К блаженному Амфилохию из 27 главы книги святого Василия о Святом Духе Правило 91 Василия Великого

Of the dogmas and sermons preserved in the church, some we have from written instruction: and some we received from apostolic tradition, by succession in secret, both of them have the same power for piety. And no one will contradict this, although he has little knowledge of church institutions. For if we undertake to reject unwritten customs, which do not have great power, then we will imperceptibly damage the gospel in the main subjects, or, moreover, we will reduce the sermon into a single name without the actual thing. For example, first of all I will mention the first and most general thing, so that those who trust in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ are marked by the image of the cross. Who taught this in Scripture? What scripture taught us to turn to the east in prayer? Which of the saints left us in writing the words of invocation upon the application of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing? For we are not content with those words that the Apostle or the Gospel mentioned, but before and after them we pronounce others, as having great power in the sacrament, having received them from the unwritten teaching. We also bless the water of baptism and the anointing oil, and also the person being baptized, according to what scripture? Is it not according to a silent and secret legend? And what else? the very anointing with oil, which written word taught? Where does the triple immersion of man come from? and other things that happen during baptism, to deny Satan and his angels, from which scripture is it taken? Is it not from this unpromulgated and ineffable teaching, which our fathers preserved in a silence inaccessible to curiosity and prying out, having been sensibly taught to guard the sanctity of the sacrament through silence? For what decency would it be to announce in writing the teaching of something that is not permissible for those uninitiated into the mystery and view? And further. This is the fault of tradition without scriptures, so that many people do not lose their reverence for the knowledge of dogmas repeatedly studied, out of habit. For the dogma is different, and the preaching is different. Dogmas are kept silent, but sermons are made public. The same kind of silence is also obscurity, which is used by Scripture, creating the mind of dogmas for the benefit of those who read it. Therefore, we all look to the east during prayers, but few know that through this we are looking for the ancient fatherland of paradise, which God planted in Eden in the east (Gen. 2:8). Likewise, while standing, we say prayers together on Saturdays, but we don’t all know the reason for this. For not only, as those who have risen with Christ and must seek things above, by standing during prayers on the day of resurrection, we remind ourselves of the grace given to us, but because we do this, as if this day seems to be some kind of image of the expected age. Why, like the beginning of days, Moses also called him not first, but one. And there was, he says, evening, and there was morning, one day (Gen. 1:5): as if one and the same day revolved many times. And so the one, which is collectively and osmoy, means this essentially one and true osmoy day, which the psalmist mentions in some of the inscriptions of the psalms, marks the future state of this age, the day of the unceasing, non-evening, unsuccessive, endless and ageless age. And so the church thoroughly teaches its pupils to perform standing prayers on this day: so that, with frequent reminders of endless life, we do not neglect the instructions for this glorification. But all of Pentecost is a reminder of the resurrection expected in the next century. For this one and first day, being multiplied sevenfold, constitutes the seven weeks of holy Pentecost. Pentecost, beginning with the first day of the week, ends with it. Turning fifty times through similar intermediate days, in this likeness it imitates the century, as if in a circular motion, starting from the same signs and ending with the same ones. Church statutes teach us these days to prefer the erect position of the body during prayer, with a clear reminder, as if moving our thoughts from the present to the future. With every kneeling and rising, we show by action both that we fell to earth through sin, and that we were again called up to heaven through the love of mankind. But I don’t have enough time to talk about the unwritten sacraments of the church. I'll leave the rest. The very confession of faith, in order to believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, from what scriptures do we have? If, by a pious conclusion, having a duty to believe as we are baptized, from the tradition of baptism we make a confession of faith similar to the sacramental saying in baptism: then let us, by the same conclusion, be allowed to send out a doxology similar to the confession of faith. But if they reject the image of doxology as unwritten, then let them present to us written evidence, both of the confession of faith and of the rest of what we have counted. And so, since there is so much that is unwritten, and it has so much power in the sacrament of piety, will they not allow us one saying that has come down to us from the fathers, which we have found remaining from an unimaginable custom in intact churches, and which is of considerable importance and brings considerable benefit to the power of the sacrament? (I Om. 19; Trul. 102; VII Om. 7; Basil the Great. 87). The present (91) and the following (92) rules are taken from the book of St. Basil on the Holy Spirit (περί τού άγίου Πνεύματος), written by St. Basil around 375 on the following occasion. On one of the holidays, Basil performed divine services in his church, in which there was Blessed Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, and many faithful; There were also many heretics here who hated Vasily and were looking for an opportunity to accuse him of at least something. Praying during the service, Saint Basil, according to the moment of the service, uttered the words: glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit (διά τού Υίού έν τψ άγίψ Πνεύματι), then, in the same sense: glory to the Father with the Son together with Holy Spirit (μετά τού Υίού σύν τψ Πνεύματι τψ άγίψ). This gave the heretics a reason to accuse Basil of not professing the true deity of the Holy Spirit. Amphilochius drew the attention of Saint Basil to this, who wrote on this occasion a book about the Holy Spirit, where he justifies the expression σύν τψ Πνεύματι and proves that the same glory befits the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as the Father, for They are of the same essence with the Father. The reasons that prompted Saint Basil to write this book are discussed in its first chapter. In it, Saint Basil, by the way, mentions oral tradition, which is of great importance in resolving many issues of church teaching, and from the places in this book where St. Vasily puts forward the significance of oral tradition more strongly; the present two (91 and 92) rules were compiled, namely from chapter 27 (66 and 67) and chapter 29 (71) of the mentioned book. In the first of these rules (91), Saint Basil says that dogmas and sermons (δόγματα καί κηρύγματα, dogmata et praedicationes, dogmas and sermons) stem from two sources, or from written teaching (έκ τής έγγράφου διδασκαλίας), or from the Apostolic Tradition (εκ της των ποστόλων παραδόσεως), and both of these sources have equal importance for piety. In the second half of the rule, Saint Basil explains why in the church much has been preserved by tradition from the Apostles and their successors, and how many of the customs of the church are based on this tradition 117. St. Basil speaks about the meaning of the custom in his letter to Diodorus of Taras, and in the interpretation of this letter, or otherwise 87 rules of St. Basil, we said as much as necessary about this. In the present (91) canon, Saint Basil emphasizes the meaning of custom even more strongly. If we deny, he says, unwritten customs (τά άγραφα τών έθών) and assert that they do not have great power (μεγάλην δύναμιν), then we will deliberately belittle the meaning of the Gospel in the main subjects, or, more simply, we will reduce everything that is said there to a simple play on words. At the same time, of the objects of piety preserved in the church according to unwritten custom (tradition), Saint Basil gives several examples. And first of all, he mentions the custom of marking oneself with a cross, through which we constantly express hope in God 118. Next he mentions the custom of turning to the east when praying 119. Mentions the Eucharistic sacrifice and the time of the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, and cites the teaching of the church about this, also taken from the unwritten teaching (εκ τής άγραφου διδασκαλίας), saying that the words of the establishment of the sacrament, which are given by the Apostle Paul and in the Gospel ( 1 Cor. 11:23–25; Matt. 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24; Luke 22:19–20), and other prayers read by the priest before and after the sacrament are needed, and in particular the words of invocation are needed at the very moment of the transubstantiation. invocationis verba cum conficitur panis et poculum, words of invocation at the breaking of the bread and cup). (See the interpretation of Zonara in Af. Synth., IV, 284.) This teaching of Saint Basil, according to which, in order to transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, in addition to the words of establishing the sacrament of the Eucharist, also the words of invoking the Holy Spirit, is based, from the beginning of the church, on Holy Tradition. For numerous testimonies about this from the fathers and teachers of the church, both Eastern and Western, see the Dogmatic Theology of Rev. Macarius (§ 214) and in the New Tablet (II, 7, §§ 51–54). When some of the non-Orthodox in the XIII and XIV centuries began to prove that the prayer of invoking the Holy Spirit was superfluous, then, in response to them, Simeon of Thessaloniki wrote the following: “Some of the unorthodox, as if encountering bewilderment in relation to the invocation of the Holy Spirit to perform gifts, or rather, rebelling against what was handed down from the Savior and His Apostles, as well as from their successors, the God-bearing fathers, raise disputes and say: why are we not content, when performing divine gifts, with the words of the Lord alone, but rely boldly on our prayer? By this they boldly and blasphemously reject the calling of the Holy Spirit and deny - it’s scary to say! - His effective power, promised and actually given by the Savior Himself to the Apostles, who were ordained by her as clergy and shepherds at the very time when the Holy Spirit descended on them and, through tongues of fire, instilled His power in them, and with it they performed sacred rites, and dedication through the laying on of hands, and healings, and miracles. For in this case, it is not the simple words that have power: create this bread the honorable body of Thy Christ, etc., but the fact that the priest pronounces them with the Spirit, that is, with grace, or with the power of the priesthood. From here it is clear that, even tens of thousands of times, even all the kings, or the ascetics, or all the pious people who do not have the priesthood, or even all the faithful that are on earth, pronounced the words of the Lord and the entire divine invocation - nothing would happen from this if there was no priest; and the gifts they offered would not have been sanctified at all and would not have been transmuted into the body and blood of Christ, for it is not man who acts here, but God, through the priest calling on the grace of the Holy Spirit, and what the priest says is effective according to the power of the priesthood. This is the power of God, which not every faithful person has, but only those who have received priestly ordination. And every prayer of his has perfect power through divine grace. He who does not believe this and does not accept this does not accept at the same time either baptism, or anointing, or the ordination of sacred rites, or the remission of sins, or the sacred prayer of the monastic form, and comes close to the infidel, and removes himself from the lot of Christians: for all this is accomplished through the prayers of sacred persons. And therefore, as when performing baptism in accordance with tradition, we baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, sanctifying the baptized with the invocation of the Holy Trinity, and we are not content with the words handed down from the Savior alone, but before them we use the seal of the sign of the cross and the breath, and we purify the baptized with negations, combinations, prayers, anointing with consecrated oil, with the sign (of the cross) and the blows, and the invocation of the Holy Trinity, and we sanctify the very water of baptism with the sign of the cross and the invocation of the Holy Spirit; or just as we consecrate the sacred myrrh with bishop’s prayers and the sign of the cross, and after baptism we perform the newly baptized and anointed with sacred prayers..., so we firmly believe that the application of bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ is accomplished by priestly prayers, the sign of the cross and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, after the words of the Lord: accept, eat and drink all of it, and also: do this in remembrance of Me, having once and for all granted to the Apostles and their successors of grace the right to do this through prayers. And therefore, turning to the Father and praising the works of the economy, the priest first pronounces the divine words of Christ and says that He betrayed this and that therefore we offer You these gifts for everyone, according to His commandment, and we pray to You, send down Your Spirit on me and on the gifts set before us and create them - His body and blood, as He said, translating it with Your Holy Spirit. Along with the words, the priest signs (crosswise the Holy Gifts); and according to the threefold sign, he believes that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, for through the priest Christ himself acts, together with the Father and the Spirit, and since He himself is here, offering and offered, and performing the sacraments and performing the sacraments, receiving and distributing, as we say in the most sacred prayer of the Great Entrance. And to show this more clearly, the priest does not signify the gifts at the time when he says: take, eat and drink from it, all of you; these words, as we said, the priest pronounces, turning to the Father, and after them the gifts are still in place, as Basil the Great calls them. But after the offering of gifts and the words: Thine is from Thine, and the invocation of the grace of the Holy Spirit, the priest (he believes that it is at that time that it comes, according to the voice of the priestly prayer), standing up, signifies the divine gifts, saying: make this bread the honorable body of Thy Christ, he blesses the bread, then saying: and the one in this cup, the honorable blood of Thy Christ, blesses the cup; the third time he blesses both, saying: adding by Your Holy Spirit - Amen, confirming the sacrament and boldly confessing that the gifts presented are the body and blood of Christ by His power, both the Father and the Spirit. And there is nothing human here, but everything is done by divine grace. And that is why the one who brings gifts is the person who has received ordination; and the table at which the gifts are presented is consecrated; and without this nothing is sanctified. And so the words of the Lord, as we said, constitute the first basis of the sacred rite, but they are brought into actual fulfillment by the prayers of the priest; however, it is not man who is active there, although a priest and a man, but Christ in the Holy Spirit through the priesthood of the priests: just as God once said: let the earth grow, and His word is effective, so that the earth grows, or when he said: let there be light, and light always appears, - in the same way He said: do this in remembrance of Me, and His word always acts through the mediation of the priests. That is why the words: create this bread, the honorable body of Thy Christ, are brought into effect through the priests; and that is why what is actually performed is the truth, and not the image, the body and blood of Christ, for He Himself acts through the priests, and He Himself commanded that it be so, that is, that the sacred action be performed through prayers. As it is written, He took the bread and looked up to heaven, gave praise to God the Father, blessed, broke it and gave it to His disciples, saying: take, eat and drink all of it, etc. Thus, He Himself performed sacred acts through prayer, although as Almighty God He had no need for it, but through this showed us that the power of the Trinity is one, and that, performing sacred acts on Himself, He has the consent of the Father and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, as was the case in His divine incarnation... Consequently, whoever denies priestly prayers when performing the sacraments does not accept any other final prayer during all the sacred sacraments. He is not even a Christian, for, as stated above, he does not accept baptism, anointing, or repentance..., since all this is done through priestly prayers. Let such a person either not say any prayer at all, either before or after the sacred rite, and thus not call on the grace of the Spirit, so as not to have communion with Christ; also, let him not call on the grace of the Holy Spirit either at baptism or during other sacred rites, and will not be a Christian at all; or, calling himself a Christian and accepting the prayers of the priests, let him accept these perfect words addressed to the Father and containing the invocation of the Spirit, as the Savior himself commanded to do when performing the sacrament, giving thanks, as said, to the Father. The Apostles, who celebrated the Eucharist together and broke bread together, teach us this by their example. The same thing was betrayed to us by our fathers – Basil the Great and John Chrysostom... Preserving the traditions we have accepted, bequeathed to us by the Lord himself, through the Apostles and Holy Fathers, we perform the mysteries of terrible communion by invoking the divine Spirit, pronouncing the words of the Lord and priestly prayer; and we believe, according to divine tradition, that all divine sacred rites are performed by the prayer of a priest with divine invocation and by the sign of the cross.” Ερμηνεία περί τε τού θείού ναού καί τών έν αύτψ ίερέων κτλ. [Migne, s. g., t. 155, § 88, col. 733–740; cp. pyc. lane in ed. "Writings of St. fathers and teachers of the church”, etc., III, pp. 41–48]. As you can see, what the saint of Thessalonica says serves as the best and most complete explanation of the thoughts of Basil the Great contained in the text of this (91) rule, as well as the teachings of the Orthodox Church, which has always believed so. But while in the Eastern Church the same teaching has always prevailed about the meaning of the prayer of invoking the Holy Spirit in the application of the holy gifts at the liturgy, in the Western Church, starting from the 13th century, a variety of opinions arose about this, which even to this day could not be brought to unity. In the Western Church, the words of the establishment of the sacrament of the Eucharist (this is My body, this is My blood) are given the main significance in the transposition of the holy gifts, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit is given one or another meaning, and everyone does not agree with each other even on the first, namely, that the words of the establishment of the sacrament of the Eucharist are the transposition of gifts. So, for example, the Dominican, and then the Archbishop of Naples Ambr. Catharinus († 1553) and the Franciscan Chr. Cheffontaines († 1599) taught that the words of the establishment of the sacrament have only historical significance, and the actual conversion is accomplished through the prayer of invocation. This same prayer, according to the teaching of some, applies only to people, so that through the grace of the Holy Spirit they receive effectum sacramenti; according to the teaching of others, in invocation they pray to the Father and the Holy Spirit, so that They too would transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, as was translated by the words of the Son of God about the establishment of the sacrament, so that, thus, all three Persons of the Holy Trinity would take part in the transformation; according to the teaching of others, both the words of establishment and the prayer of invocation are necessary for conversion; According to the teaching of the fourth, invocation is completely unnecessary, for St. the gifts are already offered by the words of institution; according to the teaching of the fifth, invocation expresses intentio; according to the teaching of the sixth, in invocation the Holy Spirit is implored, ut quasi suscitet aut vivificet corpus Christi Domini, ut vitam ipsam 'ad vitam revocet efficiatque... This, in general terms, we have copied from the article of the Roman Catholic Kirchenlexicon von Wetzer und Welte (IV, 686-696), which ends as follows: “A reliable answer (on the question of the moment of transformation) could be given here only on the basis of a historically solid and text-explaining tradition. In the absence of such a tradition, we have no choice but to be content with more or less satisfactory statements, which in both ancient and modern times have come to light in the most varied ways.” However, only science in the West judges and speaks about this issue so seriously and truthfully; Rome says differently. He anathematizes the Orthodox because they believe that the Holy Gifts are offered through the prayer of invoking the Holy Spirit. Pope Clement XII approved the decisions of one of the Uniate councils, which met in the east in September 1736, which decided, among other things, the following: eos qui asserunt, evangelica verba, quae a sacerdote proferentur, concurrerre quidem ad donorum consecrationem, sed iis illam non adaequate perfici, sed praeterea requiri invocationem Spiritus Sancti, sine qua nec corpus, nec sanguis Christi in Eucharistia post verba Domini adesset... detestamur, damnamus ac anathemisamus (Col. Lacensis, II, 197). Pope Pius VII repeated the same thing in his message of May 8, 1822 (ibid., col. 551). From their special point of view on the sacrament of the Eucharist, Protestants teach about the prayer of invocation in the same way as modern Roman Catholics (Joh. Gerhardi, Loci theol. 10, 271). The Pope's stated anathematization of the Orthodox Church for its teaching that through the invocation of the Holy Spirit bread and wine are offered at the Holy Liturgy into the body and blood of Christ, we have mentioned here both in order to show how Rome does not hesitate to anathematize the Orthodox Church, and because Dr. Ivan Markovich (O evharistiji, Zagreb, 1893, p. 232–3) publicly reproached us as if we had told a lie when we claimed that the pope had anathematized the Orthodox Church because of the leavened bread that it uses at the holy liturgy. And we said this in our essay “Cyril and Method and the Truth of Orthodoxy” (Zadar, 1881, p. 96, and a review of the contents of the book), and we took this not from the wind, but from the books that were mentioned there (see note on pages 95 and 96 of the said essay). Here we will also provide official documents confirming what we have said. The first of these is the excommunicatio, issued omnibus catbolicae ecclesiae filiis by the legates of the fallen Leo IX in Constantinople; in this excommunicatio the Orthodox are called Manichaei due to the use of leavened bread at the Eucharist and about them (the Orthodox) it is said here: sint anathema Maranatha. Similar to this is another document - excommunicatio, published a little later after the first, where it is said about every Orthodox: sit anathema, Maranatha, nec habeatur Christianus catholicus, sed prozymita haereticus, fiat, fiat, fiat (Will, Actaet scripta. Lipsiae, 1861. No. IX et X, pag. 153, 154). This anathema was pronounced by the papal legates: Cardinal Humbertus, Archbishop Petrus and Deacon and Chancellor Fridericus, by the authority and name of Pope Leo IX. The second document is Leonis IX epistola dd. mense januario an. 1054 (Will, cit. ed., 89–92), where also, only in a somewhat softened form, anyone who would persistently use St. Eucharist panem fermentatum. It was on the basis of these certificates that we affirmed the above in our mentioned work, and not because we deliberately wanted to distort the truth and defend Orthodoxy with fabricated evidence, as Dr. Markovich put it (p. 233).) Of the objects of piety preserved in the church by tradition, Saint Basil also mentions the blessing of water for baptism and anointing oil, immersion in water and the renunciation of Satan at baptism, and standing or kneeling during prayer. At the end of the rule, he finally mentions the doxology (δοξολογία), about which it is not written how it should be read, but which Saint Basil pronounced in two ways (as stated at the beginning of the interpretation of this rule) and for which the enemies wanted to accuse him, and Basil notes that the word σύν (cum) in the doxology is quite appropriate and that it has been preserved through continuous tradition (custom) in the churches of Orthodox believers. The present rule of Basil the Great, although it is important for canon law, since it puts forward the importance of tradition and custom, is of even greater importance for strictly theological sciences. On the teaching of the Orthodox Church on tradition, see Rev. Macarius Introduction to Orthodox Theology, §§ 128–133. Wed. my “Right.” tsrkveno right", §§ 12, 14 [cf. and in Russian lane in the same paragraphs]. See art. “Kreuzzeichen” in Kraus, Real-Encyklopadie, II, 251–257. And about this, see in the same edition of Kraus (I, 560–564) art. "Gebet". You might be interested in: