And so, let us celebrate not magnificently, but divinely, not peacefully, but peacefully, not our feast, but the feast of Him Who became ours, or rather, the feast of our Lord, not the feast of infirmity, but the feast of healing, not the feast of creation, but the feast of recreation. How can this be fulfilled? Let us not crown the vestibules of houses, compose faces, decorate the streets, saturate the eye, resound the ear with pipes, unanimate the sense of smell, defile the taste, comfort the touch — these are the short paths to vice, these gates of sin. Let us not be like women, neither by soft and waving garments, whose all grace is useless, nor by the play of stones, nor by the glitter of gold, nor by the artifice of coloring, which makes natural beauty suspicious and invented to desecrate the image of God. Let us not indulge in feasting and drunkenness, with which, as I know, voluptuousness and debauchery are associated (Rom. 13:13), for the lessons of bad teachers are bad, or, rather, from unsuitable seeds and fields are worthless. Let us not cover high couches with tree branches, arranging sumptuous meals to please the belly, let us not highly appreciate the fragrance of wines, chef's spices, and the great value of incense. Let neither the land nor the sea bring us a gift of expensive mud - so I have learned to call luxury goods! Let us not try to outdo one another in intemperance (and everything that is superfluous and beyond need, in my opinion, is intemperance), especially when others, created from the same dust and composition with us, hunger and endure want. On the contrary, let us leave all this to the pagans, pagan pomp and pagan celebrations. They also call gods those who delight in fat, and in accordance with this they serve the deity with gluttony, as cunning inventors, priests, and worshippers of evil demons. But if we who worship the Word should enjoy anything, let us enjoy the word and God's law, and the stories about other things, as well as about the causes of the present celebration, so that our pleasure may be our own and not alien to Him Who created us.

Or, if you like, I, who am now your master of the feast, will offer you, the good partakers of the feast, a word about it, as abundantly and generously as I can, so that you may know how a stranger can treat the natural inhabitants, the peasant can treat the city dwellers, the unfamiliar with luxury can treat the luxurious, the poor and homeless can treat the famous in abundance. I will begin with this: those who wish to enjoy what is offered, let them purify their minds, and their ears, and their hearts, because I have the word of God and God, so that they may go out of here, having really enjoyed something not in vain. The word itself will be very full and at the same time very brief, so that it will not grieve you with scarcity, nor will it bore you with excess.

God has always been, is, and will be, or, rather, always is, for the words were and will be signified by the divisions of our time and are inherent in the transitory nature, and the Eternal is always. And by this name He calls Himself, conversing with Moses on the mountain, because He concentrates in Himself the whole being, which has not begun and will not cease. As a sea of essence, indefinable and infinite, extending beyond all conception of time and nature, by the mind alone (and that is very vague and insufficient, not in the reasoning of what is in Himself, but in the reasoning of that which is around Him), through the sketching of certain outlines, He is shaded into a single form of reality, which flees before it is caught, and he who eludes before he is conceived, embracing with radiance the dominion in us, if it is purified, as the swiftness of flying lightning illuminates the eye with radiance. And this, it seems to me, in order to attract to Himself those who are comprehensible (for the utterly incomprehensible is hopeless and inaccessible), and to amaze the incomprehensible, and through wonder to arouse a greater desire, and through the desire to purify, and through purification to make them Godlike; and when we become such, we can converse as with eternal ones (the word dares to utter something bold) — to converse with God, Who has entered into union with the gods and has been known by them, as much as He knows those whom He knows (1 Cor. 13:12).

Thus, the Divinity is infinite and incomprehensible. In Him this one thing is perfectly comprehensible – His infinity; although some consider it an attribute of nature to be either completely incomprehensible or completely comprehensible. But let us examine what constitutes the essence of simple nature; for simplicity does not yet constitute his nature, just as in complex beings complexity alone does not constitute nature. Reason, considering the infinite in two respects, in relation to the beginning and in relation to the end (for the infinite extends beyond the beginning and the end, and is not contained between them)

But what for us is time, measured by the course of the sun, so for the eternals is eternity, something extended with eternal beings, and as it were a certain temporal motion and distance.

Let our curiosity about God now be limited to this, because there is no more time to expand, and the subject of my speech is not theology, but God's economy. And when I call God, I mean the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, just as we do not divide the Godhead beyond this number of Persons, so as not to introduce a multitude of gods, so as not to limit it to a smaller number, so that we are not condemned for the poverty of the Godhead, when we fall either into Judaism, defending one-man rule, or into paganism, defending plurality. In both cases, evil is equal, although from opposite causes. Such is the Holy of Holies, which is hidden from the Seraphim themselves, and is glorified by the three Holy Things, which converge into one Lordship and Divinity, about which another person was beautifully and very highly inquisitive before us.

But since it was not enough for Goodness to exercise only in the contemplation of Itself, but it was necessary that the good should be poured out, go further and further, so that the number of those who were beneficent should be as great as possible (for this is the property of the highest Goodness), then God invents, first, angelic and heavenly powers. And thought became a deed that is filled with the Word and done by the Spirit. Thus came the second Lights, the servants of the First Lightness, whether by them we understand either rational spirits, or as it were an immaterial and incorporeal fire, or some other nature that is closest to the above. I would like to say that they are immovable to evil and have only one movement towards good, as being around God and directly illumined by God (for the earthly enjoys secondary illumination); but to recognize and call them not immovable, but difficult to move, the angel urges me because of his brightness, and because of his exaltation he has become and is called darkness, with the apostate forces subordinate to him, which, through their separation from good, have become the perpetrators of evil and draw us into something else.

In the same way, for such reasons, God created the intelligent world, as far as I can be curious about it, weighing the great things with a small mind. Since the first creatures were noble to Him, He invents another world, material and visible; and this is the harmonious composition of heaven, earth, and that which is between them, marvellous in the beautiful qualities of each thing, and still more worthy of wonder in the harmony and harmony of the whole, in which the one to the other and all to everything is in a beautiful relation, serving to the fullness of the one world. And by this God showed that He is able to create not only a nature that is akin to Himself, but also completely alien to Him. Natures that are clever and comprehended by the intellect alone are akin to the Divinity, but creatures subject to the senses are completely alien, and of the latter creatures that are completely inanimate and immovable are still further removed from the Divine nature.

But what do we care about that? Perhaps some overzealous lover of holidays will say. Drive the horse to the goal — be curious about what belongs to the holiday, and why we have gathered today. "I will do so, although I have begun somewhat distantly, to which I am compelled by diligence and word.

Thus the mind and the senses, so different from each other, have become within their limits and have expressed the greatness of the Founding Word, as the silent guardians and the first preachers of splendour. But there was not yet a mixture of mind and feeling, a combination of the opposite—this experience of the highest Wisdom, this generosity in the formation of natures; and not all the riches of Goodness have yet been discovered. Wishing to show this, the Skillful Word creates a living being, in which the two are brought into unity, that is, the invisible and the visible nature; creates, I say, man, and taking a body from the already created matter, and putting life into Himself (which in the word of God is known under the name of the rational soul and the image of God), He creates, as it were, a second world, great in the small; He places on earth another angel, a worshipper composed of different natures, a spectator of the visible creation, a witness of the creature contemplated, a king over it. that on earth, subject to the heavenly kingdom, earthly and heavenly, temporal and immortal, visible and contemplated, the angel who occupies the middle ground between greatness and baseness, one and the same is spirit and flesh — spirit for grace's sake, flesh for exaltation; the spirit to abide and glorify the Benefactor; the flesh, in order to suffer and, in suffering, to remember and learn how endowed he is with greatness; creates a living being, here prepared and transmigrated to another world, and (which is the end of the mystery) through striving for God, attaining deification. For the light of truth, which is moderate here, serves for me to see and bear the brightness of God, worthy of Him who binds and looses, and again brings together in the most excellent way.

This man, having honored him with freedom, so that the good should belong no less to him who chooses than to him who planted its seeds, God made in paradise (whatever that paradise meant) the creator of immortal plants, perhaps of divine thoughts, both simple and more perfect; He made him naked in simplicity and artless life, without any covering or enclosure, for such was the first-created to be. It also gives the law for the exercise of freedom. The law was a commandment: what plants he should use and what plant he should not touch. And the last was the tree of knowledge, and it was not planted maliciously, and it was not forbidden out of envy (let not the God-fighters open their mouths, and let them not imitate the serpent!); on the contrary, it was good for those who used it at the right time (because, according to my contemplation, this tree was contemplation, which can be safely approached only by those who have gained experience), but not good for the simple, even for those who are immoderate in their desire; just as perfect food is not good for the weak and those who require milk.

When, because of the envy of the devil and the deception of the woman, to which she herself was subjected as the weakest, and which she produced as skilful in persuasion (O my weakness! for the weakness of the progenitor is also my own), the man forgot the commandment given to him, and was overcome by bitter taste: then through sin he becomes an outcast, being removed at the same time from the tree of life and from paradise, and from God; he puts on leather garments (perhaps in the coarsest, mortal and opposing flesh), for the first time he knows his own shame and hides himself from God. However, even here something acquires, namely death, in the suppression of sin, so that evil does not become immortal. Thus, the punishment itself is made by philanthropy. For this, as I am sure, is what God chastises.

But in order to prevent the many sins that grew from the root of the damage from various causes and at different times, man was admonished in many ways: by the word, the Law, the Prophets, by blessings, threats, punishments, floods, fires, wars, victories, defeats, signs of heaven, signs in the air, on land, at sea, unexpected upheavals in the fate of people, cities, nations (all this was aimed at making amends for the damage); finally, a powerful remedy was needed, because of the strongest ailments: murder, adultery, perjury, man-infraction, and this last and first of all evils – idolatry and worship of the creature instead of the Creator. Since all this required the strongest method, the strongest one is given. And it was as follows: the very Word of God, eternal, invisible, incomprehensible, incorporeal, beginning from the beginning, light from light. The source of life and immortality, the imprint of the primordial Beauty, the intolerable seal, the unchangeable image, the definition and word of the Father, comes to His image, bears flesh for the sake of the flesh, unites with the rational soul for the sake of my soul, purifying like with like; is made a man in everything except sin. Though the Virgin is pregnant, in whom soul and body are purified before the Spirit (for it was necessary to honor birth and prefer chastity); yet he who came into being is God with that which was received from Him, one of the two opposites, flesh and Spirit, of which the one deified, and the other deified.

O new confusion! O wondrous dissolution! The Eternal begins to exist, the Uncreated is created, the Incomprehensible is embraced through the rational soul, mediating between the Divinity and the coarse flesh, the Rich One is poor — poor to my flesh, that I may be enriched by His Divinity, the filled is exhausted — is exhausted for a short time in His glory, that I may be a partaker of His fullness, What riches of goodness! What is this sacrament about me? I received the image of God and did not preserve Him, He takes on my flesh in order to save the image and immortalize the flesh. He enters into a second communion with us, which is much more wonderful than the first, since he then gave us the best, and now he receives the worst; but this is more godly than the first, it is higher for those who have understanding!