Поучение о прошении милостыни на созидание храмов («Радуйтесь тому, что имена ваши написаны на небесах» (Лк. 10:20)

What will we bring, what will we give, what gratitude will we offer, beloved listeners, to our Creator, the Lord Jesus, for the fact that, without demanding our blessings, by His sole mercy He not only created this world, visible and invisible, preserves and enriches us in it, gives us life and homes and nourishes us, but also gives us heaven! Gives, I say, heaven, that is, that angelic village, those many abodes of the Heavenly Father, where “glory and riches are in His house” (Ps. 111:3), where everyone is crowned with glory and honor, where a “crown of precious stones” is placed on the head of everyone who is worthy of this bliss (Ps. 20:4); that heaven, thinking about which, David, dying, says: “How desirable are Your dwellings, O Lord of Hosts! My soul, dying, longs for the courts of the Lord" (Ps. 83:2-3), and Saint Paul is separated from the body: "I wish to be separated and live with Christ," and again: "Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Phil. 1:23; Rom. 7:24); that heaven which cannot be adequately praised. For it surpasses the mind, surprises the thought beyond all words, this beauty, this honor, dignity and height, about which the Apostle Paul, raptured to the third heaven, says: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2:9). Such heaven, such joy, has God prepared for those who love Him! Christ the Lord Himself commands those who have received this to rejoice, as if saying: do not rejoice that demons obey you! Don't be happy that you have everything! Why? “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). O great joy indeed! O ineffable bliss! O priceless acquisition! I know that everyone wants it, everyone wants to receive it, but not everyone gets it. Not all, for some will be expelled and cast into utter darkness. Who gets it? These are those to whom the Judge Himself says: “I was naked, and you clothed Me” (Matthew 25:36). For this virtue, Christ rewards with heaven and grants eternal life. Great, I say, is the virtue of clothing the naked beggars. How great and ineffable is the virtue of clothing Christ the Lord Himself! But perhaps someone will ask: how can one dress the One who dresses the sky with clouds, the earth with grass, and the One who adorns all creation? This is possible if we, seeing the naked churches being built in His name, in which Christ Himself rests under the guise of bread and wine, fill and cover them. For such a deed, more than for all others, the Lord will reward an eternal settlement in heaven. My current word will be about him. But You, O Christ, Lord, who said: “Zeal for Your house consumes Me” (John 2:17), open to me, who wants to speak about the honor of Your house, mind and tongue, and to the listeners, so that they may do what they hear, for “blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28). “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Out of His inscrutable mercy, God is so merciful to us, His children, beloved listeners, that He gives us everything we need, without depriving us of anything. He has “in His right hand the length of days, and in His left riches and glory” (Prov. 3:16), and He has prepared all this for us, He preserves it for our sake. although we have sinned before Him, for the Lord is abundantly merciful and generous (see Ps. 102:8, 145:8). We wander like lost sheep, but He stretched out His most pure hands on the Cross, “drawing everyone to Himself” (John 12:32). We touched the tree of life, He gave His hands to be nailed for this. Moreover, revealing His inexpressible kindness and showing that He does not hide anything from us, He showed us the entrance to His most humane heart and the path through His pierced sides, so that through these doors everyone would enter, and go out, and find pasture (see John 10:9). What love can be greater, what kindness greater than these? In addition to all the ineffable graces, He also bestows this: “And all Mine is Thine!” (John 17:10). Having received all this, having been worthy of all this, are we grateful? Not always grateful. For when He who bowed the heavens (see Ps. 143:5), who came down for our salvation, wanted to be born, He and His Most Blessed Mother first of all did not find a place: the time of Christmas had come, and “there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). Then, when He began to preach the way of salvation. He himself spoke about our gratitude and praised it in the following words: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. He came to his own, and his own did not receive Him” (Luke 9:58; John 1:11). He came to the land of the Gadarenes and healed a demoniac who did not allow anyone to pass along the path where he lived in the tombs, and how did they thank Him for this? They ask Him to go away: “And all the people of the Gadarene region asked Him to depart from them” (Luke 8:37). O great ingratitude, unworthy of retribution not only to such a Benefactor, but also to our enemies! However, the Lamb of God endured all this. But will He do the same with us? Will we endure the same merciless inhumanity when we, seeing Him naked, do not have mercy? When, receiving wealth and glory from His left hand, we do not at all participate in covering Him, seeing that the church of God, out of poverty, stands naked and uncovered, do we not think about it at all? Truly, it will not endure! For if unfaithful and godless people suffered death and eternal punishment for dishonoring the Lord, for neglecting Christ the Lord, then what will happen to us Christians? The word of the Lord will be fulfilled: “But that servant who knew the will of his master, and was not ready, and did not do according to his will, will be beaten many times” (Luke 12:47). The Lord punished the Philistines because they placed the tabernacle of the covenant in the church of Dagon, their god. For the humiliation of His church, in fulfillment of a dream vision, he took the kingdom from Nebuchadnezzar and divided it into many monarchies. And what happened in Jerusalem to Pompey, the Roman Caesar, who fought for the Roman kingdom with Julius and until now has always defeated him? When Jerusalem was already in the power of the Romans, he, not content with the stables, ordered the horses to be placed in the vestibule of the Church of the Lord, created by Solomon and renewed by Zerubbabel, and from then on he could no longer do anything against Julius and soon died dishonorably in that battle. But if the True God rewarded the godless for His dishonor in this way, then what will He do with us, Christians who know God, who do not guard His honor, what will He do with us, who do not care about His glory? We are ashamed to remember the primal Church, in which people had such great care for the churches of God that in order to build the church, not only did they have all their property in common, as is narrated in the chapter of the fifth book of Acts, but also, by selling villages, they brought money to the apostolic feet, as did, for example, Josiah, called Barnabas, “who had his own land. Having sold it, he brought the money and laid it at the feet of the apostles” (Acts 4:37). Saint John Chrysostom speaks of the primacy of the Church this way: “The Church at that time was heaven, but now it is only a sign.” In the primal Church, the care and concern for the creation of heavenly churches was so great that everyone wanted to make a church out of their home, as Chrysostom says in the 36th conversation on the first Epistle to the Corinthians: “Then houses were churches, but now the church is a house, and even worse than any house.” The virtues of the primal Church cannot be calculated. I won’t talk about what kind of love existed between the brothers then, what kind of strangeness there was, what virtues! Pliny, the second commander of Bithynia, writes to Trajan that Christians, meeting daily, take an oath not to do any evil deeds, but not to commit theft, fornication, murder, lies, slander and other similar things. They were diligent in building churches, multiplying altars, decorating churches, organizing and expanding them, as evidenced in Acts: “And they continued daily with one accord in the church, and breaking bread from house to house, they took food with joy and simplicity of heart” (Acts 2:46). What a great effort, what a wondrous dispensation! Where are such Christians today? Where are the builders of the holy church? It is possible, I think, to say what a resident of the city of Nola once said to a certain Roman overseer sent to Campania to put things in order, who, having visited all the cities, arrived in the city of Nola. Since it was summer at that time, and this country was very hot, he could not see anyone, and therefore turned to the resident of this city, with whom he lived, with the following words: “Friend! I am an overseer sent to this country by the Roman Senate to organize things, so go quickly and call here all the best men of the city.” Then the citizen, who was very prudent, went to the places where the dead were buried and said loudly: “Good men! Come with me, the Roman overseer is calling you!” The warden, seeing that no one comes, again orders him to call them. He again went to the tombs and said: “Go, good men! The Roman overseer is calling you.” When, neither after the second nor after the third time, no one came to the warden, he became angry and said to the citizen: “Since the good men did not obey my command, go and show them to me, I’m going myself.” The citizen led the overseer to the tombs and again exclaimed: “Behold, good men, the Roman overseer has come to you, he wants to speak with you.” The angry guard shouted at him: “What are you doing? I sent you to call the living, and you send the dead to me.” He answered him: “Don’t be surprised at this, Roman overseer! All the best men of our city have long since died and are laid in coffins. It was worthy that according to the righteous judgment of God, “those of whom the whole world was unworthy” (Heb. 11:38) rest in the bosom of the earth.” The one who says the same about the people of our time will not deviate from the truth: good people have already died! Nowadays there are neither Constantines, nor Vladimirs, nor other God-fearing lovers of the splendor of the house of the Lord, who gave not only their wealth, but also purple, scepters and crowns for church decoration. If they are found, then, God forbid! - Do they not build the churches of the Lord with others' bloody sweat and bitter tears, wanton theft and unrighteous property, as Assan Pasha, a man of flattering reason, once did in the Egyptian city of Cairo? Wanting to glorify his name, he decided to create a great church, the so-called “Moshea”, but not at his own expense, and for this he came up with the following trick: he ordered to announce in all cities that he wanted to create a great church to God, and in order to complete this work more safely and quickly, he intended to distribute rich alms to all travelers. For this he appointed a time and place. This announcement attracted a large number of people from all over. For their arrival, Assan ordered new clothes to be prepared for everyone, and those who were to receive alms, ordered to be escorted from one great chamber to another through many vestibules and doors. During this passage, everyone took off their old clothes and put on new ones. He did this in order to keep with him everything that people took with them on the journey, for in that country it was the custom to sew money prepared for travel into old clothes. Perhaps no one wanted to leave behind their old rags, but out of necessity, everyone had to put on new clothes. After this, great weeping and lamentation began among the people. Everyone demanded their old clothes and threw new ones in front of him. He, laughing at the cries and groans of the people, ordered all the old rags to be thrown into the fire and received such a lot of silver from the fire that he not only built the church, but also became rich himself. God does not like such church builders. He wants each of us to say with Zacchaeus: “Lord! I will give half of my property to the poor” (Luke 19:8). Oh, if only among Christians deeds similar to what Assan did were unheard of! The Temple of Jerusalem was deserted during the Babylonian captivity; people who returned from captivity turned to building their houses and decorating their homes. And what does the Lord say to them, how does He frighten them? Again he promises evil and trouble because they care more about themselves than about God, they provide more for their homes than for the church of God. The prophet Haggai writes: “This people says: “The time has not come to build the church of the Lord.” And the word of the Lord came through Haggai the prophet: “Is it time for you to live in your adorned houses, while this house is desolate? Therefore now says the Lord Almighty: “Turn your hearts to your ways. You sow much and reap little; eat, but not to the point of satiety; drink, but don't get drunk; getting dressed, but not warming up; he who works for wages earns for a leaky wallet.” And then the Lord Almighty says: “Why is My house desolate, while you are running, each one to his own house? Therefore the heaven is closed and does not give you dew, and the earth does not give its fruit. And I called a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the grape juice, on the oil, and on everything that the earth produces, both on man and on livestock, and on all manual labor” (Hag. 1:2-11). Who wouldn’t tremble hearing this? Who wouldn't be horrified? O Thy terrible reproach, our God! Oh, our anger and bitterness, for, hearing this, we do not care about the churches of the Lord and we ourselves arouse the wrath of God upon ourselves! Consider, then, what a blessing, what peace the Lord God proclaims to those who love the beauty of His house! The same prophet writes in the second chapter: “Thus says the Lord Almighty: “I give peace of soul to everyone who wants to build this church” (Hag. 2:10). O Thy sweet voice, our God! King David built himself a house made of cedar wood and was afraid to live in it, seeing that the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord was in a leather tent. “And it came to pass,” says the second Book of Kings, “when the king lived in his house, and the Lord reassured him from all his surrounding enemies, then the king said to the prophet Nathan: “Behold, I live in a house of cedar, and the Ark of God is under the tent” (2 Samuel 7:1-2). This word is worthy of a King! And not only the King, but also his nobles were afraid to enter their houses. When The ark was still in the tent, David ordered Uriah, who was called from the army, to enter his house. But Uriah did not go, saying to him: “The ark of God and all Israel are in tents, and my lord Joab is in the field, how can I enter my house to eat and drink? I swear by the life of your soul, I will not do this” (2 Samuel 11:11). This is how it was in the Old Testament - the image and shadow of the new grace given by Jesus Christ. This is how the Kings and people revered the Ark of the Lord, which contained only the tablets of the Testament. Here in the churches the Lawgiver Himself rests. There was only a vessel containing manna, but here on the throne is present, under the guise of bread and wine, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And yet we do not take any care of His churches! It is clear that the only way we can give thanks to our Creator God for creation and for all the benefits that we receive from His hands is by caring for His churches. For the Lord Himself demands this from us, as He demanded from Zerubbabel, to whom the prophet Haggai was sent. We, as His servants, must do the will of our Lord, as His sons, we must do the will of our Father, according to His words: “And I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters,” says the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:18). All who receive from His hand must contribute at least a small part to His honor and glory. Before us stands the church of our Lord Jesus Christ, which has been built in honor of the Image Not Made by Hands for many years and is still not finished due to scarcity, it stands, I say, evoking tenderness in us. For to this day it stands, destroyed by the winds, washed by the rain, blackened by the cold and the heat of the sun, without even having over itself the sign of the Lord - the holy cross, this decoration of churches. This church evokes tenderness in everyone passing by, and Christ the Lord who dwells in it speaks apocalyptic words: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears My voice and opens the door” (Rev. 3:20). Open, O Christian soul, the doors of your mercy and say together with that sister who in the Song of Songs says: “The voice of my brother strikes the door” (Song. 5:2). Standing along the way, this church and Christ the Lord dwelling in it, knocking on the door of mercy, tenderly calls out to the Christian soul: “Open to Me, My sister, My neighbor, My perfect one, for My head is covered with dew, My hair is sprinkled with the moisture of the night” (Song. 5:2), that is, as if he says: “For so many years now, reclining in this church for the salvation of the world, I soaked by rain and snow; everyone carefully arranges and decorates his house, but I remain uncovered and neglected. “Come and see, all you who pass by, is there still a disease like My disease!” Who wouldn’t be touched when hearing these words? (Lam. 1:12). If we wish to receive a monastery not made by hands in heaven, then we will establish a monastery here in honor of the Image Not Made by Hands. Let us first write our names in this book to give alms for the building of this church, and then we will undoubtedly hear the words of Christ read in the current Gospel, once spoken to the apostles by the mouth of Christ: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Amen.