Поучение в неделю мясопустную. О втором пришествии Христовом

“The Son of Man will come in His glory” (Matthew XXV, 31). Beloved brothers! Recently we contemplated our Lord Jesus Christ born in a den, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger, taking upon Himself, along with humanity, all human infirmities, except sin; Recently we contemplated Him, persecuted by Herod, fleeing from the sword of murderers into Egypt, returning to Judea, not daring to stay in it, settling in Nazareth, a poor and insignificant city of unglorious Galilee, receiving baptism along with those in need of baptism, preaching repentance and the advent of the Kingdom of Heaven. We contemplated this recently and are preparing for a new contemplation, for a new, most amazing spectacle. In order to become as humanly possible as worthy of this spectacle, we intend to engage in the pre-purification of our spiritual eyes - mind and heart - through the feat of fasting. We intend to refine our very flesh through the Lenten struggle, so that this veil with which our spiritual nature is curtained is not too thick and impenetrable, and does not prevent us from looking with due purity, faith and tenderness at our Savior crucified for us, destroying on the cross the mediastinum between us and God (Eph. II, 14). And a terrible spectacle still awaits us, the most formidable event: the second coming to earth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can contemplate the first coming in pious remembrance, the second is presented to our imagination by the Word of God in the most picturesque and powerful features. This painting can salutarily shake our souls with the fear of God, awaken us from deep carelessness about our eternal fate, as if from an undisturbed sleep with which our carnal life has lulled us. “The Son of Man will come in His glory.” The first coming of our Lord to earth and His stay on it were filled with deep, constant humility. Everything respected and highly valued by the world was ignored by the Lord. He did not deign to appear in the brilliance and thunder of earthly glory; He did not deign to appear surrounded by pomp and splendor; did not deign to appear amid the noise of celebrations and rejoicings. He came to earth as to a country into which the transgressors of God’s commandment were expelled; He stayed and acted on it as in a land of sorrows, where those who transgressed God’s commandment in paradise were cast out from the high paradise; He stayed and acted on it as the Redeemer of the lost, becoming a participant in all the disasters that befell criminal humanity. And He was, as it were, one of the poor, trampled under foot by men. And He was a stranger who had no place to lay his head. And He was persecuted, showered with dishonor; and He constantly rewarded good for evil: “The Son of Man came not to destroy the souls of men, but to save” (Luke IX, 56). And He ended His earthly journey with a painful and shameful death, the death of criminals, the death of slaves, for whom even in the very form of death there was no common right with the citizens of the world. This was the first coming to earth of the Son of God. In due time there will be His second coming to us: “the Son of man, who is also the Son of God, will come in His glory.” His first coming was the coming of the Redeemer, who submitted to all human weaknesses, lifting them upon Himself to destroy them with Himself; the second coming will be the coming of the Judge to accept an account from humanity regarding the conduct of humanity regarding the divine redemption granted to them by God. “The Son of Man will come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him: ... and all the nations will be gathered before Him” (Matthew XXV, 31-32), in order to present their deeds to Him for judgment and to receive from Him rewards or executions, according to their deeds. When we receive news of the upcoming coming of some earthly leader and judge, we take all measures to put our affairs in proper order and earn approval: all the more should we be concerned about the judgment of Christ, at which the eternal fate of each of us will be decided. The judge is terrible, inexpressibly terrible. He is terrible in greatness, He is terrible in omnipotence, terrible because He peers into the depths of the human spirit, and no secret human thought, no subtlest sensation is hidden from Him. Justifications have no place at His judgment: “not only those killed by sin will not be justified before Him, but also everyone who lives” by a life of righteousness (Ps. CXLII, 2). “You will conquer,” the Prophet inspired from Above cries out towards the coming Judge, “you will always judge Ti” (Ps. L, 6)! All people will be in awe when they stand before the Judge, not only sinners, but also the righteous will be in awe. Sinners will tremble from despair, from the anticipation of the torments that lie ahead for them, from that extraordinary fear that will produce a revolution in them, which will then change the universe. They will cry to the mountains and rocks: “Fall on us, and cover us from the presence of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the lamb. For the great day of His wrath has come, and who can?” (Rev. VI, 16–17) They will tremble and glorify, although it is too late. When the Creator covered His unapproachable and unbearable glory with a veil of humility: then only the creature could freely control thoughts and feelings, freely pronounce a word and freely dispose of actions. When the Creator appears in His glory, the freedom of the creature will dry up before the greatness of His glory, just as this freedom under some special circumstances, while remaining our property, is, as it were, destroyed by the violence of circumstances. The most bitter enemies of the Lord, the very Sanhedrin, who crucified Him and swore hatred towards him, will exclaim at the meeting of the Judge with a doxology that the Lord also predicted to him: “Behold the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew XXVI, 64). “I tell you that you will not see me from here on, until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:39). The righteous will tremble at the immeasurable glory of the appeared Judge, they will look at their truths, and these truths will appear to them in the light of the Highest Truth as the shabby rags of beggars: in their truths they will not see a guarantee for their pardon - they will expect pardon from God’s infinite mercy alone. The very Angels of God will come into confusion and fear from God revealed in His greatness (Luke XXI, 27), Who “hath given all judgment to the Sons, that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father” (John V, 22–23). Insensitive material nature will not withstand the gaze of the Son of God: the sky is rolled up like a scroll, every mountain and every island will move from their places (Rev. VI, 14). At the Judgment of Christ, mercy will be required for justification, as an active expression of love, and mercy alone will merit pardon, as an experimental proof of love. “I want mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13), announced the coming terrible and impartial Judge. Mercy will bring justification to those who love it, and condemnation to those who reject it. She will boldly stand before the Lord and bring all her pets before Him. She will bring those who performed it materially, who fed the hungry brethren, received strangers into homes, clothed the naked, visited the sick and those imprisoned. He will bring mercy before Christ those who did it secretly in their souls and had mercy on their neighbors, guarding themselves from condemning their neighbor when he stumbles, forgiving him insults and insults, rewarding him for an oath with blessing and for crime with goodness. Mercy will bring before Christ the shepherds of the church, who taught their brethren the incorruptible food - the Word of God, who clothed those naked by sin in the vestments of virtues, brought spiritual healing to those with sick souls, and patiently visited with their edification those imprisoned in the prisons of unbelief or dark delusion. Mercy will bring humble monks before Christ, who have acquired the mysterious and essential knowledge of Christ living within themselves, have become hungry with the blissful greed of the truth of the Gospel, have striven to clothe themselves in venerability and holiness, have been cleansed of the most subtle ailments of humanity - worldly addictions, and thereby achieved evangelical freedom. He will bring mercy before Christ and those who were able to show mercy only to themselves, visiting themselves by examining themselves and freeing themselves from poverty, from illness, from the prison of sin by repentance. Repentance for a hardened heart is impossible: the heart must soften, be filled with condolences and mercy for its disastrous state of sinfulness. When the heart is embraced and filled with mercy, only then does it become capable of repentance; then only, having abandoned the condemnation of its neighbors, can it turn to self-conception, and, having condemned itself salutarily, apply the medicine of repentance to its ulcers. Christ redeemed all men and every person by Himself. A person who will be capable only of mercy towards himself, and will create this mercy by saturating his smooth soul with the Word of God, intoxicating it with sensations emanating from the Holy Spirit, distracting it from the disastrous wandering through various types of sin, leading it into the house of piety and virtue, covering it with good deeds, healing previous sins by confessing them and the opposite activity, extricating himself from prison. carnal wisdom and state into a mind and spiritual state - the Lord Jesus Christ Himself will be recognized as having done all this. Mercy will bring all its workers before Christ and will intercede with Christ for mercy and eternal bliss. “Come,” He will say to them, “blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. You were hungry and gave me food: you were thirsty and gave me something to drink: you were strange and knew me. Naked and clothed me: I was sick, and visited me: I was in prison, and came to me. Amen, I say to you, because you have created one for my lesser brothers, you have created for me” (Matthew XXV, 34–36, 40). The day and hour are unknown when the Son of God will end the life of the world by coming to judgment; the day and hour are unknown on which, at the command of the Son of God, the earthly life of each of us will end, and we will be called to separation from the body, to give an account of earthly life, to that private judgment, before the general judgment, which awaits a person after his death. Beloved brothers! Let us stay awake and prepare for the terrible judgment that awaits us on the brink of eternity for the irrevocable decision of our fate forever. Let us prepare ourselves by stocking up on all the virtues, especially mercy, which contains and crowns all the virtues, since love, the motivating cause of mercy, is the basis of Christian perfection (Col. 3:14). Mercy makes people filled with it godlike (Matthew V, 44, 48; Luke VI, 32, 36)! “Blessed are you of mercy, for there will be mercy; judgment without mercy shows no mercy” (Matt. V, 7 and James II. 13). Amen. You might be interested in: