171. Слово в день св. мученика, Благоверного Димитрия Царевича

(Printed in the 1844 and 1848 collections) 640 I pray to you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your verbal service. (Rom.12:1). By pointing out the bounties of God, the Holy Apostle arouses in Christians the zeal to offer God abundant gifts of gratitude worthy of Him. The duty is righteous, and obviously obligatory for everyone: because we all in general, and everyone in particular, benefit from the bounties of God. Having before the eyes of the Royal Martyr, a sacrifice once mourned, but now still living, beneficial to the Kingdom and people, let us think, brethren, about the sacrifice due from us to God, guided by the Apostolic exhortation: “I pray you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present in your body a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your verbal service.” Speaking about sacrifice, initially to the brethren of the Roman Church - people who recently entered Christianity from Judaism and paganism, Saint Paul, with the wisdom characteristic of a God-wise mentor, applies to the concepts of Divine service that they had before Christianity, in order to easily raise them from the figurative, imperfect, or even vain, to the true and perfect, from the external to the internal, from the sensual to the spiritual. Before, as if he were telling them, you sacrificed edible fruits and the flesh of dumb animals: now you know that God “will not accept bulls from your house, nor goats from your flocks” (Ps. 49:9); “He does not accept pleasure from the hands of men, as if demanding anything, Himself giving to everyone life, and breath, and everything” (Acts 17:25): offer Him the best sacrifice - your body, or better to say, yourself: “present your body as a sacrifice.” Previously, for your sacrifice you killed the living and destroyed the soulless; Now learn to serve God not by destroying His creation, but by preserving it, or even by reviving it into a better life: “present your body as a living sacrifice.” Previously, you saw to it that your victim was from a race of pure animals, and had no bodily blemish on him; from now on, ensure that your body, as a sacrifice to the All-Holy, is not damaged or desecrated by spiritual vices and unclean passions: “present your body as a holy sacrifice.” Just as you instituted your previous sacrifices, in paganism itself, not out of your own arbitrariness, but in Judaism exactly according to the Divine institution: so perform the sacrifice of your body according to the will of God, in order to please the One God in everything: “present your body as a sacrifice pleasing to God.” Just as through the sacrifice of dumb animals and insensible things, sensual, external worship was performed, which among the Jews was imperfect and only preliminary, and among the pagans completely vain and fruitless: so, on the contrary, through the constant sacrifice of your rational being, you, Christians, perform spiritual worship, befitting God the Spirit, internal, worthy of the One who tests the heart and womb, actively verbal, revealed by God’s Word, leading directly to Him, and connecting with Him: “present your body as a sacrifice to God, your verbal service.” Brothers of the Church of Christ, born, raised and instructed in it! Is it not in vain that we waste words, thinking to explain to you the saying that the Apostle wrote to those who had newly entered the Church, as in itself clear and intelligible? Or, on the contrary, let everyone take note of this for himself, whether his mind is sufficiently deep in the mystery of Christ; - or is the clear teaching of the Apostles in itself, and after some effort to explain it, for some of us still seems like a dark mystery? – What does it truly mean to sacrifice your body? Doesn’t this mean to endure martyrdom: since in this exact mind the same Apostle wrote about himself in another letter: “I am already eaten” (2 Tim. 4:6)? But visible martyrdom is not the common lot of all Christians at all times: but the Apostle gives the commandment about sacrifice to all Christians, without excluding anyone, and without limiting time. The body is killed by martyrdom: but the Apostolic commandment requires it as a living sacrifice. One must be given over to martyrdom from others, just as the Apostle says of himself that he “is greedy,” and does not offer himself 642 “as a sacrifice”: on the contrary, in his commandment he demands that you 643 sacrifice yourself: “present your body as a sacrifice.” – What does it mean that he commands us to sacrifice our “bodies,” when “the Spirit is God, and whoever worships Him is worthy to worship with the Spirit” (John 4:24)? This last question will undoubtedly, I think, be resolved for everyone if we remember how the same Apostle in another place says in a similar way: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in you” (1 Cor. 6:19)? And in another place this very subject is explained as follows: “Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you” (1 Cor. 3:16)? From the comparison of these sayings, it is clearly seen that when Saint Paul calls our “bodies” either a temple of the Holy Spirit or a sacrifice, then he means not just the body, but the whole person as a whole; and therefore the subject of Christian sacrifice considers both soul and body together. - How should we make both our soul and body a sacrifice? The victim exists before he becomes a victim: his purpose makes him a victim. A lamb in the pasture is not a sacrifice: the same lamb, when brought to the altar, becomes a sacrifice. Therefore, as long as man walks in the world, bowed to the ground, gathering and devouring the pasture of earthly goods and sensual pleasures: until then he, and his body, is not a sacrifice to God; in this case, 644 he either becomes a victim of creatures, working, instead of God, for wealth, idolizing the womb, or, on the contrary, he sets himself up as an idol, and demands as a sacrifice everything that the earth produces. Thus, Christians, do not be proud of your name alone, and do not be deceived by your appearance. – Whoever does not live truly as a Christian is in a state of moral idolatry. But when the spirit of Christ, the spirit of repentance and grace, takes a person from the pastures of the world, turns and draws him to God, and the person, believing, obeys this attraction; imputes his skills, and leaves behind everything that attracted him in the world; completely devotes his soul, body, deeds, desires, and thoughts to God; decides, with the resignation of a lamb led to the slaughter, to act and suffer, and to live and die for Jesus Christ: from that time on, using the spiritual power of the sacred rites and sacraments of the visible, pictorial church, he invisibly enters, and is himself mysteriously built into the spiritual church, and enters into the rite of the living sacrifice of God. Although the various sacrifices of the Tabernacle of Moses or the Temple of Solomon, in their images, in the shadow, in fortune-telling, originally represented the single, essential, all-saving sacrifice of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: however, by communion and imitation of this universal sacrifice, and over each living Christian sacrifice to some extent, and with application to its special state, what was once represented as sacrifices can and must be accomplished educational. You slay your sacrifice when you mortify the flesh with passions and lusts in the spirit; you wash it when you mourn your past sins; you kindle it when the fire of God’s love embraces and fills your heart so that by its power the dark elements of the old carnal life are resolved and cleansed, and a new, luminous, grief-filled life of the spirit penetrates through them. You offer incense, one of the innermost sacrifices, penetrating into the Holy of Holies, and perfecting many other sacrifices, when you offer prayer: so even in the days of shadows and fortune-telling, this sacred fortune-telling was resolved by the one who sang: “may my prayer be corrected, like a censer before You” (Ps. 140:2), Lord! You sacrifice your head when you “take captive your mind” “into the obedience of faith,” and with your mind you surrender to the thought of God. You offer ramo when you gratefully attribute to God the power given to you. You bring fat when you dedicate your joy and gladness to God. You bring a lamb when you walk in kindness. You bring a pigeon chick when you keep clean. You bring a working calf or a young man when you zealously strive for God, or work complacently for the benefit of your neighbor. But be careful that your sacrifice is truly “living, holy, pleasing to God.” If your faith remains “without works” and therefore “is dead” (James 2:20); if you eloquently philosophize about rebirth, about contemplation, about mystery, but do not care about fulfilling the commandments of God, do not act according to the regulations of the mother Church, as is characteristic of the son of obedience: then the sacrifice of your spirit is not a living one; you think to worship God in spirit, but you do not worship Him in truth. If your works are not animated by faith, and therefore the blood of Christ does not “cleanse your conscience from dead” or killing lawless “works” (Heb. 9:14); if even in the subtle, pure, and most characteristic of spiritual images of God, with which it is clothed in Christianity, you do not draw spirit and strength for yourself; you offer incense, but you do not offer prayers; you light a candle, but do not burn in spirit; you hear Divine wisdom in church reading and singing, but do not sing to the Lord in your heart; You worship with your body, but are not contrite in spirit: then the sacrifice of your body is not living. You “have” one “form of godliness,” for which the Jews were rejected, and not “the power” (2 Tim. 3:5) of it, by which Christians are saved. Whoever brings to the holy church of God a heart weighed down by gluttony and drunkenness, flesh with untamed lusts, a lying mouth and a biting tongue: instead of a lamb or a dove, he wants to sacrifice an unclean animal or a serpent 646. He who kneels on both knees, bows first to God, sometimes to the world, stands in one virtue, but wavers in the other or carelessly falls: he sacrifices the lame. He who does not try to advance in the knowledge of the Son of God and His saving teachings, and thinks to please God, as it happens: he makes a blind sacrifice. Whoever imagines serving God, but secretly seeks his own benefit or human glory in it: he sacrilegiously serves himself and people, and does not make a sacrifice to God. All such sacrifices cannot be called holy, nor can they be pleasing to God. Christians! From the moment we are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by this very action we are doomed to be a sacrifice to the Trinitarian God. Let us reckon with ourselves how many times later this rebellious victim was torn away from his altar and ran away from the church; how many times was she again caught by the grace of God, returned by repentance, and again broke and ran away! Maybe so many times that we won’t even be able to count it. How long will it be like this? When will we finally decisively, irrevocably and completely “present our bodies as a living, holy, and pleasing sacrifice to God, our verbal service”? I would pray to you for this fear of God’s judgment; I would pray with the hope of your own bliss; but, obeying the Apostle, most of all, “I pray to you, brethren, by the mercies of God.” I pray with the bounty of God, who created us from those who are not, and who honored us with His image, who subdued creation to us, and even gave it over to obedience to our vanity, so that we would not have any excuse to refuse Him anything. I pray with the bounty of God, “who so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son to eat” as a sacrifice, “so that everyone who believes in Him,” having mutually presented themselves as a sacrifice to Him, “will not perish, but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). I pray with the bounty of “God who anointed us,” “who sealed us” with himself, “and gave the betrothal of the Spirit into our hearts” (2 Cor. 1:21–22). I pray through the bounty of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave us His flesh and His blood, 647 the highest, life-giving sacrifice of salvation. God, the all-satisfied one, gives up everything, including Himself, as a sacrifice for man: won’t an insignificant person present all of himself once and for all as a sacrifice to God? May the Lord “remember 648 every” spiritual “sacrifice” of yours, Christian brothers, and may your internal “burnt offering” be “fat” before Him (Ps. 19:4). Amen. “I beseech you, brethren, by the tender mercies of God, to present in your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, your verbal service” (Rom. 12:1). On this day, on which we, as usual, celebrate the blessed birth to our prosperity, given by God and preserved by God, our King, and moreover, this time we celebrate the safely accomplished sacred Confirmation of the chosen Bride of Brother Tsarev and their blessed betrothal, through which to the Holy Vertograd of the Orthodox Church and to the most pious family A new good branch is being grafted onto the Tsar - in this place, which was created by a charitable spirit and exists through the continuous benefactions of the Queen Mother - who does not think of God's bounty to the Tsar's house, and in it to all of us, the sons of the Russian kingdom? But do we all, according to the Apostolic teaching, unite with the joyful thought of God’s generosity to us the reverent thought of our sacrifice to God? You, Most Pious One to the King, respond to the great generosity of God with great sacrifices. Your entire activity is for us, independent of the motives and encouragements inherent in the service of those under our control, which is nothing other than a free, unceasing sacrifice; kindled by love for the King of kings, burned by love for Your people? If some special sacrifices should be especially mentioned, how majestic is that propitiatory sacrifice, when in the time of temptation that came to all the Kingdoms of Europe, You decisively and completely sacrificed security - truth, calculations of human wisdom - unconditional hope in God, your own benefits - the salvation of kings and peoples! Or that grateful sacrifice, when in the days of victories and glory, You brought all the glory of victories to the One Lord of hosts, or that truly peaceful sacrifice offered for the external and internal peace of so many kingdoms, for which, by an art unknown to You, You created an altar on the charter of the Holy Alliance and which to this day is so obviously pleasing to Christ, the King and God! We also see Your sacrifices, Queen Mother! Royal abundance is sacrificed to poverty and orphanhood, Royal peace is sacrificed daily to appease the needy and suffering. What about our victims? With the Apostolic Word we invite everyone to think about their sacrifice: “I pray to you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your verbal service.” Speaking about the sacrifice, initially to the brethren of the Roman Church (although, without a doubt, for the instruction of the entire Church of the Universal Church), - people who have recently entered... May the Lord “remember”... In the index on Thursday. O. L. D. Pr. listed as spoken in 1843. - According to Evrein. collection: A word on the birthday of the Most Pious Sovereign Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, spoken in the Maryinsk Church of the Imperial Dowager's House on December 12th. According to Jew. collection: no emotional... According to Jew. collection: represents... According to Jew. collection: and since it was not created simply for the bestial state, then in this case... According to Jew. collection: tirelessly... According to Jew. collection: lips filled with spiritual poison of wickedness and malice: instead of a lamb or a dove, he wants to sacrifice a pig, or a horse neighing furiously, or an adder... According to Jew. collection: eat your flesh and drink your blood... According to Jew. collection: The word about sacrifices cannot fall silent in this church without especially touching you, consecrated and newly consecrated victims of Christian love for mankind, chosen sisters of compassion! The more necessary is the universal duty of Christians to present themselves as a sacrifice to God in every rank, condition, position: the more complacently should you make your special voluntary sacrifice for the relief of suffering humanity. And your sacrifice will be living if your service to the sick is animated by Christian love and zeal; holy - if you do it faithfully and sanctify it with prayer; pleasing to God - if you go through it with joy and gratitude to the bounties of God, so obvious to you in the Royal bounties. You might be interested in: