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.

Here we are celebrating Easter - the transition to another world. Throughout Bright Week, the Royal Doors are not closed as a sign that Heaven is open for every person. As a sign that every person who follows Christ will want to see where God lives, what God is, how Him, God, to understand how to feel Him, how to come to terms with Him in general, to enter into a relationship; everyone who wants it and tears himself away from his earthly life and desires only this, and neglects everything else, he will reach the Kingdom. That is why the Lord says: "If you do not hate your father, mother, wife, children, you cannot be My disciple." This does not mean that you should harbor anger towards them, do all sorts of nasty things to them. This is not what is meant, but the fact that even such holy concepts as mother, children, homeland and everything else should stand in second place in the soul of a person in comparison with the desire for the Kingdom of Heaven. And we often have the opposite, which is why we do not achieve. Therefore, when we partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, when we enter the Heavenly Kingdom, our heart does not feel this. Therefore, we do not receive healing from confession. Therefore, our body continues to suffer even after we have received the sacrament of Unction. Therefore, when we enter into a church marriage and are given the grace of God to build up a marriage, we still continue to argue, quarrel, and our discord overcomes this grace. Why do we not assimilate the grace that the Church gives us? Because we neglect it; we ourselves expel Christ and His grace from our hearts by our commitment to the world, by our love for it. We are lovers of peace, we love all worldly things, we desire only pleasure. And if we are worried about our loved ones, then we are very rarely concerned about the fact that these people do not go to the Kingdom of Heaven. We are more worried that they drink, smoke, swear, do some other things - things that bring us some annoyance. And a person who does not smoke, does not drink and is polite to us, satisfies us completely, our soul does not hurt about him. The closest example: any grandmother or great-grandmother longs for her grandson or great-grandson to be baptized. The question is why. Does she want the Kingdom of Heaven for him? No, she herself does not know what it is, and she has never aspired to it. And why is she so eager to baptize? So that the Lord protects the child, so that he has a guardian angel, so that he gets sick less, so that he is better, more obedient, so that it is easier with him. And there is nothing to do with the soul of the child. Therefore, many parents and grandparents panic if a child breaks his leg, gets hit by a car, falls ill with jaundice, measles, diphtheria or some other terrible disease. This worries them, because his body suffers, and they, being bodily people themselves, suffer for him. Although a bodily illness can lead a person to God, and I constantly encounter this in my duty. A person did not go to church for 40 years, but was diagnosed with cancer of the third degree - then, if his relatives offer: "Maybe you should call the priest?" - "Oh, come on, come on." And with avidity he begins to read the Gospel, to pray. The head gets tired, of course, and does not understand much, but a person is thirsty. You ask: "My dear, where did you go for 40 years?" - "Yes, there was no time." That is, the disease that a person has received is good for him. Well, he would have lived 80 years and died in the dark. And so he lived for 40 years, but at least in the last months he enlightened his mind and desired the Kingdom of Heaven. Because when everything hurts, there is no time for anything: whether the dishes are washed or unwashed, the wall in the house costs or a wardrobe for 35 rubles - it doesn't matter at all. What to wear, how I look, whether I have combed my hair or not, I don't have gold crowns or half of my teeth, this is no longer so exciting for a person. He is only worried about what will happen in a month, when this rupture occurs, when the soul leaves the body. He is already really thinking about it. Our life here on earth is temporary, and the Lord has so wisely arranged His Church that it constantly tells us about sin, about death, about judgment. As a reminder of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Church opens the Royal Doors for us. And each of us can enter the Kingdom of Christ, if only he wants to, if only he devotes his whole life to it, as the apostles did. That is why they became disciples of Christ. The Lord wants to make the whole world His disciples, but for people it is much more important what the program is on television today, how much money they will receive at work. For them, the relationship between relatives is more interesting. Many people care about how they look in front of others, what they think or say about them. They don't care what God thinks of them. It is important to them how the priest treats them, they try to please the priest in everything, God forbid, he frowns - then the offenses will be terrible. People strive everywhere to surround the sharp corners with cotton wool, to comfort everything and to live here on earth for a long time. A man of seventy-eight comes and says, "I'm sick." And how not to get sick? You are approaching eighty, and after eighty there are continuous illnesses and then death. No, they argue with the doctors, they say that they do not treat, they slack, that they are bad, they do not have this-and-that. But illness is a consequence of sin. What can a poor doctor do? He is the same person, the same "C" student as you, and he does not understand what is happening to you at all. Who is there to be angry with? We must be patient. The Lord sends infirmities so that we think about the transience of all earthly and bodily things. He once said: "Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and the rest will be added to you." And each time we must ask ourselves this question: do we seek the Kingdom of Heaven, do we desire to enter the house of God? Why do I go to church, what am I looking for? Why don't I want to read the Gospel every day? For example, I easily watch TV, but I read the Gospel with difficulty. Why? Because television is native, carnal, spiritual, sinful, obscene; This is characteristic of me. And the life of the Kingdom of Heaven is not characteristic of me, because I am a sinner. Therefore, I have a lot to overcome in myself. If we want the Kingdom of Heaven, we must overcome the inertia of our flesh, overcome our soulfulness, and remake our lives in a spiritual way. And whoever really wants it, of course, will strive to go to church every minute, because Christ is here. He's here among us, whether we feel it or not. And we can partake of Him, we can unite with Him. As husband and wife are united in love, so the Church is united with Christ. But only he who strives for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the Church. Because the Church, in fact, is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Many people have very big misconceptions about this. They think: if we are good people, we will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Each of us has an idea of what a good person is: modest; has his own opinion, but does not impose it on anyone; He does not offend anyone, he tries to be friends with everyone, and so on. But you can also train the dog so that it will not pester or bark at anyone, it will eat at the right time and follow all the commands: sit, lie, stand, let's go, next to you, face. Does this mean that a dog can inherit the kingdom of heaven? No, because a dog is not a spiritual being. Only the person who hungers and thirsts for it can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for only they will be satisfied. Therefore, if we do not have this hunger and thirst, we will not achieve anything, even if we go to church, confess so dejectedly, and take communion at all costs. And many will simply be horrified when death comes and the Lord does not let them into the Kingdom of Heaven: "Well, how is that? All my life I went to church - both to my own church, and to the neighboring one, where in the evening I listened to akathists. And I have the Gospel, not even one, and the Bible, and the prayer book, and the Psalter; I have all sorts of things, and I have read all this." So what? And nothing. This is all very good, but the main thing is missing. The Apostle Peter, for example, did not read the Psalter, because he was illiterate, but he became the Chief Apostle. It turns out that it is precisely in this striving for the Kingdom of Heaven, in this thirst, in this desire, even if it often cannot be supported by a person by his own life. This is how Peter said, "Lord, I will go to death after You." The Lord says, "The rooster will crow, and thrice shalt deny Me tonight." Peter simply could not calculate his strength, he was not yet spiritualized by the Holy Spirit, so he showed such weakness. A person can do something only by the grace of God. If grace be with you, you will be able to raise the dead, and direct the living to the right path, and help your neighbor. If there is no grace with you, you will not be able to do anything. How many benefactors of mankind have already declared: I know how to save the world; This is how it should be done, these should be swapped, those should be liquidated, and then everything will be all right and paradise will come to earth. No, nothing of the kind, everything only got worse. Because these people have never had the grace of God, but only their own pride. Only the grace of God creates, and man receives it from God. That is why it is called grace, a good gift. No matter how much you pray, no matter how much you bow, it is impossible to deserve it. God is a person. With whom He wills, He abides, and with whom He does not will, He will never abide with him. Therefore, our task is to become such that the Lord will want to be with us. We are sinners, yes. And the apostles were sinners, but He wanted to be with them and sent them the Holy Spirit of the Comforter. And we must understand how we differ from these people, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, James, John and the other apostles, and try to become the same, so that the Lord, seeing us, would want to be with us. And when the Lord comes to us, this will be the Kingdom of Heaven, within us. This, in fact, is the meaning of spiritual life and the meaning of our celebration of Pascha. If we learn this, we can be disciples of Christ; if we do not assimilate it, we will be like other men, and moreover we will find ourselves not only rejected from the Kingdom of God, but we will find ourselves in a much worse place than the atheists. Because they don't know anything, and we go to church, read the Holy Scriptures, we have prayer books at home, we have icons and lamps, we know what confession is, and we dare to take communion. Consequently, the demand from us is completely different. If you call yourself a gruzdem, climb into the back. If you put a cross around your neck, then you have declared your desire to be a Christian, to fulfill the commandments of God. Otherwise, what's the point? You go to church, you read spiritual books, you wear a cross on yourself, but your life contradicts every single commandment of God. Then who are you? Hypocrite. And this is a terrible thing. The Lord forgave harlots, forgave greedy tax collectors. The Lord forgave the robber, who was a murderer and, of course, a swearer, a drunkard, and an adulterer. But to the hypocrites of the Pharisees He said: "Woe to you!" and called them "the offspring of vipers." Because external piety without internal content is much worse than any murder, much worse than any drunkenness. Yes, a drunkard is socially unpleasant, lying stinking and overgrown, but he is much closer to God than many of those who go to church, have a pious appearance, an ironed handkerchief and dwell in their own pride, flattering themselves with the hope that they have a good chance of getting to heaven. Nothing of the kind! That is why the Lord said so: "Fornicators and adulterers, tax collectors, precede you in the Kingdom of Heaven." They precede, go forward, because they often have more humility, they have a true consciousness of their own sinfulness. All people are sinful, everything is absolute, and only the consciousness of one's sinfulness can cleanse a person. If a person does not understand in what he is sinful, it means that he is blinded by his own pride, he is in perdition. This is a terrible state of mind. Save us from this, Lord! We need to ask God day and night to reveal our sins, to give us spiritual sight. Only in this way will we be able to purify ourselves and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But again, on the condition that we want it. Not just that it would be nice to devote our whole lives to it. Let each of us, coming home today, think: what is my life dedicated to? When I was baptized, the priest shaved my head in the form of a cross as a sign that I was a servant of God, as a sign that I was sacrificing my life to God. Is it there? No. My life is sacrificed to my own thoughts, my ideas; my life is sacrificed to my family; I serve my own body, my comfort, and my pleasures, and God is for me insofar as I do. This is a kind of good force to which I can always turn in difficult times in my desire to receive good from Him. This is our level of religiosity. We are no different from Muslims, from people of other faiths, who do not know about the Kingdom of Heaven, because only the Church has the teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord paved this path for us there with His Cross. And if we do not understand this enough, we need to repent, enlighten our minds, start a new, different life, and not live as people live. This is very difficult, because there are few who really want the Kingdom of Heaven. And when a person is different from others, as they say, sticks out, then it is very difficult for him to live, the world hates him. That is why the Lord says: Know this, the world will hate you, but first it hated Me. The Lord says: rejoice and be glad, because when you feel hatred from the world, then it means that you have drawn near to Christ. And while your life is prosperous, know that you are far from the Kingdom of Heaven. Because only by pleasing the world, you can live safely here. It is not for nothing that all the apostles ended their lives in suffering. And most of the saints of our Church were killed, shed their blood. If we want to arrange our life here on earth, happily, then we must turn not to God, but to the devil, because the one who is friends with the world is hostile to God, so it is said in the Scriptures. And there is no other way. If Christ, our Master and Saviour, was crucified on the Cross, are we not called to the same thing? Therefore, we need to start crucifying. As the Apostle Paul said, "I was crucified to the world." One must crucify one's flesh, give it no rest, force oneself to work, and bore the Kingdom of Heaven. "Since the days of John the Baptist, the Kingdom of God has been wanting," said Christ, "and only those who use force take it away." And if you do not lift a finger for the salvation of your soul, for the sake of forcing your accursed heart to fulfill the commandments of Christ, then there is no meaning in your life, it is an empty flower. As it happens: cucumbers have flowers, but there is no ovary; The flower has bloomed and withered. That's how our life is. Yes, we will make a good hairstyle, and save money, and we will be able to buy something, and we will be respected, and we will be given orders. And then they will forget, because there is no fruit. The meaning of cultivating a vegetable garden is fruits. Potatoes are an inconspicuous flower, but they have become the main food for a huge, multi-million people. And it does not matter to us at all whether its flowers are pink or blue, large or small. It is important that inside there is something that is not even visible, what is lying there, in the mud, these tubers. It is the same in the spiritual life: it is not important how we look, how much we get, where we live, all this external is unimportant. The main thing is what is hidden inside, whether there is a thirst for the Kingdom of Heaven. If this is not the case, then everything is empty, everything is meaningless, everything will wither. This is what the Church tells us every day, and this, in fact, is what today's Gospel is about. Amen.

Sermon on Divine Freedom and the Communion of the Holy Spirit (June 3, 1990)

The Lord came to earth in order to unite man with Heaven. Adam fell away from God as a result of the divine freedom that God could not help but give him, because without it Adam could not have responded to God's love. The Lord, Who is Freedom and Love, created man free, in His image and likeness, so that man would respond to His love, so that he would be worthy of this love and live by it. Love cannot be compulsory. Many of us know this from our own experience. Those who tried to persuade unbelieving family members to go to church found that this was impossible because they did not have love for God. Taking a person by the throat, you can force him to confess and take communion, you can force him to serve molebens, even read the Holy Scriptures, but you cannot force him to love God. Love is a manifestation of freedom. But once there is freedom, it can be used for good or for evil - just as you can use your time for drunkenness, or you can use it to take out pots for the sick. Adam, our forefather, used his freedom for evil. He did not listen to God, he doubted Him. The devil put the thought into his head: is God right? And since then, every person has been doing the same from infancy. A mother and father who love their child say: don't do this, it's bad. And the child doubts whether the father is right, and does it in his own way, manifests his evil will, and thus destroys the love between himself and his father, between himself and his mother. We are familiar with all this, we have repeated the sin of Adam repeatedly, so we understand what happened to Adam. He fell away from God, fell catastrophically, because as a result of sin he became mortal, the seed of sin entered into him. And evil has increased in the world since then, and is still multiplying. In the ancient Egyptian papyrus, which is more than one thousand years old, it is said that a certain elderly man complains that today the youth has become bad. And for thousands of years we have been hearing this moan of people who are already aging, who look at the young generation. Each new generation becomes worse, more shameless, more impudent. This is quite obvious. It seems that there is nowhere to fall - but no, it turns out that you can. It turns out that you can be even angrier, meaner, even more persistent. Humanity, using its divine freedom not for good, but for evil, plunges more and more into the mire of sin. But one day, when nothing seemed to be able to save fallen humanity, a beautiful flower was born on earth. This flower, which Old Testament Israel brought as a response to God's love, was the Most Holy Virgin. She manifested humility incarnate, and therefore God (and humility is one of His main attributes) was able to incarnate from Her and come into the world as a Man in order to save man. To save from sin. It is not difficult for God to destroy all mankind and create something new. He once said to the Apostle Peter, who wanted to protect Him: "Do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will give Me more than twelve legions of angels?" The fact is that if we are all destroyed and a new Adam is created, then he may not repeat the sin of the first Adam. But who can guarantee that his son, or grandson, or great-grandson will not also use his freedom for evil? Because freedom lies in the fact that a person can always voluntarily choose whether to steal or not to steal, to yell or remain silent, to forgive or hold a grudge. There is always this free choice of a person. Therefore, nothing will change if the old humanity is destroyed and a new one is created. And so it has already happened. The Lord once left one righteous family of Noah, and the rest were all drowned in the depths of the sea, for our edification. And yet, already in the second generation, one of the sons, Ham, sinned, and rudeness, which began to be called a bad attitude towards the elders after the name of this son, began to develop further and further. Therefore, the Lord bowed down to Heaven and descended Himself. He Himself became the New Adam in order to recreate in Himself a new humanity. And out of all the multitude of people inhabiting the earth, some responded to the call of Christ - and He says thus: "I am the light of the world: walk in me, not to walk in darkness, but to have the light of life," the light of life. The majority, of course, believe that they are not sinful in anything, no worse than others. These are the dead people. But some are aware of the entire abyss of sin in which they live, and they cannot agree with this sinful life. They suffer because they do not see God; because they do not know Him. They want to know Him. To love Him, they want to be with God in full communion. They are tormented by the fact that they cannot get close enough to God to be completely immersed in the love of God. It is to them that the words of Christ are addressed. God is light, and whoever follows Him will follow the path that He has paved. The landmarks of this path are the commandments of Christ. We must study, cognize and begin to fulfill them, despite the fact that all our fallen, filthy, corrupt nature resists this. To fulfill the commandments for fallen man is very hard work. But when he is strengthened in the faith, strengthened to such an extent that he cannot think of himself outside of the commandments of Christ, then he will suddenly notice that it is not only not difficult for him to fulfill the commandments, but so easy that he simply cannot sin. No matter how much you beat him, some unclean, dirty word cannot fall from his lips. Whatever happens to him, he cannot steal. He is not capable of malice, hatred, rancor. He will never be greedy. How does this happen? By the grace of the life-giving power that God sends into the heart of man, by which He transforms him. If any person believes that Christ, the same Jesus, the Son of Mary, who walked in Galilee and Judea two thousand years ago, is not just a man, but truly the Son of God, and that His every word is really the immutable law of the universe, and, having believed, voluntarily submits to this law (despite the fact that another law, the law of sin, operating in him, resists this) and begins to live according to it, then Christ, according to His promise, will be united with him. This union takes place through Baptism. For the first time, a person is born from the mother's womb for bodily, human and, unfortunately, sinful life. And the second time he is born again in the baptismal font. The Lord has chosen water Baptism for us as a sign that a person is washed of all sins and begins a new life, that he is dedicated to God. That is why the hair on his head is cut in the form of a cross, because he devotes himself, his whole life to God, promises to serve Him with every breath, to do every deed for the glory of God. In any person who has been consciously baptized, spiritual life begins, the Spirit of Christ begins to live in him. The Christian receives the germ of this Spirit in Chrismation, the sacrament of Pentecost, which we celebrate today. His further life should be directed towards cleansing himself of all defilement. And when he begins to correct his life, begins to work on his soul, then the Holy Spirit, Whom a person received in embryo, gradually fills his whole being and heals him, heals all the sinful wounds, all the passions that rage in his heart. Through Baptism, a person becomes a partaker of Christ. He enters the Church, which is the fellowship of saints who love God; gradually grows to it, becomes a member of the Body of Christ, because the Church is the Body of Christ. Christ is the true vine, as He said of Himself, and we are wild branches. And these wild branches are grafted into the vine through Epiphany. How is the vaccination carried out? At first, the twig hurts. In order for it to take root, you need to cut off all unnecessary shoots. Therefore, every Christian who wants to be grafted into the vine of Christ, into the Church, must circumcise all the worldly things that are in him; He must leave all evil in that old life and begin a new life. And then, finally, the life-giving juice - the Lord compares it to the water of life, the grace of the Holy Spirit begins to flow from the vine into the soul of a person. The vine grafts this twig to itself, and new leaves appear on it, which were not there before, patience, prayerfulness, goodness, and faith appear. And then this twig begins to bear fruit. It brings love, joy, peace. Why does the gardener graft a branch on the trunk to admire the leaves? No, that it bears fruit. And we were all baptized once with only one purpose, so that our spiritual life would bear fruit. So that our life may be multiplied by love, meekness and humility - the most important Christian virtues. Spiritual life takes place in a person in a mysterious way. The Kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit, comes imperceptibly into the heart of man. If we look at a flower from morning to evening, we will not see how it grows. This happens very slowly. In the same way, the grace of the Holy Spirit very slowly, but fills the soul of a person, if he struggles with sin, if he constantly pulls out the weeds that constantly grow in the garden of his heart. But this struggle with sin can take place only in one case: if a person has a constant thirst for communion with God, if he neglects everything for its sake. That is why the Lord says that there should be not desire, but thirst: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink." God is the source of our life. And if there is no thirst, then you will never know any God and you will never see him as your own ears. The Lord Jesus Christ went to Heaven, sat down in the flesh at the right hand of God and sent the grace of the Holy Spirit to the small Church, consisting of 12 apostles. He impregnated her, and since then the Holy Spirit has lived in the Church. And we, having been baptized into the Church, can partake of this grace, of this source of life, of true life. Because true life is life according to the law of God. And life not according to the law of God is prison and death. Ask any person in prison: how do you live? And he will say: is this life? Life in prison is not life. And life according to sin is also not life, because a person does only what sin forces him to do, he is a complete slave of sin. If passion tells him to be irritated, he is irritated. If passion tells you to scream, he screams. If passion commands him to take what is not his, he takes. If passion inspires him to fornicate, he fornicates. He completely obeys his desires, his animal and demonic passions. And the Lord wants us to have only one passion, one thirst – love for God, a desire to partake of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is life. And in order for us to partake of the Holy Spirit, everything bestial and demonic in us must die, move away, give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to dwell in our hearts. It is to this postponement, to this annihilation of sin in us, that our will must be directed – to the thirst for God and to the hatred of sin. And if this is really in us, then we will know God, we will commune with the Holy Spirit. Then we will know what the apostles experienced on the day of Pentecost. A sea of joy poured out of them that people could not even comprehend; they could not understand where this joy came from, gushing like Niagara Falls, and, looking at the apostles, they said: they have drunk sweet wine, something is happening to them. The source of this joy is the Holy Spirit. When a person has been vouchsafed the Holy Spirit, he has an endless Paschal joy, he is already in the Kingdom of Heaven. And cut him into pieces - his bliss will not be impoverished by this in the slightest. That is why the holy martyrs, whom we glorify and love, on whose blood the Church stands, always went to death with joy. Not because death is beautiful in public, no. For their love for God, for their thirst, the Lord gave them such grace that they endured terrible torments, which no person can endure without the grace of God. Most of us live in sorrows: we grieve from people, and from our own ill-health, and from the environment, and from microbes - from everything. Why is it so hard for us, why does joy not overshadow this suffering? Because we have a very great poverty in the grace of God, and without it it is impossible to endure sorrows. The only way to get rid of suffering is to partake of the Holy Spirit. And if we still become zealous for God, if we become thirsty in our hearts, the Lord will give us to drink, because He came for this, and shed His Blood to nourish us. The only source of God's grace on earth is the Blood of Christ, which we will partake of today. There is nothing more precious than this gift. But to learn it, you need to work hard. Therefore, the more we work in order to partake of Communion in all its fullness, as far as it is possible for us, the sooner we will be filled with the grace of God. It is only necessary to remember what the Apostle Paul says: see to it that communion is not for your judgment or condemnation; Many, taking communion unworthily, often fall ill and die a sudden death. What does unworthy mean? This means without repentance, without weeping over one's sins, without a desire to correct one's life, without prayer, without fasting, without laboring over one's soul, without being aware of who one is and what one is communicating, without thinking that one is contemplating the entire Divine mystery of Communion. Although God is a merciful sufferer, Who came to save us, He is at the same time a consuming fire. And in order for this fire to burn away the evil that is in us, we need to take this evil out of our soul and carry it out, so that it burns separately from us, without burning us. Let us thank God that He, by His grace, has gathered us all here and given us an amazing, mysterious opportunity to begin a new life in the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon on the Day of All Saints Who Shone Forth in the Russian Land (June 17, 1990)

Today is the day of all saints who shone forth in the Russian land. There were not so many saints as the people who lived on our land gave anywhere else. The Gospel says: "The Sower went out to sow." The Lord sowed the word of God in all nations, and each of them reacted to it in his own way. Holiness is man's response to the call of God. God came to earth to call everyone. He said, "Many are called." We live in an age when there is not a single person left on earth, except for little children, who has not heard of Jesus Christ. The very sound of His name already gives rise to certain associations. At any rate, everybody knows that this man said of himself that he was the Son of God who came down from heaven. And everyone knows that He was crucified on the Cross. But the reaction of the human heart to this event can be completely different. Most people are not interested in this at all. They do not even bother to find out what Christ said while living on earth; what He did when He walked two thousand years ago in Palestine; how it came to pass that, though it was evident that he was a good man, he was crucified. The life of Jesus is of no interest to the majority of those who live on earth, that is, although they hear the call, they do not give an answer to it. The Lord came to everyone. Of course, He began with His people, chosen, beloved. But this people in their mass rejected Him, just as now our people in their mass have completely rejected Christ - and, by the way, for the same reason. This, apparently, is the fate of mankind in general - to reject God. But there were people who responded to this call. In what way was their response to God accomplished? In the example of the apostles, these first saints of the New Testament, we see how this happens. In the Gospel of Matthew, which we have read today, it is told how the Lord called the Apostles Andrew, Peter, James and John. And he came to the Sea of Galilee, and saw two brothers casting their nets into the sea, and said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. They immediately left their nets and followed Him. So are the sons of Zebedee. Imagine the picture - fishermen are fishing. This is the source of their existence: from this fish they eat, from this fish they dress and maintain their homes. And so He calls them - they give it up, leave it completely, forever and follow Him. And James and John even left their father, and Peter left his wife at home and began to follow Christ. Few people can do this - to give up everything for Christ's sake. Therefore, few people can be an apostle. And it is impossible for all of us to become fishers of men, apostles. It is impossible for all of us to become martyrs. This is only who will be vouchsafed, whom the Lord will choose, whom He will allow to suffer for Himself. It is impossible for all of us to become venerable, because not everyone can go to a monastery, and now there is no one to learn the spiritual life from. But the path of salvation is not closed to us. Living in the world, we can also acquire righteousness in our own measure. To do this, it is necessary to arrange this life in such a way that it is not the world that owns us, but Christ who owns us, so that His commandments govern our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds. And to the extent that we labor and are able for the sake of Christ to overcome all the worldly things that are in us, to the extent that we displace all evil and allow God's grace to work in us, to that extent we will partake of the Kingdom of Christ, of His teaching, of His love, of His grace, which He sent to earth, to His Church. Everyone in his life necessarily encounters the word of God, hears His call. It comes to us from the Gospel, and the entire world around us, with the exception of the creation of human hands, bears witness to God. Therefore, many came to God just by looking at the sky - blue or dark blue, full of stars. Only a completely wild person, contemplating the night sky, will not come to the thought of God and will not want to pray to Him. But the vanity of the world gradually steals away such good thoughts, and a person is not always ready to give God the answer that the Lord expects from him. Christ called the apostles - and they left everything and went. The more a person leaves in this life in order to follow Christ, the closer he will come to Him, the deeper he will enter into His teaching, the more beloved he will become to Him out of all the disciples. Peter once asked Christ: "We have left everything, what will we get for this?" And the Apostle Paul, another disciple of Christ, said that "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him." If a person once believed Christ that His words are not idle, but true, then he does not doubt God's promise in the least. If Christ said, then it will be so. But for this to happen, you need to fulfill the condition - to leave as much as possible in this world. And what is in this world? Lust, worldly vanity, and, of course, worldly pride. Our life largely consists of pride, vanity, arrogance, from the desire to occupy a certain place, to look like someone, to represent something. Pride guides our actions, thoughts, and feelings. We are also overwhelmed by all kinds of desires, mostly of animal origin, which pull us back there, into the animal world, into a bestial existence. And the salvation of a person from this darkness and horror in which he lives depends on what his response to God's call will be. If we want to be citizens of Heaven, fellow citizens of the saints, our own of God, then we must conquer in ourselves what is in us from the animal. And it is imperative to overcome the multiplicity of care that is characteristic of all of us. Peter, Andrew, James and John overcame this completely and became apostles. But everyone is called to salvation, each of us is given this opportunity, the question is whether we will be able to take advantage of it. Some of us will perish, some of us will be saved, some will become saints. The Lord, Who governs everything, will ask of everyone exactly as much as is given to him. And temptations, and all kinds of labors, sorrows, illnesses, sufferings the Lord will never send more than we can bear. Therefore, if for some reason you and I do not enter the assembly of the saints of the Russian land, then this will be only our fault and no one else's fault - our laziness, our dislike of Christ or the lack of fullness of this love, which would force us to work. This means that the world and all the beauty of this world turned out to be dearer to us than the word of God. It means that somewhere in the depths of our souls, secretly, maybe even without realizing it, we have made this choice. And we make this choice every day. Every day, God's providence invites us to fulfill the commandment or break it, to help our neighbor or reject him, to pray or to be lazy. And so it is in everything, in every business, at any level, on any plane of our existence. A thought has come - you can accept it, you can reject it. If you accept it, enjoy it, then you choose the world. If you reject it with anger, it means that you choose Christ. The Lord says that in order to attain the Kingdom of Heaven, one must deny oneself. We reach Christ only to the extent of self-denial. The more of this self-denial, the closer we are to Christ. And this is the law of spiritual life, because there is nothing of our own in us but sin. All that is beautiful in us is from God. He created a body for us, He gave us reason, He put into us an immortal soul, in which there is a primordial love for good and a desire for the Kingdom of Heaven. Any person has a desire for the best, it is in us from God. And ours is what we have brought into our souls, all the evil, starting with the fall of Adam and ending with the sins that we ourselves have committed. And it is possible to give Christ a place in our soul only by displacing the evil that is in us, which we have managed to accumulate in our souls. If there is some part of our conscience in us that has not yet been affected by sinful leprosy, which compels us to move towards good, then this is what we must live, this is what we need to develop and expand in ourselves, and gradually push all the darkness out of our hearts. In this way we will give freedom to the grace of God to act in our hearts, and the action of God's grace in the heart of man is holiness. Holiness is not of human origin. This is a gift of God to man for his work, for his rejection of evil, for his choice. If a person chooses God in his life, then the Lord Himself cleanses him, and saves him Himself, and fills him with Divine life. And to this fullness of Divine life, dear brothers and sisters, we are all called. If we follow in the footsteps of the apostles who began this path, and all the saints who lived before us and prayed – we know that they prayed even in our church – then we will continue this work, we will continue the radiance of God's glory in our land. And through our land, through us, this glory of God may spread further. Because you can't save yourself alone. This is how the salvation of the human soul turns out: the Lord calls, and the person responds and follows Him. This path, of course, is difficult, because sin has grown to our soul and must be torn off with blood and meat. That is why few people want to work on themselves at all - it is easier to lie in relaxation. And so few reach the Kingdom of Heaven. We must always remember that we are a new people of God, called to heavenly life, and the Lord wants to give us this heavenly life. Sometimes, it happens, sin surrounds us so that it seems that there is nothing left but darkness. But we simply forget that the Lord, Who loves us, is near, and all the holy lands of Russia are also near. And they pray for us, loving us. It is impossible to even imagine that it would be otherwise. If we, sinners, are capable of such love for them, how much more should their holy hearts love us and sympathize with us. And if we, who are already drowning, turn like Peter and exclaim: "Lord, save us, we are perishing!" - the Lord is ready to come to our aid, and our holy relatives will certainly hear our cry. Only it must come from the depths of the heart. We really need to understand the depth of our fall, all the huge difference between our lives and the lives of the saints, and burn with our hearts and strive for this righteous life. And then we will attain, because the Lord said, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." It is then, through the merging of our soul with the Spirit of God, that saturation will take place, which every person strives for and which he does not receive in worldly life. Therefore, let us try to be faithful to our God, not to allow evil to act in us, to try with all the strength of our souls, as far as we have them now, at the moment, to resist the devil. And the weakness that we naturally experience in our struggle, let us make up for by prayer, asking God for help, and it will not be long in coming. The Lord said, "My strength is made perfect in weakness." When we come to know our weakness, when we feel ourselves truly poor in spirit, when we abandon all our proud pompousness and become simple, as the fishermen-apostles were – only then will we be able to reach the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Sermon on the Day of the Dormition of the Mother of God (August 28, 1990)

The Lord came to earth in order to adopt us as sons of His Father and to give us the Kingdom. Children inherit the Father, and the Lord came down to earth to make us heirs of the Heavenly Father. This is possible only through union with Christ. He is the Son of God and the Heir, and if we become His brothers and sisters, then we too will become sons and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. Unity with Christ takes place through the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The deeper our entry into the Church, the deeper our adoption by God. But it happens gradually, because not everyone can immediately accommodate a new life. The union begins with faith; faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes from the word of God, as the Apostle Paul said. A person can go to church and not be a Christian, and even know nothing really about Christ, and never be united with Him. He may even take communion, not understanding what he is communing. And this is quite often observed. Until the word of God touches a person, he cannot be a Christian, but even if it does, this does not mean that he immediately became one. The Lord said: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it – that is, those who live by the word of God, who keep it in their hearts, those in whose lives the word of God is always active. This action occurs very imperceptibly and gradually. The Lord even once said that the Kingdom of God would not come in a noticeable way. It grows, as from a pea seed, slowly, until it grows into a large tree. So we all gathered in church. It is necessary for everyone to ask themselves the question: why did I come here, what is the purpose of my visit, what is the meaning of my faith, what do I want from God, who do I want to become? And if our goals and desires coincide with what God wants, then He will help us in this. Even if our goals are different, the Lord can help us here too. Someone complains about their health - the Lord can give relief. Someone has a difficult situation in the family or at work - if a person asks God, the All-Merciful Lord, seeing his faith, helps him. But the blood of Christ the Savior was not shed so that no one would offend us at work. It's just ridiculous. If the Apostles were offended, if the weapon pierced the soul of the Mother of God Herself, then it is clear that the Lord did not come for us to live well and prosperously here. He came to make us partakers of the Kingdom of God. But in order for the Kingdom of Heaven to enter us, and for us to reach it, we must work. Once the Apostle Paul said: the law is a guide to Christ, a teacher. In order to attain communion with the grace of God, it is necessary to follow certain rules, a certain law. There are certain stages, gradual steps, without which no spiritual life is possible. Just as without knowledge of the most elementary arithmetic - the multiplication table, the rules of addition and subtraction, there can be no question of any higher mathematics, so in spiritual life it is impossible to jump over several steps. The very initial stage, the first thing we must learn, is to be in church every Sunday. If we don't learn this, we will never learn anything. If a person does not attend church at least once a week, then there can be no question of any spiritual life at all, with the exception of special circumstances: a person serves in the army, is in the hospital, and so on. But is going to church every Sunday a spiritual life? No of course not. You can go to church every Sunday all your life and not understand anything; But even without this it is impossible. In mathematics, the following concept is used: necessary and sufficient condition. So this condition is necessary, but not sufficient. What else? You need to learn to read morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after meals. If we have not already accustomed ourselves to this, no next step can be taken. But even if we regularly, never omitting, read morning and evening prayers, before meals, after meals, for every business, after every work, can this be called a prayer? Of course not, God forbid those who think so, this is not yet a prayer, it is just reading a rule, more or less attentively. But without this necessary step, we will not be able to approach the Kingdom of Heaven. Next, you need to correct your life according to the Old Testament commandments, which were given one and a half thousand years before Christ. If we do not do this, we cannot, strictly speaking, even go to church. What are these commandments? Know God alone, do not worship other gods, honor Him. What does that mean? This means that God should be in the first place in our lives. Neither a dacha, nor a job, nor friends - nothing, but only God. As long as this is not the case, there can be no talk of any spiritual life either. Do not make for yourself an idol – this is a similar commandment, that is, nothing should hide God from us: neither a person, nor an object, nor any occupation. Remember the Sabbath day - this refers to Sunday church attendance. Do not kill, do not fornicate, do not lie, do not envy, do not steal - if we violate any of these ancient, pre-Christian commandments, then how can we become Christians? If we lie, envy, God forbid, forbid we commit fornication, we are outside the Church. Therefore, we must learn these commandments. And if a person learns the Old Testament commandments, no longer kills, steals, fornicates, lies, creates an idol for himself, goes to church every Sunday - will this be a spiritual life? No, God forbid you think so, it will only be a step towards her. A rich young man came to Jesus and said, "I have had all these things since I was a child." Still, he did not become a disciple of Christ, that is, the fulfillment of the Old Law is not enough for a Christian. And we still do not know how to make much out of it - and already dream that we will have a pure prayer and so on. This is absolutely impossible. In the spiritual life, you can only go by steps, from the simpler to the more complex, as in any business, take figure skating or architecture. Earlier, about three hundred years ago, if a person did not fast on Wednesday and Friday, not to mention, for example, not observing the Dormition Fast, he was not considered a member of the Church. One of the questions at confession was: how do you observe the fast? And for many of us, this is still difficult, we sometimes forget that the fast is going on. Is it a great sin if a person does not remember about fasting? No, there is no sin in this, it simply testifies to the fact that the life of the Church is alien to man; he is busy with some of his own affairs and is so far from the Church that he forgets about it. His own life is so fascinating that the life of the Church is of secondary interest to him. This is evidence of the imperfection of this person. Therefore, if we strive for the perfection that the Lord prescribes for us, then, of course, this defect must be eliminated. But the observance of fasting according to all the rules, according to all the rules, is not yet spiritual life. And what is spiritual life? Spiritual life does not depend on a person, it is given by God if a person observes certain conditions. These conditions are the commandments of Christ. Let us imagine that we have already learned to fulfill the Old Testament commandments, we observe the law, we observe order, order, that is, we have become pious Jews in everything. Then we need to take the next step - to learn to fulfill the commandments of Christ. We need to study the Sermon on the Mount, to see what the Lord requires of us. And He demands a new morality from us. He says: "I have not come to break the law, but to fulfill" - that is, to fill in, to pour into it a new content, even more. To pour into the skins the new, young wine of Christ's commandments. Here are completely different requirements: about love for enemies, for example, about forgiveness of offenses. And so, if a person fulfills these requirements, corrects his actions, words, thoughts and feelings, if he becomes akin to Christ in the structure of his soul, then the Lord, in His mercy, instills in him the grace of God. This indwelling of God's grace in man is spiritual life. When a person tries to do something on his own, then, of course, nothing works. That is why many of us are very surprised: what is it, I am reading and reading the rules, and all my attention is scattered, all the evil thoughts come to me, some impure thoughts besiege me. And man does not understand that he can get rid of this only by the grace of God, without it it is impossible. And the grace of God is called grace because it is a good gift from God. And how can a gift be delighted? It is impossible, because it exceeds all conceivable, possibly attainable purity of man. A gift is always a gift. And the whole point is whether the Lord as a person will want to give us this gift or not. What should we become for this? This is the task of a Christian's life: to become such that the Lord would give him this gift. The Holy Fathers noted that if a person is zealous in piety, tries with all his might to fulfill the commandments of Christ, tries to forgive, not to condemn anyone, to show love to everyone, tries to be what the Lord would like him to be, then the Lord, seeing his diligence, begins to help him in this, and helps him until the person is freed from his past, the old man. And then a new life in Christ begins for him. In this way, gradually, starting with the small and ending with the great, each achieves in his own measure, who will work as much. For each of us there is an abode in the Kingdom of Heaven; Everyone can achieve this, you just need to make a choice: what is sweeter for you? The Kingdom of Heaven, of which you do not know what it is, but choose simply by trusting in the word of God, or sin, all the sweetness and bitterness of which you have already tasted and experienced? Here are two paths, two ways of life. If a person nevertheless wants to become a Christian, then gradually, throughout his life, he climbs out of the abyss, from this stinking pit of sin in which he lives. He lays down his life in order to get out of it into the light of God. This is the first way of life. There is another: to try to live here on earth, naturally giving yourself as many pleasures as possible, because the meaning and purpose of the biological existence of the organism in general is the achievement of pleasure. To do this, people eat, drink, and so on. Unlike animals, they also have other pleasures: movies, wine, dominoes and other things that animals do not have. And everything would be fine - some would live a spiritual life, others - carnal and spiritual. But after a certain time, a very short time, a certain disorder awaits each person, and it consists in the fact that this earthly life will have to be abandoned. Leave the granddaughters with whom you are aunting; to leave the apartment that you lick; To leave the dacha, in which he had invested so much sweat, to leave everything. All your spilkins: clothes, and a savings book, well, everything - you leave everything here. They will give you very little land, put you in a single garment and bury you. And if that was the end of the matter. But no. It turns out that there is life there too. So, if a person lived only by nourishing and enjoying his body and soul, and he was so accustomed to it, addicted and loved this work, then there, in the next world, as we say, he will be very bored, so bored that this state is simply called hell - because there is nothing to do there. Nothing that he lived for, nothing of this is there. How to live? Whoever wants to visualize such a state in his mind or experience it, can do it very simply. When all the household members go on vacation, close the curtains in the room, lie down on the bed and lie in the dark for two days, doing nothing. And imagine that it will not be a billion years or a thousand billion, but forever. You are alone, your own personality alone with your own thoughts, and you can do nothing, go anywhere, hear nothing, only darkness. And a person who has striven all his life to get out of this horror, who has striven to attain spiritual life, for him this spiritual life receives its remarkable resolution after death. What he saw only with the eyes of faith, with the eyes of his soul, he begins to see with his own eyes, because the last barrier falls. A person dwells in the arms of God and lives, continues the same endless and also eternal life, but among those souls. who set spiritual life as their goal. Such ways. The one leads to horror and darkness, the other to light and eternal bliss, for what man has striven for he now at last receives in his highest development, and this development will again increase in infinity. Why do we know this? Because love has no end. If anyone has ever loved at least one person in his life, he knows that from time to time this love can only deepen and improve. The same is true of the relationship between man and God - they can only deepen and perfect in love. And this development and approach to God, this combination with Him is infinite. We have two ways of life in front of us. We have a concept of the experience of life in darkness, because we are all sinful people. And we have a very vague idea of what spiritual life is, but we can believe in Jesus Christ, Who spoke about it. And so that we would not doubt His words, He gave His life for them. For these words that He brought us, the Lord paid with His blood. And if there is an echo of them in our souls, it means that we will choose the spiritual path. Then everything that prevents us from moving along it, we will push back and displace in our lives. And the further we go, the more diligent we will be, because the older a person is, the more gray hairs he has on his head, the more he approaches the fateful moment when he will have to leave his body. And this is a very serious matter, and we need to think deeply about it. We celebrate the Dormition of the Mother of God. Here lies the One Who has attained spiritual life in perfection. This is an image for us. Why do we have such a custom - to venerate Her image? We do this as a sign that we love the path She walked. And if we are still attached to worldly life, then it is somehow impious for us to venerate Her image. How can we, being prodigal, touch chastity? How can we, being lazy, touch the diligent one? How, being unclean, can one touch the Purest and Most Honorable Cherubim and Angels? How can we dare to do that? Only if, being sinners, we still desire a spiritual life, only then can we dare to do so. And if we reject it within ourselves and strive only for carnal and spiritual pleasures, then it means that our entire imaginary religious life is sheer hypocrisy. The Lord said, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees." This is the most terrible thing, we must be extremely careful about it. And again the Lord said: "Unless your righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." If you and I, dear brothers and sisters, have learned to go to church constantly, if we have learned to fulfill all the prayer rules, to read the Holy Scriptures daily, to fast, if we have learned to behave decently, then this is still only Phariseeism, and we must surpass it. And whoever does not even know how to do this must hurry, because the days are evil and time is short. Let us follow the advice of Christ the Savior, Who said: "Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." Amen.