Поучение на Святую Пасху 56 . Преподобного аввы Дорофея 57

In ancient times, the children of Israel, during holidays or celebrations according to the law, brought gifts to God, such as sacrifices, burnt offerings, firstfruits, and the like. The children of Israel celebrated the Passover when they left Egypt. Now this Passover is celebrated by the soul when it leaves the Egypt of thought, that is, sin, and passes from vice to virtue. Today is the Lord's Easter, the day of the Bright Feast of the Resurrection of Christ, who crucified sin on the cross, died for us and rose again. Let us also bring gifts to the Lord, burnt offerings not from dumb animals, which Christ does not want: for He did not desire the sacrifices and offerings of dumb animals and did not take pleasure in burnt offerings of bulls and rams (Ps. 39:7; Heb. 10:6, 8). But since the Lamb of God was slain for us, according to the word of the Apostle: Our Passover was devoured for us by Christ (1 Cor. 5:7), that he may take away the sin of the world, and become a curse for us (since it is written: cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree), that he may redeem us from the legal curse, that we may receive sonship (Gal. 3:13; 4:5): then we must bring something pleasing to Him as a gift from ourselves. What gift or what kind of sacrifice pleasing to Christ can we bring on the day of the Resurrection, since He does not want sacrifices from dumb animals? - “Let us bring ourselves as a kind of fruit.” This is what the holy Apostle says: present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your verbal service (Rom. 12:1). How can we offer our bodies to God as a living and holy sacrifice? No longer doing the will of the flesh and our thoughts (Eph. 2:3), but walking in the Spirit and not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh (Gal. 5:16): for this means putting to death our desires even on the earth (Col. 3:5). Such a sacrifice is called living, because the dumb (animal) led to the sacrifice, as soon as it ascends to the altar, it dies; and the saints, who offer themselves to God, slaughter themselves alive daily, as Saint David says: for Your sake we are killed all day long, counted as sheep of the slaughter (Ps. 43:23). So, let us sacrifice ourselves, imitating all the saints, let us mortify ourselves every day for Christ our God, for Him who died for us. How did the saints kill themselves? They did not love the world, nor the things in the world, but, having renounced the lust of the flesh, the lust of the hair and the pride of life (1 John 2:15), that is, lust, love of money, vanity, they took up the cross and followed Christ, crucifying the world to themselves and themselves to the world (Gal. 6:14). The Apostle speaks about them: but they are like Christ, having crucified the flesh with passions and lusts (Gal. 5:24). This is how the saints killed themselves. How did they sacrifice themselves? Living not for ourselves, but having enslaved ourselves to the commandments of God and abandoning our desires, for the sake of the commandment and love for God and neighbor, as the holy Apostle Peter said: “Behold, we have forsaken all things, and followed You into death (Matthew 19:27). The Apostle had neither money, nor property, nor silver, nor gold (he had one net and that old one, as St. John Chrysostom noted), and, however, he left, it is said, everything, that is, all his desires, every attachment to this world, so that if he had money or wealth, then, obviously, he would have despised them too and, having taken up the cross, would have followed Christ, according to what was said: I live, but I live Christ is in me (Gal. 2:20). This is how the saints offered themselves as a kind of fruit! They killed all attachment to the world, as we said, and lived for Christ alone and His commandments. So we too will sacrifice ourselves: “for God desires us as His most precious possession.” Truly, man is more precious than all visible creatures: for the Creator brought them into existence by His word, saying: let this be, and be, and again: let the earth bring forth this and that, and be, let the waters bring forth..., and the like (Gen. 1:3, 11, 20); God formed and adorned man with His own hands. Moreover, the Creator arranged everything for the benefit and service of man, and made him king over everything and gave him to enjoy heavenly bliss, and what is even more amazing, when the earth-born fell through his sin, God again restored him with the blood of His Only Begotten Son. So, man, truly, is the most precious acquisition of God, and not only the most precious, but also the closest, characteristic of God: since it is said: let us make man in our image and likeness, and also: God create man, in the image of God create him (Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:7). And our Lord Himself, having descended to us, took on the image of a man - the body and soul of a man, and briefly said: He was made in everything except sin, and through this He made man even more like Himself and, so to speak, made him His own. “Let us render to the image the one created in the image.” How is this? The Holy Apostle teaches us this, saying: let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit (2 Cor. 7:1), let us make our image as pure as we received it, and erase the sinful impurity from it, so that its beauty, coming from virtues, will be revealed. So, let us cleanse the image of God in ourselves: since God requires us to present this image as having neither spot, nor blemish, nor anything similar (Eph. 5:27), which is what He gave it. “Let us return to the image what was created in the image”: let us recognize our dignity, - we will recognize what great benefits we have been awarded, - we will remember in whose image we were created, - we will not forget these great blessings given to us from God solely by His goodness, and not by our dignity, - we will understand that we are created in the image of God who created us. “Let us honor the prototype”: we will not dishonor the image of God in which we were created. Who, intending to paint a royal image, would dare to use bad colors on this image and thereby dishonor the king and incur punishment on himself?... On the contrary, for this purpose he uses precious and brilliant paints, worthy of the image of the king - sometimes he even applies gold to the image of the king and tries, if possible, to represent all the royal clothes in the image so that everyone, looking at the image, which contains all the distinctive features of the king, thinks that he is as if looking at the king himself - at the original itself (for the image is majestic and beautiful). So we, created in the image of God, will not disfigure our prototype, but will make our image pure and glorious, worthy of the Prototype: for if someone who has dishonored the image of the King, a visible and obsequious person to us, is subject to punishment, what must we endure, having neglected the Divine image in ourselves and not returning this image in purity?... “So, let us honor the Prototype, realizing the power of the sacrament and for whom Christ is died." The power of the sacrament of Christ's death is such. Because we have darkened the image of God in ourselves through sin, and therefore through the fall and sins we have become dead, as the holy Apostle says (Eph. 2:1), then God, who created us in His image, having mercy on His creation and His own image, became man for our sake and raised death for all, so that we could be raised dead to the life that we had lost through our disobedience. He Himself, having ascended to His holy cross and crucified on it the sin for which we were expelled from paradise, took captivity captive, as it is said in Scripture (Ps. 67:19; Eph. 4:8). What does “captivated by captivity” mean? The fact that from the time of Adam’s crime, the enemy captured us and kept us in his power, so that human souls, after being separated from the body, went to hell, for paradise was concluded. When Christ the Lord ascended to the height of His holy and life-giving cross, He, with His blood, delivered us from captivity, into which the enemy had carried us away through crime, that is, again snatched us from the hand of the enemy and, having defeated and cast down the one who captivated us, captured us, so to speak, back to Himself; That is why the Holy Scripture says that He (the Lord) took captivity captive. This is the power of this sacrament: Christ died for us in order to raise us to life who were killed... Thus, by the love of Christ we were snatched from hell, and now it is up to us to go to heaven: because hell no longer rules over us, as before, and does not keep us in slavery. Just let us not, brothers, be careless: let us protect ourselves from sinful actions. Every sinful action plunges us again into the power of hell, since we voluntarily betray ourselves to it and enslave ourselves. But isn’t it a shame and isn’t it a great disaster if we, after the Lord Jesus Christ delivered us from hell with His blood, and after we hear all this, go again and plunge ourselves into hell? Are we not worthy, in this case, of an even stronger and more severe punishment? May God, who loves mankind, have mercy on us and give us vigilant diligence to understand all this and help ourselves in order to gain us, even a small mercy! Amen 58. This teaching, as its inscription says, is “an explanation of some sayings of St. Gregory the Theologian, which are sung with the troparions for Holy Pascha.” See the words of Abba Dorotheus - handicraft. Moscow Synod. Library (No. 37 – XXXVIII); compare Soulful taught Abba Dorotheus, ed. Kozelsk. Optin. desert., 1895, 204–210 pp.; Christ. Read 1830, May, pp. 165–174; Church Led. 1898, nos. 14–15. You might be interested in: