Слово 9. О непостижимом Промысле Божием, Его благости и человеколюбии; здесь же и против лихоимцев

Blessed and wonderful Prophet, God-pleasing and most virtuous king, the glorious David, about whom God Himself said: I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my heart, who will do all My desires (Acts 13:22), - such and such a wonderful man, marveling at the incomprehensible and indescribable love for mankind of the common Master of all, says to Him with great surprise: Lord, What is man, since you remember him? or son of man, because you visit him? (Ps. 8:5). Man is like vanity; his days pass away like shadows (Ps. 143:4). Very wisely and excellently, he likens the end of the days of our temporary life to vanity. For, just as the sun, when it sets or is covered by a small cloud, the shadow of any object immediately disappears, so our life immediately ceases as soon as the soul that animates it leaves the body. However, despite our badness and insignificance, the most good God who created us, does not cease to provide for us, but continues to do good to us in every way. How can we, ungrateful people, appreciate such great love for mankind of our Creator and His kindness to us? Or how can we adequately thank Him for such providence for us and for His constant benefits and visits? From the beginning He created us in His image and likeness; before that, we were not there, and we did not ask Him about this, but He Himself, by His ineffable goodness, brought everything, in general, from non-existence into being, and after all, He deigned to create man in His image and likeness, and placed him over everything created, as if a prince and ruler, for the sake of which He had previously arranged a most excellent garden, which, usually in Divine Scripture, is called paradise, the best place in all the earth, called Eden, illuminated by constant light, where the purest air blows, delighting with the most excellent aromas. Here He appointed him to stay so that he could always live in bliss and dispassion. And he would always have enjoyed this bliss if he had not transgressed the divine commandment given to him. This is clear from the words of the prophet of God, who says with pity: And this man has no understanding of honor (Ps. 48:13). And what was the honor of the ancestor, he showed this in the words: Become like the foolish cattle and become like them - not in outward appearance and other bestial-like ugliness, but in that, having first been created by God incorruptible and immortal, as a result of breaking the commandment, he immediately fell into corruption and death and accepted such a combination with the female sex, of which he himself is ashamed. But did the Creator despise him after he fell away from his equal rank and honor? No way! He immediately visited him as a lover of mankind, and out of His love for mankind and goodness gave him a helping hand. And although he expelled him from that divine and most pure dwelling, as having fallen into dumbness and bestial lusts, for it was indecent for such a divine and equal-angelic place to be desecrated by such shameful bestial lusts, so He expelled him from there and deprived him of equal-angelic honor; but he did not in any way deprive him of His divine and humane providence, and did not leave him to completely deteriorate under the influence of the evil serpent who seduced him. And after the fall, God immediately visited him, and when he ran away and hid, he called him, saying: Adam, where are you? He asked this not because he did not know about the place where he had disappeared and wanted to find out about it; but with this question He reminded him from what glory and from what equal angelic honor, into what damnation and into what dishonor he fell, being immediately deprived of divine grace and glory, which had hitherto covered his nakedness and miraculously adorned him; He also reminded him of his former great, shameless boldness towards his Creator, when he fearlessly met his Master without a call, and with a bright face and a cheerful soul stood before Him, enjoying His divine conversations. When they were expelled from paradise, and children began to be born to them, and when their first son Cain killed his brother, the righteous Abel, then even then the good God did not stop doing good to the human race, but immediately the Invisible One appeared to the nasty killer and with His usual love for mankind asks him about his brother - where is he? - wanting him to be cleansed by confessing his murder, and then God would honor him with His mercy and love for mankind. When did he proudly and shamelessly say: We don’t know: am I the guardian of my brother? (Gen. 4:9) - even then the lover of mankind did not immediately put him to death, but he did not leave him without punishment. He imposed punishment on him - relaxation of the limbs and incessant painful groaning, so that throughout his entire damned life he would always be wounded in his soul by the thorns of unceasing sorrow and would always repent of his wicked act, and for other people would serve as an indication and example of the terrible and righteous judgment of God, and that He is the avenger of every godless deed and leaves nothing unpunished, just like the divinely inspired the hymnist announces, saying: The God of vengeance, the Lord, the God of vengeance does not hesitate to eat (Ps. 93:1). Let us see what happened after that, and what clear and amazing evidence of the providence of the Almighty God for us and His goodness are presented by subsequent events. As our race multiplied, all kinds of evil on our part multiplied at the same time. When Lamech, who came not from the righteous tribe of Seth, but from the cursed tribe of Cain, killed two brothers of the righteous Enoch, and took their wives - Ada and Sellah - for himself, and when the righteous Enoch prayed to God so that the same death would not befall him, God heard his prayer and, quick to intercede with all those who called on Him in truth (Ps. 145:18), laid him alive, as it is written ( Gen. 5:24) and Enoch was not found among his relatives. According to His philanthropic vision, God keeps him alive until the adversary of God, the Antichrist, appears, so that through him and through the blessed Elijah he can then visit and strengthen His believing Christian people in faith and love and convert to our infallible and immaculate faith those who will prove before God worthy of salvation from the Jewish race, and also through the wondrous miracles that the Lord will then perform through these saints Their prophets, to expose this wicked opponent of God and show him to be a liar and a flatterer. Such is His indescribable divine providence for us, graceless, that He not only now arranges everything for our salvation, but also in the future prepares saving means for the faithful and the unfaithful - so that the believers can be confirmed in their beloved faith, and the unfaithful can be converted from their unbelief, which they accepted from their ancestors, to the infallible light of true faith, through the wondrous miracles that He then has. He will accomplish through His righteous Prophets. Let’s also talk about God’s other humane providences for us from time to time - how great, amazing and beyond any word and comprehension of the human mind they are. When the human race multiplied under Noah and people shamelessly gave themselves over to every kind of evil, just as the prophet of God Hosea says: Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the judgment of the Lord is upon those who dwell on the earth, because there was no truth, no mercy, no knowledge of God on the earth: oaths and lies, and murder and theft and fornication were spread throughout the earth, and blood mixed with blood ( Hos.4:1-2): then, seeing them without fear daring to do this and worse evil, and already incurably ill, a terrible flood is brought upon them. And thus brought final destruction upon those, as incorrigible wrongdoers; He arranged salvation for the righteous Noah and his sons, livestock and birds, preserving them in a strong wooden ark and leaving us with a small seed, so that the human race would not completely disappear. Oh, what an incomprehensible and unspeakable love for mankind of the Lord of all! He destroyed those evils and cleansed the entire earth from their defilements; For us, the subsequent generations, He left evidence of His righteous wrath and judgment, so that we would know about it, fear and be ashamed, and live righteously, according to the will of God. When, after the flood, people again multiplied and, due to their great madness and insensibility, agreed to create a high tower for themselves, so that they could hide in it in case a flood was again sent to them from above: then the Lord ruined this crazy advice of theirs, dividing their languages, teaching them this, and through them, and all those who have power on earth, to have trust in God and to Him alone to resort in every need and in every possible way. troubles, and not rely on your own strength and wisdom and wealth, but speak with the Prophet: Give us help from sorrow, and human salvation is in vain (Ps. 59:13). And again: God is our refuge and strength, a helper in the sorrows of those who have found us great (Ps. 45:2), and also always remember what was said: A king cannot be saved by much strength, and a giant will not be saved by the abundance of his strength. A lie is a horse, that is, the power of a horse, for salvation, but in the abundance of its power it will not save those who are proud of this power. Behold, the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, who trust in His mercy: to deliver their souls from death and to feed them during the famine (Ps. 33:16–19). But since it is written by the prophet of God: Whoever proclaims the mighty powers of the Lord is heard to do all His praises? - that is, no one is able to express this; then I, in obedience to this divine saying, leave to count the countless saving providences of our humane Creator, which He arranged by Himself and through His holy prophets among the Jewish people in Egypt, in the Red Sea and in the desert, where for forty years He nourished them, enduring their resistance and in every way showing them, and through them and the whole universe, His unspeakable goodness, and what great providence He, as a child-loving Father, has for the salvation of people and for the existence of His creatures - I will leave all this and move on to the greatest and incomprehensible terrible mystery, to His incarnation of man, which surpasses every mind and every word. This matter is not acceptable to everyone who hears, but only to those who are prepared and enlightened in advance from above, as the God-speaking Paul secretly teaches, saying: Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing; and in them the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, which is the image of the invisible God, should shine upon them (2 Cor. 4:3–4). For whoever, not being involved in the grace and illumination of the Holy Spirit from above, hearing about the invisible, incorporeal and omnipotent God, that He took on human flesh, was seized by people as a simple man, bound, spat upon, mocked, beaten and, like one of the villains, nailed to the cross, died and was buried - who, I say, hearing such reproaches about the One immortal, impassive and Almighty God, will not laugh and consider what is being told unworthy of God? A spiritual person does not accept the mysteries of the Spirit of God: for he has foolishness, he strives for spiritual things, says the divine Paul (1 Cor. 2:14). And he again: Because in the wisdom of God there is no understanding of the world through the wisdom of God, God deigns to save the believers through the violence of preaching. Even the Jews ask for signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom: we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a temptation, to the Greeks foolishness, and to those who are called Jews and Greeks of Christ, God's power and God's wisdom. Man is wiser than God (1 Cor. 1:21–25). This is a temptation for the Jews because, hearing the sacred Scripture speaking about the Messiah, whom they are waiting for: The Lord speaks to Me: You are My Son, this day I have begotten You: ask of Me, and I will give Your tongues Your inheritance and Your inheritance to the ends of the earth, and further that follows (Ps. 2:7–8), and understanding the Scriptures carnally, and not spiritually, they expect that He will be a world king in the sense of human concepts about this, and will come to their aid, abounding in wealth and glory and surrounded by countless armed forces; Seeing and hearing what happened, everything contrary to their concepts and the hopes they harbored, they are greatly tempted, and in no way want to recognize Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, who is revered and worshiped by us, as the Messiah. For the Greeks, the immaculate faith we worship, which Paul preached to them on the Areopagus (Acts 17:22–32), seems like madness, claiming that the Crucified One is the true God, and that through this Crucified God God will judge the world in righteousness, raising Him from the dead; They, hearing the resurrection of the dead, cursed. And the divine Apostle Paul calls this insane abuse of the unfaithful Greeks a riot, and not the evangelical and apostolic preaching and the mystery it proclaims. For he says further: But to those who were called Jews and Greeks, that is, who were called by divine grace and the holy apostles, and believed with all their souls in Christ our God, - by this, he says, we preach not temptation and not violence, but Christ, God's power and God's wisdom. “Power”: because through Him and through Him, the Savior, the entire strength of the demons was finally crushed, and idolatrous charm completely disappeared from the face of the earth, as the prophetic word foretold, saying: The enemy has run short of weapons to the end, and you have destroyed cities (Ps. 9:7). And the Lord said to His disciples: Behold, I give you power to tread on the serpent and the scorpion and all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19), just as David’s prophecy foretold, saying: The voice of the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars, and the Lord pulls down the cedars of Lebanon (Ps. 28:5). What other voice of the Lord could this be if not the evangelical and apostolic sermon, proclaimed by the holy apostles throughout the whole of heaven, by which all the darkness of idolatrous delusion was driven away and the ever-present light of true piety and knowledge of God shone? By “cedar”, crushed by such a strong voice that he can mean nothing else but the most ungodly demons, which he allegorically calls cedars because of their exorbitant exaltation by arrogance. “Wisdom”, which is and by which Christ the Lord is called, who does not recognize that this is the very Life-Giving Wisdom of the beginningless God and Father, by Whom and through Whom He created everything - visible and invisible, in which are all the hidden treasures of wisdom and understanding (Col. 2:3)? And our wisdom is Christ, for through Him we received knowledge of God and we always learn to understand the unspoken mysteries about God, that is, we learn the mystery of the Holy, Life-Giving and Worshiped Trinity and the unspoken love for us and the goodness of the Creator of us, and the enjoyment of future blessings observed by the righteous in the future, and the terrible second coming of the unwashed Judge, when the wicked and sinners like me They will be separated from the pious and righteous and condemned to eternal torment, in which they will suffer for endless ages. We also learned other inexhaustible treasures of teachings of mysterious theology, which He secretly teaches us through various Gospel parables and fortune-telling. That's how many and what great blessings and immortal gifts the Incarnation of the Only Begotten became a source for us, surpassing all mind and every word! And therefore, rightly, the Apostle Paul called Him the power and Wisdom of God. How do we, cursed and ungrateful, repay Him for these countless blessings bestowed upon us? Do we recognize that we constantly, by all our evil deeds, anger Him and dishonor Him, whereas we should always glorify His ineffable goodness to us in every possible way, so that He also glorifies us, as said by the Prophet, who says: Those who glorify Me will I glorify, but those who dishonor Me will be dishonored (1 Samuel 2:30). In what way is the Most Glorified One glorified, He Himself teaches us about this, saying: The Son glorifies the Father, and does not the servant fear his master? And if I am the Father, where is My glory? And if the Lord is, where is My fear? (Mal.1:6). How does a son glorify his father? - Obviously, by the fact that he always does what pleases him and never breaks his slightest commandment, but listens to him with good will in everything, obeying him voluntarily. The slave is not like that, but, fearing beatings and other punishments, he involuntarily obeys and carries out the orders of his master with great diligence. But we, having such a good and generous Lord and Savior, and having been granted so many grace-filled gifts from Him, why do we treat Him so madly and ungratefully, and not only do we not glorify Him as a son glorifies his father, and do not fear as a servant fears his master, but we also dishonor Him in various ways and greatly grieve Him, trampling on His saving commandments and living like pagans who do not know God? Let us carefully consider and fully understand how we, Christians, now spend our lives and, having recognized our repentance and the distant falling away from the commandments of our Lord and God Jesus Christ, we will repent before Him with sincere repentance while we have time. And that we have greatly deviated from the commandments of our God is clear from the following. Our Lord and God, reproaching the scribes and Pharisees, says: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you practice riot, and copra, and kimin, and forsake the law, judgment, and mercy, and faith. It is fitting to do these things, and not forsake them (Matthew 23:23). Who are these scribes and Pharisees? Are we not the ones who are in the authorities and principalities, and don’t these reproaches and this “grief” also apply to us, who reject faith - I do not say faith in Christ our God, let it not be so - but faith in the commandments of the Master and obedience to them, we do not perform righteous judgment, we do not show mercy to those who are offended and require help, but whoever brings the most gifts, we listen to him with both ears, whether it be the offender or offended, and thus we transgress the will of the terrible Judge, who threatens through His prophet, saying: “Woe to those who justify the wicked for the sake of reward, and the righteous who takes the righteous” (cf. Ex. 23: 7–8). But can there be more or worse than this? Nowadays, the passion of the Jewish love of money and covetousness has so prevailed among the judges and rulers sent by the noble king throughout the cities that they even allow their servants to come up with all sorts of unjust accusations against wealthy people, and for this they sometimes throw various objects into their houses at night, and sometimes - oh, great dishonesty! - they drag the corpse of a dead man and leave him in the middle of the street, so that, under the pretext of supposedly righteous vengeance for the murdered man, they have a reason to bring not only the street, but also this entire part of the city to trial for murder, and thereby receive a lot of silver in the form of vile and ungodly gain. Who, since the beginning of the century, has heard of any of the unfaithful pagans daring to engage in such an abominable method of extortion as has now been invented by our authorities? Oh, what inexpressible meekness and what long-suffering Thy, O Christ God! Where is now another prophet as bright-voiced as the divine, bright-voiced Isaiah was, who would clearly and worthily denounce the godless untruths and Jewish love of money they commit? Oh, what their inhumanity, what the greatest madness! Orthodox Christians, abounding in wealth and all sorts of possessions, and, moreover, having received for a time the power that they should have used, if there had been a spark of the fear of God in them, to win for themselves, through all truth and mercy, inexhaustible wealth in heaven; they, being overwhelmed by the greatest fury of insatiable love of money, offend, extort, rob the estates and acquisitions of widows and orphans, inventing all sorts of guilt against the innocent, not fearing God, this terrible avenger for the offended, condemning the covetous to endless torment, and not being ashamed of the people living around them, I mean the Poles and Germans. For these, although they belong to the Latin heresy, govern those subordinate to them with all justice and love for mankind, in accordance with the laws established by the faithful and wise kings: Constantine the Great, Theodosius, Justinian and Leo the Wise, with all prudence and wisdom. Where will you find among the Latins the kind of injustice that now exists among us Orthodox? Our Creator God, the righteous and terrible Judge, strictly commands, saying: test the truth correctly and fairly, and do not interfere with the person in court, that is, if the poor and wretched turns out to be an offender, do not spare him, as he commands in another place, saying: do not have mercy on the poor in court, if he is guilty, and do not acquit the rich offender for the sake of bribes, for this is the judgment of God ( Deut.1:16–17, 16:19 ; Lev.19:15 ). Our authorities and judges rejected this righteous command of God because of the desire for self-interest, and if when the whole city appeared before them and loudly testified against the offender, they even then do not heed this, but order the offender and the one offended by the crowded battle and weapons to resolve the matter between themselves, and whoever wins in this battle by a large number of people is recognized by them as right, even if he caused the offense. Oh, what an unprecedented disobedience of the divine command and a violation of the justice of the court! How unexpectedly and foolishly we expose ourselves to a curse from God, if the prophet of God is not deceitful when he says: Cursed are those who turn away from Your commandments (Ps. 119:21). Now the order has been given to judge the litigation by force, and each side looks for people experienced in warfare; the offender is looking for a sorcerer and fortune teller who could help his warriors with satanic action. Oh, what unprecedented lawlessness is being committed among us! What kind of malice can compare with this evil invention of ours? Even among the most infidels we have never seen or heard of such an insane custom. With them, any dubious or unkind litigation is resolved either by the testimony of reliable witnesses or by oath. O glorious rulers! Such decisions of yours are not pleasing, for this godless judgment was invented for you for the sake of unrighteous self-interest and insatiable covetousness, because of which we are deprived of the heavenly inheritance without reason and are counted by the Apostle Paul among idolaters, as we hear him saying in his letter to the Ephesians: For this you know, that everyone is a fornicator, or unclean, or covetous, and so on. idolater, have no property in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one flatter you with vain words, for for their sake the wrath of God is coming on the disobedient sons (Eph. 5:5-6). We are Christians and servants of the living God and the terrible Judge: therefore, we must, in a Christian and righteous manner, as we were commanded by our righteous Judge, judge and arrange the affairs of our subordinates, so that we may glorify, and not blaspheme among the unfaithful pagans, the holy and worshiped name of the Lord our God. What tears and sobs is worthy of the fact that the command and justification of God relating to judgment is fulfilled correctly and directly by the unbelievers, and as first established by God, it is strictly preserved; among us, the Orthodox, all this is despised and trampled upon. I greatly fear that what the prophet Isaiah said about lawless Jerusalem, about which he speaks with pity, will not apply to us: What a harlot was the faithful city of Zion, full of judgment? Truth rests in him, but now there are murderers in him. Your princes do not repent, they are in common, loving gifts, persecuting recompense, not judging the orphans, and not heeding the judgment of widows (Isa. 1:21, 23). Therefore, let us know ourselves and stop angering the Lord by disobeying His saving commandments. For the Holy Scripture clearly says: Curse those who turn away from Your commandments. If we are cursed by God for transgressing His holy commandments, then who will bless us, or who will be able to deliver us from the pitch darkness and from the unquenchable fire, where the condemned are sent, as He Himself certifies, saying with unbearable anger: Depart from Me, curse, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angel (Matthew 25:41)? It is a terrible thing, O brothers, to fall into the hand of the living God (Heb. 10:31); therefore, let us precede His face in confession and exclaim to Him in psalms (Ps. 94:2), that is: before His righteous anger flares up, let us each try to abandon our evil deeds, for the face here refers to the righteous wrath of God; as in another, revenge is said: But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. For what? “To consume,” he says, “their memory from the earth” (Ps. 33:17). By the action of this unbearable and righteous wrath of God, the Jewish people were humiliated and rejected, who, having lost their land and power, had been scattered throughout all nations for many years, and a prophetic oath was fulfilled over them, which, as if from the face of the Crucified Jesus Christ, our God, says: Let their court be empty, and let there be no living thing in their dwellings; let their eyes be darkened, so that they cannot see, and their backbone I will take out the sweets, pour out Thy wrath on me, and let the fury of Thy wrath overtake them (Ps. 69:24–26). Let us be afraid of this example and stop angering the Lord, Who is terrible. For if He did not spare those for whom He performed such terrible and wondrous signs and wonders in Egypt, in the Red Sea, in the desert, in the Promised Land itself and in Babylon, constantly glorifying them and showing them to be terrible, and insulting and shaming their opponents in various ways: then we will be afraid, lest He turn away from us, as He turned away from them, and then, being abandoned by Him, we are easily enslaved Let us all be those who hate us, and the divine saying will be fulfilled over us, which says: Because of their flattery, you brought evil upon them; What about Bysha in desolation? she suddenly disappeared, perishing for her iniquity, like the sleep of one who arises (Ps. 72:18-19). The greater, in comparison with them, grace and great visitation we have been granted by divine grace through our Lord Jesus Christ: the more diligence we must have for the salvation of our souls, continuing in good works and in all righteousness, so that we do not turn out to be worse than them in fulfilling the commandments of our God, and then we will not be able to enter His kingdom, as He Himself said: Unless your righteousness comes out, more than the scribe and Pharisee, you will not enter into kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20). I beg you, through the mercies of God, to be lenient with me, who proclaims it to you, my masters, without hesitation, out of God’s zeal and out of spiritual love, and diligently open the ears of your thoughts, so that you may understand the truth of the Pharisees and scribes regarding the fulfillment of the commandments of Moses, as well as the life we ​​are now leading in transgression of the Gospel commandments. Comparing both, we find that our life is far worse than the life of those. Those, as that eloquent Pharisee boasted, not only did not offend or rob other people’s estates, but they also gave a tenth of their own to the poor and provided for them. In our country, what type of extortion and robbery is not committed shamelessly and without any fear? Everywhere there are robbers and murderers, thieves and robbers, cruel oppressors, imposing interest on interest on poor debtors and thereby plunging them into extreme poverty. And this godless gain intensified so much that it prevailed over the very hierarchs of God and the priests, our archimandrites and abbots. What a terrible crime this is against the commandments and will of the Lord! What answer will we give to the terrible Judge on the day of the terrible trial, when those who performed many miracles in His name and cast out demons will be rejected and called workers of iniquity because they have not acquired the fulfillment of the law, which covers a multitude of sins and consists in love for the poor and needy, widows and orphans, whom we are commanded to provide? They not only did not supply them, but, on the contrary, despised them when they perished here from hunger and nakedness and from a lack of all needs, while they themselves always enjoyed all peace and all kinds of worldly pleasures, amassing wealth for themselves on earth: gold and silver, valuable clothes and all kinds of acquisitions, taking into account the commandment of the Lord, who commands not to hide treasures on earth for oneself, but to hide them in heaven, so that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. What hope can we have of being saved and entering the kingdom of heaven, when our truth is not only not more abundant, as the Lord has determined, than the truth of the scribes and Pharisees, but is also much worse than them, since they desecrated their estates, and we, with annual demands of the most burdensome interest, plunder the estates of debtors without mercy? Let us not deceive ourselves, reverend fathers, and flatter ourselves with vain hopes: the covetous and predators of the kingdom of God will not receive, as Paul cries, these are the lips of Christ. Let no one, he says, flatter you with vain words, for for their sake the wrath of God is coming on the disobedient sons (Eph. 5:6). If the wrath of God comes upon us, who transgress the commandments of our God, then what hope of salvation remains for us, or what helper will be able to snatch us from the hands of the terrible Judge? It's scary to fall into the hands of God Zhivago. From the beginning of the century, who from among those who angered Him with all sorts of untruths, covetousness and fornication, escaped His completely strong hand? Where are the famous kingdoms of the ancient peoples - Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, Romans? Wasn’t everyone destroyed and completely extinguished because of their various untruths, depravity and pride? Let us also pay attention to ourselves, and let us renounce all our evil deeds: untruth, covetousness, satanic pride, Sodom and Gomora fornication, and let us cleanse this Orthodox state entrusted to us by God and the common Master. Let us cleanse it from all lawlessness, from untruths, from Jewish love of money and covetousness, for the sake of which the divine cover and power is removed from us, covering us and keeping us unharmed from all slander and all troubles caused to us by our visible and invisible enemies. Having been deprived of this divine protection and intercession, we become a playground and a trample upon invisible opposing forces, which push us into countless abysses of all evil and lawlessness, and as a result of this we fall into all sorts of troubles and misfortunes that do not retreat from us, harming us until they finally destroy us. Therefore, I beg you, let us not be like a horse and a horse, who have no reason, so that we, like many ancient lawless ones, do not have our jaws crushed by the rods and bridle, that is, by rage and unbearable anger; but with a sober mind and with full attention let us accept and love the instruction offered to us by King David, who says: And now, kings, understand, punish all who judge the earth. Work for the Lord with fear, and rejoice in Him with trembling. Accept punishment, lest the Lord become angry, and perish from the path of the righteous, when His wrath soon flares up (Ps. 2:10-12). Always keep this saving and philanthropic instruction in your thoughts, O most pious kings, princes and boyars, and judges of the earth, and with the fear of God and righteousness arrange the affairs of your subordinates, turning away from all bribery, so that you too can pray to the righteous Judge and say with boldness: Having done justice and righteousness, do not betray me to those who offend me ( Ps.119:121), Let us delve into the power of this short prayer of this righteous and wonderful king: he did not put forward any other virtue to implore the terrible Judge - neither whole-day or all-night vigil, nor frequent prayers, nor tears, but only that with righteous judgment and justice he judged the people of God entrusted to him and ruled them without any extortion. Let us also love this truth of this righteous king and prophet! Yes, I beg you, let us love her and hate all covetousness and Jewish love of money, which, according to the teaching of the holy Apostle Paul, is idolatry. Let us listen to the divine Prophet, who says: Do not trust in untruth and do not desire admiration; if wealth flows, do not apply your heart (Ps. 61:11); For when she is rich, he says, she becomes poor and hungry (Ps. 33:11). And some of them in this life fell into various troubles, and were deprived of their unrighteous wealth and life itself, and perished in evil; others not only here lost this short-lived wealth, but also after death fall away from everlasting and endless blessings. Those who seek the Lord will not be deprived of any good (Ps. 33:11) both in this and in the next century, as it is written: The righteous will flourish like a phoenix, and like a cedar in Lebanon he will multiply. The plantings in the house of the Lord in the courts of our God will flourish: they will again multiply in old age, and they will be acceptable (Ps. 92:13-15). This will be the reward from the righteous rewarder God in the future for those who live righteously and pleasing to God. And how wonderfully they are blessed in this life, let us hear about this attentively, and let us desire, I ask, to receive such a blessing from the Lord: Blessed is the man, he says, fear the Lord; he will greatly delight in His commandments, that is, he will love with all his soul the commandments of his God, which are nothing other than truth, goodness, mercy and unfeigned love according to God. The seed of such a righteous Christian will be strong, he says, on earth, that is, in this life, and the race of such righteous Christians will be blessed, glory and wealth will be in his house, and his righteousness will endure forever. The righteous will be an everlasting memory; he will not fear the hearing of evil (Ps. 111:1-7). What could be more blessed than this blessing and more desirable for us, the truly pious, who love our Lord Jesus Christ, Who says: If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, he will also be My servant (John 12:26)? The righteous, who fears the Lord, will not be afraid when he hears the voice that says: Depart from Me, the curse, into eternal fire (Matthew 25:41), but on the contrary, he will hear: Well done, good and faithful servant: you have been faithful over a few, I will set you over many: enter into the joy of your Lord (Matthew 25:21). So, if, indeed, we want to receive such an unspeakable divine joy of our Lord Jesus Christ, then let us acquire clothing corresponding to such joy, woven from works of truth and mercy, so that we can enjoy this divine joy forever. And those who dare to enter that divine marriage, not having such cleanly decorated clothes, are not only deprived of this unspeakable joy, but are also bound hand and foot and thrown into utter darkness, where they weep and gnashing their teeth, and there they are eternally tormented, damned. May the philanthropic Lord deliver us from their madness and condemnation! Amen. You might be interested in: