring Jerusalem, Bethany. They had their own home in Bethany. They had a brother - Lazarus, who was honored to be called a friend of the God-man and His apostles (John 11:11). From the Gospel it is clear that the Lord visited the home of a pious family more than once. During one of these visits, He raised Lazarus, who had already been lying in the tomb for four days. The Holy Evangelist Luke narrates that during the Lord’s visit to this house mentioned today, Martha busied herself with treating the most desired Guest, and Mary sat at His feet and listened to His word. Martha, caring only that the meal was as satisfactory as possible, asked the Lord to command Mary to help her. But the Lord answered: “Marfo, Marfo, worry and speak about the multitude; there is only one thing that is needed. Mary has chosen the good part, lest it be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41–42). According to the explanation of the holy fathers, Martha mysteriously depicts a pious physical feat, and Mary – a spiritual one 237 . The story of the Lord's present visit to the two sisters is read, according to the establishment of the Church, on all feasts of the Mother of God. For these two reasons, consideration of the events and teachings contained in the story should be both especially significant and especially edifying. Martha was the elder sister, and is presented by the evangelist as the mistress of the house. She welcomes the Savior into the house, she manages the food, prepares the food, cleans the meal, and brings the dishes. Her service is a continuous activity. And bodily labor, according to seniority, takes first place in the ascetic life of every disciple of Christ. “By bodily work,” said Saint Isaac of Syria, “the work of the soul is preceded, just as the creation of Adam’s body was preceded by the creation of his soul. He who has not acquired bodily work cannot have spiritual work; the second is born from the first, like an ear from a naked grain of wheat sown 238 . Bodily feat consists of fulfilling the Gospel commandments physically. These include: giving material alms, accepting strangers, participating in the various needs and sufferings of needy and suffering humanity. This includes chastity of the body, abstinence from anger, from luxury, from amusements and distractions, from ridicule and gossip, from all words that express anger and impurity of the heart. This includes fasting, vigil, psalmody, kneeling, standing in prayer in church and in cells. This includes monastic obediences and other external feats. A bodily feat requires continuous activity of the body: it moves from one bodily good deed to another, and sometimes combines several good deeds, performing them at the same time. Physical feat gradually cleanses the soul of passions and introduces it to the spirit of the Gospel. The Gospel commandments, being fulfilled in practice, little by little convey to the performer the deep thought and deep feeling living in them, they communicate to the performer Truth, Spirit and Life. Physical feat has its limit and end: these limit and end lie in the ascetic’s decisive transition to spiritual feat. A decisive transition culminates a gradual transition. Martha's ministry ended when the Lord's meal was completed. “Mary, sitting at the foot of Jesus, heard His word” (Luke 10:39). The position adopted by Mary serves as an image of the state of the soul, worthy to enter into a spiritual feat. This state is a state of both calmness and humility, as the Monk Barsanuphius the Great said: “Internal activity, combined with heart disease (with the crying of the heart), produces true silence of the heart; from such silence humility is born; humility makes a person the abode of God" 239. He who has achieved service to God in spirit abandons external activities, abandons concern for other methods of pleasing God, or uses them moderately and rarely, in cases of special need. With his spirit he is cast down at the feet of the Savior, he heeds only His word, he recognizes himself as a creation of God, and not an original being (Ps. 99:3), he recognizes himself as being cultivated, and God as a worker (John 15:1), surrendering himself entirely to the will and leadership of the Savior. It is obvious that such a state is brought to the soul by a more or less prolonged bodily feat. And Mary could not have sat at the feet of the Lord and directed all her attention to His teaching if Martha had not taken charge of the reception. Serving and worshiping God in Spirit and Truth is that “good part,” that blissful state that, having begun during earthly life, does not cease, just as bodily exploits cease with the end of earthly life. The “good part” remains an integral part of the soul in eternity, and in eternity it receives full development. The “good part” is not separated from the soul that acquired it, and remains forever its property. A physical feat is very often hidden by a very important flaw. This shortcoming lies in the fact that when an ascetic practices feat recklessly, when he gives the feat an excessive price, when he performs physical feats for himself, mistakenly concluding and limiting in them all his life, all his pleasing to God. Such an incorrect assessment is always associated with the disparagement of spiritual achievement and the desire to distract those engaged in it from it. This happened to Martha. She considered Maria's behavior wrong and insufficient, and her own more valuable, more worthy of respect. The merciful Lord, without rejecting Martha’s service, condescendingly remarked to her that in her service there was a lot of unnecessary and vain things, that Mary’s work was essential work. With this remark, the Lord cleared Martha’s feat of arrogance and taught her to perform bodily service with humility. Exactly! A bodily feat, not yet illuminated by spiritual reason, always contains a lot of vain and unnecessary things. The one who works in him, although he works for God, still works in the old man; in his field the tares grow along with the wheat; he cannot be free from the influence of carnal wisdom on his way of thinking and activity. It is necessary for all of us to pay due attention to the instructions given by the Lord, and to perform our good deeds, performed through the body, with the greatest humility, like slaves obliged to fulfill the will of their Lord, who are unable to fulfill this will as they should due to weakness and sinful damage. It is very useful for those engaged in physical feats to know that there is another feat, an incomparably higher feat, a spiritual feat, a feat overshadowed by Divine grace. “He who does not have spiritual activity,” said Saint Isaac of Syria, “remains alien to the gifts of the Spirit,” 240 no matter what his bodily exploits may be. The great mentor of monastics likens bodily work, one in itself, when it is not assisted by the work of the mind in the inner cage, to barren wombs and dry breasts, because bodily work cannot come close to the mind of God 241. We see this in Marfa. She was so busy with her work, so confident in its significance, that she did not ask the Lord for an order pleasing to Him, but offered her understanding and her order, interceding that they be fulfilled. Why is the reading of this Gospel story established by the Holy Church on all feasts of the Mother of God? Because the Mother of God brought to the God-man the most sublime bodily service and the most sublime service of the spirit, “putting all His words in her heart” (Luke 2:51), keeping everything that happened to Him from infancy and everything related to Him, “compositing in her heart” (Luke 2:19). To explain this, attached to the story from the next chapter of the Gospel of Luke is an appeal to the Lord from a certain wife who heard the teaching of the Lord: “blessed is he who bore thee, and the breast that thou didst piss” (Luke 11:27), and the Lord’s answer to this appeal: “even so blessed is he who hears the Word of God and keeps it” (Luke 11:28). God's answer to human judgment! Human judgment recognized the Mother of God as blessed solely for Her birth of the God-Man: The God-Man exalts the dignity of the Mother of God, calling especially blessed those who hear the word of God and keep it. The Mother of God had this bliss above all people, listening to the words of the God-man and preserving them with such sympathy that no other person had. Here again, priority is given to the service of the spirit over the service of the body, in contrast to human judgment. The merciful Lord calls all people to serve Him. Serving the Lord, coupled with the crucifixion of the old man, with the rejection of his carnal and sinful desires and understandings, has its own work; but this work also has its own consolation, consolation given by a good conscience and Divine grace. “The yoke of Christ is easy, and His burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). Those who wish to enter into the service of the Lord with the goal of receiving Him into the home of their souls and resting Him in the rest He commanded must begin with bodily labor, with the fulfillment of the commandments of the Gospel through bodily actions. Our soul is in connection with the body by creation, depending on it due to the fall. She becomes infected with sinful ailments and passions due to bodily actions; passions are destroyed in it, good habits and virtues are introduced into it through bodily actions. He who allows himself to act on the impulse of anger is enslaved due to the skill formed by the actions of angry passion; He who allows himself to act on the suggestions of self-interest becomes infected with the passion of love of money, covetousness, and stinginess. Likewise, all passions enter the soul based on the outer activities of a person. This shows the need for physical feat; it is essential for the expulsion of passions by actions contrary to the demands of the passions; it is necessary for planting virtues in the heart, as indicated by the Gospel. Prudent bodily feat, based on the word of God, illuminated by the word of God, accomplishes to a large extent the liberation of a person from sin, forms from him to a significant extent a confidant of virtue, a servant of Christ. Such a physical feat will very soon initiate a spiritual feat capable of delivering salvation. And cold and heated physical feat, alien to the spiritual, alien to that spiritual mind, which is required by the word of God and should be the soul of bodily feat, is destructive. It leads into self-conceit, contempt and condemnation of others, leads into self-deception, creates an inner Pharisee 242, alienates from God, and combines with Satan. When the grace of God abundantly overshadows the ascetic, then abundant spiritual achievement is revealed in him, guiding him to Christian perfection. Then the sinfulness of her soul, which was previously hidden from her, is revealed to her soul! Then the veil will be lifted from her gaze, and an immense, majestic eternity, hitherto hidden from her, will appear to her soul! Then the hour of death, standing somewhere far, far away, approaches and becomes before the very soul, before its eyes! Then earthly life, which hitherto seemed endless, is reduced to the briefest dimensions: a passing life, like a dream of a passing night! The remaining field of life merges into one dying hour! Then, from the depths of the soul, groanings hitherto unknown to her arise! There is a cry that she has never felt before! A prayer arises, such as she has never uttered before! Prayer and crying arise in the very depths of the soul, are pronounced by the mind and heart with the silence of the lips, ascend to heaven, cast the praying person at the feet of the Savior, and are held at the feet of the Savior; the soul, in confessing its sinfulness and the infinite greatness of God, enters into perfection, is brought into perfection by the right hand of the all-good God, Who created man and recreates him. “Bless the Lord, my soul, who cleanses all your iniquities, who heals all your ailments, who delivers your belly from corruption, who crowns you with mercy and bounty. Your eternal youth will be renewed like an eagle” (Ps. 103:2-5) by the omnipotence of the Savior who renewed our nature in Himself and renews us with Himself. Amen. Blessed Theophylact and many other fathers Saint Isaac. Word 58th, according to the link made by the Monk Nil of Sora. Preface to the Tradition Venerable Gregory of Sinaite. 137 chapters, chapter 19. 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