454. Слово в неделю Мясопустную

Depart from Me, cursed, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angel. (Matthew 25:41). “God is loving” (1 John 4:8) in His being and mercy in His actions towards man; No matter how diverse these actions are, they have a single beginning - goodness, and a single end - goodness. Therefore, God appears in the form of a father and gives us the glorious name of a son: “Give me, son, your heart” (Prov. 23:26); then in the form of a doctor he buys us health with our own illnesses: “by his wound we are healed” (Is. 53:5); then in the form of a shepherd, and does not forget to proclaim by name the sheep who have forgotten Him in their error: “other sheep are Imam, which are not of this court; You too it is fitting for us to bring” (John 10:16); then in the form of a guest he tries harder to bring us into our wretched hut than we into His glorious palace: “Behold, I stand at the door and understand” (Rev. 3:20); then in the form of a groom he approaches his bride everywhere, wherever she goes: “Come, my neighbor” (Song. 2:10). But have you now seen in the mirror of the word of God the last appearance of the Eternal in time? Oh, how terrible it is and how different it is from the previous one! Souls who did not correspond to the love of the heavenly Bridegroom, you will soon experience the flame of His jealousy! Hearts that have not accepted the Divine visitation, “your house is left to you empty” (Matthew 23:38)! Sheep who heard the voice of their Shepherd, but did not heed him, He will hand you over to the wild beasts! Sick members who have rejected the help of the doctor of souls and bodies, He is already accepting iron in order to cut you off and cast you out of the city of immortality! Disobedient children who have despised the saving advice of the Father, you will see in Him a strict judge! Behold, He lays aside His meekness and puts on glory! Behold, He looks with lightning, speaks with thunder, and is surrounded by horror! Death dwells where He turns away His eyes! You who did not want to come to Him when He called you: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), - behold, He now dismisses you from Himself: “Depart from Me, cursed into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angel.” So, listeners, in this terrible act, God is no longer love and mercy. The same love that came “not ... to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by it” (John 3:17), will come to condemn those “whose love did not accept the truth, by which means they may be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). He condemns the evil, because he loves the good. The merciful judges the unrepentant because he has mercy on the repentant. And why else does He proclaim the destruction of the outcasts, if not because He does not want anyone’s destruction? Therefore, in a few more centuries, he allows us to hear the last curse on our country, in order to escape to the right hand in advance! Blessed is he who listens to this curse without deviating from the intention of God’s love! Then the curse gives birth to blessing. We must listen to him with our hearts and minds, not with our ears. We must recognize in it the horror of the state of the outcasts: we must not wait for the clarity of experience itself. So, the Righteous Judge will deprive the condemned of the right and opportunity to enjoy His sight: “Depart from Me, curse.” This great loss cannot be felt sufficiently by those who have not experienced the high bliss of seeing God! When we see the perfect work of the human mind, we are bursting with curiosity to see the creator; when we hear about praiseworthy, philanthropic deeds, our eyes would like to rest on the chest in which such a kind heart beats; when we listen to the glory of the mighty of the earth, our imagination rushes to their places of residence, and we consider ourselves happy if we can place ourselves before them. However, seeing the face of a sage, they do not yet see his wisdom; looking at the virtuous, they do not see virtue; viewing the splendor that surrounds the strong, they do not see that strong spirit that passes through and moves the huge members of the state body. The bodily gaze embraces only the body, but to see God - of course, no longer with this mortal eye - is to contemplate (as limited as possible the creature) His wisdom - and always be illuminated by it with a new light of knowledge, and His goodness - and be filled with love and immortal joy from it, and His greatness - and rise to the bliss of the purest spirits. If the mind, not blinded by passions, not darkened by prejudices, finds pleasure in examining the traces of the Divine in the kingdom of nature; if a believing soul is immersed in raptures, mentally passing through the wonderful paths of grace in its mysterious kingdom: then what should one feel who, leaving these distant regions of the Almighty, would penetrate into the interior of His power, would enter His immortal city, would feel His glorious presence everywhere and around and within himself? If we love to listen to how these visible heavens in silence “tell the glory of God” (Ps. 18:2), the smallest insect proclaims the greatness of the Creator; what if in the heavens of heaven, instead of the radiance of dead bodies, we saw the light of immortal spirits, we would listen to their silent praise, unite our voices with their choir, learn, by pouring, so to speak, praise into God, to draw inexhaustible joy from God? The God-inspired king, who, it seems, learned their songs from the seraphim and tried, as much as possible, to more perfectly experience their heavenly exercise on earth - to glorify the King of kings, does not expect any other bliss there than to be closer to Him and praise Him forever. “Blessed,” he sings, “those who live in Your house will praise You forever and ever” (Ps. 83:5). The apostles, confirming us in the faith, thought that they had said everything when they said that we would see God face to face, we would see Him as He is. Their Divine Teacher Himself describes the high state of the Angels with this one feature, that they “can see the face of the Father... in heaven” (Matthew 18:10). Judge, therefore, how much does he lose who loses the right to see God? We, not seeing Him now, due to the coarseness of our feelings and natural weakness, how much we endure! What darkness in the mind! What emptiness in my heart! What joy in desire! But to what terrible extreme will these disasters reach, when they will not be our weakness, but the endless consequences of God’s wrath, when these accidents of our being will pass into nature itself! Absalom, rejected by David, asks Joab to either ask him permission to see the king and his father, or kill the unfortunate man. Thus, a sinner rejected by God will prefer death to his condition; only he won't find her. He will die continually, and he will not be able to die just once. Collect a thousand hells, exclaims Chrysostom, this is by no means as hard as being cast out from glory, being hated by God! The punishment of those condemned at the Last Judgment does not consist merely in the deprivation of goods and the sight of God, but in the actual suffering of evils. The judge sends them to the fire. It will be so pleasing to strict Justice that the whole person should be subject to the action of His vengeance, since he was completely given over to the action of lawlessness. It posits the same difference in the punishments that we carry out for sins. Of these, some are born in the soul and through it they enslave their bodily powers, such as pride or malice; others take place in the body and defile the soul, through whose participation it receives pleasure, such as luxury and voluptuousness. Thus, alienation from God, gnawing at the memory of the disorder of life, complete despair, are the essence of executions that devour the soul, and only extend to the body, as long as it is connected to it. Fire is a material torment that torments the body and passes through it into the soul. And therefore it is in vain to explain this fire as the action of conscience; in vain they ask: what kind of torment is this? What kind of fire is this that could act on an immortal person? But should the limits of human understanding be the limit of God's omnipotence? Whoever can “make this perishable... into incorruptibility” (1 Cor. 15:53) and make the body spiritual, how difficult is it for him to prepare such a subtle and penetrating fire that it will also be felt by the immortal composition, like the present fire by the present body. Whoever wants to know in detail the nature of torment alone, let him first explain to me exactly the nature of heavenly bliss. But if the one who was in the third heaven did not describe what is prepared there for those who love God, and admitted that it is completely impossible for a more or less carnal person to comprehend; then can anyone who has not descended into hell even imagine the nature of the terrible final acts of God’s wrath? We can, and it is enough for us, to know only that this wrath is endless: go into eternal fire, says the Eternal Judge. In vain, some, to mitigate this terrible threat, resort to the mercy of God. But what kind of mercy is there for those who reject mercy with insurmountable stubbornness? God is one, infinite good; evasion from Him is a single infinite evil. God created man for Himself; the Fall removed man from God; mercy again opened the way to unite with Him. Whoever does not follow this path, according to the law of Justice, remains subject to eternal evil, as a necessary consequence of moving away from God. It will be too late to look for this path in the darkness of hell. The path to immortality lies in the vale of mortal life. Here you can have a lamp in order to find it and safely continue the procession along it. Death for every person, and the final judgment for the entire human race opens the door of fate. Wise virgins enter the marriage of the immortal groom - but they are expelled. To receive pardon, one must repent. But who can accept a cry emitted by torment as pure repentance? The more painful these torments are, the less capable the heart is of having feelings other than those of the fiercest sorrow. It single-handedly suppresses all thoughts and desires with despair. So, mortal, as long as you wear a mortal body, and with it you are subject to change, you can become better or worse. But when you put aside the clothes of corruption and mortality, then either an immortal feeling of good or an immortal feeling of evil will remain in you. No new atheists will be born in heaven, “lower in hell... whoever confesses to the Lord” (Ps. 6:6). Imagine, listeners, as much as you can this country of impenetrable darkness, boiling with fire and bogeymen and worms, noisy with gnashing of teeth and furious groans: there minutes pass like years: but years pass - and this is still the beginning of torment; eyelids pass - and this is still the beginning of torment; As many millennia will pass as there are specks of dust that make up the present world, there will still be the beginning of torment!.. Think also with whom sinners will share this endless curse of eternal torment: this is the fire prepared for the devil and his angel. The enemy's destructive gaze will constantly pierce the victim he has killed! The fierce serpent will kiss the heart poisoned by it with its vile sting, and will always shed new poison into new wounds. But may these terrible sights be removed, and may they not be for us, the listeners, mere dreams of the imagination! Open your ears, and in the most formidable broadcasts of justice, inspire a sweet voice: “Come, blessed of my Father” (Matthew 25:34). Do you hear what love says? The dwellings of hell were not built for you, but for the devil and his angels; The flames of hell were not kindled for you, but for the prince of darkness the kingdom of darkness was built: the mansions of paradise were prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Why are you jealous of the lot of those who have earned their fortune? Convert, “repent, the kingdom of heaven is drawing near” (Matthew 3:2). Amen 949. In the book by Rev. Cheredeev, - “Biographies of the Tver hierarchs from the beginning of the existence of the episcopal see in Tver to the present day” (Tver, 1859) about Archbishop Filaret, who was at the Tver see from March 15, 1819 to September 26, 1820, the following is written: “he greeted the Tver diocese with a letter or message.” But we could not find such a certificate anywhere. 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