Речь в день Благовещения Пресвятыя Богородицы, сказанная в Предтеченской церкви архиерейскаго дома 25 марта 1858 года.

“The day of our salvation is the most important and the most important mystery since the beginning of time: the Son of God, the Son of the Virgin comes!” Contemplating with faith the great mystery now revealed - the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God, you do not know, brethren, what to be more surprised at: whether to what extent God depleted and belittled Himself, taking on the form of a servant, becoming a man (Phil. 2:7); or to what degree human nature has been elevated through this exhaustion of the Divinity. She amazingly rose above all in the person of the incarnate Lord himself. The Son of God took upon Himself human nature forever, and accepted into the unity of His Divine hypostasis, so that although He now has two natures - Divine and human, they are inseparably united in Him and constitute one person, one Divine hypostasis. Both in his incarnation and in human nature, he is still the same one true Son of God and true God as he was before the incarnation. As a result of such a hypostatic union of two natures in Christ, humanity in Him partook of the Divinity and became deified, that is, it assimilated from the Divine everything that it was capable of assimilating, without losing its limitations and human properties, and was enriched from the Divinity with wisdom and holiness and life-giving power and other Divine perfections. Following this, humanity, deified in the person of the Lord Jesus, became partakers of both Divine glory and Divine worship in Him. Now He will sit on the throne of glory at the right hand of God the Father in His human nature; now to Him already in the flesh “all authority has been given in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18); Now He is worshiped in human nature as God by “every tribe of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10). Well, tell me, can it be higher than what our human nature has been rewarded with in Christ? If not to such an extent, then our nature has nevertheless risen to an amazing degree in the person of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the Lord. She gave birth to Him, without a doubt, not according to Divinity, but according to humanity. But since humanity in Christ, from the very moment of His conception, was inseparably and inseparably united with the Divine into His one Divine hypostasis: this means that the Most Holy Virgin conceived, and carried in the womb, and gave birth to the true Son of God, the true God. Therefore, there is truly the Mother of God. And having been honored to be the Matter of the Lord, the Creator of everything that exists, She naturally rose above all His creatures, not only earthly, but also heavenly, and is worthily confessed to be more honorable even than the cherub, and more glorious, without comparison, than the seraphim, that is, the highest created spirits. She is the first according to God, she is the Queen of heaven and earth! If not to such an extent, then human nature can still rise to an amazing degree in each of the people who only believe in the incarnate Son of God. While one of the daughters of men was worthy to be the Matter of the Lord, all of us who believe in Him are worthy to be His brethren, sons of His heavenly Father, partakers of the Holy Spirit. In the sacrament of baptism we are born of God and put on Christ. Through the sacrament of confirmation we receive the Holy Spirit into ourselves. Through the sacrament of the Eucharist we sincerely unite with Christ, so that He abides in us, and we in Him (John 4:15). And if after this we live piously, in a Christian way, then we more and more imagine Christ in ourselves (Gal. 4:19) and it is not by whom we live, but Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20). But, “beloved,” let’s say with St. apostle, “we are now children of God” and only brethren of the only begotten Son of God, and “not having appeared, that we shall be: but we know that when He appears, we will be like Him” (1 John 3:2.5). We know that we will then become “heirs with God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17), that we will “reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2:12) and we will sit with him on the throne of His glory (Apoc. 3:21). Shall we add, brethren, moral instruction? It is obvious to everyone. If our nature has risen to such a degree in the person of the now incarnate Lord and His Most Pure Mother and can rise in each of us: then let us learn to respect our nature and behave in accordance with its high dignity. Let us firmly remember that it really rises in some righteous people, true Christians, through their piety, and in sinners it is only more and more humiliated, and while the former, ascending in degrees of moral perfection, will finally ascend to heaven to reign there with Christ, the latter, gradually descending, will finally fall into the abyss of hell, to be tormented there forever with the devil. Amen. You might be interested in: