Finally, the winged herald of the primacy of our salvation flew up to the heavenly world, to his immortal brethren. And his annunciation was not only a word, but also, like every word of God, a deed. And God spoke, and it was so. Never did any messenger bring more joyful news to a land cursed for its alienation from God and for its union with the gloomy Satan than the radiant and wondrous Archangel Gabriel. Whose lips will not praise him, whose heart will not thank him!

Never has any spring water been such a pure mirror of the sun as the Blessed Virgin Mary was the mirror of purity. ("O purity, joy that creates the heart and transforms the soul into heaven! O purity, good acquisition, not defiled by beasts! O purity, which abides in the souls of the meek and humble, and creates these men of God! O purity, in the midst of soul and body, like a flourishing flower, and filling the whole temple with incense!" Ephraim the Syrian. About cleanliness.) And the morning dawn, which gives birth to the sun, would be ashamed before the purity of the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the Immortal Sun, Christ our Saviour. Who will not bow the knee before Her, whose lips will not cry out: "Rejoice, O Thou of Grace! Rejoice, Dawn of human salvation! Rejoice, O thou more honorable than the cherubim and more glorious than the seraphim! Glory to Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, One-in-Essence and Indivisible, now and ever, unto all times and unto the ages of ages. Amen."

Рождество Христово (I). Евангелие о Первенце

Мф., 2 зач., 1:18-25.

Тот, кто с послушанием и смирением приступит к Господу Иисусу Христу, тот никогда более не пожелает от Него разлучиться.

Начальные упражнения новобранцев войска Христова суть упражнения в послушании и смирении.

С послушания и смирения начинается новый мир, новая тварь, новое человечество. Ветхий мир попрал послушание Богу и смирение пред Богом, и тем разрушил мост между землею и небом. Духовный стройматериал для восстановление этого моста - прежде всего, послушание и смирение.

As long as Adam was rich in obedience and humility, he could hardly distinguish between his own spirit and the Spirit of God, between his own will and the will of God, between his thoughts and the thoughts of God. He could neither feel, nor will, nor think anything that was not in God and from God. Like the angels of God, so Adam stood in the immediate vicinity of God and from the immediate vicinity contemplated the Primordial source of light, wisdom and love. Living within the sun itself, he had no need to light any of his own candles. His candle inside the sun would not burn and shine.

But when Adam broke his obedience and lost his humility – and they are always lost or gained at the same time – then his direct communion with God was interrupted, the bridge was destroyed, and he fell into a terrible darkness and rotten dampness, in which he was forced to shine with his candle, nevertheless given to him by the mercy of God, when God's righteousness expelled him from Paradise. Then he not only began to feel the difference between himself and God, between his own will and the will of God, his feelings and God's feelings, his thoughts and God's thoughts, not only did he begin to feel and realize this difference, but he could scarcely, in the rare hours of enlightenment, notice his God-likeness.

Alas, into such an abyss was thrown by his disobedience and pride the one who was originally created in the image and likeness of the Holy and Divine Trinity Himself! ("In the blameless man the image of God was the source of blessedness, in the fallen man it is (only) the hope of blessedness." Alas, we are all descendants of Adam, all are low shoots from the stump of a felled cedar, which once majestically towered and ascended above all God's creatures in Paradise, low sprouts, drowned out by the tall she-wolves of coarse nature, descending like a veil between us and the Ancestral Source of immortal love.

Just look at how, as if by magic, the disobedience and pride of the progenitor of mankind immediately change the entire creation around him and he is surrounded by a whole army of disobedient and proud people!

As long as Adam was obedient to his Creator and humble before Him, all those around him breathed obedience and humility. But what an instant change of scenery! At the moment of Adam's fall, Adam is surrounded only by the disobedient. Here is the naughty Eva next to him. Here is the main bearer of disobedience and pride - the spirit of disobedience, Satan. That's all nature, naughty, rebellious and insane. Fruits, which until then melted in the mouth of man with sweetness, begin to torment him with bitterness. The grass that has spread like silk under his feet begins to scratch him with thorns. The flowers, which rejoiced when their king inhaled their fragrance, begin to clothe themselves in the armor of thorns in order to push him away from them. The beasts that caressed him like lambs begin to pounce on him with sharp fangs and eyes burning with anger. Everything occupies a rebellious and threatening position in relation to Adam. Thus the richest of all created nature felt himself the poorest. Previously clothed with the glory of Archangel, now he felt humiliated, lonely and naked; so naked that he was forced to borrow from nature clothes for his nakedness, both physical and spiritual. For his body he began to borrow the skin from animals and leaves from trees, and for his spirit he began to borrow from all things - from things! - knowledge and skills. He who had formerly drunk from the full-flowing fountain of life now had to follow the cattle, bend down in the mud, and drink from the tracks of the beasts, both physically and spiritually thirsty.

Look now at our Lord Jesus Christ and His entourage. All of them are obedience and humility itself! Archangel Gabriel, representative of angelic obedience and humility; The Virgin Mary - obedience and humility; Joseph - obedience and humility; shepherds - obedience and humility; the Magi of the East - obedience and humility; the stars of heaven - obedience and humility. Obedient storms, obedient winds, obedient earth and sun, obedient people, obedient cattle, and the grave itself is obedient. Everything is obedient to the Son of God, the New Adam, and everything humbles itself before Him, for He too is infinitely obedient to His Father and humble before Him.

It is known that along with many earthly crops that man plants and cultivates, some other herbs and plants that have not been sown or cultivated grow willingly. So it is with the virtues: if you diligently sow and cultivate obedience and humility in your soul, you will see that soon a whole bunch of other virtues will grow next to them. One of the first is simplicity, internal and external. The obedient and humble Virgin Mary is at the same time adorned with chaste simplicity. In the same way, the righteous Joseph, and the Apostles and the Evangelists. Just look at the unparalleled simplicity with which the Evangelists describe the greatest events in the history of human salvation, in the history of the universe! Can you imagine how extensively and theatrically a worldly writer would describe, for example, the resurrection of Lazarus, if he happened to become an eyewitness to this event? Or what grandiose and pompous drama would he have written about all that was going on in the soul of Joseph, an obedient, humble, and simple man, at the moment when he learned that his ward and betrothed was pregnant? And the Evangelist in today's Gospel reading describes all this in just a few simple sentences: