And perhaps he will shudder

For a moment, for a moment...

And when we consecrate a bell, we have this in mind. We ask to give this bell not only a musical sound (it can be created from anything if you know how to do it), but we ask you to let God's blessing fall on this bell so that its sound – simple, like all sounds, it will not sound differently from another bell created without prayer, without the purpose of renewing and reviving souls – so that its sound will reach the human soul and that this soul will wake up. So, you see, it is not only a question of sanctifying matter, waters, oil, bread, wine, and so on, but that everything can be offered to God as a gift from us, accepted by God, and that God pour, include in this substance the Divine transforming power. It seems to me that this is central to our understanding of both Christ and the Incarnation, and the cosmic, that is, universal, all-encompassing meaning of the Incarnation of Christ.

This also applies to the word, for not only does the bell ring and renew souls, but the human word resounds and renews souls or kills souls. If the word is dead, it kills; if it is alive, it can reach the depths of man and there awaken the possibility of eternal life. You probably remember that place in the Gospel of John, when what Christ said confused the people around Him, and people departed from Him. The Savior turns to His disciples and says: "Will ye also depart from me? And Peter answers for others: Where shall we go? With Thee are the words of eternal life (John 6:26-29). The point is not that He knows eternal life in such a way that He describes it in such a way that the disciples are eager to enter it. If we read the Gospel, we will see that Christ nowhere specifically speaks about eternal life, in the sense that He does not describe it, does not present before us a picture of eternity or hell or heaven. No, but the very words of Christ were such that when He spoke to people, His words reached the depths of man, where the possibility of eternal life rests, and, like a spark falling on a dry tree, eternal life lit up in man. I think it is very important to imagine this.

This applies not only to Christ, whose word certainly came more powerfully than any other, but also to those great teachers and preachers who transformed the lives of others by their words. Both sound is substantial, and light is substantial. Everything material and material (so great that we cannot even imagine its dimensions, and so small that we cannot even grasp it with an instrument) precisely because man was created from the earth, that is, belongs to matter in his flesh - everything is embraced by Christ, included in Christ. And therefore, when we are told that the calling of man is to go into the depths of God, to become related to Him in such a way as to be one with God and through this to transform his corporeality, and in the process to transform the whole world around him, these are not words, but reality, this is our specific calling, what is given to us as a task.

But why are we so unsuccessful? It seems to me that it is worth looking into the Holy Scriptures and asking yourself: what happened? (Of course, I will speak fragmentarily, because I cannot develop the topic now simply because of lack of time.)

When man was created, he was given the opportunity to enjoy all the fruits of paradise, but he did not depend on these fruits for his existence. As Christ said to the devil when He was tempted by him in the wilderness: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God" (Luke 4:4). Man lived, of course, not by the words of God, but by the creative Word of God and his communion with God. At the moment of his falling away from God, this is what happened. Firstly, there was a division between man and man. When Eve was created from Adam, they looked at each other, and Adam said, "This is flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone" (Gen. 2:23). That is, he saw himself in her, but no longer closed in on himself, but as if in front of himself; he saw in it not his reflection, but its own reality. And so does Eve. And they were united. Sin not only separated them, but also shattered the integrity of man's relations with the entire surrounding world. And now, when man has broken away from God, has lost the ability to live only by God's word, God gives him the opportunity and the task: the opportunity to exist by the fact that he will receive a certain part of his life from the fruits of the earth, and the task of cultivating this land. Without it, he will die - he can no longer live by God alone. It is as if man is rooted both in God, Whom he has not completely lost, and in the earth, in which he has sunk with roots, which he should not have done, because his calling was to lead this land to God, to be, as it were, a leader. We read in the Bible that man was told to possess the earth, and we constantly interpret this word in the sense of having power over it, having dominion over it. To possess does not necessarily mean this. You probably remember again from the Gospel the passage where Christ says: the rulers of the earth rule over their subordinates; let it not be so with you: let the first of you be a servant of all (Mark 10:42-44). This was man's calling: to be a servant; not in some humiliating sense, but to be the one who serves all creation in its ascent to God and its gradual rooting in God and in eternal life.

And then another moment comes. If you read carefully the story of the generations from the fall of Adam to the Flood, you will notice that the number of years of life of the persons mentioned is decreasing. In another passage of Holy Scripture (I cannot quote it exactly) it is said that after the Fall, death gradually set in, that death gradually began to take possession of man, or rather humanity, more and more, because mankind moved further and further away from unity with God and plunged deeper and deeper into creation, which in itself cannot give eternal life or even prolonged earthly life. Two exceptions, however, are in this series. One is Methuselah, who lived longer than all his ancestors and descendants; it is said of him that he was a friend of God and lived for so many years. Another is Enoch, who, because he was a friend of God, died young, according to the biblical story: only three hundred and something years old... For us, of course, this is not youth, but compared to others, he was young. But the longevity of the one and the early death of the other were due to the fact that both were more united with God than anyone else. God needed one to live, and God needed another to come to Him.

And then the flood comes, and there is still a place in the text that you can think about. People moved further and further away from God until the moment when God, looking at them, said: "These people have become flesh" (Gen. 6:3). There was no spirituality left in them, and the flood came, death came upon them. And after the flood, the Lord says for the first time: now all living creatures are given to you for food. They will serve you as food, and you will be their terror (Gen. 9:2-3). It's very scary. It is frightening to imagine that man, who was called upon to lead every creature along the path to transfiguration, to the fullness of life, has reached the point where he can no longer soar to God and is forced to obtain his food by killing those whom he was supposed to lead to perfection. Here, as it were, the circle of tragedy closes. We are in this circle, we are still incapable of living only eternal life and the word of God, although the saints to a large extent returned to God's original plan for man. The saints point out to us that we must gradually free ourselves from the need to eat the flesh of animals through prayer and spiritual podvig, to switch only to vegetable food, and, going into God more and more, to need it less and less. There were saints who lived only by communing the Holy Mysteries once a week.

This is the kind of world we live in, this is what we are called to, this was the given. This is our Orthodox idea of what the world is like and how God is connected with this world: not only as the Creator, Who simply creates and remains a stranger to His creation. Even the artist does not remain a stranger to what he creates; Anyone can recognize the hand of the artist or his seal on his work. Here we are talking about something else. God does not simply create and let the creature live, He remains connected with it and calls it to Himself so that it may grow to the full measure of the given possibilities: from innocence to holiness, from purity to transfiguration. This is the idea that we have in the Orthodox Church about the created world, about the relationship of God with man and with all creation without exception, and about the role of man. Then, from the point of view of the Orthodox Church, the question of our role in what we are doing with the land now becomes clear. The question is not "what we do to the earth will destroy us"; But: "What we do to the earth is a violation of our human calling." We destroy ourselves and we close the way for other creatures to a transfigured life.

Fall as a loss of integrity.