The gracious covenants of St. Sergius to Russian theology

Speech at the annual meeting of the Paris Theological Institute on June 7, 1926. The life of the Church is moved by the breath of the Holy Spirit abiding in it, and the knowledge of this life is possessed to the highest degree by those who purify their feelings through ascetic endeavor and become filled with the Holy Spirit. Holiness is the foundation of true divine wisdom and thought of God. In the lives of saints, treasures of divine knowledge are found; from here should the intellectual theology, which strives to comprehend with reason the revealed truths of God and subject their diverse faces to school study, draw its inspiration. To the extent that theology, as the work of the school, is by its nature scholasticism, but genuine, good scholasticism knows above itself and above itself the non-school, spiritual knowledge of holiness. And our Russian Orthodox theology, as well as the work of our school, is carried out by the leadership of our God-seers, and among them the great Abbot of the Russian land, of Radonezh and all of Russia, and now of Paris and other countries, stands closest to us. Sergius. It has already been recognized by high minds of our country that Rev. Sergius was and remains the educator of the Russian people, their mentor and spiritual leader. But we also need to know him as a gracious leader of Russian theology. He concluded his knowledge of God not in books, but in the events of his life. Not in words, but in deeds and these events, he silently teaches us the knowledge of God. For silence is the speech of the future age, and now it is the word of those who, while still in this age, have entered the future. The silent word, the hidden, must be clothed in words, translated into our human language by us, the scholastics and wise men of this century, to nourish our theology from the source of divine knowledge. Miraculously through the prayer of St. Sergius brought forth from the earth a source of fresh and pure waters, and from the earth of our hearts and minds even now let it flow forth rivers of theology. The Venerable inscribed his signs in the intelligent sky. Sergius, and his constellation burns and shines above our heads. And it is a tribute of gracious, pious veneration to now look at this constellation. What do we know about the natural talents and education of St. Series? The Life contains only meager data about this, corresponding to the general poverty of the Russian enlightenment of that time. This was the darkest time of the Tatar yoke, the nascent Russian culture was trampled by the Horde invasion, the darkness of savagery, mental and spiritual, fell on our homeland, and all of our, albeit embryonic, education experienced paralysis. And this darkness becomes thicker and more painful if we remember that the Western world was experiencing an unprecedented rise and pressure of creative forces. The age of scholasticism, so brilliant and fruitful for Western theology, has come to an end. Catholicism already had its Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, along with many others, the appearance of Wyclef and Hus already foreshadowed the catastrophes of the Reformation, the beginning of the revival - trecento and quatracento - promised the coming humanism. The fullness of the spiritual forces of the West and the possibilities inherent in it have already emerged, along with their tragic confrontation. And at this very time, the Russian land was shackled by an untimely frost, and instead of Parisian and other universities, she studied reading and writing in the psalter from a local sexton. But at the same time, the star of St. Sergius, once again testifying to people how incomprehensible are the ways of God and His judgments. For all the spiritual wealth of the western land did not give it at that time one such treasure as was sent by God to the Russian land in St. Sergius. But young Bartholomew, a boyar’s son from near Rostov, received all his school education in a similar deacon’s school, and, according to his life, at first he was little capable of this teaching, and only after the miraculous appearance of an angel in the form of a monk to him did he receive the power of reason. We can guess about the saint’s natural intelligence only on the basis of the general impression of his entire life and many-sided activities. From all this we must conclude that Rev. Sergius was one of the most outstanding Russian minds: all his actions bear the stamp of some kind of loyalty and insight, the highest wisdom, not only spiritual, but also civil and social. Another feature of his life that deserves special attention is that while leading the monastery, the monk took special care in acquiring and producing four books or compiling a library of such books, which were also intended for cell reading by monks. 1 It is known that Rev. Sergius especially valued a certain monk Athanasius, who was “a wonderful man in virtues and extremely intelligent in the divine scriptures, and his many hands testify to his complete writings.” Rev. Sergius preserved and cultivated the sprouts of spiritual enlightenment. All these facts mean a certain sign, the blessing of the monk and book wisdom, what we called scholastic enlightenment in combination with spiritual feat - they do not yet make the monastery a monk. Sergius is such a scientific scholastic center, although they promise it in the future. Here we can only establish the fact that, although the whole life of St. Sergius proceeded beyond dogmatic disputes and questions, but for his time he is a mourner and a planter of the theological enlightenment that was interrupted at that time and, as if from the depths of time, he blesses our current, and also weak, efforts carried out under the cover of his name. However, it is not these relatively minor facts that should now attract our attention, not enlightenment, but the very thought and knowledge of God of the Rev. Sergius, which he told about his life, the image of his piety and worship of God. And here a huge fact, one might say, of stunning importance, lies before our spiritual eyes. The young 23-year-old novice monk, together with his brother Stefan, retired to the desert, on the site of his future monastery, first of all, he built a wooden church and without any hesitation, responding to the innermost desire of his heart and heeding his knowledge of God, he dedicated it to the Most Holy Name of the Life-Giving Trinity, and this was the future Trinity Cathedral of the future Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Lord before the birth of St. Sergius revealed him as a chosen servant, reader and disciple of the Most Rev. Trinity. While still in the womb of his mother, the baby cried out three times during the divine liturgy, thereby revealing and indicating his wondrous knowledge and veneration of the divine trinumerary. This is how the contemporaries and biographers of St. Petersburg perceived this sign. Sergius (in particular Epiphanius). Dedication of the church in the name of St. The Trinity cannot be venerated as usual and accepted in Rus' until St. Sergius. It in itself was, rather, an innovation and a certain boldness, so surprising in the young, humble Sergius. And yet - life assures us especially persistently - without any hesitation, with complete determination, obeying the undoubted inner voice, he called St. Sergius the Most Holy Name of his church and monastery. 2 How can we look at this from the outside? A village peasant, a half-man, young, unenlightened, chooses for himself - indeed, the most sublime and important dogma of the Christian faith, but also the most mysterious and difficult both for precise expression and for speculative comprehension - the result is some kind of glaring incongruity. But Rev. Sergius had experienced knowledge of Pres. Trinity, he knew what he was doing. For, in addition to the scholastic-speculative comprehension of the dogma of the Trinity, there is direct knowledge about It, promised and attested by the Savior: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and I will come to him and make my home with him” (John 14:23), and the monk entered this path of knowledge from the very beginning of his life, so that in the 23-year-old young man a venerable saint had already been revealed. Trinity. The dedication of a church expresses a special spiritual choice, a response to a certain call that sounded in the soul of a person. And, listening to these calls, through the dedication of churches taking place on Russian soil, we penetrate into the secret places of worship and revelation of God. There is one Spirit moving the Church, but the gifts and ministries are different (1 Cor. 12:4). And although the dogma of Rev. The Trinity is fundamental in the Christian faith and known and obligatory for all Christians, but there are also other dogmas and dogmatic events, in the name of which churches are consecrated. The fullness of the Church embraces all church dogmas, and yet at different times and in different persons certain aspects of Christian dogma come into consciousness and are perceived with the greatest acuteness. And the special, deliberate gift of Rev. Sergius attracted him to the secret of St. Trinity and made him Her chosen servant and admirer. What did the Rev. see and tell about through his silence? Sergius? Isn't this a daring question? “For us to love, as if silence is comfortable through fear,” but love for the monk and the desire to learn from him, doesn’t it command us to overcome fear and fix our gaze on the spiritual face of the monk? He himself, Sergius the humble-wise, will help his flock in this. Here we cannot do without the auxiliary construction of forests of speculation. 3 God, in St. The Trinity that exists is Love, and this Love is the very life of the Divine trinity, the trinity itself, as the eternal act of love-reciprocity, in which Three are One and One is Three, a single trinitarian, absolute, divine Subject, the Existing Jehovah, the divine Self. Man is created in the image of God and therefore within himself he conceals the possibility of knowledge of God. Every human subject is I, a hypostasis, a single subject of its infinite predicates or self-positings. The I is directly given to the subject as its main self-positing; it is indefinable, although it underlies all definitions or all predicability. It looks into itself, posits itself: I am I, I am, or in short: I, I, I,..., the crushing mirror faces of a single person, which grammar therefore calls the first person. In this self-consciousness of mine, which at the same time is self-positing (in Fichte’s expression, absolute Thathandlung), I am absolute and eternal. It looks from eternity into time, it contemplates movement from some extra-spatiality, there is no consciousness in it that it arose in time, it is eternal and abides, it is existing, it is the absolute subject, I. Such is the self-consciousness of I, directly known to us, such is the miracle of I, which we do not notice, only because its intelligent sun always burns on the horizon of our life, and in its light we contemplate it, and it is also impossible for us to think of it as extinguished as it never shone. This eye of eternity in our soul is the image of God in us, the image of the Existing, Hypostatic God, the Divine Self. In the same way, God speaks about Himself, as man speaks about himself, and this is not anthropomorphism, but the God-likeness of man. And yet the created, human self, absolute in formal self-consciousness, turns out on closer inspection to be non-absolute and not self-sufficient, but in need of some other givens for its self-revelation, absolutely relative, and contains a contradiction. The self looks not only into itself, into the self, but also into the non-self, into that which, with its opacity, reflects its rays onto itself, however, we do not need to dwell on this side of the self. But there is another side of self-determination, where it also turns out to be non-absolute and needs some ontological borrowing to complete its existence. The pronoun of the first person, as the first, already presupposes the pronoun of the second, and then the third person. The I in its clarity looks not only into the I, into itself, but also into another I, similar to it, that is, into you. Without you and I, I am not I, or I am not entirely I; you are also the mirror of I, without which it cannot fully see itself. You are another, similar to me, which at the same time is not-me for me, because it is outside of me, it is a given for me, but at the same time it is given to me, as a condition of my self-consciousness, it is in this sense in me. At the same time, you are also my own self, at least as a co-self for me, and you are an external given for me, the boundary of the self, questioning its absoluteness. Having seen you, I can no longer remain in my self-isolation, in my metaphysical egoism, it already needs you to be I, for the fullness of its self-existence, for its reality. It can no longer and does not want to forget you, and at the same time as the loudly pronounced I, you silently whisper. I turned out to be two-faced: I am you, or I am in you, or you are in me. I multiplied through self-doubling. However, self-reproduction does not end there. As an absolute self-positing, as an act, in this very act I have evidence of my reality, a guarantee of its completeness. However, for the reality of its implementation, soon you will not be enough. You are inextricably linked with I, like the image of an object reflected in water or in a mirror, with the object itself. However, this indissolubility of mutual reflection is such that it casts new doubt on the guarantees of reality or authenticity of both I and Thou. What if it is you who are just a different self, who has put on the invisibility cap of not-me. Indeed, in this case, this self-repetition or self-reflection does not provide anything, because if I doubted the completeness and absoluteness of my own and went out of myself, into the non-I, into you, in search of it, then it should at least receive a firm and unchanging confirmation of its reality not through reflection only, but also through recognition and confirmation of itself in another I, in you. For this to happen, a real meeting must take place, but it has not yet happened, or rather, has not fully occurred, has not been fully verified. I see some image in a mirror image: I bow to him, he bows to me, I make a gesture with my hand, he answers, I make another movement, he repeats it. Then fear creeps into the heart - is this not a mirage, a double, a Doppelgänger, a dream? But in this case, is it not a dream and this is my self, the reality of which I strive to verify by leaving myself, and has this exit been accomplished? Here comes the turn of the third, not yet used pronoun, namely the third person: he. As a personal pronoun, he is a person who, according to what is shown, has both faces: I and you, there are both I and you, but in the shadow of self-consciousness, outside of direct address and yet in a necessary and essential co-presence, as the fulfillment and affirmation of both I and you. He is no longer a mirror image, so he is not in the focus of vision, and yet his presence next to me strengthens, and comforts, and fulfills their powers of being. From now on, I will no longer doubt myself as a result of the doubt in you, the doubt about his illusoryness, and at the same time the illusoryness of I myself, is eliminated by the fact that he is, existing, although standing in the shadows, the very essential reality. He, called from his shadow to the light, turns out to be you, and, consequently, I or co-I, independent in its existence from the mutual reflection of I and you, and thereby these latter are certified. So arr. self-disclosure of I occurred only through you and he, it has three modes, and this is confirmed by the genius of language, which knows three personal pronouns and thus testifies to the trinity of I. However, this trinity I, you, he is not exhausted by the mode I. The genius of language in the personal pronoun knows not only the person, but also the number, singular and plural, and even dual. I participates not only in I, you, he, but also in we, I am we - this is new, his further self-revelation. We, too, are a constant miracle in the self, which also does not strike us only due to the stultifying power of habit. How did the I, which first came out of itself into you and he, now enter into we? Doesn’t I feel like the only, absolute, self-affirming, selfish center of being, for which, in which, from which everything is determined and exists? And suddenly this is his humble self-immersion in we, the death of I and his resurrection. We testify how far the self-discovery and self-awareness of the I have gone and how deeply it has asserted itself in its reality, for, plunging into we, it does not drown or dissolve, on the contrary, it blooms in being - I in co-I, and without we, not having the fullness of this loving self-combination of many, the I itself was deprived of the power of being. But the reality and authenticity of us already contains you and them. Now rising, now plunging in the waves of existence, I now merges myself with we, now, raising my head on the surface of the waters, I see us, like you and like them, going through in every possible way the multiplicities that, like diamonds, flow in drops from the fingers of the triumphant I. In the plural, the triune self is revealed as three unity or many unity, and only in this does it realize itself. What does all this mean? This means that the nature of the self is conciliar, conciliarity or plurality is an integral property of the personal self, the hypostasis, outside of which it cannot open up and simply exist: when I say, the hypostasis speaks simultaneously to you, and we, and they. This is the self-testimony of our spirit about its own nature: it is not one, although it is one, its unity is given only in the plurality of the trinity, it is one-person in multipersonality, it is catholic, conciliar, and pure monohypostasis is an abstraction, nonsens. But this conciliar nature of the hypostasis, indisputably ascertained from the self-disclosure of the self, leads to hopeless self-contradictions and new aporias. In fact, on the one hand, I am an act of absolute self-positing, in which it knows no one and nothing above and outside itself, neither creator nor creation, but is its own creator and creation. But, at the same time, in order to carry out this self-positing, it presupposes a givenness outside itself, needs other co-selves, which it has in itself and even co-posits, but over which it has no power, for it is not their creator, but rather their creation. It is given to itself from the outside, it is created, it is created in this area, and not a self-positing self. It posits itself, although in an absolute manner, but is not absolute, depending on other selves. In this position, the created self does not explain itself, but refers to that Absolute Subject, the image of which it is in the absoluteness of its task, although not its being, it postulates it. The absolute subject, as a postulate of the created self, obviously overcomes its contradictions and aporias. There can be no givenness or extra-position in it; it is one pure self-positing, having everything within itself. God, existing in the Holy Trinity, is the Absolute Subject, in whom the conciliar, triune nature of the self is realized in an absolute manner. God is the Person, the Existing One, Jehovah, the Hypostatic Self. But this Divine Hypostasis exists in three hypostases, there is a hypostatic trinity, a personal trinity. The Holy Trinity is the pre-eternal catholicity of the Self, which is revealed as You and He (also You, and You), and also as We. In the Holy Scriptures, these pronominal addresses are used in relation to God, and sometimes to signify the indifferences of alternating I and We, singular and plural. In St. The Trinity contains the fullness of the self-disclosure of the self, its conciliarity. But unlike the created self, which needs and outside itself has you and us, the Holy Trinity in itself has both I and You, and He, and We, and You, as a single trinitarian subject, the absolute divine Self. In the Divine Trinity, uncut and unmerged, each hypostasis is mutually for each other and I and You, and He, therefore the Holy. The Trinity is a certain absolute We in Our three unity and I in My three unity. Each Hypostasis is I, but at the same time you are for another, and He is for a third, and everywhere there is a single transparent I. Each hypostasis does not want to remain in itself, to be a hypostasis for itself, it not only looks, but essentially proceeds from itself into another hypostasis, or, rather, into the other two hypostases: in you and in he, and you, and in them it acquires not only you and he, but also I, the other, my I - in the not-I , which becomes not only co-I, but also directly I. In the Holy Trinity, something is accomplished that is inconceivable for created consciousness: not from the I, which remains unshakably in its place, comes into you and he, but the I itself comes out of itself, as if in sacrifice it extinguishes its lamp so that it can flare up in another or others (two). The Divine Hypostasis is realized by the pre-eternal act of hypostatic self-extinguishing for combustion in another, for another, through another. This is hypostasis as an act, as self-positing through self-giving, self-extinguishing. Therefore, there is no separate juxtaposition here, and at the same time there is no extra-position I, you, he, we, you, although testifying to conciliarity, but also destroying it, here there is a trinity for each hypostasis: I, you, he, with the simultaneous we and you, an eternally actualizing conciliarity, a self-positing absolute subject. But what is the name of this self-positing, the essence of this actualizing conciliarity? The Word of God answers about this: “God is Spirit.” "God is Love." As Spirit, God is the Existing One, I, the hypostatic subject, the Absolute, i.e., the Tri-hypostatic I, is Love, not as a “property,” but a small being, life, conciliarity. The face of God is Love in actu et in hypostasi. Not only from the prototype is the image comprehended, but from the nature of the Absolute Subject the nature of the created and the relative is explained. The Word of God testifies to us that man, created in the image of God and having received from Him the image of hypostasis, was already created as a duo of Adam and Eve, which, at the very time of its creation, by the power of God’s blessing, had in itself further multitudes. In other words, man was created by God as a multi-unity, which essentially reduces in relation to hypostasis to trinity. The fullness of the image of God is revealed and realized not in a separate individual, but in the human race, the multitude, for which there exists not only I, but also you, and he, and we, and you, which is collective as a race and is called to love. The trinity of the hypostasis in God was reflected in creation as a plurality of separate, but mutually confined and interconnected subjects by personal pronoun. Only God is characterized by trinity, which cannot be contained in human nature, as a complete given, but it is contained in the fullness of the image of God, as a given, as the ultimate goal of God-likeness. The path of this godlikeness is love. Divine love, the eternal image of sacrificial self-sacrifice, as the power of Love, completely overcomes the boundaries of the self, makes another self its self, and identifies itself with it. But the path of self-identification with another self is the path of love and the power of love in human life. And every experience of love is this life in another and others, transfer your self into a certain you, self-identification with it in the image of trinitarian love. But this conciliarity of love is the Church, the human race in its ecclesiasticalization, likeness to God, deification, which is the goal and task of human life. And the Lord prays about this in His high priestly prayer, in which He defines the final purpose of creation. “That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may be one in us.” (John 17:21). “Let them be perfect in one” (23) “so that the love with which you have loved Me will be in them, and I in them” (26). After this retreat into the sandy and waterless, shifting swamps of speculation, let us return again to the meek and sweet spiritual city of the God-wise and God-bearing Sergius, so that in his life and feat we can see the seal of the holy Life-Giving Trinity, with whose Name he sealed himself. The Lord raised up His chosen one in a difficult time of not only the external enslavement of our homeland, but also internal decline, deep despondency and spiritual decay. People lost faith in goodness and gloomily isolated themselves in their grief, in their embitterment: man is a wolf to man! Oh, how we know this now and how our souls are still sick from darkness, discord and isolation. And yet the immortal human soul never completely dies, it only waits for its awakening, its resurrection. And now, in the days of great sadness and despondency, the people’s soul is waiting for a sign from heaven, and it will sparkle in the spiritual sky, it will rise up and rush towards it in a selfless impulse, and will forget all its troubles and will rise again, and will shine with great joy - this be and be! God gave this sign to Rus' under the jugular - the wonderful Sergius, hiding him in deep and dense forests so that his lamp would shine from under the bushel. In timelessness, the reverend carpenter went out to work as a builder of the City of God, in which stone is the essence of human hearts, to gather souls, to create brothers, to join the Church, so that they all might be one, in the image of God, in the image of the Most Holy Trinity. Rev. Sergius is the revivalist of monasticism for northern Rus', on the principles of the strict, but at the same time, the most brotherly discipline of the communal monastery, where there is nothing divisive, where everything is one, one will, one love and one life. It was not easy to take up such a task and solve it in the fight against human weakness, but it was defeated. Rev. Sergius, a hermit who left the world in a dense forest, became the spiritual collector of Rus', and its spiritual leader. But earlier he became one in his wretched monastery, where hearts were drawn to him, and from it, as from a root, young shoots began to appear, monasteries began to arise and expand, in which new lights were lit, and just as the candles of those praying are lit from the priestly candle, and the whole church is filled with light, so from the candle of St. Sergius, the Russian land was filled with lights, and the entire era of history that follows the century of St. Sergius, there is the Sergius era in the history of the Russian spirit and creativity. But the kingdom of God, which embraces the whole world, is also within us, and it was necessary for the builder and architect in himself, in his soul, to give it triumph through great labors and exploits, to build the most holy church. Trinity. What were the secrets of the wondrous success of the Rev. Sergius, his victories? How did he attract and conquer the souls of people from whom he went into the desert, where they, however, were going to him? What is the strength of this conciliarity? The fact is that this conciliarity itself, the image in St. The Trinity of the existing God burned with a bright light in his heart. He himself accomplished the feat of conciliarity in the hiddenness of his heart, conquering selfishness, sacrificially denying himself in love for another, living no longer in himself and not for himself, but in another and for another, revealing in himself the truth of the apostolic word: I do not live for this, but Christ lives in me. Biography Rev. Sergius is surprised to point out humility and meekness as the most basic features of his spirit. He wanted and knew how to remain in the shadows, being a beacon for everyone, to take second place, while in reality having first place in everything: Sergius the humble-wise - this is the address to him. This is how he is narrated in the life of Epiphanius, not without rhetoric, but with a deep sense of surprise and tenderness: “The venerable abbot of our father Sergius is a saint, a wonderful old man, adorned with all sorts of virtues, having a quiet, meek disposition, humble and good-natured, friendly and kind, comforting, sweet-voiced and gracious, merciful and kind-hearted, humble-wise and chaste, reverent and poor-loving, strange-loving and peaceful...; having acquired, above all, immeasurable humility and unfeigned love equally towards all people, and together equally loving and honoring everyone, without choosing, without judging, neither in vain, nor against anyone, nor against anyone, nor condemning, nor slandering, nor with anger, nor rage, nor cruelty, nor cruelty, nor holding malice against anyone.” These words provide a sufficient and convincing answer to the question of what the Rev. did. Sergius as a venerator of the Most Rev. Trinity and in what way was Her image imprinted on his face and in what was Her abode created in his heart, according to the false promise of the Lord? The spiritual experience of self-denying love and, as its fruit, humility and humility, that is, the special highest wisdom of humility. Love is humility, it gives birth to humility and is established in it. God-Love is God-Humility, revealing himself in the Son, who himself testifies to himself: that I am meek and lowly in heart. For love is self-rejection, self-unseeing, self-giving, self-conquest, self-liberation. Love is life not by oneself, but by others; it is liberation from one’s selfish self, which obscures the intelligent sun. And the image of trinitarian self-denying Love, in which each hypostatic Self exists in another Self, one Self only as another, is pre-eternal humility. And the one who partakes of love-humility, to the extent that the mystery of the trinity of God is revealed to him. And Sergius acquired this humility from his youth, and became - in addition to all other virtues that can be acquired on the spiritual path - only humble-wise, but through this he also became god-wise. And aren’t we here approaching the comprehension of what the God-wise Sergius already testified to when building the Church of the Most Holy. Trinity, and having previously established it in your heart? Through the feat of love, he came to know God-Love and became the abode of the Holy One. Trinity. Comprehension of God-Love leads to comprehension of God's love. The love of God, realized by the Trinity, flows out of it and beyond the Three. In the insatiability of Love, which is its nature, God calls forth from non-existence the created selves in His image in order to make them partakers of love, to introduce them to the divine life, in them He seeks a friend with whom to abide in love. The all-satisfied and all-blessed God humbles himself in His humility and love and places His creation next to Him. The creation of the world and man is an act of divine condescension, of humble love. But the creation of created Hypostases in God’s eternal plan is determined by their future deification, which is created through the incarnation. And God’s love for creation, revealed in the Incarnation, does not stop before the atoning sacrifice offered for the sin of the world. “God so loved the world, as He gave His only begotten Son to eat” (John 3:16). God, who created the world with His word, creates it again - with Calvary, with the cross. “You came down to earth, O Savior, that He might save Adam, but you did not find this on earth, you even descended to seek hell.” The Incarnation becomes the world Eucharist, the sacrifice of Calvary is God’s love for the world, sacrificial, humble, self-denying, reconciling and reuniting, upon this sacrifice and by the power of this sacrifice the Holy Spirit descends into the world, sanctifying and adoring it. Therefore, the Divine Liturgy is “always, now and ever, and forever and ever” the triumph of sacrificial, seeking and saving love, the divine meal of the Kingdom of God. We know this with theological reason, for around this question human thought, one might say, has trampled all the paths and paths; we recognize this with an embarrassed, trembling heart, approaching St. throne or approaching St. cup, but this knowledge of ours is poor and meager; in its fullness it can flood our soul and melt our heart, enlighten the whole life of the world into the divine liturgy. And the greater the feat of carrying the cross after the Lord, the more ardent the spirit, the more Eucharistic it is, the more the divine liturgy shocks it. And here our thought turns with trepidation to St. Sergius, to his prayerful knowledge, and contemplates the traces of this terrible knowledge. There are two of them, these traces, but they are indelible, they are forever imprinted in the history of the Church, in theology, in the doctrine of the Divine Eucharist. Biography Rev. Sergius tells us that once the monk celebrated the Divine Liturgy with his brother Stefan and nephew Theodore. Stood in the church, Isaac the Silent One, one of his most perfect and strict disciples, looked and beheld not three, but four servants, and the fourth was a very wonderful man, bright in appearance and wearing shining robes. And after the service, the reverend they asked. Sergius told them that it was an angel of God who always served with him, but he kept this secret in silence until his death. “Now the powers of heaven serve with us invisibly,” but here they have become, according to God’s vision, visible. And even more trembling is the second vision, which was awarded to another, no less strict disciple of the Monk Simon: during the divine liturgy, he saw fire walking over the altar, overshadowing the altar and the holy meal, and then it, curled up, entered the altar, and the Monk took communion of the fire. But the monk kept silent until his death, that Simon saw the grace of the Holy Spirit acting with him. Conducted by Rev. The Trinity in the incarnation of God, in the deification of the world, the slaughter of the Son and the descent of the Holy Spirit sent by the Father - what can be added to this knowledge? Here is all theology, all Christology and pneumatology, God in himself and God in creation, in the Holy Spirit. The One who exists in the Trinity reveals Himself to the devotee of the Most Holy Trinity. The new creation of the world and man, which takes place in the incarnation of God, has its fulfillment in a God-receiving, glorified, deified creature. The Wisdom of God, eternally existing in the Holy Trinity, addressed to the world, is the Wisdom in creation as the divine basis, and together the goal of the world, speaking in Aristotelian terms, its entelechy. Sophia the Divine is the eternal foundation of Sophia in creation; in deification, creation partakes of divine life, heaven and earth are united. The Incarnation is the descent of the Divine Logos into the bosom of the Mother of God: God incarnate is Christ, the creature receiving God is the Mother of God. The incarnate wisdom of God is the Son of God. Created wisdom is the Mother of God, the Glory of the world. One nature, one divine life St. The Trinity has His image in a single world, which comes to God, is adored and unites with the world in the Mother of God and through the Mother of God. Knowledge of the world is therefore a gracious knowledge of the Mother of God, and true love for the world is veneration of the Mother of God. An ascetic who leaves the world for the sake of love for God and love for the world in God is not a gloomy world-hater, a suicide, he is a honorer of the world in its truth, in its glory, for he is an honorer of the Mother of God. In Rev. Sergius we know, we directly feel this love for the divine cosmos, which shines even through this sinful face of the world: and this forest in which he lived among nature, and this bear in the thicket of the forest, which he had as a friend, and these feathered inhabitants of the forest, who not without reason appeared to him in a vision of birds - all this speaks of some kind of graceful merging of him with nature, known to a pure heart. But behind this natural world, still awaiting its transformation, the monk knew its already accomplished glory, the already completely blessed and deified creation, the God-bearing and God-receiving earth. The knowledge of the divine Sophia was for him also the knowledge of Sophia in creation. 4 Here we approach again the mystery of the wisdom of St. Sergius. He was not only a worshiper, but also a chosen one of the Mother of God, who herself called him that in her wondrous appearance to the venerable one. That was in his old age, several years before his death. The Most Pure One appeared to him in great radiance, accompanied by St. the apostles Peter and John (with the same accompaniment She twice appeared to the wondrous old man of the Russian land, St. Seraphim). This happened in the presence of Rev. Micah, student of Rev. Sergius; he himself told about this phenomenon only to two mystic seers already known to us, Isaac the silent and Simon. The appearance of the Mother of God is Her inexpressible mercy towards man, but it already presupposes the ability to accommodate it, the presence of a certain preparation, it is, as it were, a supernatural answer to human questioning. And the phenomenon itself sufficiently testifies that in the soul of St. Sergius the knowledge of the Mother of God and the veneration of Her glory matured. He was the secret place of the Mother of God and before this appearance, one might think that his whole life was a preparation for this vision, which filled him with complete and final knowledge. The Most Pure One appeared in light and radiance as the glorified Virgin (Ven. She also appeared to Seraphim in royal purple, like the Queen of Heaven, accompanied by two chief apostles: Peter the Chief and John, the beloved disciple of Christ. In this connection, a new side of knowledge about the Mother of God is outlined, not only as the glory of the world, but also as the head of the Church of Christ. The two chief apostles Peter and John express the fullness of the power of the apostleship: the primacy of Peter, as an elder of the apostolic rank, is complemented and overcome by the primacy of love - the beloved disciple of the Lord, the seer of the mystic and theologian on the divine adoption of the son of the Mother of God. And with them She herself is as a personal embodiment, the heart of the Church, its created head. In this vision, therefore, the entire fullness of the Church is concentrated, as a human society, headed by the Mother of God in the concelebration of the two chief apostles. Vision of the Mother of God Ven. Sergius therefore has a vision of the Church, its dogma revealed to him. At a time when in the West the shackles for the church were already being forged in the form of the doctrine of papal supremacy, ecclesiopapism, the vision of St. Sergius revealed to Orthodoxy the foundations of the dogma of the Church, the true teaching about it. And honorable Rev. The Trinity, by the power of this ministry, also became the secret of the vision of the Church, like the ancient Hermas in the Shepherd. The knowledge of the Mother of God given by St. Sergius, agrees tacitly after his death. In the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, which he founded, there are two main churches, which is why they are called cathedrals: one is the Trinity, founded by him, and the other is the Dormition of the Mother of God. This cathedral was built, apparently, in the last years of Grozny 5 in the likeness of the Moscow Assumption Cathedral, and until 1781 the coffin of St. Sergius in the same appropriate place as his relics in the Trinity Cathedral. We cannot refuse the idea that the creation of the Assumption Cathedral was not accomplished without the will of the Venerable. Sergius and in his spirit, and this outlines another new, deliberate aspect of the veneration of the Mother of God. The feasts of the Mother of God have a twofold appeal, like the very dogma about the Mother of God: Christological - and then she is blessed and dogmatized primarily as the Mother of Christ, the womb of the Incarnation of God, such are all the feasts of the Mother of God, including the Nativity of Christ (the same is the anti-Nestorian dogma of the Mother of God of the Third Ecumenical Council, essentially Christological) - and purely the Mother of God (in Catholic language) Theology can be expressed as: Mariological), which, although it is present in all the feasts of the Mother of God, but to an exceptional extent in Her Dormition, it is a celebration of the Mother of God herself. The Feasts of the Assumption, this Mother of God Easter, only have as their starting point the event of the earthly death of the Mother of God, but its essential content lies in what followed in connection with the Assumption and after it, that is, the resurrection and ascension of the Mother of God and Her heavenly glorification. The Feast of the Assumption therefore has not a Christological, but a cosmological character. Here the Mother of God is blessed as a perfect deified creation, as the glory of the world, justified wisdom in her children (Matthew 11:19), as the queen of heaven and earth, as the Wisdom of God revealed in creation. Here we encounter the well-known historical fact that in northern Rus' the churches of the Assumption were often dedicated to Sophia, the Wisdom of God, and the church holiday was connected with the Assumption, so that this also found its liturgical expression in the general summary of the service for the feast of the Assumption and Sophia, the Wisdom of God. “This last circumstance, perhaps, is the reason why many Assumption Cathedrals appeared in Russia: in Rostov, Zvenigorod, Vladimir, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Kostroma, Astrakhan, Vologda, Rybinsk, Tobolsk, Vilna.” 6 The Sophia character is inherent to a certain extent in the Moscow Assumption Cathedral, this cathedral of the entire Russian land; at least on its outer altar wall there is an image of Sophia in the Novgorod version, a fiery angel sitting on the throne, on the sides of which stand the Mother of God and the Forerunner, both winged. But this particular church served as a model for the Trinity Assumption Cathedral and, moreover, during the era of construction of the St. Sophia churches. Therefore, there is sufficient reason to see this church as Sophia in a certain sense. But even without this assumption, the genuine and undisputed dedication to the Dormition of the Mother of God speaks essentially about the same thing. Here we witness the veneration of the Mother of God as a glorified creation, which is the perfect fulfillment of God’s plan for the world. She, belonging to the earth and the created world, sits in heaven at the right hand of Her Son. In Her there is God in all things. She does not even come to judgment, but is present at it only as an intercessor and representative of the human race. In Her, the entire creation is illuminated and sanctified: the earth from which She came, like the new Eve, in the likeness of ancient Eve, created from the rib created from the earth of Adam, and the human race, of which She is the luminous daughter, and together the all-sung mother, the entire creation, the angelic council and the human race, for no creation, not even an angelic one, carried Christ in the womb, not sits in heaven at the right hand of the Son, in the presence of the Holy One. Trinity. She is the justification and salvation of the world in its created nature, She is the Wisdom of God poured into the creation of the world and existing in the world, She is Her image in creation, one with the prototype. Therefore, She is God’s love for creation, for God loves Her in His creation, and the world is Her container, for Her sake it was created, for redeemed by Christ and becoming, like the Church, His body, it is also the body of the Mother of God. And if the world is a creation in the Holy. The Trinity of the existing God, and on him lies the seal of all the Holy. Trinity, Her Wisdom, then the love of the Holy One rests on the Mother of God. Trinity, She is Her created wisdom. She is the Church, the Mother of the human race, for she heads the Church of Christ together with the two chief apostles and all the apostles. She is the Glory of the world, already accomplished and fulfilled, the Queen of heaven and earth. This is what the Rev.’s visions silently tell us. Sergius and the ongoing revelation of this vision after his death. So, the Holy Life-Giving Trinity, the Incarnation and Redemption, the Most Pure Virgin, the hope of Christians, Her presence of the Church and Her most glorious Assumption and ascension into heaven - this is the subject reverend's vision Sergius, here is the fruit of his theology, and here are his covenants to our weakness of theology. This is how the gracious head of our school, the sweet and strict Abbot of our monastery, commands, this is how our thoughts are directed. However, they will tell us, isn’t all these objects that are self-evident for all theology, and what’s Sergiev’s in this? But did those who spoke like this hear everything, did everything unite within them in complete consonance? There are individual sounds, and there is a chord that is made up of them, but is not exhausted by them in its independent existence. There are stars of different sizes, brightness and colors, and there is a constellation, a special combination of stars. And if until now we have focused only on the individual stars of St. Sergius’s Divine Wisdom, in their particularity, then their constellation itself is no less important, how it burns in the vault of heaven and how it changes in our eyes along with the movement of the vault of the night. St. The Trinity, the Incarnation, the Wisdom of God, the Church, the Mother of God, the world - this is the constellation, this is the problematic, characterized not only by the content, but also by the relationship of the problems. The Church is one and always possesses the fullness of truth, but in human understanding it is subject to history with its development and alternation. The history of the Church knows different dogmatic eras, when consciousness was taken over by one side or the other of dogma. So, for example, the era of the ecumenical councils was predominantly Christological, the dogma of the Incarnation of the Word was in the center of attention, and it was given to it by inspiration to resolve the Christological problem. It was replaced by a pneumatological problem - from the age of Photius to the present day, in one form or another, it dominates minds, and with it the ecclesiological problem, the doctrine of the Church: trinitarian questions in connection with the doctrine of St. Spirit and different comprehension of the Church - these are the questions that both concern and divide the Christian world today. And partly in connection with this, questions about the veneration of the Mother of God and Her place in the Church and in the salvation of the world arise again, but in a different way. And this, in turn, leads, if not in Western, then in Orthodox wisdom, to the question of the Wisdom of God, as a revelation of St. Trinity in the world, for what else do the Palamite disputes about the energies of God mean, and the newest doubts and questions about the veneration of the Name of God, 7 and about the Wisdom of God, about which our ancestors theologized not in word, but in deed, building churches, establishing services, becoming akin to the heart with something not yet comprehended in the mind. And our dogmatic era is characterized by a peculiar combination of all these questions, their intersection: trinitarian questions in their inseparability with cosmology and anthropology, and, ultimately, with the primacy of anthropology. This is the situation today in the theological problematics given to us by our Orthodox consciousness, our dogmatic era, our modernity, for even for theological work Goethe’s word remains valid that whoever lived for his time lived for all times. However, it seems that this is only our human, perhaps armchair, limited, biased, incorrect perception. But let’s raise our heads and the constellation St. is burning above us in the heavens. Sergius, in him we joyfully see these same signs, in him we find our own thoughts, and by him we determine the direction of our ship. In our current theological self-determination, we recognize ourselves as being in the spiritual helicity of St. Sergius, let us heed his commandments. To see this, as it has been given to us now, is a great joy, and may I be allowed to share this joy with you on the day of our St. Sergius celebration. The Sergius era of church history in Rus' and beyond its borders has not yet ended and has not been overcome. And now the Radonezh abbot goes to a new desert in the far west and here he cuts down his cell so that his disciples will again flock to him to work and multiply and continue his work. Reverend Father Sergius, pray to God for us! In the library of the Trinity Lavra, some handwritten books from the time of St. Sergius: The Pentateuch of Moses, collections of some books of the Old Testament, the Book of Ephraim, the Gospel, the teachings of St. Ephraim the Syrian, 16 chapters of St. Gregory the Theologian, “Words of the Fast” by Rev. Isaac the Syrian, written under the Rev. Sergius in 1381, etc. “You expressed - responded to the proposal of your brother, Rev. Sergius, says the life of Epiphanius, is the very thing that has been in my soul for a long time, what I desired with all my heart, but did not dare to express. Your word is kind to me: let this church be consecrated in the Name of the Holy One. Trinity. For the sake of obedience I asked you; I didn’t want to have my own will in this, and so the Lord did not deprive me of the desire of my heart.” Here in brief and cursory outlines are outlined the constructions deliberately set forth in the work: “Chapters on the Trinity” (ready for publication) I will present the biblical and patristic teaching about the wisdom of God in a special study. (ready for printing) Prof. E. Golubinsky. Guide to the Lavra, 182–3. A. Nikolsky. Sophia the Wisdom of God (Section XVII, p. 34) Not everyone knows that at the Moscow Council of 1917–18 the missionary department was formed under the chairmanship of Arch. Feofan of Poltava subdepartment is relatively so-called. “name-worship,” and in the very first (and, it seems, only) meeting, it was decided to consider the dogmatic question of the Name of God on its merits, and topics were distributed (and I personally got a general philosophical introduction to the issue).