Слово на Вознесение Господне. Блаженного Августина

It’s amazing, my beloved brethren, why this holiday, which is one of the most solemn holidays, is not celebrated by all of us with the appropriate solemnity - why now in the churches of God we do not see such a gathering of believers as on other solemn holidays, and as great as the guarantees of spiritual joys given to us by this celebration are great?.. Should this day really be less solemn for us than the glorious and venerable day of Christmas? Christ, or even the Most Bright Resurrection of the Lord, so that the Church has no right to expect from believers the same crowd of pious visitors as in those days? In those days, celebrating the birth in the flesh of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ, we remember His humiliating descent from heaven to earth, for us for man and for our salvation; remembering later, after the most humiliating crucifixion, the most shameful death and modest, but pious, burial, through the diligence and zeal of those close to us, His bright resurrection from the dead - we triumph in His victory over death, His death and our death, trampling on ours and giving life to those in the tombs; and on this day, after He has accomplished our salvation, we piously remember and celebrate His glorious ascension from earth to heaven. At one time the Lord appears as a true man, and at another as a true God, sometimes taking upon Himself the form of a servant, out of His ineffable love for us, and sometimes, according to His greatness, confirming our faith in His Divinity. At that time, He passed humiliatingly through the virgin’s womb, and after further humiliation, with triumph, He finally destroyed the gates of hell; and in the present, he opens the gates of heaven to us even more solemnly. In those days, having descended from heaven to earth, He appeared to us as our Redeemer, and now, ascending from earth to heaven, He is the Intercessor for us with God the Father, who then sent Him, and now accepts Him into His Father’s embrace, although this Only Begotten Son of God did not leave heaven then, when He deigned to dwell on earth with us people, and now does not leave earth, when He sits in heaven at the right hand of God the Father. Oh, truly, my beloved brethren, and the real feast of the Ascension of the Lord for us should be as solemn and joyful as those great days with which we compare it: for this feast of the Lord confirms us even more clearly, more convincingly, more immutably that our Redeemer and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the true God, Who, ascending from earth to heaven, thereby testified that He and descended from heaven to earth, as the Scripture says: no one ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven (John 3:13). The merciful Lord, when he arranged redemption and accomplished the salvation of the human race, sacrificing Himself to the justice of God for the sins of the whole world, appeared as a man, endured reproach, strangulation, beatings, the cross and death and all kinds of signs of human weakness, so that His suffering on the cross seemed to the Jews a temptation, and to the Greeks madness (1 Cor. 1:23); but, after the completion of such a great work in the economy of our redemption and salvation, through His resurrection, and even more through the ascension, He revealed His Divinity for the conviction of believers, so that we, in His very face, in which we had hitherto seen only the perfect man, would know the true God - so that we would understand in Him the God-man. Thus, our Lord Jesus Christ made Himself alive through His suffering, in many true signs, appearing to them for forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God, as we heard in this reading from the Acts of the Apostles (1:3). And before He ascended into heaven, after His resurrection, He appeared on earth to many during the same fourty days (Matt. 28:9, 10; Mark 16:9, 10; Luke 24:10; John 20:11–18; 1 Cor. 15:5–8), which from the day of St. Until now, we spend Easter with splendid triumph as days of joy, and not sorrow, according to the word of Himself: can the sons of a marriage cry, as long as the Bridegroom is with them (Matthew 9:15)? And when these days are fulfilled, the Lord will be taken away by them who see, and His clouds will be lifted from their sight (Acts 1:9). If the Jews were previously tempted by the Savior’s ascension to the cross and cursed at Him, not believing the truth of His resurrection, then let now the immutable evidence of His ascension into heaven make them wise and captivate their minds and hearts into the obedience of faith; if the pagans were mad and mocked the former humiliation of the Lord, not seeing into the mystery of His resurrection, then the sublimity of the present triumph will enlighten and raise up grief even these sons, who are not alien to salvation. And when I look up to heaven, I go to Him, and behold, two hundred men are standing before them in white clothing, like the men of Galileistia, why do you stand looking up to heaven? This Jesus, who ascended from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him going into heaven (Acts 1:10, 11). This appearance of the angels served, on the one hand, to confirm the spectators in the reality of their vision, and on the other, to testify to both His undoubted ascension and the fact that the Ascended One will come again. And in the Gospel story it is now narrated: and when He had blessed them (and lifted up His hands and blessed them), He departed from them and ascended to heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and I went out in the Church, praising and blessing God (Luke 24:50–53). And truly, brethren, great joy for us earthly beings is praise, thanksgiving and worship of the God-man: He in His person lifted up our nature into heaven, not only saved man, but also glorified him, glorified and magnified him by His incarnation and resurrection, and even more by His ascension. Having ascended from earth to heaven as God, with our flesh as man, He, the God-man, thereby revealed that through Him heaven, which had been closed for us for so long, was opened to us, and that the mediastinum 85 between heaven and earth was finally abolished. So, before that, we fasted and lamented for fourty days, and then we spend the next fourty days in joy and consolation, praising and blessing God, who has now ascended to the very height of triumph. At the end of those fourty days, accompanied by fasting both physical and spiritual, in sadness and lamentation, we joyfully celebrated the bright holiday of Easter, and from that time on we have been spending the other forty days with divine triumph. At the end of these joyful and bright days, we now celebrate the most sublime holiday: for what can be higher for the earth than the sky? It would seem, my brethren, that the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ from earth to heaven, leaving His disciples orphans, should have plunged them into the deepest sorrow and inconsolable sadness, not for fourty days, but for the entire unknown future; however, the disciples of the Lord returned with great joy, as noted in the Gospel, praising and blessing God. The Lord Himself gave them overwhelming consolation: you too have sorrow now, but your sorrow will turn into joy: again I will see you, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, and believe in Me. I will not leave you, sires: I will go and come to you. In My Father's house there are many mansions: I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, you also will be (John 16:20, 22; 14:1–3, 18, 28). Here is the source and guarantee of heavenly joy on earth at the very separation from the Sweetest Savior! Moreover, our Lord Jesus Christ, who ascended from us, as God, never leaves us. Just as after His descent from heaven to earth He did not leave heaven, but was together with the Father: so after His ascension from earth to heaven to the Father, He does not leave earth, but always remains with us, according to His false promise: and lo, I am with you all the days, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). He is always with us - both in happiness and in misfortune, and in joy and in sorrow, and in favorable and difficult circumstances, being, as it were, guarding our lives, so that even though we sometimes wanted to hide from Him in our deeds and very thoughts and even intentions, but before His omniscience and omnipresence, everything is naked and the essence is declared (Heb. 4:13). Let us give worthy thanks to our ascended Lord, who only benefits us, and together let us be afraid to anger Him with anything unworthy of His greatness and destructive for ourselves, so that we may live chastely, righteously and piously in the present age: waiting for the blessed hope and the appearance of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ (Tit. 2:12, 13) - just as we had always lived and acted before the face of Himself. If slaves tremble before the face of earthly rulers and in their presence do not dare to allow themselves anything indecent, much less offensive to their greatness: then with what fear and reverence we must perform our service for our own salvation before the Lord of heaven and earth, the Omniscient and Omnipresent! Finally, the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ to heaven had the purpose and served as a guarantee of another loving gift for us - the sending down to earth of the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Comforter and Teacher. “It is not for you,” says the Savior to His disciples, “but I am coming.” If I do not go, the Comforter will not come to you: if I do go, I will send Him to you. The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, the Father will send Him in My name, He will teach you everything, and He will remember everything that I have told you (John 16:7; 14:26). The Church commemorates this celebration with special solemnity on the fiftieth day after St. Easter, under the name of Pentecost: and soon after this, in ten days, we will be worthy to meet this great Comforter and Teacher, who among us will be honored by our risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, to Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit honor and glory forever and ever. Amen 86. Block. Concise Church Slavonic dictionary. Note electronic edition This word is one of two (the first) included in the Paris edition of the Collectio selecta SS. Ecclesiae Patrum among those unpublished until that time, at No. 40; Wed Sunday Read XVI (1852–53), pp. 49–52. You might be interested in: