Слово 38

On Epiphany or on the Nativity of the Savior Christ is born - praise! Christ from heaven - come out to meet us! Christ on earth - ascend! “Sing to the Lord, all the earth” (Ps. 95:1)! And I will say to both together: “let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth rejoice” (Ps. 95:11) for the sake of the Heavenly, then the Earthly! Christ in the flesh - rejoice with trembling and joy, with trembling because of sin, with joy because of hope. Christ from the Virgin, maintain chastity, wives, so that you may become mothers of Christ! Who does not worship Jehovah from the beginning? Who does not glorify the Last One? Again the darkness dissipates, again the light appears; again Egypt is punished with darkness, again Israel is illuminated by a pillar. Let those who sit in the darkness of ignorance “see the great light” of knowledge (Matthew 5:16). “The old things have passed away, everything is new” (2 Cor. 5:17). The letter yields, the spirit prevails; the shadows pass and truth takes their place. Melchizedek comes; one born without a mother is born without a father - the first time without a mother, the second without a father. The laws of nature are being violated, the heavenly world must be filled. Christ commands, let us not resist. “Clap your hands, all nations” (Ps. 46:2); “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; dominion on His shoulder”, for he ascends with the cross, “and they will call His name”: the Great Council - the Council of the Father Angel (Is. 9: 6). Let John proclaim: “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Matthew 3:3)! And I will proclaim the power of the day. The ethereal incarnates. The word hardens. The invisible becomes visible, the intangible becomes tangible. Flightless begins. The Son of God becomes the son of man; “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). Let the Jews be tempted, the Greeks laugh, the heretics dull their tongues! Then they will believe when they see Him ascending into heaven; if not then, then certainly when they see Him coming from heaven and sitting down to judge. But this will happen later, and now is the feast of Epiphany, or Christmas, for this day is called one way or another, and two names are given to one celebration, because God appeared to people through birth. He is God, as the Existing and Ever-Sustaining of the Ever-Sustaining, superior to guilt and words (because there is no word that is higher than the Word); and He appears for our sake, having been born subsequently, so that He who bestowed being would also bestow well-being, or better yet, so that we, who fell from good-being through sin, would be returned to it again through incarnation. And from the appearance the name Epiphany, and from birth - Christmas. This is our triumph, this is what we celebrate today - the coming of God to people, so that we may move or (more precisely) return to God, so that, having put off the old man, we will put on the new (Eph. 4:22-23), and just as we died in Adam, so we will live in Christ (1 Cor. 15:22), being born with Christ, crucified, buried and raised together. For it is necessary for me to undergo this saving change, so that, just as the sorrowful may come from the pleasant, so the pleasant will arise again from the sorrowful. “And when sin abounded, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20). And if eating was the cause of condemnation, then was not Christ’s suffering all the more justified? So, let us celebrate not magnificently, but divinely, not in a worldly way but in a worldly manner, not our holiday, but the holiday of Him who became ours, better to say, the holiday of our Master, not the holiday of infirmity, but the holiday of healing, not the holiday of creation, but the holiday of re-creation. How can this be accomplished? Let us not crown the entrances of houses, create faces, decorate the streets, satiate the eyesight, fill the ears with pipes, undead the sense of smell, defile the taste, delight the sense of touch - these short paths to vice, these gates of sin. Let us not be like women, neither with soft and flowing clothes, whose whole grace is in uselessness, nor with the play of stones, nor with the glitter of gold, nor with the art of tinting, which brings into suspicion natural beauty and is invented to desecrate the image of God. Let us not indulge in “feasting and drunkenness,” which, as I know, are associated with “lust and debauchery” (Rom. 13:13), for bad teachers have bad lessons, or, better said, bad seeds and fields are bad. Let us not cover high beds with tree branches, arranging luxurious meals to please the belly, let us not highly value the fragrance of wines, cooking seasonings and the value of incense. Let neither the earth nor the sea bring us the gift of expensive dirt - this is how I learned to call luxury items! Let us not try to outdo each other with intemperance (and everything that is unnecessary and beyond need, in my opinion, is intemperance), especially when others, created from the same dust and composition as we, are hungry and in need. On the contrary, let us leave all this to the pagans, pagan pomp and pagan celebrations. They even call those who enjoy fatness gods, and accordingly they serve the deity through gluttony, like crafty inventors, priests and worshipers of crafty demons. But if we who worship the Word should enjoy anything, then let us enjoy the word and God’s law, and the legends both about other things and about the reasons for the present triumph, so that our enjoyment is actually our own and not alien to the One who created us. Or, if you wish, I, who is now the manager of the feast, will offer a word about this to you, the good partners of the feast, as much as I can, abundantly and generously, so that you know how a stranger can treat natural inhabitants, a villager - city dwellers, not familiar with luxury - luxurious, a poor and homeless person - famous for abundance. Let me begin with this: let those who wish to enjoy what is offered purify their minds, their ears, and their hearts, because I have a word about God and God, so that they can come out of here having truly enjoyed not something vain. The word itself will be both very full and at the same time very short, so that it will neither upset you with its poverty, nor will it bore you with its excess. God has always been, is and will be, or, better said, always is, for the words was and will mean the divisions of our time and are characteristic of a transitory nature, but the One who exists is always. And He calls Himself by this name when talking with Moses on the mountain, because He concentrates in Himself the entire being, which did not begin and will not cease. Like a certain sea of essence, indefinable and endless, stretching beyond any idea of time and nature, with one mind (and this is very unclear and insufficient, not in reasoning what is in Himself, but in reasoning what is around Him), through sketching out some outlines, He is shaded into one kind of image of reality, escaping before it is caught, and escaping before it is imagined, just as embracing with radiance what is sovereign in us, if it is purified, just as the speed of flying lightning illuminates the gaze with radiance. And this, it seems to me, is in order to attract the comprehensible to Oneself (for the completely incomprehensible is hopeless and inaccessible), and to surprise the incomprehensible, and through surprise to arouse a greater desire, and through the desire to purify, and through purification to make God-like; and when we become like this, we can already converse as with the eternal (the word dares to say something bold) - conversing with God, who has entered into unity with the gods and is known by them, perhaps as much as He knows those known by him (1 Cor. 13:12). So, the Divinity is limitless and difficult to contemplate. In Him this one thing is completely comprehensible - His infinity; although others consider it an attribute of nature to be either completely incomprehensible or completely comprehensible. But let us examine what constitutes the essence of simple nature; because simplicity does not yet constitute his nature, just as complexity alone does not constitute the nature of complex beings. Reason, considering the infinite in two respects - in relation to the beginning and in relation to the end (for the infinite extends beyond the beginning and the end, and does not lie between them), when it directs its gaze into the mountain abyss and does not find where to stop and where to put a limit to its ideas about God, then the infinite and unsearchable is called beginningless; and when, rushing into the deep abyss, he experiences the same as before, then he calls Him immortal and incorruptible; when it brings both into unity, then it calls it eternal; for eternity is neither time nor a part of time; because it is immeasurable. But what is time for us, measured by the flow of the sun, is for the eternal eternity, something coextensive with eternal beings, and, as it were, some temporary movement and distance. Let our philosophy about God be limited to this now, because there is no time to expand further and the subject of my word is not theology, but God’s economy. When I name God, I mean the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, both without dividing the Divinity beyond this number of Persons, so as not to introduce a plurality of gods, and without limiting us to a smaller number, so that we are not condemned for the poverty of the Divinity when we fall either into Judaism, defending unity of command, or into paganism, defending plurality. In both cases the evil is equal, although from opposite causes. Such is the Holy of Holies, hidden both from the Seraphim themselves, and glorified by the three Shrines, which converge into a single Dominion and Divinity, about which someone else spoke beautifully and very highly before us. But since for Goodness it was not enough to exercise only in contemplation of Itself, but it was necessary that the good spread, go further and further, so that the number of those benefited was as large as possible (for this is a property of the highest Goodness), then God invents, firstly, angelic and heavenly powers. And the thought became a deed, which was filled with the Word and accomplished by the Spirit. This is how the second lordships arose, the servants of the first lordship, whether by them we mean either intelligent spirits, or a kind of immaterial and incorporeal fire, or whatever other nature is closest to what has been said. I would like to say that they are motionless towards evil and have one movement towards good, as existing around God and directly illuminated by God (for earthly things use secondary illumination); but to recognize and call them not motionless, but difficult to move, the angel convinces me by his lordship, but for exaltation he became and is called darkness, with the apostate forces subordinate to him, which, through their removal from good, became the perpetrators of evil and draw us into it. So, for such reasons, God created the intelligent world, as far as I can philosophize about it, weighing the great with a small mind. Since the first creatures were pleasing to Him, He invents another world - material and visible; and this is the harmonious composition of heaven, earth and what is between them, amazing for the beautiful qualities of each thing, and even more worthy of surprise for the harmony and harmony of the whole, in which one thing to another and everything to everything is in a beautiful relationship, serving to the completeness of a single world. And by this, God showed that He is able to create not only a nature akin to Himself, but also a completely alien nature. Akin to the Divine are natures that are intelligent and comprehended by the mind alone, but creatures that are subject to feelings are completely alien, and of these latter, creatures that are completely inanimate and immovable are even further removed from the Divine nature. But what do we care about that? - perhaps some overly zealous holiday lover will say. Drive your horse to the goal - think philosophically about what relates to the holiday and why we have gathered today. “I will do so, although I began somewhat distantly, to which I was forced by diligence and words.” So, mind and feeling, so different from each other, became within their limits and expressed the greatness of the Creative Word, as silent guardians and first preachers of splendor. But there has not yet been a confusion of mind and feeling, a combination of opposites - this experience of the highest Wisdom, this generosity in the formation of natures; and not all the wealth of Goodness has yet been discovered. Having desired to show this too, the Skillful Word creates a living being in which both are brought into unity, that is, the invisible and the visible nature; creates, I say, man, and from the already created substance, taking a body, and putting life from Himself (which in the word of God is known under the name of the rational soul and the image of God), creates, as it were, some kind of second world - great in small things; places on earth another angel, a worshiper composed of different natures, a spectator of the visible creation, a witness of the intuited creation, a king over what is on earth, subordinate to the heavenly kingdom, earthly and heavenly, temporal and immortal, visible and intuited, an angel who occupies the middle between greatness and baseness, one and the same is spirit and flesh - spirit for the sake of grace, flesh for the sake of exaltation; spirit to abide and glorify the Benefactor; flesh to suffer and, suffering, to remember and learn how gifted he is with greatness; creates a living being, here prepared and transferred to another world, and (which is the end of the mystery) through the desire for God achieving deification. For the moderate light of truth here serves for me to see and bear the lordship of God, worthy of Him who binds and looses, and unites again in the most excellent way. Having honored this man with freedom, so that the good belonged no less to the one who chooses than to the one who puts in its seeds, God placed him in paradise (whatever this paradise means) as the creator of immortal plants - perhaps divine thoughts, both simple and more perfect; He placed him naked in simplicity and unartificial life, without any cover or fencing, for this was how the primordial should have been. It also gives a law for the exercise of freedom. The law was a commandment: what plants should he use and what plants should he not touch. And the last was the tree of knowledge, and it was not planted at first with malicious intent, and it was not forbidden out of envy (let not the atheists open their mouths and imitate the serpent!); on the contrary, it was good for those who use it in good time (because this tree, in my opinion, was contemplation, which only those who have acquired experience can safely approach), but not good for the simple and also for those who are immoderate in their desire; just as perfect food is not good for the weak and those who require milk. When, because of the envy of the devil and the seduction of the wife, to which she herself was subjected as the weakest and which she produced as skillful in persuasion (oh my weakness! For the weakness of the ancestor is also my own), a man forgot the commandment given to him and was overcome by a bitter taste: then through sin he becomes an exile, removed at the same time from the tree of life, and from paradise, and from God; puts on leather vestments (perhaps the coarsest, mortal and warring flesh), for the first time knows his own shame and hides from God. However, even here something is gained, namely death - in the suppression of sin, so that evil does not become immortal. Thus, punishment itself is made by philanthropy. For this, as I am sure, is how God punishes. But in order to prevent many sins, which grew from the root of damage from different causes and at different times, man had already been admonished in many different ways: by word, by the Law, by Prophets, by blessings, by threats, punishments, floods, fires, wars, victories, defeats, signs from heaven, signs in the air, on land, at sea, by unexpected upheavals in the fate of people, cities, nations (all this was intended to make amends for the damage); Finally, the strongest medicine became needed, due to the most severe illnesses: murder, adultery, perjury, masculinity, and this last and first of all evils - idolatry and worship of the creature instead of the Creator. Since all this required the strongest method, the strongest was given. And he was as follows: the Word of God itself, eternal, invisible, incomprehensible, incorporeal, beginning from beginning, light from light. The source of life and immortality, the imprint of primordial Beauty, the imprint unbearable, the immutable image, the definition and word of the Father, comes to His image, bears flesh for the sake of flesh, unites with the rational soul for the sake of my soul, purifying like with like; done by man in everything except sin. Although the Virgin, in whom the soul and body are prepurified by the Spirit, bears womb (for it was necessary to honor both birth and chastity); however, what happened is God and with what was received from Him 249 is one of two opposites - flesh and Spirit, of which One deified, and the other is deified. O new mixture! O wonderful dissolution! The Existing One begins to be, the Uncreated One is created, the Uncomprehensible One is embraced through the rational soul, mediating between the Divine and the gross flesh, the One Who is Rich is poor - he becomes poor to the point of my flesh, so that I may be enriched by His Divinity, the One Who is filled is exhausted - is exhausted for a short time in His glory, so that I may be a partaker of His fullness. What a wealth of goodness! What is this mystery about me? I received the image of God and did not preserve It; He perceives my flesh in order to save both the image and the flesh to immortalize. He enters into a second communication with us, which is much more wonderful than the first, since then he gave us the best, but now he perceives the worst; but this is more divine than the first, this is higher for those who have intelligence! What will slanderers, evil connoisseurs of the Divine, detractors of the praiseworthy, enveloped in darkness in the Light itself, ignoramuses in Wisdom itself, those for whom Christ died in vain, ungrateful creatures, creatures of the evil one, tell us about this? Are you blaming God for His good deed? Is it because He is small that He humbled Himself for you? That the “good shepherd, who lay down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11), came to the lost sheep, came to those mountains and hills on which you offered sacrifices, and that you found the lost one, and took the found one on the same shoulders (Luke 15:4-5), on which he bore the cross, and brought the one taken up again to the life above, and numbered the one brought among those who remain in his rank? That he lit a “candle” - His flesh, and “swept the room” - cleansing the world from sin, and “found a drachma” - the Royal image, littered with passions; after acquiring the drachma, he convenes those who are in love with His Powers, makes those whom He has made witnesses of the mysteries of His economy (Luke 15:8–9) participants in the joy? That the most radiant Light follows the flowing lamp, the Word - after the voice, the Bridegroom - after the bridegroom, preparing for the Lord “a special people” (Titus 2:14) and purifying with water for the Spirit? Are you blaming God for this? Because you consider Him inferior, because He “girds Himself with a towel” (John 13:4-5) and washes the feet of His disciples, and points out the most perfect path to exaltation—humility? What humbles himself for the sake of a soul that has bowed down to the ground, in order to lift up with Himself that which has been brought down by sin? How can you not blame the fact that He eats with publicans and from publicans, that He has publicans as disciples, and He Himself acquires something? What does it gain? Salvation of sinners. Would anyone blame a doctor for bending over to wounds and enduring the stench just to restore health to the sick? Will he also accuse the one who, out of compassion, bent down to the pit in order, according to the law (Ex. 23:2; Luke 14:5), to save the cattle that had fallen into it? It is true that He was sent, but as a man (because He had two natures; so He was tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and was in struggle, and wept - according to the law of bodily nature); and if he was sent as God, what of this? By embassy, ​​understand the favor of the Father, to whom He refers His deeds, in order to honor the incorruptible principle and not seem to be an enemy to God. He is said to be betrayed (Rom. 4:25); but it is also written that He also betrayed Himself (Eph. 5:2, 25). It is said that He was raised by the Father and ascended (Acts 3:15; Acts 1:11), but it is also written that He raised Himself and ascended again into heaven (1 Thess. 1:14; Eph. 4:10), the first by good will, the second by power. But you expose what is derogatory and pass over in silence what is elevating. You argue that He suffered, but do not add that He suffered voluntarily. How much the Word suffers even now! Some honor Him as God and unite Him; others dishonor Him like flesh and separate Him. With whom will He be more angry, or, better said, with whom He will forgive their sin? Is it those who unite, or those who dissect wickedly? For both the first had to be divided, and the last to unite, the first in relation to number, the last in relation to the Divinity. Are you tempted by the flesh? And the Jews were also tempted. Wouldn't you also call Him a Samaritan? I won’t say anything about what comes next. Do you not believe in His Divinity? But the demons also believed in Him, O you, who are more unfaithful than the demons and more ignorant than the Jews! Some recognized the name of the Son as meaning equality, while others recognized God in the exile, for they were convinced of this by what He endured. But you neither accept equality nor confess the Divinity in Him. It would be better for you to be circumcised and become possessed (I’ll say something funny), than to have evil and ungodly thoughts while uncircumcised and in a healthy state. Soon afterwards you will see Jesus cleansing himself in the Jordan - my cleansing, or, better to say, through this cleansing making the waters clean, for He Himself, “who took away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), had no need for cleansing; you will also see “the heavens opening” (Mark 1:10); you will see how Jesus receives testimony from the Spirit kindred to Him, and is tempted, and overcomes, and is surrounded by angels serving Him, and “heals every disease and every infirmity” (Matthew 4:23), and gives life to the dead (oh that He might also give life to you, who died through evil faith!), and casts out demons, sometimes Himself, sometimes through His disciples, and with a few loaves He feeds thousands, and walks around the world. to the sea, and is betrayed, and crucified, and co-crucified with my sin, brought as a lamb, and brought as a Priest, as a man is buried, and rises as God, and then ascends to heaven and comes with His glory. How many triumphs each mystery of Christ brings me! In all of them, the main thing is one thing - my completion, reconstruction and return to the first Adam! And now it’s almost womb-bearing, and galloping, if not like John in the womb, then like David at the repose of Kyoto; respect the census according to which you too are inscribed in heaven; worship Christmas, through which you were freed from the bonds of birth; give honor to little Bethlehem, which again led you to Paradise; bow before the manger, through which you, who have become dumb, are brought up by the Word. Know (Isaiah commands you) as the ox of the One who has acquired, and as the “donkey of his Master’s manger” (Is. 1:3). Do you belong to the number of the pure, and lawful, and “belching up the chewing” (Lev. 11:41) of the word, and fit for sacrifice, or to the number of the still unclean, not used either as food or as a sacrifice, and you constitute the property of paganism; go with the star, bring gifts with the Magi - gold, and incense, and myrrh - as to the King, and as to God, and as to the one who died for you; glorify with the shepherds, rejoice with the Angels, sing with the Archangels; may there be a general triumph of heavenly and earthly powers. For I am sure that the heavenly Powers rejoice and triumph with us today; because they are lovers of mankind and lovers of God, just as David imagines them ascending with Christ after His suffering, meeting and commanding each other to “lift up the gates” (Ps. 23:7). There is only one thing you can hate that happened at the Nativity of Christ - this is Herod’s infanticide, or better yet, and in it there is almost a sacrifice of the same age with Christ, which preceded a new slaughter. If Christ flees to Egypt, you too will willingly flee with Him. It is good to flee with Christ when you are persecuted. If He tarries in Egypt, call Him out of Egypt, giving Him good worship there. Walk blamelessly through all the ages and powers of Christ. As a disciple of Christ, cleanse yourself, be circumcised, remove the veil that has been on you since birth, then teach in the church, drive out those who sell holy things. Endure, if necessary, stoning; I know well that you will hide from those who throw stones, and you will walk among them like God, because the word is not stoned. If you are brought to Herod, answer him no more. He will respect your silence more than the long speeches of others. If you will be whipped, covet and so on, taste the bile for the first taste, drink vinegar, be spat upon, receive blows on the cheek and beatings. Be crowned with thorns - the severity of life according to God, put on a scarlet robe, accept a reed, let those who curse the truth bow before you. Finally, willingly be crucified, die and accept burial with Christ, so that with Him you will be resurrected, and glorified, and reigned, seeing God in all His greatness, and visible to Him, God in the Trinity, worshiped and glorified, Whom we pray, may now, as far as possible for prisoners of the flesh, be revealed to us, in Christ Jesus our Lord. To him be glory forever. Amen. You might be interested in: