Слово на Рождество Христово. Святого Димитрия, митрополита Ростовского

I see a strange and glorious mystery: the sky, the den. God revealed himself from the hidden things, from the mysteries of Holy Scripture. While God was sitting in heaven (“He sat in glory on the throne of the Divine”), until then no one knew His secrets, not even the holy angels closest to Him (“For centuries, a mystery hidden and unknown to angels.”) But as He descended from heaven to earth, and as soon as He began to dwell with people, so about His secrets, secrets, not only pious people (like Saint Joseph, righteous Salome), but only the important persons (like the three eastern kings), but also common people, shepherds talk: they spoke about the verb spoken by them about this Childhood (Luke 2:17)... Now the Church sings: “I see a strange and glorious sacrament." And can there be a sacrament equal to this? The whole heaven with all the majesty of God fit into one small Bethlehem den: “Heaven is a den.” A whole choir of cherubs, the number of which is unspeakable (the darkness of those on whom God rests), gave up their position to one most pure and blessed Virgin Mary: “the throne of the cherubim, the Virgin.” All the uncounted treasures of God, inconceivable by any place, are placed in one cramped manger: “The manger is a container.” Oh, a truly great, strange and glorious mystery was revealed to the world on the current feast of the Nativity of Christ - revealed so that people would not remain silent, but would talk about it: for it is only good to conceal the secrets of the king of the earth, but it is glorious to preach the secrets of the Heavenly King, the works of God. And the wonderful property of the mysteries of God! A human secret, when you tell it to one or another, everyone will already know it, but the mysteries of God, the more you talk about them, the more hidden and incomprehensible they are: the judgment has not been tried and His ways have not been explored (Rom. 11:33); however, we must preach and glorify the strange and glorious mysteries of God. Leaving, for the shortness of time, other mysteries of God performed at the Nativity of Christ, we will take into account and for the purpose of explanation only this one mystery: “Heaven is a den.” Why and how is the sky a den, and what kind of secrets are in that sky? It is no small mystery how the earth became heaven, the sky became earth. Two guests have now arrived at the den: from earth and from heaven; one guest is the first man from the earth, who came from Nazareth, brought in the womb of a virgin; the other guest is the second person, the Lord from heaven, who came from heaven. In the first - nature taken from decay, this is earth; in the other there is a nature that came down from heaven, this is heaven; God becomes man, and man becomes God; heaven becomes earth, and earth becomes heaven, and God does not become man in such a way that he ceases to be God, and man does not become God in such a way that he ceases to be man, but both are united with each other (as in that sacrament of which the Apostle says: both will become one flesh) in one person, as Damascene says well: “not divided into two by the face, but unmergedly cognizable by nature.” Where does such a mysterious thing take place? the union of heaven with earth, God with man? - in the den of Bethlehem. So, the den became heaven when it received the Heavenly God and all the Heavenly Powers within itself. Heaven is the throne of God, and in the den God sits on His holy throne, in the arms of the Virgins; and why is the nativity scene less than the sky now? Where there is God, there is heaven, as evidenced by one pre-festive hymn, which contains the following verse: “The angels walk around like the throne of the cherubim manger, for the den is in vain; the Lady lies in it.” While there was no Lord Christ in the den, the den was a den, and as the Lord Christ lay down in it, the den is already heaven. angelic eyes saw this: “the den of heaven is in vain, the Lady lying in it.” It is well sung in the Epiphany songs at litia: “Where the King comes, there his order comes.” The Heavenly King entered the earthly den, His entire Heavenly order entered with Him, the sky entered with Him with His whole greatness. At this hour, God moved from heaven to the Bethlehem den: here is not only God the Son, but also God the Father, who gave birth to the Son before the ages. Looking at the Son, we look at the Father, as the Son Himself says: He who has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:9). Right there is the Holy Spirit. fulfilling the unspeakable birth of Christ. So in the den there is the whole Holy Trinity, the King of Heaven. Right there with Him is His Heavenly rank. Seeing that the Lord, the Lamb, chose for Himself the den of Bethlehem instead of heaven, and the manger instead of the throne of heaven, and how the Lamb, born of the most immaculate Lamb, laid down in the den, in the manger - and they fit into the den and, surrounding the manger, honored their Newborn King with a worthy bow; and they sang the text: You are worthy, O Lamb, to receive glory and honor and power (Apoc. 4:11). Where, if not in the den, did the Son of God become the Lamb? In heaven He was not a Lamb, but a terrible lion: before Him the mountains trembled, according to what is written: if He opens the heavens, the mountains will tremble: before Him the foundations of the earth shook: look upon the earth, and make it shake: touch the mountains, and they smoke (Ps. 103:32). And where did He become the Lamb? - on earth, in the den of Bethlehem. There, then, this song was composed: “Thou art worthy of the Lamb!”... Archangel Michael, Archangel Gabriel (one - as the first guardian of God's honor, and the other - as the secret place of God's incarnation) are both right there, and not alone, but with all the Heavenly Powers: with the angel there were many howls of heavenly ones praising God (Luke 2:13). As for other celestial decorations, such as the sun, moon, stars - you will find all this in the Bethlehem cave, as in the empty sky. The baby in the manger is our Sun, our light, the radiance of the Father’s glory: “We bow to you, the Sun of righteousness.” The Most Holy Theotokos in the manger is the young, new month; what is new is that an unmarried Virgin gives birth and remains a Virgin at Christmas. Here are the holy righteous Joseph and the old woman Salome: these are stars worthy of the sky. So, this sky has in itself the sun, the month and stars: “sky, den”; but the sky is mysterious: “I see a mystery. Let us pay attention to the word “sky”, and we will comprehend the secrets. "Heaven" was previously called in Hebrew "shamayim", which means "watery". God said: let there be a firmament in the midst of water (Gen. 1:6); and the Lord called that firmament - "shamayim", that is, what was created from water, just as our eyes see, that the sky is watery in color. Now let us proceed to the mystery of the nativity scene. Let us divide the sky into three heavens, in the likeness the Apostle Paul, who was caught up to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2). The first and lower heaven - the Bethlehem den takes place in Bethlehem, in the land of the Jews: and if one of the devout people, such as Saint Joseph or Elder Salome, or the shepherds or kings, this den, for the sake of Christ abiding in it, needed to be called “heaven,” then they would have called it nothing other than in Hebrew “shamayim” means watery. This sky actually looked like it was watery, for they reliably say that at that hour in which our Lord passed through the virgin gates, at that very hour in that den a source of living water flowed from the earth, and that source existed until then while the Child Christ, the Most Holy Theotokos and Saint Joseph were there, which is why that den was at that time a watery sky. Another heaven is the Most Pure and Most Blessed Virgin Mary. This sky is a high sky: “truly you are the highest of all, the pure Virgin”! The sky is wide: “Your womb has made it more spacious than the heavens"! The sky is bright, illuminated by the sun of Christ; the sky is wavy, filled with rain and dew of the Holy Spirit and watering us all with His grace. The third heaven is the infancy of Christ, and this sky is watery. Let us become our mind at the entrance of the den, and our inner eyes will fix on the Baby lying in a manger, dripping tears from his eyes, and let us ask ourselves, what kind of Child is this? This is the source of animal waters that flowed from God the Father before the ages, and in the last years descended from the Most Pure Virgin’s womb onto the earthly vale. This is a sea of ​​bottomless depths: oh, the depth of the wealth of the wisdom and mind of God! This is the abyss of destinies, the abyss of mercy: “I call upon the unfathomable abyss of Thy mercy.” Over that abyss the Spirit of God floats: for the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and resting on the Son accomplishes the incarnation of the Word... Of course, there is also a firmament. The firmament flowing from those bottomless spiritual waters is none other than His firm love for the human race: “Thou hast laid it upon us Thy steadfast love, O Lord! Because of His abundant love for us, the Lord seems to forget Himself: for, having exhausted Himself, He committed all His wisdom to our salvation, sending us His Son: so God loved the world, as He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). This firmament of God’s steadfast love for us is heaven for us, a watery sky. Just as rain or dew descends from the sky, so from the most holy eyes of Christ, in infancy, tears come. The little children of this world themselves do not know what they are crying about; for they do not yet have understanding until they come to age. Our Lord was born with perfect reason (and the Church sings: “Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, shine forth the light of reason in the world”), and He already knows what he is crying about. Let us look for the reasons for His weeping. As soon as He looked at the world, full of all evil, he immediately burst into tears; and these tears, shed in the first days of His life, are equal to those tears that He later shed in half the thirty-fourth year over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). As the All-Seer, His heart is much more concerned about our sins than about His ulcers; He is more concerned about our troubles, the troubles of hell, into which we willfully plunge ourselves with our sins, than from His any suffering. ingratitude and hardness of sinners, that for them suffering, the outpouring of His blood, will be in vain: the unconscious sinner will trample all this with his feet - and it is written about heaven: “it will give rain of wounds and lateness” (James 5:7). This is our heaven, the incarnate Word of the Father, now giving the early rain, sprinkling His tears in His infancy; and with circumcision by blood, on the cross he will give the rain and the latter, when the light is darkened, and He (the Lord) will pour out blood and water. So let us not despair: for, as we know, His blood and His tears are shed for our benefit and salvation. The tearful rain now flowing from our mental sky, from the eyes of the weeping Infant Christ, will water the parched earth of our hearts. That is why the publican in the church drank from the rain with emotion, the sinner - at His feet, Peter - outside the courtyard of Caiafin, and the thief on the cross. Tears are a sign of love: Jesus shed a tear, I say to the Jews: see how they love Him (John 11:36). Jesus comes down in swaddling clothes; look and know how He loves us: Love those who are in the world, love them to the end (John 13:1). Tears flow from the eyes of Christ, it is rain that descends from heaven: these are the sources of heaven to quench our fire. Our Lord came to lead us to paradise: he sees a flaming weapon at the doors of paradise, we sharpen tearful waters from our eyes, as from a source, in order to quench the flaming cherubic sword. “The flaming weapon gives splashes, and from the food of heaven, take communion.” The Church sings... But enough about the mental rain of tears coming from the mysterious sky, from the infant eyes of Christ. “I see a mystery: the sky, a den,” or more clearly, the sky in a den. The spiritual heaven of the den hid in itself priceless wealth, the blood of Christ in His infant members: for you were delivered by incorruptible gold, says Scripture, but by the venerable blood of the Lamb without blemish (1 Peter 1:18–19). The small den contained great things that the whole world could not contain. Saint Macarius of Egypt speaks about the human heart this way: “the heart is a small vessel, but it contains all things: there is God, there are angels, there is life and the kingdom, there are heavenly cities, there are treasures of grace." We can say the same about the Bethlehem den: the den is small, but it contains great things. There is God in the person of Christ; there is life and the kingdom and treasures of grace, there is His angels, and St. Joseph, pure in soul, like an angel, there is a heavenly city, in the person of the Most Pure Virgin: “Glorious said about You, the city of God!" So the nativity scene contained, hid in itself great things. The other sky, the Most Pure Virgin, hid in itself that secret about which the Apostle says: The secret hidden from ages and generations, which has now been revealed (Coloss. 1:26); and again: great is the mystery of godliness: God appears in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16). But what was hidden from all human understanding was the way in which she gave birth to God and herself remained a Virgin: “Rejoice, you who gave birth to the ineffable light; Rejoice, you who taught not a single one!” He also hid another secret from the devil, as Saint Damascus says: “so that both the virginity of the Most Holy Theotokos and the incarnation of God the Word would be hidden from the prince of darkness.” As for the third heaven. i.e., the infancy of Christ, then it hid it in itself and, like a cover, covered the countless sins of the whole world. The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, gathered together all the sins of men, in order to be for them the sacrifice of the propitiating God the Father. Here is the crime of Adam, here is the fratricide of Cain, here is the curse of Ham, here the iniquities and sinful burdens of the whole world are collected, bound into one burden and laid upon the Lamb wrapped in swaddling clothes. But this cannot be seen and seen with bodily eyes, it is a mystery: “I see the mystery,” but with the enlightened eye of faith, according to the Apostle: faith is the conviction of invisible things (Heb. 11:1). Amen 84. In short. See Works of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov. Kyiv. 1881, part 3, countries. 402–423 You might be interested in: