Metropolitan Veniamin Fedchenkov in one of his sermons on Easter remembered Columbus and his crew. Seeing a strip of land on the horizon, the weary sailors galloped like children on the deck and shouted: "Land! Like them on Easter, an Orthodox Christian is ready to dance and jump, exclaiming: "Heaven! The sky!" If you like, this is similar to the words of a famous singer: "The sky is getting closer."

In the light of the Resurrection and precisely in it (even more categorically, only in it!) one can forgive the offender, one can share not only the superfluous, but also the necessary, one can do all that the lives of the saints are full of and that is so difficult to comprehend in the consciousness of a person without grace. The light of Christmas gives hope, calls to think, read, pray. But there is no celebration in it. There is an expectation of the Cross, spitting, blows, and uncertainty about what will come after. Resurrection is an explosion. An explosion that does not hurt anyone, but pierces everyone through and points everyone upwards.

What a pity for those who think that death will come - "only meat - into the pit". Neither the reviving field, nor the trees covered with greenery, nor the butterflies coming out of the cocoon, say to man today: "And you will be resurrected." Adam's son became deaf and blind. But the tree of life is eternally green. And in thousands of simple parishes, and hundreds of convents and men's monasteries, people sincerely sing these days about the resurrection from the dead of their beloved Savior. As long as they sing, the earth's axis will not move from its place, and bored libertines continue to sluggishly enjoy life, and stupid businessmen burn all megawatts of their energy in vanity. Everything in general lives and breathes, as long as Orthodoxy sings.

Christ is Risen!

Answer, please.

241 Great Lent

Long before the birth of Christ, a clever Chinese man named Kung-tzu (Confucius in our language) said that the world was being distorted, words had lost their meaning, and it was necessary to give new names to things and concepts. Bowing our heads before the wise Chinese, we still admit today that humility is confused with an inferiority complex, courage with impudence, generosity with stupidity, and so on ad infinitum. The time of Great Lent obliges us to talk about repentance – and we, as children of the twentieth century! century, you will immediately have to justify yourself.

Repentance is not at all the announcement of one's filthy deeds and not reflection on one's own shortcomings in one's own minds and aloud. And not much else that is erroneously attributed to real repentance. In its divine services, the Church calls repentance "joyful." As, for example, in the service to the Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God there are words in one of the troparia: "Let us weep for our sins, but for the mercy of God we will rejoice." True repentance gives birth to joy: joy for the forgiveness of sins, for the fact that hope has been given to you again, and the page has been turned, and God has forgotten your untruths, and life goes on. This bright attitude to repentance either does not exist at all, or is almost non-existent. It was mistakenly confused with some kind of spiritual fanaticism, self-flagellation, where there is no scourge. The Catholics logically went further and reached the point of self-torture. And the Orthodox, without taking extreme steps, stood halfway and mixed repentance with self-abasement, anguish, sorrow, and with many things that have nothing to do with God. When Anthony spent 20 years in the wilderness, and those who knew him came to him, they saw a man (I will never forget these words) "whole in mind, sound in soul and body, initiated into the mysteries and embraced by God." This is true repentance. Like him is Moses, who at the age of 120 did not lose a single tooth, did not weaken in sight and was strong in body, like a mature man. This is repentance. The rest is boredom, whining and the quiet howl of a weak and stupid person who considers himself (think about it!) an ascetic.

Great Lent requires of all of us wholeness, that is, the gathering together of all the components of our nature: mind, will, feelings. And the one who does not eat from Monday to Friday, and the one who simply quit smoking, and the one who refused to eat sweets ("necessary" for life) – all of them are ascetics. Remembering Confucius, it must be said that we also understand the word "feat" incorrectly. For the average person, the feat is associated with rifle volleys, a sinking ship, and icy peaks. In fact, the real feat is to move oneself from the dead center, it is the ability and desire to awaken one's deadness and take a step towards the Father Who Himself runs to meet the prodigal son.

It is not for nothing that we read about Zacchaeus on the eve of the post. About a man of venerable age and respected because of his wealth, who was not ashamed to climb a tree to see Jesus. Our post is nothing more than the ridiculous attempts of a fat and middle-aged man to "climb a tree" in order to look into the eyes of the One Who came to save man.

Your muscles are flabby, your social status obliges you to certain rules. You are wise in the eyes of those who know you. And here you are, like the last boy, sweating and straining your weak body, climbing a tree. You're a laughing stock. But you don't care about that. This is fasting.

Of course, it is not food that makes a fasting person fasting. The saints knew how to eat meat in public as if it were carrots. The foundation of fasting is humility. Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) said that the Latin humilitas (humility) is associated with "humus" (fertile soil). He meant that humility is fruitful, that it is open to God as the earth is open to heaven, and to every raindrop, and to every seed that is cast into it. The earth is capable of transforming any rot into fertile soil, and it always gives birth. Such is humility. If humility does not give rise to the ability to forgive, the ability to work, the ability to give one's own, this is not humility, but the inferiority complex against which atheists, who do not know the meaning of holy words, rebel so much.

It is obvious to me that repentance is one of the steps towards achieving the state of which the Apostle Paul speaks: that the man of God may be perfect, prepared for every good work. To confuse the penitent with the melancholy, or the despondent, or simply the melancholic, is a textbook but monstrous mistake. Let every penitent remember the words of Christ about fasting: anoint your head, wash your face, that is, appear not to fasting people, as hypocrites, but to God, Who sees in secret. The penitent is joyful, strange as it may seem. And Chesterton said that it was not difficult to recognize a good man: he had a smile on his face and a pain in his heart. By the way, the procession into the narthex during the litany meant nothing else than the Church's participation in the sorrows of unbelieving humanity and prayer to God "for all and for all." So we have to repent in such a way that we do not irritate the unbeliever, and we do not seduce the believer, and we ourselves grow, and do not descend. It's hard, isn't it? And who has it easy now? – everyone standing in the bazaar will answer.