137. Слово по освящении храма Святыя Мученицы Татианы, при Московском Университете

(Said September 12; printed separately and in collections of 1844 and 1848) Seek the Lord, and hear me, and deliver me from all my sorrows. Come to Him and be enlightened, and your faces will not be ashamed. (Ps. 33:5–6). And so here is a house of prayer under the same roof with a house of wisdom. The Sanctuary of Mysteries was invited into the abode of knowledge, and entered here, and here it was founded and established in its secret ways. It is clear that Religion and Science want to live together and work together for the ennoblement of humanity. Condescendingly, on the part of Religion: let us thank its condescension. Prudent on the part of Science: let us praise its prudence. I will not say: the highest Sage, for this name would be still low for the One about whom I now think; – He who is wisdom itself, and the only source of all wisdom, in whom “all the treasures of wisdom and understanding are hidden” (Col. 2:3), who, revealing His treasures, “gives wisdom,” and “from whose presence comes “knowledge and understanding” ( Prov. 2:6), - He came here now, and moreover, not only as a visiting Guest, but also as settling Dweller; and here He opens His school, which no one except Him, neither before Him nor after Him, could have formed; - a school that is always quite high for the most exalted minds and souls, and at the same time quite simple for the simplest and humblest of the earth; - a school that does not caress with the hope of a teacher’s degree, but wants to make all peoples nothing more than “students,” but which, being so unattractive, during its initial formation, attracted and re-educated the learned world in its ancient way; - a school in which, without violating fair respect and love for known sciences, one can notice mainly subjects of study worthy of superficial curiosity. The word of life is a philosophy not according to the elements of the world, which are killed by artistic experiments and crushed into little things, and, according to the natural proportionality of the consequences with the cause, which gives not very living and not very enormous knowledge, but according to the living and life-giving principles of “the wisdom of God, in the hidden mystery, which God prepared before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7), - contemplation of the Supreme Unit in the consubstantial Trinity, and the Trinity in the Unity, as the true root of everything that is numerable, as the immeasurable foundation of everything that is measurable - knowledge of earth and heaven, not that grave knowledge of the earth, which descends into its depths in blocks and layers, as if into a grave, and with the remnants of destruction wants to interpret the life buried and remaining, without hope of resurrecting the buried, and to preserve the remaining one, not that glass knowledge of the sky, which through far-sighted glasses follows the path of the stars, without paving the way for the viewer into the sky, but the knowledge of the earth and the sky, which was good in the beginning, then the earth cursed in the deeds of man, and the sky that has become “unclean” (Job 15:15), then, the earth, which with the deeds existing on it will burn, and the sky, which will pass away, finally “a new heaven and earth new ", in which truth lives" (2 Pet. 3:13), and into which we can also move, if we live by the truth - legislation, not some ancient Greek and Roman, to which time has given importance, and which time has shown weakness, because the States that wanted to improve and strengthen this legislation have long disappeared, but the legislation with which the King of heaven and earth improves His kingdom of all ages and His dominion in every race and generation, and, what is especially important for each of us, the legislation with which He wants to establish His kingdom within us, if we decisively and actively desire to become sons of His kingdom, - the medical science of souls, teaching the means not only of healing from mental illnesses, but also resurrection 580 from spiritual death, showing ways not only to preserve the life we have from destructive moral illnesses, but also to gain a new one, the best, revealing not dreamy, but genuine, all-healing healing, the Flesh and Blood of the God-Man, and the only beginning of higher life, the Grace of the Holy Spirit: - shouldn’t these educational subjects be interesting? Isn’t the Only Teacher Who taught and teaches them in His universal school worthy of zealous listening and following? And what prevents you from listening to Him and learning from Him? On the contrary, how close and how convenient! “Come to Him and be enlightened” (Ps. 33:6). These words calling for enlightenment and the Enlightener belong to a very ancient and undoubtedly high servant of enlightenment, the King and Prophet David. Let us repeat them somewhat more fully: “Seek the Lord, and hear me, and deliver me from all my sorrows; come to Him, and you will be enlightened, and your countenance will not be ashamed” (Ps. 34:5-6). To better understand this, we must remember that the ancients considered it impossible to see God, and that God himself in some way confirmed them in this thought when he said to Moses: “You cannot see My face; For no man shall see My face, and live” (Exodus 33:20). So, isn’t the sovereign singer of psalms excessive and contrary to the beliefs of his times when he proposes to approach the Lord and be directly enlightened by Him? In order not to burden the Prophet with the guilt of an error in the knowledge of God, incompatible with the enlightenment of the Prophet, we must necessarily take into account another type of knowledge of God, also represented by the ancient Jews. A careful study of the holy books of Hebrew shows that God appeared in the form of a created being, an Angel, a man, but with the Divine name, with Divine action. The more unexpectedly this humanoid type of knowledge of God is encountered under the dominion of the main thought about the invisible, unapproachable, incomprehensible God: the easier it is to recognize in it a special dispensation of providence, namely, the early condescension of the Son of God to humanity, previously appearing in the outline of His future incarnation, just as the sun, before its rise, appears in the morning dawn, and sometimes in the air reflection of one's circle. Now it becomes clear how David represents the invisible and unapproachable God as visible, safely accessible and enlightening those who approach Him; and with this, it is definitely known that the Prophet invites us to approach that exact Lord for our enlightenment, whom we call our Lord Jesus Christ. And so Christ is the Light of the ancient world, as well as the new! And the distant ancient world points to no other light than that shining so close to us in Christ! Where should we invite lovers of enlightenment now, if not to this Light? “Come to Him and be enlightened.” If we delve into the union of these invitational words of the Prophet with the previous and subsequent ones, then we can see that with the call to the Lord who Enlightens, he wants to combine the conviction to accept this call. When he says: “I have sought the Lord, and heard me, and delivered me from all my sorrows”: through this he points to his personal experience, first unhappy, then happy. “From all my sorrows”: apparently, his sorrows were numerous and severe; Apparently, on the ordinary paths of worldly life, he did not encounter any relief, no help, no consolation. “Seeking the Lord”: - it is clear that he did not easily receive help from God, either because, not being tempted by difficult experience, he was not sufficiently enlightened, or because too deep the darkness of sorrow hid the path of God from him: for he does not say that he resorted to the Lord directly, he came close, but he says that he “sought the Lord”; They are not looking for what they see, or what they correctly know the way to. What, however, finally brought the search for the Lord? - “I sought the Lord, and heard me, and delivered me from all my sorrows.” Just as someone wandering in the dark, or in the forest, or in the wilds, with a voice seeks a deliverer whom he cannot see, and the compassionate one, having heard, answers him, approaches him, and ends his difficulty: so David sought the Lord with the voice of sorrow and prayer, and the Lord, having heard, answered him with the voice of grace, approached him, and stopped all his sorrows 581. Now David, from unhappy to happy, wants to share his happiness; grateful to the Savior, he wants to promote the deliverance of distressed people: and therefore, following the indication of his happy experience, he pronounces an appeal encouraging not only to seek the Lord as the hidden, but also to approach Him as if already found: “come to Him, and be enlightened, and your faces will not be ashamed.” This sequence of sayings gives us the right to understand this latter in such a way that the Prophet promises from the Lord not only the enlightenment of the mind, with the light of the truth of Christ, but also the enlightenment of the heart, with the light of the Comforter Spirit, in whose abundant consolation all earthly sorrow disappears, like a drop of bitterness in a cup of sweetness. Having found that the Prophet calls for enlightenment from the Lord, as a means against sorrows, let us not think, however, that his calling in this sense applies only to certain people, in certain circumstances. No. He calls out: “Come on, be enlightened,” and does not name anyone to whom he would address this appeal, no doubt in the sign that he calls out to everyone who has ears to hear. Let us ask ourselves: have we lived without sorrows until now, and do we hope to live without sorrows? I don’t think anyone has so decisively boasted about the past, or vouched for the future. I ask especially: which of us indestructibly possesses the bliss about which the ancient pious sage speaks: “Blessed is the man who has not crept with his lips, and is not hurt by the sorrow of sin” (Sir. 14:1)? If, more than aspirations, someone would like to say that he has preserved and is preserving this bliss, his mouth is first stopped by the unquestioning accuser, chosen for purity, the disciple of Christ John: “If we say that we are not sinners, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). But if we are not so deceived by ourselves, are not so alien to the truth as not to recognize sin in ourselves, and are consequently subject to the sorrow of sin: then I ask everyone who has, or has ever had, a claim to enlightenment and wisdom: where is the wisdom that would teach me to be comforted in the sorrow of sin? Where is the enlightenment that would illuminate the path for me to get rid of the sorrows of life; and especially from sorrows of conscience? Where is the science that would satisfactorily resolve, for none of us, the question of the possible bliss of man, and especially of a man who has sinned and is guilty before God? For although from ancient times they have philosophized a lot about the bliss of man according to reason, they had little success, partly because they did not understand the main difficulty of the question, which stems from the thought of sin and guilt before God, partly because they were fussing about how to make themselves blessed the temporary life of an immortal person, that is, they wanted to sweeten the drop, without caring whether the sea, which must be drunk after it, would be sweet or bitter? Where is the person who would enlighten me so that “my face would not be ashamed” before God and before my own heart, which despises the sinner? Explorers of the forces that move the sky and keep it in order and balance! Will you not find me a force that would correct my deviation from the true path of heaven, that would sufficiently counteract my voluntary and involuntary attraction to hell? Leaders of Divine and human rights, natural and social! you cannot help but admit that there is no more natural and indefinable right than that which God has to demand that no His creature violate His will and law by any action, by any word, which is also a kind of action, by any thought and desire, which in the realm of spirit and omniscience are the same as words and actions in the realm of the senses; that whoever acts contrary to the rights of the Autocrat loses through this his own rights, which he enjoyed by his grace, and which, according to the fundamental principles of the Royal improvement, he could not use except with the obligation of faithful obedience; that on the same principles he exposes himself to the taming or punitive actions of justice. Thus, your science, just like conscience, “shames the face” of the sinner: but will it find a means to erase his shame? They say among you that what has been done cannot not be done: this saying condemns the sinner to the eternal shame of conscious sin. God is merciful: they often say without thinking, and an indiscriminate conscience wants to fall asleep on this soft thought: but the thought of God’s mercy, which enlightens the area of ​​faith with such a strong, such a sweet light, cannot be brought into similar action in the area of ​​natural wisdom, by the mere conditions of 582 inferential reason. God is merciful, but also just; infinitely merciful, but also infinitely just; the scales of concepts stand equally, and there is no reason why the hope of God's mercy could outweigh the horror of God's justice. That the sinner is subject to God's justice is obvious; in what relation he is to the mercy of God is indeterminable by reason; and how God’s mercy can be overwhelming for a sinner without violating the rights of God’s justice is completely incomprehensible without a special revelation from above. Who will resolve my confusion? Who will enlighten my darkness? Who will console me with faithful and unshameful trust in God’s mercy? Who will “deliver me from all my sorrows.” - This is possible for You alone, who came from God to the Teacher, the Light of the world, the Visitor of souls, Lord God, Savior Jesus! Your wonderful appearance in the world, Your word, which is like “nothing man has spoken” (John 7:46), and especially Your suffering for me, Your wounds, Your death on the cross are such proofs of saving mercy that are strong and sufficient - and they are only strong and sufficient - not only the earthly darkness of ignorance, doubt, sorrow, but also hellish to illuminate the darkness of despair with sweet, life-giving, unquenchable light. No matter how deeply “wounded” my heart was by the “sorrow of sin”; no matter how wounded and torn by the sorrows of earthly life; - when, with an inner movement of faith, I apply my heart wounds to Your wounds of the cross: Your immortal and resurrecting life flowing from them touches my life, dying or already dead; and Your Divine light enlightens the darkened; Your creative Word raises up the fallen, heals the sick, resurrects the dead: the consolation of Your Spirit either delivers from all sorrows, or makes the very sorrows comforting, the very suffering joyful, in the communion of Your saving sorrows and sufferings; with you, my “face” is “not ashamed” before God the Father and before my own conscience; for “Your blood cleanses my conscience from dead works” (Heb. 9:14); Your truth covers my self-condemned untruth; Your intercession gives me boldness before Your Father, and, as You taught and 583 gave us the right to call Him our Father, for this sake I glorify You, the only Enlightener, and although with an unworthy voice, with a worthy servant of Your eternal enlightenment, I cry out for You to all the enlightened and unenlightened of this age: - “come to Him” - with a reverent mind, a believer with a heart, a praying spirit, an obedient will, draw close, “come to Him, and you will be enlightened, and your faces will not be ashamed.” Amen In the author's manuscript: resurrection. In the author's manuscript: disasters. In the author's manuscript: by efforts. In the author's manuscript there are no words: “taught and”, as well as the words: “to us” after: “gave”. You might be interested in: