Глава 3. 1773–1175

1. Preparation and Divine Changes ...When will I come and appear before the face of God? 109 With a heart burning with divine love, Nicholas returned to Naxos. One thought, one desire, one aspiration reigned in him - to run to the Holy Mountain as quickly as possible. He was in a hurry, like the Apostle Paul, to reach Christ who had reached him 110. The desert elders say: “Did you see how the young man runs? The old man seduced him.” Elder Sylvester further inflamed the holy desire for monastic life that possessed Nicholas. Studying monastic life and constantly preparing himself for it, he eagerly awaited the time of his departure. Communication with the Holy Mountain Fathers strengthened his decision to become a monk, as well as his noble desire to bring his outstanding spiritual powers and remarkable education to the service of the Church. The five-year stay in Naxos with academic studies under the metropolitan became a period of preparation. Nicholas very early became acquainted with everything related to monastic life, and his deep knowledge of the teachings of the Hesychast Fathers, which he revealed two years after his arrival on the Holy Mountain in the “Philokalia”, “Evergetina”, the book “On Constant Divine Communion” and the “Alphabet of Alphabets” of Saint Meletius 111, convince us that in his fatherland he labored as a monk, studying books about divine monastic wisdom - and, of course, doing “mental prayer”. Несомненно, он жил мечтой о новой жизни. If we could, as if through a crystal, see the pure soul of this young man, passionately burning with the desire to become a monk in the desert, with all the excitement and leaping of holy feelings, we would find ourselves before a truly amazing and sacred sight and would be forced to bow with amazement and reverence, throwing away cold logic. Любовь души к Богу – это божественная реальность. If the earthy and sinful love of this world forces those engulfed by it to make any sacrifices, then even more so the pure and holy love for God, which is strong as hell, 112 leads to great decisions, which only pious thought can interpret. Those Christians who try to contradict this have not taken the trouble to deeply study the lives of the saints. For pure hearts and high minds, Christ is the center around which, like Seraphim, feelings, thoughts, and will revolve - in a word, the whole soul. After all, this is precisely the deepest requirement of Christianity: “Love your God with all your soul, with all your thought, with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself” 113, and love for your neighbor appears as a reflection of love for God. Let us descend into the bottomless depths of the Gospel given to people by the God of Love, to the writings of the holy Apostles, to the teachings of the holy Fathers - Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom, Augustine, Maximus, Palamas, Cabasilas, Simeon, Nicodemus - and we will undoubtedly emerge from this boundless depth of all possible perfection, “rejoicing, shining, changed, enduring strange things.” a most splendid change." Saint Chrysostom writes: “For no, there is nothing that love cannot conquer. When this is divine love, then it is above all... For more than anything in the world is to love Christ and to be loved by Him..." 114 And St. John Climacus, teacher and singer of monastic life, says: "Blessed is he who has acquired such love for God as a madly in love with his beloved... Not like a mother to her suckling child, as the son of love always cleaves to the Lord. A true lover always imagines the face of his beloved and with delight embraces his image in his soul. Such a one cannot taste peace even in a dream, but even then he talks with his beloved. This usually happens in bodily love, and so in incorporeal love...” 115 You can say whatever you want, claiming that the soul can live in the world in God, as if in the desert. But the Lord cries from heaven: “Be silent and understand that I am God” 116. The sting of divine love, piercing Solomon’s soul, made her cry out excitedly: “... I am wounded by love” 117. Because of the divine love that surpasses human understanding, those who left everything and followed Him who is more beautiful in kindness than the sons of men appear in the eyes of the world as fools and madmen. And truly, those who have not been hurt by this love do not know anything like this, for those who love go beyond the limits of human logic. For them, what is reasonable is what people who do not love the beauty of God consider unreasonable. In fact, this madness is full of meaning in Christ. It is reasonable - like the love of Christ. Madness, as the Apostle Paul says, but divine madness. It is inexpressible and beyond words. A holy action, not comprehended by the mind, but difficult to express in words. Nicholas's soul was wounded by this Beauty, and therefore he did not want to be consoled by worldly joys. The eyes of this godly young man were not pleased with anything that usually fascinates people on earth. His spiritual taste, tested and uncorrupted, unmistakably distinguished the spiritual and holy from the material and sinful, from everything that was not capable of delighting beautiful souls for a moment. So, the glorious Nicholas learned from the Holy Mountain fathers about monastic life on the Holy Mountain and was inflamed with divine jealousy. His pure heart was completely captivated when he was told about the sacred and god-creating mental prayer, which he immediately began - and then practiced throughout his reverend monastic life. God-loving Nicholas fell in love with mental prayer so much that even in his last dying minutes, as we will see, his heart could not part with the all-desired Name of the Lord. And in many of his works, the most wonderful pages are devoted precisely to this divine and all-honorable spiritual work. Sending his “Admonitory Manual” to his cousin, Bishop Hierotheus of Euripus, the saint explains with sacred pathos how to continually perform this “uniform” prayer: “If you keep your heart pure... it is clear that you will try to protect yourself from unnatural evils, and over time, with the assistance of the Sweetest Jesus, who is often remembered in your heart, you will rise and to what is higher than nature. For by digging through this smart work and tearing out the dust and ashes of passions, and evil thoughts, and enterprises 119 from your heart, in which the spark of the supernatural grace of God is buried, you will find this very spark that Christ came to bring to the earth of the heart and you will rejoice with indescribable joy at its acquisition, and from your joy you will shed the sweetest tears... You will kindle a strange and supernatural fire in your heart; It’s better to say, Jesus, Whom you call, will light it, and with its heat it will ignite passions and burn the demons that are fighting you, and will drive away the temptations of thoughts and sweeten the entire inner structure of your heart, giving you joy, peace, love for God and love for neighbor... And so with this smart deed you will make your entire inner man a church and a village of the Holy Spirit... I ask you, let Jesus be the sweet teaching of the heart yours, let Jesus be the delight of your tongue, let Jesus be the meditation and thought of your mind. In short, may Jesus be your breath and may you never be satisfied with the call of Jesus. For from this constant and sweet remembrance of Jesus, these three great theological virtues - faith, hope and love - will be planted, grow and become great trees in your heart. Know that when a lover is far from his beloved, he cannot appease his desire and love in any other way, except by frequent reflection and recollection of the name of his beloved and his beloved face, as Gregory the Theologian says: “...those who have strong love for something usually hear names with pleasure” 120. In the same way, the soul that loves Jesus, since Jesus is in Heaven and does not appear to it so that it can see Him and enjoy Him, cannot satisfy its love for Jesus in any other way than by frequently remembering His holy Name, always crying out with love and tears and heartache: My Jesus, my beloved Jesus...” 121 From that time on, Nikolai, like a wanderer and stranger in this world, was looking for a convenient time to get to the Holy Mountain. For this reason, every day he came to the island’s harbor, watched the movement of sailing ships and asked with excitement if there was a ship sailing to the Holy Mountain? He was already a grown man of twenty-six years old when decisions were made regarding his future path. Euthymius reports that the pious mother of Nicholas, Anastasia, accepted the holy angelic schema in the nunnery of St. John Chrysostom on the island of Naxos 122 and was named Agathia in monasticism. Following the tradition of holy wives, after raising her children well and with the consent of her husband (if he was still alive), she devoted herself entirely to serving God, so that, far from worldly cares, she could devote herself entirely to the spiritual and holy life. It is completely impossible for her to accept monasticism before her son departed to the Holy Mountain. It is more likely that Nicholas himself assigned her to the monastery. 2. Like another Peter on the Holy Mountain Let us rise to the mountains, souls, come there, help is coming from nowhere 123. Divine Providence did not leave Nicholas, who was angelic on earth and striving for angelic life on the Holy Mountain, to worry and grieve for too long. One spring morning, when the sun had just risen and the light illuminated the “beauties of the earth,” Nikolai came to the shore and saw a sailboat. “The young man asked the captain: “Where are you going?” And he answered: “To the Holy Mountain.” Hearing this, Nicholas glorified God with secret exclamations for having finally fulfilled his holy desire. And he says to the captain: “Please take me too.” The shipmen said: “So be it, we will take you.” However, I don’t know why, but it seems they forgot, and the ship set sail. Nicholas, screaming and sobbing, threw himself into the sea and swam to catch up with those swimming away. The sailors, seeing that he did not turn back, feared God, returned and took him. And thus he reached the Holy Mountain,” 124 says the simpleton Euthymius. This one act of Nicholas, expressing all his impatient desire, is enough to praise the nobility of his soul and sacred delight and predict the great measure of spirituality that he will achieve later. He was 26 years old - and he cried on the pier like a little child. And yet, he was not a simple man with an immature mind and heart. He was a wise man, possessed of a remarkable mind and a strong soul, strengthened by long training and a pure life. And he cried because he could no longer endure separation from the desert life and his beloved brothers who had renounced the world. His soul was full of the fragrance of pure ascetic life - and could not endure any further stay in the world. Some people are born desert lovers, and the world for them is truly an unbearable prison. We will not go into lengthy discussions. History cries this out piercingly. The prophet David cries day and night: “Bring my soul out of prison” 125. The great Paul says: “...I have a desire to be separated and to be with Christ” 126. And Nicholas, unable to bear the deprivation of mystical communication in the desert with the Beloved, to Whom he strove, threw himself into the sea. Of course, like every islander, he knew how to swim... But what if the ship had not turned back and picked him up, if under the weight of his wet clothes, exhausted, he had drowned? Oh, then, without any doubt, his glory would have spread across the heavens - as a crowned winner, as an arbitrary martyr... For the fact that he threw himself into the sea cannot be regarded other than as an internal act, as an outburst of love. This was a sign that the limits of his patience had been exhausted; it was an action designed to fulfill his radiant dream of an ascetic life on the Holy Mountain. Only cold logic does not accept such hasty actions, considering that they lack composure and prudence. However, those who have accepted into their hearts the mysterious sting of Christ’s love will easily understand the meaning of the act committed by the wondrous Nicholas. We could safely compare this act, in its deepest meaning, with the act of the Apostle Peter, when he threw himself into the sea 127 when he saw Jesus walking along the shore. What prompted the divine Peter to do this? His great desire is to get closer to his beloved Teacher as quickly as possible. How far was the ship from land and how long would it take for the Apostle to get near the Lord Jesus? And, despite this, the one who truly loves God commits actions that break the logical chain of events. He does not wait, he is not content with a mere vision, he does not have enough confidence that in a few minutes he will reach the Beloved. Just as the Apostle Paul had no rest for his spirit in Troas due to the absence of Titus, although the great door was open, 128 just as Saint Peter could not tolerate a delay of only five minutes, so Nicholas, who was burning with the same fire, could not endure any longer. This zeal was not the transitory enthusiasm that almost all of us exhibit in some circumstances. It was a spiritual event that had deep roots - virtue that took root in the soul, strengthening it and encouraging it to great deeds. Only Christianity can present such manifestations of holiness. No philosophy, no cold social or moral system is able to convey this divine flame to the soul and move it to sacrifice. Only Christianity makes saints. If we look into the depths of this act of Nicholas, surprise will certainly be followed by amazement, and amazement will be followed by praise to God, who accomplishes such great and wondrous deeds with His Grace. Spiritual, in the exact sense of the word, a man in Christ, lovingly lifting the eye of his mind to supernatural perfections and ineffable heavenly beauty, Nicholas lived in spiritual amazement, contemplating and learning from the boundless love of God for people, for the sake of which God came out of Himself. Later, the Monk Nicodemus would write in “Spiritual Exercises”: “... the Evangelist John and the Apostle Paul were in amazement at the boundless love that God showed towards man. One said: “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son” 129, and the other: “He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all” 130. Truly, here it is necessary to say that daring, but at the same time true word that was spoken by Dionysius the Areopagite, the bird of the sky, - that God comes out of Himself from the abundant love and zeal that He feels for His creations, and especially for you - man. And from where He dwells above all, He descends to the insignificant and lowest in order to convey His goodness to them. “For the sake of the truth, we also dare to say that He Himself, Who is the Cause of everything thanks to the love of beauty and goodness in everything, through an excess of loving goodness finds itself outside of Himself, being attracted to everything that exists by Providence, as if by goodness, attraction and love, and from a state that transcends everything, is brought down by a super-essential force inseparable from Him that leads outward” 131 . And this,” says the Monk Nicodemus, “is clear from the creation of everything, having accomplished which, God, who was outside of Himself, rested on the seventh day, that is, returned to Himself...” 132 This is exactly how we interpret the actions of the pure-hearted Nicholas, strange for human logic, who a decade later wrote about Christ such words filled with divine love, which contain the sweetest contemplation of his mind: “So, one Lord is so desirable that just contemplating Him face to face is enough to plunge all the blessed into the abyss of eternal joy, and if He appeared in secretly in hell, that would be enough, to turn it all into paradise. Will He not be enough, I say, for you too, to transform you with His love? Wouldn't it be enough for you to love Him and be filled with His joy? Oh, strange hearing! I see that if all creation gives you one single drop of good, then they will immediately win your heart... and the boundless Ocean of good cannot win it?..” 133 “Do you want to understand this better? Tell me, what do you imagine in your mind when you hear this name - God? You reason that this God is like a kind of completeness of all the advantages, all the perfections, all the virtues and all the benefits that you can imagine. That is, beauty, wisdom, strength, holiness, greatness, goodness, infinity, life, peace, truth, kingdom, righteousness, salvation. However, having imagined all this great and lofty, you have achieved nothing and have not found the truth, because this is not God, and God is not this. But this is the neighborhood of God, and God is a Being infinitely higher than all this... So, double, again and a thousand times more this entire collection of perfections, and if you continue to multiply it like this for all eternity, countless centuries, then you will find yourself as far from comprehending your God as you were far on the first day when you began this calculation. God is a Being completely different from anything we can comprehend. God is an abyss of goodness, beauty, wisdom, greatness and power, He is infinitely higher than the knowledge that we have in our minds when we pronounce these words...” 26 They ate Thy light and Thy truth: she taught me, and led me into Thy holy mountain, and into Thy villages 134. Nikolai's wish came true. He reached the Holy Mountain, which he read about at school in Naxos, and then at the Evangelical School of Smyrna, and knew from the descriptions of the Athonite hieromonk fathers. He was captivated by the history of this unique center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism; he was aware of the thousand-year exploits of Athos and its significance in the life of Byzantium. He knew about the patriarchs and metropolitans who adorned the cathedra of the East, which the Holy Mountain gave to the Church, about the Athonite monastic ideal, about the mission and asceticism of the Svyatogorsk monasticism, about its diminishment and greatness. Knowledge of classical philology and philosophy made it easier for Nicholas to understand the two great movements that separated the theology of East and West, and encouraged him to establish himself on the foundation of Orthodoxy. He immersed himself in the study of the lives of the Eastern Fathers and the ascetic life of the monks of the Holy Mountain. Possessing a pure soul and a keen mind, he, like an industrious bee, did not miss the opportunity to collect the fragrance of the holiness of the Fathers of former times and the inherent inclinations and virtues of each of them. Nicholas's arrival on the Holy Mountain was for him the greatest event that separated his worldly life from his chosen hermit life. His young soul was filled with inspiration, which became a means of mystical communication with God. The vanity of this world was highlighted more and more clearly, revealing to Nicholas his impoverished and fickle nature. Nikolai now showed an amazing combination of tender and dreamy youth with a mature mind inherent in old age. Seized with inspiration from the sight of his new spiritual Fatherland, in a deep peace that filled his heart, rejoicing and thanking God for His ineffable gift, for the fact that He excommunicated him from natural life and placed him, along with the beautiful and holy souls in their humility, in a special monastic atmosphere, Nicholas probably knelt in one of the deserted corners, raised his hands to the sky and said: “Lord, send Thy light and Thy truth: she taught me, and led me to, and led me to Thy Holy Mountain, and to Thy villages.” Only pure and loving souls feel the immeasurable joy that they live, for they live in God. And their joy, and their tears, and their unspeakable lamentations are nothing more than the divine echoes of feeling in Christ, the murmur of water flowing into eternal life, 135 which Christ gives and with which the hearts are inflamed. This is the water that elevates, and warms, and cleanses, and irrigates, and amazes, like fire and dew, strange and wondrous. Water and fire, two elements opposite in nature to each other, so wonderfully and harmoniously united in one soul, but equally calling and saying: “Come to the Father.” “Oh Lord, our soul will not rest...” 136 Those who are wounded by the divine arrow of Christ’s love and seek consolation in renunciation of the world and flight into the desert, so that in silence they can serve their incomprehensible love and be inseparably united with Christ are like madmen and insanity. The great “Theologian of the Most Holy Trinity,” Gregory of Nazianzus, is not content with his divine revelations to the world, is not satisfied with the high life of his holy soul, but leaves the whole Church, which was in turmoil at that time, and retires to the Pontic desert. And what is his justification? “Then I was overcome by some kind of attachment to the blessings of silence and solitude. Loving him from the very beginning, as hardly anyone else in the sciences loved... It seemed to me that the best thing is to close off the senses, renounce the flesh and the world, gather within oneself, without extreme need touching anything human, conversing with oneself and with God, to live above the visible and carry within oneself divine images, always pure and unmixed with earthly and deceptive impressions, to be and continually become a truly pure mirror God and the Divine, to acquire light towards the light - to the less clear, the most radiant, to reap with hope the blessings of the future century... If any of you is embraced by this love, then you will understand what I am saying” 137. Captivated by the same divine love and worthy of contemplation of the sweet spiritual light, Father Nicodemus later wrote in the “Admonitional Guide”, with all possible clarity, for the sake of his simple and illiterate brothers 138: “... this contemplation, so called according to custom, as well as because of the coming of that divine light and that divine beauty, is sweeter and more desirable than all other properties and perfections of God. It stings, and wounds, and pierces the heart of those who love with a bow, and arrows, and the sharpest goads of the desire of God, and the attraction to the Almighty, and divine love. And the reason for this is this: just as this sensual sunlight, giving clarity and brilliance to the bodily eyes, gives them the power to distinguish through it all visible creations located in this sensory world, so the intelligent light of the essential sun, giving intelligent illumination and clarity to the spiritual eyes, gives them the power to discern through it and contemplate all other perfections of God, and all the blessed visions existing in the mental world, and the mysteries of the future age. Then the Monk Nicodemus says: “If you are not yet wounded by anything else towards divine love and zeal, let at least these words of the Great Basil, filled with love and inspiration, about divine light and beauty, hurt you: “So, what is more wonderful than divine beauty? What thought is more attractive than God's splendor? What spiritual desire is so acute and unbearable as that coming from God to a soul cleansed of all evil and with a true disposition saying: “I am wounded by love”? The brilliance of divine beauty is completely indescribable and inexplicable; the word does not embrace them, the hearing does not accommodate them. Whatever you say about - about the radiance of the star, about the brightness of the moon, about the light of the sun - everything is unfit for comparison with glory and is insignificant in comparison with the true light, like a deep, dark and moonless night in comparison with the purest noon. This beauty is invisible with carnal eyes, but is comprehended only by the soul and thought. And when she illuminated one of the saints, she left in them an unbearable sting of love" 139 140. See chap. about these books. 5. Combination of verses Song 8:6: Love is strong like death, jealousy is cruel like hell (in Russian translation: Love is strong as death... fierce as hell, jealousy). St. John Chrysostom. Discourses on Romans 9: PG. 60. Col. 474. St. John Climacus. Ladder. 30. 5–6 (in Russian translation 11–13). “Enterprise” (πϱόληψις) in the ascetic sense is a predisposition to repeat sin, associated with the memory of a sin committed in the past, resulting from sympathy for it and a readiness to commit it again. Compare: “And deliver me from many and fierce memories and enterprises” (10th morning prayer, to the Most Holy Theotokos). Word 40th, for Holy Epiphany: PG. 36. Col. 361; in Russian translation see: Gregory the Theologian, St. Collection of creations. T. 1. P. 545. Συμβουλευτικὸν Ἐγχειϱίδιον. Σ. 185–186, 189, 190. Euthymius does not write anything about this, he only reports that “in angelic form she received the name Agathia” (see: Euph.4). – Note. ed. The author does not quote Euthymius, but retells it, close to the text, cf.: Euph.7. – Note. ed. Dionysius the Areopagite. About Divine names. 4. 13 // aka. About Divine names. On mystical theology / Transl. G.M. Prokhorova. St. Petersburg, 1994. P. 127. Γυμνάσματα Πνευματικά. 1999. Σ. 145–146. (In the following, when referring to this publication, the abbreviation Γυμνάσματα Πνευματικά is adopted). In this passage a constant epithet is used, which is St. Nicodemus applies to St. Dionysius the Areopagite - “bird of heaven.” These words are taken from the Gospel (Matthew 6:26). Γυμνάσματα Πνευματικά. Σ. 128 Γυμνάσματα Πνευματικά. Σ. 127–128. Probably the words blessed are meant. Augustine: “Lord, our heart is troubled until it rests in you” (Confessions 1.1). St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 3: PG. 35. Col. 413–416; Gregory the Theologian, St. Collection of creations. T. 1. pp. 25–26. Note that the “Admonitory Guide” was originally addressed to the cousin of St. Nicodemus, Hierotheus, who cannot be called “simple and illiterate.” St. Basil the Great. The rules are set out at length in the questions and answers. 2: PG. 31. Col. 909. Συμβουλευτικὸν Ἐγχειϱίδιον. Σ. 285–286.