Sunday All-Night Vigil. Commemoration of the Monk Bessarion of Egypt

Today we read the Sunday Gospel of Mark. When the Lord appeared to the eleven disciples reclining at the supper, He began to reproach them for not believing those who had seen Him risen. Why couldn't they believe? The Lord indicated: because of hardness of heart.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." In what does this mercy consist, in what is this mercy of God poured out? In the fact that the Lord gives man the grace of the Holy Spirit, which cleanses him, saves him from sin. This salvation from sin is, in fact, pardon, because sin leads to spiritual death. And if a person is cleansed from sin by God Himself, then it means that he has been pardoned, or one can say saved, or he has been granted eternal life. An obstacle to receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit is hardness of heart, because a hard heart cannot receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. And a hard-hearted person, of course, cannot believe. This is absolutely impossible.

Today is the memory of St. Bessarion of Egypt. He was a believer, and you and I are believers, but our faith is different from his. For example, he could walk on water, he cast out demons, he worked many miracles. And why can't we work such miracles? If you compare our life and his, it becomes clear. From his youth, Vissarion was looking for the Kingdom of Heaven, looking for people who knew what it was. He found them in the Egyptian desert (he himself was an Egyptian by birth), studied with them, watched how they lived, and lived in the same way: he ate once a week, slept only sitting or standing, and performed many other feats. Often he fasted for forty days, and once he was seen standing at prayer for forty days and nights without sleep or food.

It seems to us that these are some kind of fairy tales, miracles - just as the apostles, when Mary Magdalene said that she had seen the risen Lord, began to doubt. The fact is that our heart has never experienced anything like this, we do not have such an experience, and there is no true trust either. Trust is a property of a child's soul, open, straightforward, and we have a cunning soul, twisted through and through, we lie not only to others, but even to ourselves, not to mention God. We are all trying to hide somewhere, to find some loopholes for ourselves, that is, we live dishonestly before God. Therefore, what gifts can we talk about when we are not able to live directly and purely before God? This, in fact, is where all our troubles come from. Of course, the Lord knows this and tries to correct our lives, tries to put us in certain circumstances in which our life path can be straightened.

People who aspire to God, like Bessarion of Egypt or Mary Magdalene, are few now, so the Lord does not reveal Himself to us in all its fullness. But the Lord is the same, and the faith is the same, and the grace is the same. The Church is filled with the same gifts as two thousand years ago, only we cannot assimilate this, it is difficult for us, because we do not have the most important thing - the desire to fulfill the will of God. We do not have a deep, wholeheartedly desire for the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord said that only "those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" will be satisfied. Not just like that: well, it would be nice, but you need to wish with your whole life. But we, unfortunately, on the contrary, strongly desire sin, we want to deviate from God's commandments, we want only every kind of rest, comfort, and we do not want to work spiritually, bodily, spiritually – there is no desire for this grace-filled labor. Because if a person willed, he would do it, and if he does not want to, then he does not do it.

We are all terribly busy, each of us has thousands, millions of things to do, and we are very willing to do them. And the most important thing is the salvation of our own soul - in our pen, in abandonment, we always strive to do only what we want. Our soul is not directed towards the Kingdom of Heaven, we have no will for the Kingdom of Heaven, and because of this our heart is closed to the grace of God, it has become hard. Although we are mostly sentimental people, we can willingly sympathize on the spiritual plane; When we hear about someone's misfortune, our heart shrinks, but it is already difficult for us to take a step towards someone, it is already difficult for us, we are incapable of such a feat.

And how to soften the heart? Only by constant exercise. Let's take a piece of plasticine - it is tough. But if we start crumpling it, it becomes soft. So it is with the heart: it must be constantly exercised in virtue. And although virtue is a property, it is acquired by doing - that is why it is called "virtue-action". For example, how to acquire the virtue of prayer? You need to pray constantly. And how can one turn from a dry and selfish person into kind and compassionate? We must try to show love to our neighbor, to anyone and everyone, all the time. This is how to exercise your heart all the time, to soften.

Usually we forgive ourselves everything, we do not want to repent of our sins and love even them, we have grown together with them, we cherish them, we do not want to leave them. Well, how to get rid of it? To do this, one must constantly teach one's heart courage, constantly try to overcome sin, constantly not allow it to dominate oneself, remembering the Kingdom of Heaven – that only in this way, constantly striving towards it, can one soften one's heart. And if our heart is softened, we can be closer to God. If we see God closer, then our faith will grow. If our faith increases, we will be able to do more works of faith. The more a person believes, the more he can do. Why could Bessarion of Egypt walk on water? Because he had faith. For example, Peter – he had the strongest faith of all the apostles, such that, even though he did not fully receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, when the Lord said to him: "Walk on the water," he believed and immediately went. True, it was not enough for much, he soon doubted and began to drown, but still he was able to take a few steps.

Of course, the purpose of the Christian life is not to walk on water. Spiritual life is not a circus: I can not sleep, I can not eat. Although bodily feats delight us, because they speak of man's courage, of his striving towards God, this is not the goal. John Climacus, for example, always fasted very moderately and was not famous for any special bodily feats. Demetrius of Rostov did not sail on any waters. And Elder Silouan, who is now glorified as a saint, also did not walk on the waters. He lived on Athos, prayed and never bathed at all, because on Athos the custom is as follows: monks do not bathe.

The purpose of spiritual life is not to walk on water, this is already a consequence. The goal is to draw closer to God, to live one life with Him. When a person is close to God, he feels the will of God, he is at one with God, he always hears God. In the Bible there are such words: "And the Lord said to Abraham" - and then there is a direct speech. That is, Abraham heard what God said to him, because his life was completely in harmony with the will of God. Of course, this voice of God does not come to man like a thunderbolt from heaven, out of some cloud, no, the voice of God is heard within man. How can we be able to act according to the will of God?

For this purpose the commandments of God are given, to teach us to hear the will of God. And we need to delve into, understand, and realize what God's commandment is. After all, this is the voice of God to us. And if we believe that the Holy Scriptures are true and that what the Lord said is true, and since it is true, it means that we must act in this way, without conforming to any circumstances: if the Lord wants it so, then we should act in this way, then when the Lord sees that we strive with all our might to live exactly as He wants, then He will govern us in our lives. Through our conscience, He will always tell us what to do at this or that moment, in this or that case. And no matter how fantastic the will of God may seem, man will always fulfill it. Let us remember Abraham: he had no children for a long time, and he was already in despair, because he was a very old man. And the Lord said to him, "You will have a child, you will make a great offspring, a great nation will come out," and Abraham did not doubt: if the Lord said that it would be so, then it would be. And indeed, a son was born. But then the Lord says: go, offer this only son to Me as a sacrifice - that is, make a fire, take a knife, kill him and burn him, because this is the form in which sacrifices were offered to God. And Abraham doubted for a second that God was wrong? Finally, in his old age, he gave a son, this greatest miracle happened - and suddenly he said: go and kill him. No, Abraham did not doubt at all, took a bundle of wood, took a knife, went to the mountain, built a fire, put his son on this fire and was ready to make a sacrifice - and then the Lord stopped him. This is how the Lord tested his faith.

And although Abraham was not a righteous man from our point of view, there were very unchristian actions in his life: he was often faint-hearted, and cowardly, and did a lot in life according to Christian concepts of sin, because Christianity is the highest morality - but God imputed to him this faith that he had, as righteousness. Because his faith was simply amazing, almost no one living on earth had such a faith, he had this Christian virtue in the highest degree. That is why the Lord made Abraham, the fathers of all believers. And our faith is weak. Why? From our hardness of heart, because we are far from God. The closer a person is to God, the more faith he has, the more works of faith he can do. The farther from God, the more unfaithful he is.