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Sermon

Sermon on the Eve of the Meeting of the Lord (February 14, 1988)

Tomorrow the Holy Church celebrates the Presentation of the Lord, which means "meeting" in Old Church Slavonic. The Infant Lord and the Elder Simeon meet. The Mother of God brought the Infant to the temple, and Simeon, led by the Spirit, also came there, for he was told by God that he would not die until he saw the salvation of Israel, until he saw the Savior, the Messiah, Christ, promised by the prophets. The Church chose this event as the Twelve Great Feasts, because it contains a very great spiritual meaning. The Bible consists of two parts - the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament describes the life of mankind from Adam to Abraham and then the life of God's chosen people from Abraham to the coming of Christ, which was characterized by the fact that Israel constantly apostatized from God, but the Lord took care of His people, saved, delivered, punished, sent prophets, trying to return them to the true path. Ancient Israel is a kind of drop of water in which the life of any nation is reflected. The Old Testament books tell about the history not only of the Jews, but of all mankind, but of spiritual history. Because the main thing, of course, is not the events that are set forth in them, although the Bible is partly a historical monument, the main thing is the spiritual vicissitudes of how the Lord built His people, gradually educated them, and led them to be able to accept Christ the Savior. The Old Testament ("covenant" means "covenant") was made on Mount Sinai. We know that the greatest of the prophets of Israel, Moses, was chosen by God to give him the law because of his love for his countrymen. He went up to Mount Sinai, and there the Lord revealed His glory to him. Moses saw the same light of Tabor that Peter, James, and John had seen. And when he descended from the mountain, his face shone so brightly that he had to cover his head with a handkerchief, because the people who were waiting for him below could not see this reflected, but Divine light. Moses brought the Ten Commandments. The commandment that there is only one God and only He must be worshipped. About the fact that you need to honor your father and mother, because without this there can be no healthy family and society will fall apart. That they do not kill, do not steal, do not fornicate, do not envy, do not lie. Why did it take all the authority of Moses and the authority of God Himself to emphasize such obvious things to people? Because they were so wild, like you and me, that they did not understand the simplest things. And so, with the help of the commandments that were given only to him, Israel was preserved from spiritual damage for a very long time. The rest of the peoples degenerated into a demonic realm. They followed the path of paganism, worship of many gods, that is, demonic power, and therefore revealed terrible crimes that even a fallen man of the 20th century simply cannot dream of. For example, the greatest valor for a Japanese is to commit hara-kiri, that is, to rip open his stomach so as not to bring shame on his head. Can there be a greater sin for a Christian? Who taught man that to cut oneself out of pride is the highest virtue? Only the devil. And all pagan religions are about serving the devil in one form or another. There is still the memory of the Maya, Incas, and Aztecs, whose civilizations were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors and wiped off the face of the earth, and their language forgotten. What an inhuman state they have come to, that they sacrificed living people. The priest opened a person's chest with a stone knife, took out a fluttering heart and tore it apart in front of the crowd. Or people were thrown onto the peaks that were at the foot of the mountain, and killed not one, not two, but hundreds of thousands every year. In ancient Sparta, frail babies were thrown off a cliff. Can any mother or father think of this?! Only Satan can suggest such a thing. Suvorov, for example, was born a very weak baby - and became a wonderful military leader. How many Suvorovs were thrown off a cliff in Sparta; how many musicians, poets, artists were burned in ovens, sacrificed to Moloch! And what monstrous perversions and purely satanic erotic cults existed? It is enough to look at the images of pagan gods, ugly, with ugly fangs. Japanese or Chinese deities are all dragons, terrible, spitting, always with hooves and a tail, always with horns. And in India there are temples decorated with scenes of fornication. Except in classical Greece there were statues of gods that were beautiful in shape. Perhaps that is why Greek architecture became partly the forerunner of Christian culture for this striving for beauty. This was the situation in the Old Testament and the environment in which the people of Israel lived. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that he constantly avoided serving the true God, although the Lord was constantly trying to return him to the right path. Israel was a very small people and survived only because of the commandments. But they did not save man in essence, but only protected him from complete degeneration. After all, animals also have commandments. We know that animals of the same species, as a rule, do not kill each other. It is a rare case when deer, butting, beat each other or birds peck at a fellow deer. But this is an accident, as they say, a raven will not peck out a crow's eyes. And it was at this level that Israel was maintained until its historical development finally came to its limit, when the Savior was to be born. The entire Old Testament, its commandments, temple worship, piety, the reading of the prophets and the law of Moses prepared many people to accept a completely new, higher teaching. It consists in the fact that from now on a person is freed from the bonds of the law and stands under the law of grace. If we have learned with our minds and hearts what Christianity is, then we should understand this. And if you have not assimilated, if you have not tasted what the grace of God is, if you have not come to know the true spiritual life, then, no matter how much you explain, it is impossible to understand what this new law consists of, why Christ was not accepted and He was crucified. But we need to feel this, because otherwise we will not understand why the Holy Church chose the Meeting of the Lord as its feast, why Simeon was so old, why he said: "Now lettest Thou depart..." - and after that he died. Why did the Old Testament have to die? It ended, because it did not save a person, but played only a preparatory role. You can raise a child, take him to services, teach the Gospel, prayers, and then, when he turns 15 years old, he will suddenly stop going to church: he does not want to, everything there annoys him. Why? The fact is that a person always makes his own choice, and it is impossible to teach faith to almost anyone, you can only help to learn about it. And whether a person will open his spiritual eyes, whether he will see the spiritual world, whether he will meet God or confine himself to reading prayers and a purely mechanical ritual, depends on his own volition. The Old Testament created a certain ritual, everyday life, conditions of life, which were a preparation for the perception of the Truth. He created a vessel for the grace of God. And if a person himself loves God as such (this commandment was given in the Old Testament), desires divine life, spiritual, heavenly life, wants to partake of grace, then this grace will be poured out. The religion of the Old Testament is a rather materialistic religion: obey the law, do what you can, do what you can't, don't do it, and God will arrange a good life for you: you will have big flocks, good children, everything will be all right. And when suddenly it turned out to be not in order, the Jew was perplexed: how come, I am fulfilling the law. This Old Testament consciousness is alive in each of us. Many people, coming to confession, simply do not know what to repent of. Every Sunday I go to church, I fulfill the morning and evening rule, I read three canons and the Prayer for Holy Communion. I read the Gospel chapter by chapter. What is the matter, what are the sins that the priest has pestered me? And it is not the fulfillment of the rule that is important, it is important whether you have met God or not. And when a person thinks in this way, it means that this meeting did not happen, because when a person meets God, he shudders from his own sin. God is light, and what we carry within us is darkness, and it is impossible not to notice it. Therefore, if a person does not see billions of sins in himself, this indicates that he has never seen God, that he is still in the Old Testament, until Christ came to him, a person did not feel what the grace of God is. To find it, we need to grow out of the short pants of the Old Testament. For us, all kinds of rules, customs, and ideas are of tremendous value, because we cannot be guided by our own conscience, our own communion with God, we cannot ask God specifically so that God would specifically answer us. We need purely external, legalistic information, we strive to describe our whole life. Is it possible to work on a holiday or not? If it is possible, then until what hour? After what hour is it not allowed? Can I brush my teeth after Communion? Is it possible before Communion? How many pieces can you eat? How much not to eat? How long should you fast, three days or two and a half? This is what is of great importance for a person. But in fact, all this plays a purely disciplinary role. Many people are able to behave outwardly irreproachably with the help of rules. Such were the Pharisees. They obeyed the whole law, all its petty prescriptions, and at the same time they did much more than you and I do now. But Christ came, and they crucified Him, because they had envy in their hearts, and no one ever told them anything about the struggle with envy, they had never heard of it at all. And many of us, chasing the ghosts of the fulfillment of something, lose much more, not understanding what the main thing Christ brought to the world. From priests you can hear the following phrase: you would rather eat meat during fasting, and not people. Because sometimes people who do not eat meat torment everyone around, terrorize their children, daughters-in-law or nephews. The grandson, except for a motorcycle, cigarettes and beer, has no interests, and the grandmother tells him: you go to church, pray, you wear a cross. And he eats it, and eats it, turns his life into a pitch-black hell. He no longer knows where to go, and she pesters his mother: you take him, you tell him. And this is called Christianity. If the grandson is dragged to the church by force and baptized, the grandmother will be pleased: well, thank God, now my soul is calm, the law is fulfilled, everything is in order. But in fact, it is not all right: since he is baptized, he will probably be much lower in hell than if he were unbaptized. That is, she did him a much worse service, because he could have grown to faith someday; in prison, perhaps, five times, he came to his senses, was baptized, and the Lord would have forgiven him all his sins in baptism. And so he immediately, having been baptized, goes to who knows what to do. The grace that is given to him tramples into the most terrible mud imaginable. And the grandmother does not consider it something terrible. This is a purely legalistic, Old Testament attitude to spiritual life. And we all need to get rid of it. And it is gradually overcome in the process of churching, in the process of revealing in us the spiritual life, of perceiving the grace of God. Those rules, canons, and customs that exist in the Church are holy. They all lead us to the Truth, make it visible. The truth is accomplished and revealed in our soul through spiritual podvig. It is not the observance of the rules or the search for special prayers that saves us. And often, in an effort to read as many akathists as possible, a person even falls under the power of some numbers; Some say: look, we need to read forty akathists. Why not forty-two? Or maybe twenty-three would be enough? Why forty? Or they want to go somewhere: oh, it's grace-filled there! And there it is even more grace-filled! But every Orthodox church is Heaven. What could be more grace-filled? We have just come to church, and the Most Pure Body of the Lord lies on the altar. We are standing literally three meters from the holiest place imaginable. What other holy places are needed? Here is the Kingdom of Heaven. And the Body of Christ, the very one that is at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven, which rode on a donkey to Jerusalem, which was crucified on the Cross and ascended to Heaven, the same Body that the woman touched with faith and was healed of her sickness, it is here. There is no difference between this Body and that, they are absolutely identical. We stand in the presence of Christ the Savior, we listen every day to the word of God, which comes from the Gospel, but nothing happens to us, because the Old Testament has not yet died in us, we all live in a chain of some rules that bind us and have become an end in themselves for us. But the rule is just a crutch that helps you walk. The Lord says through the Apostle Paul: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law." For the one who has acquired the fruits of the Spirit, the law does not exist, he does not even need to read the Gospel itself constantly, because it is written by the finger of God on the tablets of his heart. He can no longer act otherwise than what is said in the commandments. It is we, people, who have become dumbed down from sin, who need a written law. We must read the Gospel so often that it penetrates deep into our souls. And this will happen only when we begin to remove the scabs of sin from our souls. And let us understand that it is not the rules that are salvific, but the change of life, the correction of one's own heart. Therefore, neither the Old Testament, nor readings, nor trips to holy places, to elders, altars, to icons will ever save us. It will save us only if we force ourselves to fulfill the commandments of God, and the holy thing before which we will pray should move us to correction, the elder should arouse zeal for holiness, the holy places should remind us of the feats of those who were here before us. Fulfilling commandment after commandment of Christ, we will gradually stir our hearts, a crack will appear in this crust, and sins will fall from us layer by layer. Then life will be revealed in us. In the meantime, we are still in the Old Testament and, therefore, are crucifiers of Christ the Savior. That is why we sin so easily. Those sins that are inconceivable for holy people who have come to know the New Testament are very easy for us. When Elder Silouan was asked for his opinion about a certain monk, he answered: "Do you want me to condemn, or what? Yes, I have never condemned anyone in my life. It's impossible for me." Cut him into pieces - he will not be able to condemn, because his heart has already changed. And for us, to lie, to deceive, to condemn, to fall into some sinful thoughts, as they say, is easier than a steamed turnip. Because this is our own life, we are boiling in it. It is difficult to renounce sin, but we can and do do it with pleasure, because it is easy to follow the rules. Take a monastery, everything is scheduled there: at five o'clock, at half past six a fraternal prayer service, then obedience, liturgy, lunch, rest, again obedience, evening service, then some have obedience, some have dinner, some have rest. Everything is regulated, the whole day is full. But even where these strict rules are in force, created for a person to know the spiritual life, there are so many people who not only do not think about it, but do not even know what it is. After all, even in church you can settle down perfectly and do nothing, and train yourself to defend the service so much that you will not get tired at all, and you will not even hear what is read and sung, and you will not pray - so, you will cross yourself purely formally. Why did he cross himself, what does it mean, why? There is no mind at all. A person stands and dreams about something. I thought about this, about that. The window slammed and he turned around. I liked some kind of face - I looked at the face. The priest came out and noticed what kind of shoes the priest had. Like new, or not, no, old, just cleaned. I looked there, I looked there. Look, they have already begun to sing "Now lettest Thou depart." Vespers ends... And the soul flew away again. And what is "Now lettest Thou depart"? And again he looked here, here, thought about it, remembered it... The lights are turned off, oh, the Six Psalms are being read. Who is reading today, Alexei Nikiforovich? No, Vovka came out. And he fell asleep again... Well, thank God, the service is over, which means that now there will be a sermon, the priest will say something interesting. He stood there, listened and went. Oh, I reached the bus stop and forgot everything. And tomorrow everything will be all over again. That's how it happens. And you need constant work of the soul. When you stand in church, you must suffer, force yourself to pray all the time, to sober up, to constantly wade through the bushes of thoughts, to try to think over every word so that it reaches your mind, and only then, if God wills, of course, to your heart. Because the word of the divine service reaches the mind through our effort, to the heart – by the grace of God. And the work that is required of us in order to delve into the divine services, we must do irreproachably. They say that the hardest work in the world is to pray to God. Yes, this is true: we are ready to do anything, but not to pray. The most difficult thing is to open the Prayer Book in the evening: now you have to watch TV, then wash, then this, then that. Because then we will have an excuse: here I am tired, and the Lord will not seek if I read it formally. We are deceitful before God. And this is not a prayer. Of course, on the one hand, it is good that a person forces himself to read the rule. This act of his is good-willed, it is directed towards God, but will there be a meeting? Will there be an encounter with God during the reading of the evening rule or not? That's what's important. It is important that the heart open to God, so that a person feels himself in the presence of God, sees himself as a sinner, wants to improve, again, again and again. It is important to want to live the next day better than the previous one. This is spiritual life. And we are all slipping, slipping, slipping, and therefore we are still in the Old Testament. The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord has a colossal spiritual meaning. Two Testaments meet; all the best that is in the Old Testament is symbolized by the elder Simeon, who holds the Infant Christ in his arms. He is still very young, He has only just been born, and now the Old One dies to give life to the New. This must happen in our hearts as well: all that is old must pass away in order to give way to the new. Amen.

Sermon on the feast day of Mary of Egypt (March 26, 1988)

Today's Sunday, which we begin to celebrate in the evening, is dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt. In the Orthodox Church, Mary of Egypt has a special honor, her memory occurs several times a year. This week we performed the service of the Standing of Mary of Egypt and read her life, and she is also glorified on the day of her blessed repose. Since the Church so triumphs in her memory, it means that her life is edifying for us. What does it teach us? Of course, we cannot imitate her feat, not a single person living on earth is now able to repeat it. To us, people of the 20th century, it seems fantastic, because we live in a completely different era. None of us is able to go to the desert with one and a half pieces of Orlov bread and live there for 47 years. Is it possible for us to do without clothes or leave a Moscow residence permit? No, it is beyond our strength. Well, what can we do? What can we take from her life in order for us to approach the lofty ideal to which Christ calls us? What moved the life of St. Mary? What was the main virtue in her? We know that she began life very sinfully. Well, all of us also began life very sinfully, with the exception of those who have been in the Church since childhood - there are only a few of us like that. But then she found the courage to change her life. And she corrected it as radically as we cannot. It changed life fundamentally in every point, changed it in everything. She lost her soul for the sake of the Gospel, as the Lord calls to it. In general, people used to be more simple-minded. They perceived the truth of the Gospel directly. For example, we celebrated the memory of the Martyrs of Sebaste. The guard looks at the warriors who stand naked on the ice in winter and freeze, and sees the crowns descending. And he took it so simply that if he undressed now and rushed to them, he would also receive a crown from God - he did not think that he would be cold or hurt. Such was his thirst for salvation, for spiritual beauty, such a thirst to draw near to God, that he did not think about anything, undressed and stood up with them - and in one night he became a saint, although he was not even baptized. For one such aspiration he was vouchsafed the gift of the Holy Spirit and was numbered among the forty martyrs of Sebaste, whose memory the Church has triumphed for so many centuries. The same was true of Mary - she entered the temple in order to worship the Cross of the Lord, the Life-Giving Tree, and could not enter: the Lord rejected her. And the psychology of a resident of the VI century is interesting. When something doesn't work out in our lives, we usually start blaming everyone around us: people, circumstances, authorities, something else. We want to enter the struggle, to overcome it, to achieve something. She took it quite correctly: she realized that her own sin did not let her in. And the desire to touch the Tree was enormous, and Mary decided to pray to the Mother of God and make a vow that if She allowed her into the temple, then she would change her life. And she was admitted immediately, and touched the Wood of the Life-Giving Cross, and communed the next day - that is, the Lord accepted her and gave her grace for the fact that she decided to turn her life around. This decision of hers is repentance. Mary went into the wilderness and there, of course, suffered very hard. She endured hunger, thirst, and in addition she was tormented by thoughts, by her desires, by the passions that tormented her, but still she did not return to the world. She threw herself on the ground, gnawed the sand, tore her hair, beat her breast, she did not sleep, she prayed, but she did not cross the Jordan, she did not go back. Such courage and great patience have shown. She tolerated herself, her passions, did not give them free rein until they died. And when the passions died, she began to ascend to spiritual heights and attained amazing holiness, absolute clairvoyance, and full knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. From her life we know that she was even able to walk on water when there was a need for it; and Zosima was amazed at how she had traveled in a day that had taken him 20 days. She did not need a car, or an airplane, or a helicopter, all this is not necessary for a spiritual person. And we are surrounded by all sorts of toys, as it seems to us, very important and necessary for life, because we have become weak and cannot do anything with ourselves. Some elementary action, for example, giving birth to all the children you conceive, is an unbearable feat for many. A woman who has more than three children is looked at as some kind of miracle. And what is so special about it? In the last century, 7-8 children were born by high-society ladies, and ordinary peasant women, both rich and poor. And it never occurred to anyone that it was somehow possible to get rid of children. Although there were cases when they were thrown up; rarely, extremely rarely, children were killed or the fetus was poisoned. And so they gave birth and brought up. But for a modern person, just giving birth to their own children is something so impossible. Or, let's say, to live in a communal apartment - and thirty years ago people lived quite like this, it was a common phenomenon. And so it is in everything. Man has lost all courage, all will to live because he has lost his spiritual core. And this core is given only by faith in God and the grace of the Holy Spirit. What should we do if we want to be disciples of Christ? The Lord, knowing our weaknesses, knowing our weakness, of course, does not demand of us the feats of Mary of Egypt. He just wants elementary decency from us, so that we are normal people. Demands on us now are simply demands on an ordinary person: so that we do not do evil for the sake of some momentary benefit, do not collude with our conscience, do not lull it to sleep; so that they do not take revenge, they learn to act nobly; so that the strong do not offend the weak. What for a person who lived a hundred years ago was elementary and in the order of things, for a modern person is already an outstanding feat. Well, how come, he pinched me, he cursed me, and I endure, keep silent or even forgive? It's impossible. But if I want to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, then, despite the fact that he has offended me, that he treats me badly, I will find courage in myself and forgive him. Some spiritual people say that in our age it is possible to be saved by doing small good deeds. We must learn to do this little good, that is, to be constantly faithful to God in small things. As in today's Gospel the Lord said to Thomas: take your hand and put it in My side, and from now on be not unfaithful, but faithful. That is, do not be an unbeliever, but a believer. Everyone believes in God, with rare, rare exceptions. Both the devil and demons believe, and people of different religions that are opposite to Christianity - Buddhists, Satanists, Confucians - also believe in God. Confucianism is not even a faith at all, but there is still some concept of God, of a higher power, of the Creator of the universe. Therefore, faith in God itself does not give anything. Faith must be to God. And here the discord begins. For example, Christ says that before God there is neither male nor female, everyone is equally equal, there is no preference. And Muslims do not treat a woman at all as a full-fledged person, they believe that only the male sex inherits life and immortality, and a woman is like a draught animal that should give offspring. And it is very important what kind of God a person believes. What teaching for his heart he accepts as the truth that is his driving force. If we are Christians, then we must make Christ's commandments the driving force of our lives. And to build our lives not according to the way people live, not according to the way it is customary in society, or what we read in a book by some perhaps very good writer, not according to this we should arrange our lives, and not according to what our boss at work, or our wife, or our children, or grandchildren demand of us. It is necessary not to submit to the spirit of the times, but to remain faithful to God, to His commandments, to remain faithful to the spiritual postulates of Christianity. Then we will be able to hold on to our faith and fill it with meaning. Because some people who consider themselves Christians, and go to church, and even take communion and confess regularly, sometimes do things for which they are supposed to be excommunicated from the Church immediately. For example, quite recently, when the Pope of Rome came to America, Catholics, believing Christians, began to demand that he allow abortion and issue such an encyclical. Well, can a Christian bishop allow murder? It is impossible to allow polygamy, infanticide, drunkenness, drug addiction, because if they are allowed, then it will no longer be Christianity. Therefore, we need to try to know the Gospel. We must know the text of the Gospel by heart, so that it fits not only in our minds, but also in our hearts. Mary of Egypt was illiterate, but the Lord enlightened her so much that she knew all the Scriptures by heart and quoted them. But by what a feat she achieved this! We are not capable of this, so the Lord, in His mercy, arranged it so that each of us can have the printed text of the Gospel. In the sixth century, not a single Christian, except for the emperor and a few, literally on the fingers of one hand, dignitaries, had the Gospel. Not every church had it. The gospel was considered the greatest treasure, a jewel, and people gathered in church to hear it, they studied it, they asked God to help them assimilate it. And each of us can fully read the Gospel at home, sitting on a chair, and yet, although we have such a blessed treasure, we do not use it. We read as we are used to reading the rule - just to get rid of it, without thinking at all about how much it corresponds to our life. And if we see an obvious discrepancy between the Gospel and our actions, then we begin to persuade ourselves: well, they say, it's okay, who can do this now - absolutely not understanding that the Gospel is said for all ages. If we have a desire for the Kingdom of Heaven, if we want to see God in our lives, if we want to know what God is like, if we want to feel Him, put our hand in His side, feel Him as Thomas wanted, then our life must be arranged in a completely different way. Then we should not put at the forefront how to live better and easier. And out of all the abundance of opportunities that we have, we should choose only that which does not contradict the gospel. This is what distinguishes the Christian life from the non-Christian one. Let's say I got married, and I got tired of my wife. I met better: she is more beautiful, she is younger, and more economical, she has a car, and a separate apartment - well, that's it. And this one is sloppy, and hunchbacked, and barren, and in a communal apartment. What to do? A normal, average person will leave this one, of course, and go to that one. But if I am a Christian, I can no longer do this, because this act contradicts the Gospel, because divorce before God is simply unthinkable. If I want to reach the Kingdom of Heaven, then I must live with the wife I have chosen to the end. And so it is in everything - at work, and at home, and on the bus, and in the tram, and with your own soul. Human life is made up of actions. And each of our actions cannot be neutral, it is either a step towards God or a step away from God. Therefore, our whole life, if we want to be Christians and want to reach the Kingdom of Heaven, must consist of actions that bring us closer to God. Mary of Egypt is an example of this. She was consistent to the end, and with the help of God's grace she corrected all that was sinful in herself. In the same way, if we courageously and consistently always choose God's commandment, always choose the Gospel, God's truth, then gradually our life will begin to improve. You never know what is in my soul, you never know what mood I have, what sympathies or antipathies I have for a person. It is said: love your neighbor as yourself. And that's it, there can be no retreats. Whether I like a person or not, whether I like him or am tired of him to the last degree, I cannot reject him if I am a Christian. Because if I reject him, it will be contrary to love. Therefore, if I do not like him, I must pray that God will bring him to reason, that he will improve. But I no longer have the right to reject, neglect, or step over it, because although this may not be contrary to my conscience (I have long since burned my conscience with my sins), it is contrary to the Gospel. And if the Gospel becomes the principle of our life, then our life will gradually be corrected. And those small feats for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the Gospel, which we begin to perform, will be the bearing of our cross, the denial of ourselves. That is what it means to lose one's soul for the sake of the gospel. After all, if a person is unpleasant to me, and I have to open my heart to him, I thereby perform a feat: I make an effort over myself, I die at that moment, because my self, which opposes this person, must die. And if I do this not just for the sake of this person, but precisely for the sake of Christ, I will become one step closer to the Kingdom of Heaven. Because Christ did the same. So ten lepers came and asked Him to heal them. And He healed. How many returned to thank Him after that? Only one out of ten. And the Lord saw through them all. He could have chosen this one thing, only healed him, because he was the only normal person: they did him good - and he thanked him; It's normal, it's natural. And to the rest I could say: and you, guys, take a walk until you learn how to behave correctly. But the Lord did not do this. Once they turned to Him, He gave it to them, although they afterwards harmed Him, and He knew that it would be so. And a Christian always does just that, although he knows that what he does often harms him. The more you do good to people, the more they sit on your neck. But this does not mean that you need to stop doing good. If we do good according to the principle: you do it to me, I do it to you, this is not Christian. The Christian principle is when you do good, and you are slapped on the neck for it. Then, then, a person does good for the sake of good and is not afraid that he will get hit on the neck. And even if he is afraid, he overcomes this fear. It is in this overcoming, in this courage that Christianity is. Mary of Egypt is an example of this. If we want to reach the Kingdom of Heaven, we must constantly strain our hearts and constantly think about whether my action is pleasing to God or not. And if our heart answers that it is not pleasing to God, then we should not do it in any case. And if we see that an action is pleasing to God, then we must pray that the Lord will help us to accomplish it. Because very often we cannot do some good because of weakness of character, cowardice, cowardice, laziness, unwillingness, and so on, for many different reasons. But not doing good is just as evil. Or many people say: I didn't do anything bad to anyone. So what? The shed that stands in the yard also did nothing bad to anyone, but when the house is built, it will still be broken, no one needs it, and this barn will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. If we want to be heirs of the Heavenly Kingdom, we must all the time, all our lives, perform these actions, which are a step towards God. And when we weaken, let us ask Mary of Egypt: Venerable Mother Mary, pray to God for us. And her prayer will help us in this work. Amen.

Sermon for Bright Week (May 3, 1989)

Christ is risen! Today we heard the Gospel of John about how the Lord called His first disciples, Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael. John the Baptist stood with two disciples and, seeing Jesus coming, said to them: "Behold the Lamb of God" - and they immediately followed Jesus. He turned around and asked, "What are you looking for?" They answered, "Where do you live?" From that moment on, they became His disciples. Why did they so easily leave John and follow the Lord? Because John said, "He is coming after me, Whom I am not worthy to untie the strap of my boots," and here come this Man that they were looking for, Whom they longed to see. Then Philip called Nathanael. He doubted: how could a prophet appear from Nazareth? The prophet does not come from Galilee. Philip said, "Go and see, see for yourself." And as he approached, the Lord said, "Behold the true Israelite, in whom there is no guile." Nathanael asked, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered, "Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree." And Nathanael immediately confessed Him to be the Son of God and became His disciple. The Lord did not perform any miracles, did not do anything special or convincing before them, but their hearts felt that this was the Truth, and they remained with Him forever. Christ walked for three years in Galilee, Judea, Samaria, preached the word of God, healed the sick, raised the dead, fed the hungry - and out of this huge mass of people (and He became known throughout Palestine, even from other countries they came to see Him) only a few became His disciples. Because not everyone needs the Kingdom of Heaven. Most people - I cannot say how many, only God knows - but I can affirm, hand on heart, that many go to church not for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. They do not even think about it, do not want to know the Truth, to draw closer to God, to become disciples of the Savior. A person goes to the temple to get a treasure here on earth. If he is sick, he asks for relief from the disease. If he has trouble with his son or daughter, he asks God to help him overcome it. Even if a person has some bad character trait and he understands that it is impossible to live like this, and wants to get rid of it, it is not for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to make life on earth easier. Most people who go to church, intuitively feeling and knowing that God is good, want good from Him. And they receive it, but they do not become disciples of Christ, because only he can become a disciple of Christ who wants to see Heaven open and the angels of God descending and ascending there; who really wants to attain spiritual life; who wants to live with God, wants to touch Him, to feel Him, to be constantly in living communion with Him. Those four whom the Lord had called—Peter, Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael—wanted this. And when many of the disciples began to depart from the Lord (especially after His words about Holy Communion - that He is the Bread that came down from Heaven), and the Lord, turning to the Apostles, looked around them and asked: "Would you also like to leave?" - Peter, as always, expressing a common opinion for everyone, said: "And where shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." We don't need this hectic life, we don't need these nets, fish, we don't need this money - we don't need anything. We need only the Kingdom of Heaven, and of all people on earth you alone speak of it. We do not understand half of what You say, but we believe You, because we have never met such Beauty anywhere, in no one else, we have never met such Love, no one has ever spoken to us like this. We feel that there is truth behind Your words. We do not know much, but we want the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord said to them, "You will drink the cup that I drink, and you will judge the twelve tribes of Israel, and you will be in the bosom of Abraham, you will enter the kingdom of heaven." The Lord promised them, and they were vouchsafed it. Why them? Were they not like other people? No, the same bones, the same muscles, the same brain, six hundred kilograms, there was nothing special about them. Of course, they were purer than the rest: they were not such hypocrites as the Pharisees, who prayed for show; they were not so covetous as Judas Iscariot later; were not as fickle as the crowd that followed the Lord. They did not really need bodily health - none of the disciples of Christ, except for the Apostle Paul, ever asked Him for healing from their illnesses, because the only thing that worried them in this world was whether they would reach the Kingdom of Heaven. Sometimes even this anxiety took strange forms: they wanted to be not only in the Kingdom of Heaven, but they wanted to be as close to Christ as possible in this Kingdom of Heaven. And James, and John, and even their mother, these brothers, the sons of Thunder, asked: Is it not possible, when You come into Your Kingdom, that James and John sit one on the right side, the other on the left? They desired the Kingdom of Heaven.