Слово 30. Послание о примирении к бывшему митрополиту Даниилу, уже изверженному

All of us, who obey without doubt and without hypocrisy the saving commandments of God and our Savior Jesus Christ, have from Him a commandment and a firm testament - to have peace among ourselves, without which we are not allowed to bring Him any gift, that is, no sacrifice or verbal offering. He teaches us this clearly, saying: If you bring your gift to the altar, and remember that one, as your brother has something for you, leave that gift of yours before the altar, that is, whether it was you, or you offended him in some way, and you have some kind of righteous or unjust displeasure against each other, leave your gift before the altar, and go first to reconcile with your brother and other things known to everyone (Matthew 5:23–24). This is what God the Word incarnate commands, as the Lord, to all who believe in Him. Isn’t it the same bequeathed to us by His forefather, called the Godfather in divine scripture, clearly saying this: With those who hate the world I will be at peace (Ps. 119:6)? Also, many years after him, the young man Benjamin (here of course the Apostle Paul), to whom St. John Chrysostom relates the word of the God-father David: there Benjamin the youngest was in horror (Ps. 67:28), who was horrified and from Judaism changed into the evangelist of Christ, becoming from a terrible persecutor a glorious preacher and an ardent follower of Him whom he had persecuted until then, strongly bequeaths to all believers, saying: Have peace and holiness with everyone except them no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14); and again he: If it is possible from you, have peace with all people (Rom. 12:18). Obeying this teaching and the like, I, your least brother, as a pious Christian and from pious parents, who for the sake of this very piety struggled many times and suffered troubles, as the omniscient Eye knows, considered it fair through an intercessor - a person disposed towards me, to learn about your holiness, Most Reverend Bishop and Father, Mr. Daniel, what is your thought about me, a sinner, and from your answer I understood that your holy soul is still sick against me. I consider this unhelpful and harmful to my soul, if I do not try to cure this long-standing unkind opinion of me about you with a short piece of writing. I call this opinion unkind because, as only the Knower of the Heart knows, I did not philosophize, write, or teach anything blasphemous about our Orthodox faith, and you, as a blasphemer and a wrecker of the sacred scriptures, condemned me for only insignificant mistakes in the translation I made. And about these slips I then explained to your sacred council that this was not done by heresy, nor by any deceit - God is my witness - but somehow by accident, or out of oblivion, or due to some kind of sorrow, the mind was then in confusion, and or somehow, due to the burden of excessive wine drinking, it was then written like this (we must understand the employees who allowed themselves to do this. - Approx. Transl.). And I not only explained this then, but also bowed to the ground three times before your sacred cathedral, asking forgiveness for what I had made a mistake out of ignorance. Your Eminence, I don’t know for what reason, instead of forgiveness and mercy, again placed shackles on me, and I was again imprisoned and again imprisoned and subjected to various embitterments. This happened to me because the righteous Judge, Who wants to save every sinner, allowed such sorrows to befall me because of my many and serious sins, but not for any heresy or blasphemy. The One who knows everything, Who alone knows the hearts, knows that I do not lie before Him and before you, my masters, and that by His grace and love for mankind and goodness I still remain within the bounds of the pious and right dogmas of the faith handed down to us, the Orthodox, from our fathers; but even until my last breath I will remain firmly in it, protected by His grace. For this very piety, I was vouchsafed to struggle repeatedly in many places and was not put to shame. I especially struggled against the Latins, strong in the Holy Scriptures and in external sciences. This can be testified to you, my masters, by my unfalse Scriptures against them, compiled not only against the Greeks, who were previously my teachers, but now are not, and against the most wicked, demon-invented charm of the most vile Mohammed, the heresiarch of Ishmael. From these writings of mine, it is not difficult for you, my gentlemen, if you deign to listen briefly to my answer, to know the truth of my words, that in me there is no deception at all, or any blasphemous wisdom against the Orthodox Christian faith. And what hope of salvation will there be for me after so many of my sorrows and monastic robes and deeds, about which I am speaking out of my weakness, if I find myself ailing in secret with something like this, and, according to the divine voice, I become like the deformed man who built his church on an arctic fox, and behold its great destruction (Matthew 7:26-27), or if, in justice, I become like the one who built the foundation, laid down by a wise architect, edifies firewood, hay, straw, why will my work be burned, and I, alas, will receive eternal futility, having been deprived of the triumph of the faithful and becoming part of the fox? But You, the humane-loving Master, I pray Your ineffable goodness, do not allow anything like this to happen to me, but as You have deigned to preserve me, the ungrateful creation of Your most pure hands, until now within the limits of the Orthodox Christian faith, so deign, O Most Good Master, to preserve me in them unshakably, having within myself the great sacrament of Your piety. You know, Master, that from my youth I have loved this and love it with all my soul, and I was not mistaken in my desires, but by Your great love for mankind and by Your grace I was honored to be numbered among the godly council of monastics. These words of mine refer to the Creator of all and the Lord. To your holiness I will say the following: I pray to your holiness, most honorable father: deign to obey him who commands: Repaying no one evil for evil, and again: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:17, 21). I know and remember well that I saddened your sacred soul two or three times by not obeying you in what you ordered me then. This became known to me from your words, which you indignantly expressed to me at the trial, when I was judged by you and interrogated at the council: “Your sins have befallen you, accursed one, since you refused to translate for me the sacred book of blessed Theodoret.” Regarding this disobedience, I will explain the truth to your holiness, that for no other reason did I then disobey you, except because I feared that this translation could serve as a stumbling block and a temptation for some Orthodox, as it contains the messages of Arius and Macedon and other leaders of heresies, which they sent to their like-minded people, extolling and glorifying their wicked wisdom and at the same time slandering and refuting the pious and right dogmas of the conciliar and apostolic faith. That is why I did not listen to you then, fearing the simplicity of some pious people and their inability to correctly understand each Scripture, and so that I, through my translation, would not be the cause of temptation for them, and instead of blessing would not bring upon myself eternal damnation, for it is said: woe to the man to whom temptation comes (Matthew 18:7). But you, as a teacher of faith, and a builder of the mysteries of the Holy Spirit, as a zealot for heavenly life and a disciple of the meekest Jesus, who says: Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:29), destroy your many years of indignation against me and show me, the poor, holy love, obeying the Judge, Who says to the Supreme Apostle: I will not tell you before seven times, but up to seventy times sevenfold (Matthew 18:22). And again He: So will My heavenly Father do to you, if you do not let each of your brothers away from your hearts their sins (Matthew 18:35). This word and saying is terrible, honest father and master, and worthy of all fulfillment on our part. If I have sinned against you in my disobedience, then I repent of this before you: forgive me, for God’s sake, so that you yourself may be worthy of forgiveness and blessing from God, for you, as a person, are guilty of everything before Him in every way, no one is clean from filth, says the Scripture, even if one day of his life be (Job 14: 4-5). If your holiness, continuing to be indignant against me, says: I did not excommunicate you from communion of the divine mysteries for any disobedience, but did it out of divine jealousy - for the perversion of some church word and correct teaching, and excommunicated you as a blasphemer; then to this, holy lord, I will again answer the same: I put Himself as a witness before you for myself, who is the incorruptible Judge of all, as I said earlier that nothing like this happened on my part out of deceit - neither then nor now. Such harmful wisdom is alien to me! Read with Christ-like meekness the answer I wrote about my Orthodox faith and, having become completely convinced of the truth, leave behind your many years of indignation against me, a sinner. If, even after you learn all the truth and truth, you do not deign to show me, a sinner, deeds of holy love and continue to separate me from the divine mysteries, then I will remain silent, and let the divine voice cry without hesitation: He who is not with Me is on Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters (Matthew 12:30). Who is this wasteful person if not the one who madly separates those who believe in Him from Christ, pushing those for whom Christ died and rose again, and possesses both the dead and the living, to the perilous abyss of despair (Rom. 14:9)? If someone, out of his great hardness of heart, being overcome by the passion of self-indulgence, excommunicates from Christ the right of those who believe in Him and hope to be saved by His grace, what else will he hear from Him then, if not this: Evil servant, he has forgiven you all your debt, because you begged Me: would it not be fitting for you also to have mercy on your fellow worker, just as I had mercy on you? And his Lord became angry and handed him over to his tormentors, Dondezhe will repay all his debt (Matthew 18:32–34). So I fulfilled what all holy scripture commands us: I humbled myself before God and before you - with a pure heart and sincere words, as the One Knower of the Heart knows. But you, my lord, if, justifying yourself, you are in vain indignant against me, then you will see for yourself when we both appear before the terrible and indefatigable Judge, giving an answer each for himself. I will also say the following: in vain you condemn me of heresy and for this you excommunicate me from communion of the holy mysteries of Christ. Meanwhile, my other countless sins make me unrequited. However, one should not despair, but, in the hope of His ineffable mercy, one should always do good, so that His mercy may remain upon me both in this and in the next century. Amen. You might be interested in: