12. Слово на восшествие на престол его величества государя императора Александра Николаевича (Что такое благоденствие? Непрерывность Божия попечительного устроения нашей участи во благо. Чем привлечь к себе благоволение Божие? Что такое веротерпимость? В государстве выше всего должна стать святая ве

The accession to the throne of the Sovereign Emperor is the dawn of new hopes for the Fatherland. The continuation of the reign is the fulfillment of these hopes. The annual celebration on this day is the revival of old hopes and the birth of new ones. But what do people want so badly? - Prosperity. What does the most pious Sovereign Emperor want and what is he so actively concerned about? - About the welfare of the people. What are all the efforts of statesmen directed towards? - To ensure the well-being of the people. What seems to be missing for this prosperity to finally take place?! And yet, it is always only in desire, only in expectation, always ahead, as a blissful limit of effort, as a place of rest from work. What then? Isn’t this prosperity a dreamy good, and isn’t the trustworthy striving for it a deception of a self-loving heart? - No. It cannot be a dream, because it lies so universally and so deeply in the soul and heart of everyone, you just need to understand it correctly, expect it as usual and go straight to it, and most importantly, lay a solid foundation for it and not allow yourself to move from it. The Lord said to the fallen husband: “Cursed is the earth in your deeds; bear it in sorrow all the days of your life.” And to the fallen wife: “I will multiply your sorrows and your sighs; in sickness you will give birth to children” (Gen. 3:16,17). Consequently, prosperity as a comfortable life - in contentment, peace and continuous pleasures - is not the lot of man on earth. We will not have the ability or the strength to change this definition of a non-false God and turn the earth into a lost paradise. Solomon carefully sought prosperity, tried all the ways and means to achieve this and became convinced that all his supports on earth were not strong: “all is vanity.” . And what did he conclude with? “Fear God and keep His commandments, as every man does” (Eccl. 12:13). This is all that can be lasting in the aspirations and labors of a person and entire states: to fear God, to be jealous of pleasing Him, to subordinate and betray oneself to Him, in order to be sure that the true God is our God, and we are His people. This does not exclude care and concern for improving our life, but it indicates one unchanging basis for all the changeable contingencies of our fate. Is it not possible, at least, someone might think, to base the hope of all-sufficient happiness and continuous prosperity on this undoubted favor of God? - No. This establishes not the continuity of prosperity, but the continuity of God’s caring arrangement of our destiny for our essential and eternal good—and that’s all, and prosperity is in the will of God. The All-Good God sometimes punishes the one he loves, and beats the one who is pleasing to Him. What remains to be done? – In striving for prosperity, which we cannot refuse, we must most of all take care of pleasing God, handing over our lot to the care of His Fatherly love for us, in the confidence that He will arrange everything in us for the better, take care that God has us as His people, loves us, does not abandon us, does not reject us. In God's favor towards us lies our trustworthiness; in rejection lies despair and destruction. How can you attract this Divine favor and how can you be confident in it? – The Lord came to earth and founded His Holy Church here, in which He promised to abide all the days until the end of the age, calling her a pure virgin, His bride, a tabernacle of men. So, as long as we remain true sons of the Orthodox Church, the tabernacle of God will be in us, and God will dwell among us. He will be our God and we will be His people. Evidence of this devotion to God on our part is love for the holy faith and zeal for organizing our private and general lives in accordance with the spirit of this faith and the direction of the Church. As long as this zeal remains, there will be in us that which is pleasing to God, that which attracts His mercy and brings down benevolent care - and He will never leave us. True, even at the same time there can be sins, both private and general, there can be even great wrath of God; but they will only cause corrective punishment, and not destructive and exterminating rejection: the Lord will punish and have mercy. After this, do you see what is the scourge of the people and the final undermining of all the foundations of their prosperity?! - If the spirit of zeal for the holy faith and godly life cools in him. As this cooling grows, God's blessing will move away from him and His rejection will approach. Cooling will ripen - the final rejection will be pronounced, and with it all disorder, confusion and destruction. “Because you are stupefied, and neither warm nor cold, the imam will vomit you out of my mouth” (Apoc. 3:16). So, the zealots and founders of the people's well-being must take care most of all that indifference to faith and the Church (indifferentism) does not cover the entire national body, and therefore, remove all methods that can dispose, lead and plunge the people into this abyss. What could this be? – A lot, but here’s the most important thing... First of all, the concept of religious tolerance and acting on it are wrong. True toleration sincerely loves and reverently honors its one holy faith, is jealous of its purity and glory, rejoices in its exaltation; but at the same time it gives a place near it to other faiths, not because it considers them equally honorable and saving, but out of condescension for the weaknesses of those who err. She does not oppress, does not persecute, does not persecute, but at the same time she does not miss the opportunity to lovingly point out error and offer free conviction and conscience the choice of the best. Only such tolerance is appropriate in our Fatherland, where, according to the basic state laws, the dominant faith is the holy Orthodox faith. Dominant, therefore, towering above all others, visible everywhere and in everything, passing through all branches of the people’s life, directing, sanctifying and enlivening everything. She is the joy of the people, the inspiration of their spirit, the excitement of high impulses. The Orthodox government does not tolerate its own Orthodoxy, but with its Orthodoxy, beloved, revered and exalted, it tolerates other faiths, keeping them, however, in the shadows. As long as we maintain this order, there is no need to fear a cooling of faith and, consequently, rejection of God. But unfortunately, religious tolerance can take false directions and deviations from its meaning are dangerous and harmful. The following situation may arise: to tolerate faith in general. This presupposes that public figures are busy with other, more significant things, and they tolerate faith only out of condescension, admit it as an unimportant, insignificant matter, not bad, but also not so valuable as to engage in it. The following rule can also be established: to tolerate all faiths, that is, to value every kind of faith equally, without giving any advantage, placing them all on the same line, under the same Level. Where the first direction is accepted, they say in writing and orally: faith is the daughter of heaven, we are earthly; We don’t care about her, let her not interfere in our affairs. We need citizens, not priests, public figures, not missionaries. Where the second direction is accepted, they say and write: believe as you want, just be faithful and honest. Let the temple and the mosque, the synagogue and the church stand equally high, as long as they do not interfere with each other and do not disturb the public order. The first direction breathes unbelief and the second reveals the absence of any conviction and smells of dead indifference in faith (indifferentism). Both are detrimental to the pious life of the people, and in our case, moreover, it is a state crime, as a violation of a fundamental state decree and, therefore, the fundamental conditions of state life. Such positions and thoughts, reaching the ears of the people, cast a shadow on the faith they honor and shake their love for it, cloud their concepts about it, put them in indecision and bewilderment, cool them and alienate them from it. And this is all the more successful the more openly and publicly the same principles enter into the order of life, into writing, education, customs, and sayings. As a result of this, the spirit will inevitably become dead, acts of self-sacrifice will cease, and energy will weaken. Everything will become sluggish, stale, earthly. The people then are a dead corpse without the spirit of life. What can such a person expect except contempt from people and rejection from God? And this is what may the Lord deliver us from! Secondly, the wrong direction of the people’s activities, their concerns, desires, cares, or, as they say, the wrong development of the elements of people’s life. Society or the state in its composition is the same as man. Just as a person has a spiritual and physical side, so there is a spiritual and material side in the life of the state. In man, the spirit knows God, fears Him, tries to please him, is zealous for the salvation of the soul and prepares for eternity, the body requires food, clothing, shelter, contentment, an advantageous position outside, and so on. In the state, the spiritual side is made up of holy faith with all its saving actions and institutions, the material side is all the ways of external well-being: agriculture, industry, arts, etc. Just as a person’s main concern should be directed to the spiritual life, and under restrictions from its side, also to the physical, so in the state the holy faith should stand above all, and everything else should be subordinate to it and governed by it. This is the law or sample (norm) of the correct development of the elements of life of a person and a people! Just as in a person, when he cares exclusively about the body and the physical, the spirit weakens and extinguishes, so in the state, if all care is directed only to one thing external, material, faith inevitably weakens, diminishes and finally completely disappears. Imagine that in some state, in the eyes of the people, enterprise after enterprise is being set up, and everything is in the form of improving one external life, books after books are coming out, and everything is about agriculture, then about communication routes, manufactures, and so on and so forth, in society you hear only speeches that everything is about the same thing, everywhere around you see troubles, worries and vanity all about the same thing, as if there was nothing except the land and there is nothing to expect from earthly hopes. What then should happen in this people, especially if, in addition, all the orders of family and civil life do not remind of anything higher, all ways of spending free time are directed only at joy and pleasure, and here there are orders in which their conformity with the spirit of faith (booths) is obviously not taken into account, what should happen in the mood of this people? The same thing that happens in a person when he feeds and warms only his flesh, that is, a weakening of the spiritual side, or in other words, a cooling towards faith. For with such an order of affairs, the attention of the people will naturally deviate from the holy faith, the time that was devoted to its affairs will be taken away, other matters will come forward and obscure the face of the Church; he will lose the habit of her, grow cold towards her, stop loving her and, finally, forget her completely. And then, as public opinion, they will begin to publicly express the following thoughts: the realm of faith is ideal (invisible); we adhere to the more solid, positive, just as the age is now more positive, and in another place they will add to that: the ideal is the world of ghosts of fantasy. So wave after wave pushes the drowning man away from the shore until the abyss of the sea swallows him up! Perhaps the outer form of life by faith will remain for a long time, but what will this mean without the inner spirit of faith? The spirit of faith will be extinguished - the people will become obscene before God and will be rejected from His presence. And what can a God-rejected man expect except disorder, division, slavery and dispersion! What is the beginning of this trouble? – The fact is that they are wrongly starting the business of developing the elements of people’s life, forgetting that the people are not only a body, but also a spirit. So, while being jealous of prosperity, it is possible - not intentionally, perhaps, but not innocently - to destroy and upset the true foundations of this prosperity. In addition, there are many other, insignificant in appearance, but powerful in their fascination, activities and skills. This is a false shame, according to which they hide matters of faith and show only secularism and free independence from any restrictions, an open passion for the new and a public dislike for the old without distinction, unnecessary claims adopted by those who are considered educated without delving into the properties of their education, a passion for fashion, fun, witticisms, ridicule, caricatures, idle talk, idleness and so on... All this petty habits; but as they are noticed most prominently in the circle, they evoke imitation and thus enter into life and control it, and, expressed in propositions, they constitute a code of laws of the world, or the fundamental principles of public opinion. Where you can’t hear, for example: it’s customary... what will they say? Is it possible for an educated person?.. This is old... now is not the time and so on? Obvious prejudices, from which, however, no one cares and does not consider it necessary to cleanse themselves. Such is the spirit of the time - soulless, before which everything bows and which, the more it expands its area, the more it spreads deadness, transforming reasonable people into automata, moving without knowing whose strength and whose command and preconstruction. The spirit of the times is the spirit of the prince of the century. And everyone understands how natural it is for him to extinguish the spirit of faith in the Lord, who destroyed his power, to alienate him from the Church and instill coldness and indifference towards her. This is how it all happens; and evil grows more and more, passing from the highest to the lowest, from capitals to cities and villages, until it is communicated to everyone and from all of them it becomes one, a people rejected from God and rejected by God. These are the directions from which danger can threaten us! He who stands at the pier considers all the contingencies of navigation, and he who sails through safe places, knowing where there are pitfalls ahead, does not let them out of his mind and carefully directs his ship so as not to fall into them through negligence. Let us pray that the Lord will grant to everyone actively involved in the management of our domestic ship both the eyes to see and the ability to avoid the pitfalls that stand in the way of its voyage, to the extent that everyone has the will and good wishes. May the Lord give them the memory of the simple rule He uttered: “Do these things appropriately and do not forsake them” (Matthew 23:23). We have a lot of worries, works, enterprises; but all this is a circle of things that there is just no need to leave. What should you do? - Conduct our affairs in such a way that, through cooling towards the holy faith, we do not lose the favor and blessing of God, for it is the source of all good. But, thanks be to the Lord, we have sure guarantees that such a misfortune may not befall us. The first and most living desire of the most pious Sovereign Emperor is that the light of the Orthodox faith illuminates more and more the minds and hearts of the people. The people love the holy faith and value it above all else. What remains? – It remains to act according to the wishes of the Sovereign Emperor and in accordance with the spirit of the people, not leaving behind what is useful, but also not sacrificing what is necessary. May all statesmen and on behalf of the Church receive a reminder of this, with a prayer for their success in this holy matter. For which she will not cease to beg the merciful Lord, knowing that the blow of thought or desire from the soul does not reach the member to which it is directed if the intermediary organ does not act, and that a ray from the sun directed at an object will not reach it and will not illuminate it if it crosses any intermediary body or deviates it in another direction. Amen. You might be interested in: