When I examine the holy life of our Father Peter, Metropolitan of All Russia, who was among the saints, I see that both before his consecration and after his consecration to the All-Russian pastorate, he had opponents. For a certain hegumen Gerontius wanted to steal that great dignity not by the grace of God and not by human election, but by his power-hungry arrogance.

He dared to take the bishop's vestments, utensils and pastoral staff. When Saint Peter, by the grace of God and by the concordant election of all the Russians, accepted the episcopacy and arrived from Constantinople to Russia, some, at the instigation of the enemy, did not want to recognize him and resisted him. Bishop Andrew of Tver, sharpening his tongue like a razor out of envy, spoke lawless, false and blasphemous words about the righteous, and sowed them not only with his lips, but also with his writings.

The saint of God, like a lamb without malice, meekly endured all this, and when his enemies were exposed at the conciliar trial and trial, he had mercy on them, granting them forgiveness. Considering all this, I will truly call him a lamb and a lion at the same time: a lamb for the sake of meekness, and a lion for the sake of patient generosity. Like a lion courageous in magnanimity, not taking revenge, but enduring it with meekness and not maliciously, he defeated his adversaries, and especially defeated and put to shame the common adversary of all, the all-evil devil, the teacher and chief of all evils, he conquered by abolishing his intrigues. "Behold, the lion has conquered."

As a lamb, for his meekness, he was vouchsafed, with the acceptance of many gifts from God, the Book of Life, in which he was recorded in the face of those to whom it was said: "Rejoice that your names are written in heaven" (Lk. 10:20), — St. Peter, Metropolitan of All Russia, is recorded as a meek and gentle lamb. "Behold the Lamb of God!" Speaking thus of the lamb of the meekness of the Holy Hierarch of Christ, I recall the Beatitudes pronounced in the Gospel through the mouth of Christ: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5)

— and immediately I have pity for the meek. For it seems to me that they were not bestowed by Christ in the same way as the rest: the kingdom of heaven is given to the poor, eternal consolation to the weeping, endless satisfaction to the hungry and thirsty, mercy to the merciful, the contemplation of God to the pure, the adoption of the Lord God to the peacemakers, the kingdom of heaven also to the persecuted, and to all the rest who are worthy a great reward in heaven — but to the meek only the earth: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

That is, Christ seems to say: "You beggars, go to heaven; you who weep, go and be comforted in paradise; you, hungering and thirsty, go to paradise and be satiated with the sweets of paradise; to you, merciful ones, God's mercy has been prepared at the Last Judgment; you, who are pure in heart, go and behold God; ye peacemakers, be the sons of God; you, poor exiles, go also into the kingdom of heaven, but you, meek ones, stay here, inherit the earth, and be blessed in it: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." O Merciful Lord!

All Thy servants are happy with Thee, all are blessed in heaven. Only the meek are unhappy, they alone have been granted earthly bliss by Thee. But is earthly bliss comparable to heavenly bliss!? Perhaps, Lord, he will be meek! Have mercy on them and take them to heaven, to heavenly bliss! Say: Blessed are the meek, for theirs also is the kingdom of heaven!

But our Lord will not change His holy word written in the Gospel for the sake of my obscene prayer. And the interpreters of the Divine Scripture do not command the meek to be faint-hearted, saying that the land which the Lord has prepared for the inheritance of the meek is not earthly land, but heavenly land, that is, that the Lord called the heavenly kingdom itself the land of the meek.

Thus, for example, St. Theophylact says: "Some think that here is meant the land of thought, that is, heavenly, that the earth, which the meek will inherit, is the kingdom of heaven, and this is really so." Other teachers explain these words in the same way. And I again have pity for heaven: is it not dishonorable for heaven that it is called earth?

Heaven is the throne of God, and earth is the footstool. Heaven is the nature of the incorruptible, and the earth is all filth and decay. The sky is bright, and the earth is dark. Heaven is inhabited by angels, and earth by people. No defilement will reach heaven, but the earth is full of all kinds of defilement. Why is heaven so dishonored when it is called earth? Can the footstool compare with the throne, corruption with incorruption, the dark thing with the light, people with angels, the filthy with the undefiled?

But since these words were spoken by the mouth of the Lord Himself, there can be no disgrace to heaven, for they were spoken by Him Who is able to make the earth heaven and heaven earth. He who created all things visible and invisible is free to make His footstool a throne, and to change corruption into incorruption, and darkness into light, and man into an angel, and the filthy into the undefiled, as the Almighty.

He called heaven the land of the meek, the promised land, boiling with honey of eternal sweetness and the milk of eternal nourishment, which King David also prophetically mentioned, saying: "I believe that I will see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living" (Psalm 26:13), that is, according to the interpreters of the Divine Scriptures, in heaven. For this earth, on which we temporarily live, is not the land of the living, but the land of the dying.

The land of the living is heaven, where there is no death and eternal life reigns, where all unspeakable blessings are prepared for those who love God. Be you, O heaven, the land of the meek, and you, the meek, inherit heaven as the earth: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). And therefore, turning again to the meek lamb now being celebrated, the saint of God, St. Peter, I will say: blessed is the meek St. Peter, for he inherited not the earthly, but the heavenly one. Amen.   33. Homily for the Nativity of Christ (

"I see a strange mystery and a most glorious one: heaven is a cave, the Throne of the Cherubim is the Virgin")   God ceased to be hidden from people. All the mysterious things of Holy Scripture became clear. This is not surprising, for He appeared among people: "He appeared on earth, and dwelt with men" (Bar. 3:38), and among people, what can be hidden? Nothing is hidden. As long as God dwelt in heaven, as long as He rested in His omnipotence, Who sat in glory on the Divine Throne, until then no one knew His secrets, His mysteries, nor did even His closest holy Angels, who always stand before Him: "From eternity concealed even by the Angel unknown mystery."