It is no accident that the most important thing in the life of the Holy Church is Her center, through which we become partakers of the grace of God, we call T A I N S T V A M I.

We ourselves, with our created minds, could not comprehend this mystery of the Church. But the Lord, in His mercy, gradually reveals it to those who live in the Sacraments, who fall down to this source of grace and drink its living water.

There are many mysteries in the life of the Church, but one of them is constantly revealed to the faithful. We enter into communion with her, and not only when we receive grace-filled gifts through the Sacraments, but whenever we are in church and participate in divine services.

However, for many of us, believers, this mystery continues to remain closed. In order to truly come into contact with it, we need to be not mere listeners and spectators of what is happening in church, but to enter into the experience of those who were the creators of the divine services and imprinted it in the prayers and hymns they composed, beginning with the time of the Apostles, through the martyrs and monks, and ending with the ascetics of our time.

The creators of the divine services, in full agreement with all the fathers and teachers of the Church, tell us that man was created for eternal life, that the true element, in which alone his soul can live, is eternity.

When we bury our departed and pray for the repose of their souls, we ask the Lord to grant them "eternal memory." But this prayer can also apply to us who are still living on earth, because we also need the Lord to have us in His eternal memory: after all, the goal of our life is communion with eternity. Therefore, the best and most valuable wish of the Church is the wish of eternal memory.

And we constantly forget about it. Burdened with worldly cares and overshadowed by the temporal circumstances of our life, we forget about what we were created for, we forget about eternity, in which only that which was created by the Lord – VIRTUE – lives.

Everything else is swept away and thrown into the fire — into outer darkness. It only seems to us that it exists, but in fact, as one holy father says: "In the beginning there was no evil, because even now it is not among the saints, and for them it does not exist at all." (St. Athanasius the Great, "Homily on the Gentiles" – 2, Works, Part 1, p. 127).

Truly, there exists only life in God and that which follows the path of acquiring the Kingdom of God in us. St. The Fathers tell us that man is created in the Image and Likeness of God, that he is the crown of nature and the king of all visible creation, and, at the same time, the co-mystery of God's grace. They teach that man is connected with all earthly creation by his body, because it is the Lord who created the body "with a finger taken from the earth" (Genesis 2:6), and with his soul he is united with the heavenly angelic world. Man stands on the verge of two worlds – earthly and heavenly. "In his creation," says Gregory the Theologian, "the artistic word creates a living being, in which invisible and visible nature are brought into unity; creates, taking a body from the already created matter and putting life into Himself, He sets up on earth another Angel, composed of different natures, a spectator of the visible creation, a mystery of the contemplative creation" (Homily 38 "On the Epiphany or the Nativity of the Saviour," Creations, Part III, pp. 199-200).

But created in the Image of God and placed by the Lord on the verge of two worlds, man did not fulfill his destiny: he sinned, falling away from God, and through him the entire visible world, of which he is the crown, began to depart from the Lord. Then the Son of God appeared on earth, Who by His death abolished death and by His Resurrection opened to us the way to eternal life. He has granted us eternal memory, and not only to us, who believe in Him, but also to all visible creation.

Therefore, the task of man, cleansing his soul of sin, is to raise and spiritualize also the substance from which his body is created, making it a worthy abode of the immortal soul. St. The Fathers say that on the day of the last Resurrection, not only our souls will appear before the Lord, but also our resurrected bodies. And in this earthly life, in his ascent to God, man can only follow the path that is shown to him by the Lord, Who has placed him on the verge of two worlds. Only in communion with these two worlds and together with them can man serve God here on earth. The Holy Church constantly reminds us of this in its divine services.

Recently, we celebrated a New Year's service. On this day we brought praise to the Lord not only from ourselves, but also from the whole world, visible and invisible, with which we are united in body and soul.

This is clearly stated in the canon of this day: "All Thy works, O Lord, the heavens and the earth, the light and the sea, the waters and all the fountains, the sun and the moon and the darkness, the stars and the fire, men and cattle with the angels praise Thee" (Service on September 1, canon of the indiction, ode 9).

Whoever believes that these words correspond to reality and that in divine services we truly unite with both worlds, understands what a great mystery is contained in Orthodox worship.