With these words the holy Apostle Paul invites all those who are strong in faith, science, reason, health, prosperity and other blessings, so that they help their neighbors in everything in their weaknesses and shortcomings, correct them and in everything brotherly intercede for them. Someone thinks: "I do my job, I take care of it, but what do I care about my neighbor? I go to church every holiday, every Sunday, I send my children to school, I spare no money for them for various useful books, I teach them obedience, I teach them to work and everything that is useful for life; I do not drink, I do not quarrel, I do not waste my pennies of labor, I do not go into debt; And how my neighbor lives there - what does it matter to me? Perhaps he does not go to church at all, does not fast, lives badly with his wife, does not accustom his children to church or school, drinks, likes to take advantage of other people's things, swears and fights—what does it matter to me? Will I answer for him before the Lord God? Everyone will answer for himself." "It is not good, it is not Christian to reason in this way, my brethren. If the Lord has vouchsafed you, human, to confess the holy Orthodox faith, if you honor your law and live in a Christian way, and if at the same time you see that your neighbor is breaking the law, has strayed from the straight path, then you are obliged to correct him and teach him good. Imagine that your neighbor's house is on fire. Though you are not afraid that the fire will spread to your house, yet will you not go out to extinguish the fire and say, "Let it burn"? And if the soul of a neighbor dies, and the souls of his entire family perish with it, is this misfortune not worse than a fire? Are you not obliged to see to it that these poor souls do not fall into the power of the devil and perish forever? That is why the holy Apostle Paul writes: "We must bear the infirmities of the weak, and not please ourselves." It is not out of mercy that you alone should help the weak, instruct the ignorant, correct the sinner: no, this is your duty, your holy duty!

When you see that your neighbor does not like to go to church on holidays, then go to him and say to him: "Come, neighbor, let us pray to God together!" When you see that your neighbor does not send his children to science, say to him: "It will be a sin for you, neighbor, for your children, that they grow up with you without science, they will not know how to read and write. Send them away, let them go to church and school with mine!" If you see that there is a quarrel in your neighbor's hut, that one is not inferior to the other, or, God forbid, a fight has broken out, go there, tell them a reasonable Christian word, point out with brotherly love that they are taking a grave sin upon their souls, that they are attracting the wrath of God upon themselves. If you do this, you will do a good deed: you, who are stronger than they are in faith, will help your neighbor who is weaker in faith. And if he obeys you and corrects himself, then this will be your great merit before the Lord God, and God will forgive you any of your sins for having delivered your neighbor's soul from sin, for enlightening him, for leading him to the right path. And if the Lord God has given you strength in prosperity, then with your prosperity help the weak, the poor brethren and your neighbors. This does not mean that you are obliged to distribute all your possessions to the poor, and to be left with nothing; it only means that you do not refuse to help such a neighbor who has come to need through no fault of his own, not through drunkenness, laziness and debauchery, but from unkind people or some unfortunate circumstance. Help such a person in need, if you can, lend him without interest, and God will pay you for him with such interest that you do not expect. This is what it means: the infirmities of the weak. If your neighbor gets sick, don't say, "How can I help him?" — No, you go to him, comfort him, talk to him, serve him as best you can. Trouble has come to him, his field is not ploughed, not sown, it worries him. Oh, how happy he will be when you come to him and say: "Don't be too hard, neighbor, let's be alive and well, and we'll plow, and sow your field!" When he recovers, he will not forget your service, and perhaps he will repay you with such a favor, and if he dies, oh, how pleasant it will be to your heart to think that you have provided bread for his widow and orphan children! Great will be your reward in heaven with God!

If you take care of your neighbors in this way, teach them goodness, turn them away from sin, help them in need, then you will fulfill the will of the Lord God and will rightly be called a Christian. For Christ also did not please Himself, – says the holy Apostle Paul, – but as it is written, the reproaches of those who revile you have attacked me. Christ the Savior came to our earth not to please Himself, not to rule, although He could have ruled if He wanted to, but He endured mockery and torment for all of us. Therefore, should we not follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and everywhere, in everything, show love for our neighbors? And if we were to lose something, if only to serve our neighbor in need, would we not be obliged to do so? Should we not care for the good of our neighbors with all the strength of our souls? But does it happen in our country? And first of all, do we help each other in a Christian way in the community? For the most part, it happens to us like this: I am a dark person, so be you dark. I live badly, and you live the same. And those who like to go to church are sometimes laughed at, they call him a praying mantis. But the Apostle Paul does not teach this: whosoever, he says, let him please his neighbor for edification. Everyone should try to serve your neighbor, teach him intelligence, show him a good example. And what happens here? You are walking through the field, you see: the cattle have entered the rye or wheat, trampled a whole strip, and its tired owner has fallen asleep on the boundary. His neighbor is plowing nearby, as if he does not see anything. You say to him: "Listen, my dear, why don't you drive the cattle out of the field? See what she's done!" and he answers, "It's not my cattle." "Though not yours, but all of it must be driven away." "And what should I," he said, "graze other people's cattle for hunting? Why is the master sleeping?" — This is how we know how to bear the infirmities of the infirm! Not only does he not want to do his neighbor a favor, but he also gloats that he is in trouble!

There is a sin when one rejoices in one's soul if one's neighbor has become poor, if he has fallen into debt, if he has begun to drink... Some people rejoice that when their neighbor has nothing to eat, he will take exorbitant prices from him, take away his bread on the vine for a whole year in advance, pick it around — this is love for your neighbor, this is how you help him in trouble, bear his infirmities, give him a good example! And all this, my friends, is because we know little about our Christian faith, that we only call ourselves Christians, and do not at all think of fulfilling the law of Christ! It is embarrassing to say: a Jew willingly helps a Jew; a non-Orthodox German rescues his German neighbor from trouble – and we have people worse than them, worse than any pagan who does not believe in God! It was not so in apostolic times. In the same Epistle from which we have quoted the words of the Apostle Paul, "Bear the infirmities of the infirm," he writes to the Romans that he would be glad to come to them, but does not yet have free time: "Behold," he says, "when I go to Spain, I will come to you on the way, and now I must go to Jerusalem, to serve the saints, that is, the Christians there: For it is good pleasure that Macedonia and Achaia make some kind of communion with the poor saints who dwell in Jerusalem. This means that in Macedonia and Achaia the Christians made a collection for the poor Christians living in Jerusalem, and the holy Apostle undertook to carry the collected donations to the holy city. Where are Macedonia and Achaia? These are countries that are remote from each other, the peoples are different; Greeks lived in Macedonia and Achaia, and Jews lived in Jerusalem, but all loved each other brotherly and helped each other as if they were their own. Thank God, this pure, holy Christian love has not yet completely become impoverished; and now, in days of sorrow and need, as, for example, during the famine in some places of Russia, considerable sums were collected and sent to the starving. Good people do not refuse to donate to the needs of the Orthodox faith in distant countries, as, for example, in Japan, in Siberia for the newly-baptized, and may God grant that this love never fails, for if it becomes impoverished, then faith itself will be extinguished in us! Brethren! Let us love one another in a Christian way, in love we will find our happiness here on earth, and eternal salvation in heaven! Amen.

(From Fr. John (Naumovich's) book "Science")

688. St. Sergius Day

"Remember your leaders, ... but looking at the end of their life, imitate their faith" (Heb. 13:7)

How long has it been since we brightly celebrated the 500th anniversary of the blessed repose of our venerable father Sergius? And now the goal has passed; More years will pass, hundreds, thousands of years will pass, and the memory of the righteous will remain with praise, because it is said: "The righteous shall be in eternal remembrance" (Psalm 111:6). How happy we Orthodox are that our Holy Church celebrates the memory of the saints of God! And God's saints are always close to us, but we are sometimes far from them. And so, the day dedicated to the memory of this or that saint of God comes, and he rises before our spiritual eyes as if alive: we contemplate all his spiritual perfections, we glorify God, Who glorifies those who glorified Him with their holy life, and through this, imperceptibly for ourselves, we ourselves become better, drawing closer in prayerful communion to the saints of God, and through them to God Himself... Who among us, monks, living under the grace-filled protection of our venerable father Sergius, does not bear his holy name in his grateful heart, who does not at least once a day lift up a sigh of prayer to him? But even in the monastery of monks there is not a great deal of worldly vanity, which hides from us the radiant image of our heavenly abbot, and behold, the day comes, mainly of St. Sergius: the entire Divine service is devoted to the glorification of his wondrous feats, the churches of God are filled with reverent venerations of his sacred memory; in the midst of the all-night service, his life is read, and then what a wondrous image of the great in his humility the ascetic elder appears before us in all his unearthly beauty!

Here he is, the still 20-year-old youth Bartholomew, leaving the world and going with his brother Stephen into the impassable thicket of the forest, with one cherished desire – to hide forever from the world so that the world could not find him and would completely forget about the hermit, so that he would be alone with the one God, pray unceasingly, work tirelessly and cleanse his heart of sinful passions with the help of God's grace. So, the brothers built a church, and, with the blessing of the bishop, the name of the Life-Giving Trinity is called on it. So, the elder brother leaves the younger brother and goes to the capital: he could not endure the sorrows of the wilderness life, and the young Bartholomew remains a lonely hermit in a deep, impenetrable forest. Here he accepts from the hand of a certain hegumen Mitrophan the angelic image and gives himself entirely up to monastic podvig. Is it possible to depict in a brief word this wondrous feat of his solitary sojourn in the wilderness? "Who can count his warm tears and sighs to God, his lamentations of prayer and heartfelt weeping, his vigils and sleepless nights, his long standing and prostrating himself before the Lord? Who will count his kneeling and prostrations, who will tell about his hunger and thirst, about his poverty and shortcomings in everything, about temptations from the enemy and fears in the wilderness?" — Thus says his worthy disciple, the Monk Epiphanius, the scribe of his life, about his teacher, who could better and more closely appreciate the feats of his beloved abba?

But now, by God's will, the time has come for the courageous ascetic to serve as his spiritual experience for the salvation of his neighbors. People come to him for advice and consolation, and seek guidance and instruction in the spiritual life. After all, with such a teacher you can bear everything, endure any sorrow: only open your whole heart to him with childlike simplicity, tell him what torments you, complain to him about yourself, as a child complains to a tender mother about his offender, and believe: he will sometimes say only two or three words to console you, but what wonderful, warm, grace-filled words they are! They will pour peace into your troubled soul, warm it with such love as only a mother warms her suckling child, and everything will pass away as if it were taken away by a hand, and your soul will become so quiet, clear and warm...

And so, years passed, and the number of Sergius' disciples increased. His name is reverently pronounced in all corners of the Russian land and becomes known in the Orthodox East. His word is cherished by princes and nobles, his advice is sought by the primates of the Russian land, but he, already an abbot, an old man already whitened with gray hair, still walks in clothes sewn with patches, still serves the brethren like a bought slave: he is for them a cook, and a baker, and a miller, and a woodcutter, and a carpenter, and a tailor... The more he ascends from strength to strength, succeeding in spiritual enlightenment and drawing closer to God, the more he descends into the depths of humility. Deep humility and childlike simplicity are the two beautiful qualities of his holy soul, which we see in all his actions, from his early childhood to old age. These two holy virtues constitute the main features of his moral character; they, so to speak, color all his other virtues: his gracious attitude towards all, his dove-like gentleness, all his great feats. In conjunction with spiritual reasoning, as the fruit of spiritual experience, they form in it that integral moral character, the beauty of which involuntarily attracts the human heart. When one looks more closely at the holy image of this wondrous elder of God, then the heart is overwhelmed with some unearthly sense of beauty, and the soul yearns in tenderness to fall at the feet of the saint of God! O holy head, our venerable father Sergius! And so we fall at your feet like loving children — we fall down most of all today, on your chosen and holy day, and rejoice and rejoice spiritually, for we believe that you are ever with us, and especially now from the heights of heaven you look down on us, sinners, who celebrate with you to the glory of God, and bless, and illumine us with the quiet light of your heavenly glory!

But, beloved brethren, is it only pure joy that is felt in the heart at the time when the holy image of the great ascetic of God is presented to our souls? I dare not judge others by myself. Perhaps there are not a few among you such pure souls who now rejoice with full, radiant joy for the glory of God and for the honor of the saint of God. But I think that for many sinners like me, the feeling of joy on this day is mixed with a certain feeling of sadness — not that joyless, tormenting sadness that oppresses the soul with anguish and undermines spiritual strength, but that salvific sadness with which begins sorrow according to God, the sorrow of salvific repentance, the thirst for moral purification, the sorrow of the soul for lost purity, for separation from God... One cannot help thinking: this is what our spiritual ancestors were like – the true followers of Christ's teaching! And what about us? Lord, what an abyss separates us, the carnal, from them – the spiritualized, us, the earthly slaves of sin, from them – the holy, pure, free citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem! Is it any wonder after this that in Russia various godless false teachings find followers, that love for one's neighbor is cooling and self-love is growing, that vices and lawlessness are multiplying, and heresies and apostasies from the Mother Church are spreading? And who is to blame for this, my brethren? Who but ourselves?! We do not remember our spiritual ancestors, we forget their sacred precepts, and now we ourselves become worse and worse... But the saints of God were the same people as we are, they were clothed with the same flesh, they had the same infirmities, they bore the same sorrows; This means that no one would prevent us from becoming the same as they were, if only we ourselves wished — yes, we wished with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our thoughts!

Remember your leaders, – commands the Apostle of Christ, – looking to the end of your life, imitate their faith (Heb. 13:7). In fulfillment of this apostolic commandment, today we commemorate our great teacher, St. Sergius. But not only today, but always, we must look to the end of life and imitate the faith of the saints of God. Every day the Holy Church honors the memory of one or another saint of God. Let us look more often at their wondrous images, for it is not without reason that it is said in the Scriptures: "With the monk shalt thou also be venerable, with the grace-filled thou shalt be perfumed with the fragrance of grace emanating from the garment of his soul!" Amen.

(Sermon on the Feast Day of our Venerable Father Sergius, delivered on September 25 in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius)