Поучение второе на день памяти святого великомученика Димитрия

...One is carnal passions, the other is spiritual passions. Carnal passions are contained in visible carnal feelings, such as: voluptuousness, lust, laziness, and so on, pleasing and desirable to the senses. Mental passions lie in the invisible and unknown heart. This is anger, rage, malice, rancor, hatred of a brother and other similar passions that are contained in the heart with evil thoughts and sometimes come out. The holy Apostle Paul partly mentions these carnal and spiritual passions, saying to the Colossians: “Mortify your members on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil lust and covetousness, which is idolatry, for which the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience” (Col. 3:5-6). This is about carnal passions, but about spiritual ones he says: “Put aside everything: anger, rage, malice, slander, foul language of your lips; do not tell lies to one another,” and so on (Col. 3:8–9). Remembering the Holy Cross on Friday, it is appropriate to say that from the bow of the cross, from the veins of Christ extended on the Cross, three spiritual arrows are emitted, producing three ulcers in our hearts, and each of them acts in us with its own special power, or, better to say, the one Christ, crucified on the Cross, wounds us in three ways with His love: with the first ulcer he makes us dead, the second revives us, and the third delights. I will not expand on the interpretation of these spiritual arrows and plagues, so as not to burden the listeners, but I will explain this briefly. Let him who looks with his mental eyes at the death of the Lord Jesus, hanging dead on the Cross with his head bowed, think: Did not my Lord die for my sake? When he thinks about this, will not his inner man, his conscience, say to him: “If your Lord died for you, why do you live for sin? Why do you waste your life in sins? Why don't you put to death your sinful lusts? Isn’t it time for you to stop, having lived in the past in uncleanness and lust? Are not your past evil deeds enough for you, with which you angered and greatly saddened your Master, your Creator, your Lover, your Benefactor? Here the heart is immediately wounded by the deadness of the Lord - as if by an arrow, it is wounded by an ulcer that kills sin in it, mortifies sinful actions in it and makes a person ineffective for evil. Was it not this arrow that shot and wounded the apostle, who says: “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live” (Gal. 2:19–20). I, he says, am no longer alive, but dead, died to the world in order to be alive to God. Looking at the wounds of the Lord Jesus, hanging on the Cross, bloodied, looking at His ribs, pierced, oozing water and Blood, let him think: for my sake my Lord was wounded, bleeding, in order to revive, heal, wash, cleanse me, wounded by sins and dead in soul, and to give me eternal life. When he thinks about this, will not his inner man, his conscience, say to him: “If for your sake your Lord took all this upon Himself, then why do you lie, in laziness and negligence, as if dead, inactive and sleeping in a tomb? Why don’t you rise up, don’t stand up, don’t take up the work of a virtuous life? Why don’t you show yourself alive and fulfilling His commandments? Why don’t you work according to your strength to please Him and show yourself grateful to Him for the plagues raised for you? “Awake, you who sleep, and rise from the dead” (Eph. 5:14)! Here the heart is immediately wounded by the ulcer of life-giving love, reviving and raising a person to do the commandments of the Lord for the sake of His love, and the person no longer lives for himself, but for Christ, or, better to say, lives by Christ Himself, having Him within himself as his own soul. Was it not this arrow that was shot and wounded when he said: “And it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”? When any of the true theologians looks at his Lord crucified on the Cross, will he not think of His love so great that, loving us, He laid down His soul for us? “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And He laid down His life not for friends, but for His servants, being Lord; God is for people, the Sinless One is for sinners. When he thinks about this, won’t his heart be stung by the sweet ulcer of love? Will he not be filled with spiritual sweetness in his heart? Won't wormwood sweeten all your sorrows, troubles and sorrows? If any persecution or bitterness happens, won’t he say within himself: if the Lord so loved me, a sinner, unworthy and indecent, that he laid down His soul for me, shouldn’t I also endure this little for the sake of His love? This arrow of love shot and wounded the holy Apostle Paul, who says: “We overcome all these things through the power of Him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37), that is, he endured all this for the love of the Lord. But the time is already drawing to a close, and therefore we will postpone a more extensive explanation of these three spiritual arrows and plagues until another time (if the Lord wants). I, a sinner, would like to talk a little more with the holy Apostle Paul. I hear the words of Saint Paul: “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Do you hear, your love, what the holy Apostle Paul says? He says that Christ loved him alone and that he died for him alone: ​​“who loved me and gave himself for me”? Where are we? Didn't Christ love us? Didn’t He give Himself for us? Saint Paul! Why do you take away the love of Christ and His suffering from everyone, appropriating them for yourself alone? Was it for you alone that Christ sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? Was it only for your sake that he was taken and tied up? Was it only for your sake that he was spat upon, struck on the cheeks, beaten, and crowned with thorns? Was it for your sake alone that he was crucified on the Cross, given bile and vinegar, and pierced in the ribs with a spear? Was it only for you that He poured out Blood and water from His most pure ribs? Why, O apostle, do you deprive us of our redemption, our hope, appropriating to yourself alone that in which we all boast? Were you not the first to say: “God did not spare His Son, but gave Him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32)? Saint Chrysostom, reflecting and interpreting the words of Paul, with which he appropriates the love and suffering of Christ to himself alone, says that the Apostle Paul said this either out of immeasurable love for Christ, or in order to show and teach that each of us should give such thanks to the suffering Lord, as if He suffered for him alone. I, sinful Demetrius, say: I thank You, my Savior, my Light, my Life and Resurrection, because You loved me and gave Yourself for me. You, Peter, James and John, also say: I thank You, my Master, because You loved me and gave Yourself for me. And let each one say on his own behalf with thanksgiving: “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Eph. 5:2). Why is this so? Because, as the same Saint Chrysostom says, Christ our Lord loves each person individually to the same extent as he loves the whole universe, is ready to suffer for everyone, and, if it were necessary, would suffer as much as he suffered for the whole world. Consequently, a person should love Christ as if He suffered for him alone and loved only him. We can understand this from the following comparison: just as the soul is equally present in each of our individual members and in all of us together, so the love of God loves and wants to save each person individually as much as it loves and wants to save everyone together: “He wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Forgive us, Saint Paul, that we contradicted you a little! Now we already know that you speak correctly, appropriating to yourself the love and suffering of Christ, and this in order to teach us your love for Christ. While I was saying this, Blessed Jerome appeared, encouraging us to the same apostolic love for Christ in the following words: “Blessed and blessed is he who, having Christ living within himself, can say with every deed and every thought: “By faith I see the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” This arrow of God’s love has the power to pierce through and pass into the heart if someone puts it towards it, that is, if someone listens to the love of God, tries to acquire it and cares about it, if someone carries the love of God in his mind and heart, reasons and understands it, if he deepens in the teaching of it with all his thoughts. This arrow has the power to kill, to put to death the sins living in us. She has the power to revive us, restore us to a virtuous life, has the power to fill us with sweetness and spiritual joy. He who opens his heart to such an arrow and receives its blow and wound can be an imitator of those who bear the marks of the Lord Jesus on their bodies.