226. Слово по освящении храма Святаго Предтечи Господня Иоанна, в Кремле

(Said on May 2nd; published in the Gub. Ved. 1848 and in the collection 1861) How much power the Eternal has given to time over human affairs, since the first man did not value his immortality! Whatever a person undertakes, he must do everything in obedience to the law of time. For example, you plant an acorn in the ground and would like to see a majestic tree; but time says: no, you can see the sapling and the tree, but I will only allow your descendants to see the majestic tree. And when a person, with the permission of time, has actually produced something: time extends a new, even more difficult law to his work - the law of decay and destruction. Man strives through monuments to create for himself immortality on earth, which he was unable to preserve ready in paradise: time, as if out of pity, hesitates a little, but then this self-made immortality buries in ruins. When time so mocks the works of human insolence and vanity before God, such as, for example, over the pillar that was built by those who said: “Let us make ourselves a name” (Gen. 11:4), I do not complain and say: this is because of works. But when time does not carefully touch that on which the seal of the shrine is placed: then it is difficult to be indifferent, you involuntarily sigh for the Eternal. “The Tabernacle of Testimony” (Exodus 31:7), a camp church of the Israeli people, the first experience and example of the churches of the true God, was built by Moses at the direct command of God, “in the image shown on the mountain” (Exodus 26:30), or, as the Apostle explains, in the “heavenly” image. Every piece of wood, every spool of metal, every thread of cloth was used in it by Bezalel, according to the inspiration of “the spirit of God’s wisdom, understanding, and knowledge” (Ex. 31:3). It was consecrated by the miraculous overshadowing of a cloud and the sending of heavenly fire on the victims, and was marked later by many miracles. Her sacred ark is especially glorified by stopping the flow of the Jordan and drying it up at high water, so that the people of Israel could pass through it to the Promised Land. In the time of David it counted more than four hundred years from its creation. What holy antiquity! What an ancient shrine! What a precious monument of God's miracles and blessings! But what happened? When the King, according to the heart of God, moved the ark of the covenant to himself in Jerusalem: he created a new tabernacle for him, and left the old one aside, probably because time was bringing it closer to destruction, and did not leave it convenient to move it. Solomon, at the beginning of his reign, honored the ancient tabernacle in Gibeon with a thousand burnt offerings; but soon he created a new church, and from that time on it is no longer visible either in the land of Israel or in the chronicles. You will think and ask: how dares time to destroy something that was created by the special command of the Eternal, under His direct protection, and is destined to exist “legally forever throughout all generations”? ( Ex. 27:21 ). How can the decrepit natural law of corruption rule where the supernatural law of omnipotence acted and set the seal of God's miracles? But time does not answer these objections, and continues to prove its rights by the fact that, after the Tabernacle of the Meeting, the more durable Temple of Solomon begins to destroy before the Babylonians and Romans, as was revealed during the reign of Joash; and finally, a dark veil is thrown over the greatest shrine of the Old Testament, over the Ark of the Covenant with the God-written tablets, so that we do not clearly know where it is and what has become of it. Let us stop competing with time and turn to the Eternal to ask Him for understanding about His destinies in time. Sometimes God restrains the action of the law of time and corruption on matter that is corruptible by nature according to the special intentions of His wisdom, truth and goodness, as for example, “he does not allow His venerable one to see corruption” (Ps. 15:10), so that the body, sanctified by the asceticism of the holy soul, can be shown the honor characteristic of it; in order by incorruption in the kingdom of corruption to recall the truth that is easily forgotten here, that “God created man into incorruption” (Wis. 2:23); in order to give evidence through visible incorruption in time to invisible immortality in eternity; to make it convenient for faith to draw from a living vessel of grace even after the end of temporary life. More usually, God allows the law of time to act on what is marked by a shrine: because a visible shrine has a temporary purpose, and if it is called “eternal”, then in the indefinite meaning of many “centuries”, and not in the strict meaning of “eternity”. What was the use of making the tabernacle of Moses incorruptible, or the temple of Solomon indestructible, when the old “Law had” only a “shadow of good things to come” (Heb. 10:1), and this shadow was supposed to disappear when the sun of Christ’s truth ascended to the perfect height? And even before this, because the Israelites “had tempted and grieved the Most High God, and had not kept His testimonies,” He Himself “threw away the tabernacle of Shiloh” (Ps. 77:56, 60), and against the Temple of Solomon for the same thing he uttered a similar threat: “And this temple, which I have sanctified to My name, I will cast away from before Me” (1 Kings 9:7); and really rejected him, taking His grace from him, and handed him over to the pagans for plunder and destruction. The fate of the Christian sacred monuments of faith by God’s dispensation is also applied to the needs and conditions of believing and sanctified humanity. And the Christian church does not want to take His high grace away from the ordinary law of time; so that you do not forget that its purpose is temporary; so that you do not rest with a careless thought on the steadfastness of the ancient visible shrine, but strive to take the shrine within yourself, to make yourselves “churches of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16), and thus prepare yourself for the still higher Divine service of the new heavenly Jerusalem, in which the seer “saw no church: the Lord God Almighty is his church, and the Lamb” ( Rev.21:22). If we are negligent about our inner sanctification through piety and virtue, then the ancient terrible word of the Lord reaches out to us: “Do not trust in yourself with lying words, for they will not profit you greatly, saying: the church of the Lord, the church of the Lord, the church of the Lord is” (Jer. 7:4). These reflections on sacred antiquity and a dilapidated shrine are timely, I think, and not useless in this temple, ancient, dilapidated, but preserved and restored as much as possible. They help us here to look at the past without complaining, at the present with consolation, at the future with self-edification. Should there be much complaining about the fact that the temple of the holy Forerunner of the Lord, created by the Grand Duke Vasily the Dark, after three and a half centuries had already weighed on it, was touched in the time of temptation by the action of a hostile hand, aimed at the final destruction of the local sacred antiquity? Our sins were visited by the rod: but the signs of God’s mercy were also great, when the most important antiquity and shrine were wonderfully preserved. The great, preeminent Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Assumption, with the existence of which St. Peter connected the prediction of the prosperity and glory of Moscow, has been preserved with many of its shrines. The Church of the Holy Archangel, the posthumous resting place of the ancient rulers of Moscow and Russia, has been preserved with its shrine. The Church of the Annunciation, a particularly revered sanctuary of the Royal House, has been preserved with its shrine. The churches of the monastery of St. Alexis have been preserved with their shrines and antiquity. The Church of the Transfiguration has been preserved, covering the site of the church that preceded it, the oldest on the Kremlin mountain. Many more ancient, holy, precious things have been preserved that would take a long time to count. So, it is not a very serious loss if the stones of Vasily the Dark do not remain in their place, when the church that lived in them, with its inner shrine, and even with the ancient cross that overshadowed it, moved to other ancient walls. On the contrary, let us be comforted and grateful to the Most Pious Sovereign Emperor, Who takes out the ancient shrine of the church from the crumbling stones and preserves it in another container; whereas His royal house here is already replete with churches, more or less ancient, which have received from Him either renewal or a completely new existence, due to long desolation, which happened precisely with the church of St. Lazarus. Finally, from these reflections and the examples presented, let us draw an instruction for ourselves - to cleave with love and reverence not just to the material antiquity of temples, but even more to the spiritual grace and shrine in them; look in them not only for ancient names and chronicle numbers, but especially for our renewal and sanctification; It’s not something to be afraid of, lest time destroy our sacred monuments; but to fear and actively take care that they are not destroyed by our sinfulness and unworthiness, from which, according to faith, from distant and close ancestors we were betrayed, protected and supported by a sovereign example, may God preserve us with His abundant grace forever. Amen. You might be interested in: