“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Fighting the tree of sin

Key Verse 3:2

Today's passage tells how John the Baptist prepared the way. John the Baptist prepared the hearts of the people to receive the Messiah. How did he prepare this path? I pray that as we study today's word, we will repent, accept Jesus, and have the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts. I also pray that we will fulfill the mission entrusted to us by God and bring many people to the Lord, as John the Baptist did.

I. John the Baptist Prepares the Way of the Lord (1-12)

Look at the 1st verse: “In those days John the Baptist comes and preaches in the wilderness of Judea”. Between the events of the 2nd and 3rd chapters there is a difference of 30 years. This was the time when Jesus ended His private life and began the missionary life. It was the time when the dark night passed and the sunny day came. It was in those days that John the Baptist came and preached in the wilderness of Judea. The Judean Desert is a wild place on both sides of the Jordan River. The divine mission began in the desert, not in a luxurious temple. The desert seems to be the most unpromising place to preach. But when one man dedicated himself wholeheartedly to God's mission, God did a great job even in such a place.

What was the message of John the Baptist? See verse 2: “And he says: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Word “repent” evokes negative feelings. This is not a soft and beautiful word. Hearing this word is especially unpleasant for people. However, if someone accepts this word, it becomes the most blessed word in his life. At that time, the people of Israel suffered greatly under the yoke of the Roman Empire. It seems that John the Baptist should have preached warm and comforting words. But above all, he called for repentance.

He said “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”. What is repentance? Repentance is not a change of form. And this is not just the realization of one's sins and their confession. Repentance is a change of heart and a change of life path. Therefore, repentance means an active change in the direction of life. One must turn one's heart, longing for peace, to God and accept God as the center of one's life. For example, Matthew lived a selfish life only for his own happiness in this cruel world. But when he heard the call of Jesus “follow me” he followed him. After this event, the purpose of his life was to live only for the Lord. He changed the direction of his life from himself to Jesus. This is true repentance. One Chinese philosopher proclaimed the middle way as the principle of human life. These are also democratic principles - a compromise for mutual benefit. But in the spiritual world there is no middle way, no compromise with Satan. Repentance is a choice between God and Satan, a decision to be a slave of God or be a servant of Satan. Therefore, each person becomes a slave of God through repentance, and without repentance becomes a slave of Satan. Repentance is a decision to leave the old life and sins and live for God. Repentance is a bold decision. Often repentance requires a great decision. For example, when the famous publican Zacchaeus repented, he said that he would distribute half of the estate to the poor, and he would reward four times to all those whom he had offended. This means that he, it would seem, remained completely poor. But he decided that the Kingdom of Heaven is much more expensive. This is true repentance. But how to repent? When we listen to the word of God, we must repent. John the Baptist truly loved his people, he did not compromise with sin. To make his people become the people of God, he preached repentance to him.

John the Baptist didn't just say, "Repent, you damned ones!" He said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!” Behold, the Kingdom of God is so close, you only need to enter it by repentance! Who could convince Zacchaeus to distribute the estate? Who can find reasonable enough arguments? But when he saw that the Kingdom of God was close to him, he repented and accepted the Kingdom of God more precious than all his possessions. There is a great decision in repentance, but there is also a great grace that surpasses any loss. The approach of the Kingdom of God means not only grace, but also the fact that the judgment of God is approaching, and everyone who resists God will be condemned. There is the beautiful Kingdom of God, and there is the fire of future wrath, and we must choose.

Also, the word "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" means that through repentance God's kingdom, God's government enters our lives. We must now obey God. If they stole, committed adultery, deceived, then leave it, even if the price is high.

When through the 13th chapter of the letter to the Romans I repented and decided to pay taxes, I had to agree that my salary was reduced from 700 to 50 dollars - 14 times. But God's Kingdom and God's management are more valuable and dearer, and having submitted to God and accepted His Kingdom into our lives, we will never suffer damage, which I fully experienced myself.

Who was John who preached the Word in the wilderness? Look at verse 3: “For he is the one about whom the prophet Isaiah said: the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths.” John the Baptist was the forerunner, previously foretold by the prophet Isaiah (Is.40:3). The heart of the Israelite people was not ready to accept the Messiah because of pride and unbelief. Then John the Baptist, preaching repentance, prepared the hearts of the people. Why is it difficult for people today to accept Jesus? Because people stopped considering sin as sin. In secular society, adultery is commendable, and love adventures are revered and praised as a feat. If not to say that adultery is a sin, that pornography and lewd looking at a woman is a sin, then people cannot come to Jesus by continuing to live in sin. By preaching about sin, we prepare the ground for people to receive grace. This sermon is not only about saying to everyone - you are a sinner, but also about living in society, working at work, living purely, honestly and truly. By doing this, we destroy the atmosphere of sin that people create in order not to feel condemned for sin. Otherwise it is very difficult to talk about Jesus, otherwise people's hearts are self-satisfied and cold.

John the Baptist preached: “prepare the way of the Lord”. John the Baptist created a favorable atmosphere for the Messiah, Jesus Christ, to come and work. "Path" means uneven path. Through this word, we see that people have different hearts: arrogant and humiliated. Arrogance is the property of the proud. A proud person praises himself and despises others. Such people must humble themselves, and only then can they accept Jesus. Humiliated people often fall into self-destruction. They destroy themselves out of a sense of defeat and fatalism. At first glance it seems that such people are modest. However, in fact, such people hate others and are full of anger at themselves, at people and at God. Scourging oneself and scolding oneself is a thing very far from repentance and rather useless. Here, a man scolds and chastises himself, so that tomorrow he will do the same thing. But, such people should fill their hearts with the Word of God, and have hope in God! There are also hearts that are not straightforward and irreconcilable. Such people in any situation oppose and look askance at everyone. Even the love of a shepherd and any gift is received with suspicion. Such people should get rid of their prejudices. In Ukraine, very, very many people suffer from prejudice and therefore do not accept Jesus. How many parents, having no faith, but having only outward religiosity, oppose their children who believe in the Gospel! But God gives them many shocks and troubles, so that they do not hope for empty religiosity without faith and sincerely seek God in sorrow. John the Baptist faithfully fulfilled his mission as a voice crying in the wilderness. The voice only conveys meaning and meaning and immediately disappears. Likewise, John the Baptist fulfilled his mission as the forerunner of the Messiah and disappeared without thinking about his popularity.

What was his life like when he was on his mission? Look at verse 4: “John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his loins; and his food was locusts and wild honey.”. John lived in the wilderness, where no one interfered with his life of prayer. He lived very simply. His daily food was locusts and wild honey. He wore clothes made of camel hair. This life of John reminds us of the life of the prophet Elijah. His life was simple and poor. From such a life came such preaching, which has full vitality. If you speak sweetly and beautifully, but do not follow such a life, then such words are an empty phrase. Therefore, when proclaiming, one must follow it in life. Such a life is a living sermon. Therefore, there is great power in a pure life.

What happened to the people when he preached repentance? Did they all run away with a heavy heart? Not! Read verse 5 together: “Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around Jordan went out to him”. Confessing their sins, they were baptized in the Jordan. Here we see that people do not need empty praise and flattery, but they need the true Word of God, which leads to the Kingdom of God! There is great struggle in repentance, but there is much greater grace and mercy. That is why so many people came to John and were baptized by him in the Jordan.

Look at verse 7. Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to John to be baptized. All of them were spiritual leaders who gave their instructions. The Pharisees were very strict, adhered to the regulations of the law, believed in life after death and resurrection. However, at that time they were very smug, hypocritical and formal leaders. The Sadducees denied life after death, angels and the Spirit, and resurrection. Because they only cared about reality, they were more interested in political power and wealth. Seeing them, John scolded them mercilessly, saying: “spawn of vipers! who inspired you to flee from future wrath?” Why so strict? Perhaps they came because John became popular and they were afraid of losing the respect of the people. John called them "spawn of vipers" because they, being spiritual leaders, had an evil influence on the people. Echidna is a beautiful snake with soft skin on the outside, but inside it has a deadly poison. Likewise, they looked righteous and reverent, and were dressed in sumptuous clothing. But in fact, they had a deadly influence on the people, killing the souls of people. Especially, the spiritual leader has a huge influence on the lambs, so when he lives a hypocritical life, he has a harmful influence on others.

Let's look at verse 8.9: “Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance, and do not think to say in yourselves: our father is Abraham”; for I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” John the Baptist not only scolded them, but gave them the right direction. In order to avoid future wrath, they must abandon their empty greatness and create worthy fruit of repentance before God. The biggest obstacle for them to create a worthy fruit of life was their pride in being the descendants of Abraham. However, appearance is not the norm for judging God. In God's view, kinship and other conditions simply do not matter, because God can raise children of Abraham from stones. God evaluates by looking at our fruits. The God who judges by fruits alone is a righteous God. For example, a tree can deceive with its appearance, but it cannot deceive with its fruits. Here we learn that we must not only repent, but also bring forth fruit worthy of repentance. Here we see that if we are to truly bear the fruits of repentance, we must repent sincerely. If a person really repents, then if he lived in passion, then he must leave such a life and live a pure and holy life before God. If we repent of our selfishness, we must live with self-giving, we must give, serve and sacrifice. Therefore, true repentance means to repent not only in words, but also to bring worthy fruit of repentance in your life. When we repent, most of all we must repent of our inner sinful thoughts. If we do not repent of the small sinful thoughts that are within us, then this prevents us from creating the fruit of repentance. We must stand before God, having taken off all our sinful clothes: secretive pride, righteousness, empty majesty.

But why should we necessarily produce fruit? See verse 10: “Already the ax lies at the root of the trees: every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”. The words “already the ax lies at the root of the trees” means that God's judgment is near. Thinking that the judgment is far away, people sin freely, indulging their desires. However, the court is not somewhere far away, but very close. We do not know when we will stand before the court of God and receive according to our good or evil deeds. Therefore, we must bring forth the good fruits of repentance. Our life can be compared to a tree. The purpose of the tree is to bear good fruit. If it does not bear fruit, it will lose value. We must bear good fruit, but first we must become a fruitful tree. In order to bear good fruit, we must truly repent before God and abide in Jesus, who is our true Vine (John 15:1).

John not only preached repentance, but also strongly proclaimed Jesus. See verse 11: “I baptize you in water for repentance, but He who comes after me is stronger than me; I am not worthy to bear His shoes; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”. He testified that he baptizes in water for repentance, but Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit, which fundamentally cleanses the sin of a person and allows you to be born again and become a new person. Through repentance, we decide to leave the old, we decide even beyond our strength, but the Holy Spirit gives strength to bring our repentance and decision to life. John also testified of Jesus that “He will gather his wheat into a barn, and he will burn his chaff with unquenchable fire.”(12) There is God's court, where there is an unquenchable fire, and there is God's granary, the Kingdom of God, full of joy, love and grace. And we must use our lives to make choices and help others choose the coming Kingdom of God.

I pray that we, like John the Baptist, will fight against sin, preach the gospel of repentance, and bring many wandering souls to Jesus, pointing to the coming Kingdom of God.

REPENTANCE, CONFESSION AND FASTING

Repentance is the beginning of the Christian new life, or the Christian new being, being in Christ.

Thus began the gospel with the words of St. John the Baptist: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And the preaching of Christ after Baptism was: "Repent and believe in the Gospel."

But in our time the question is raised: why is repentance necessary? From a social point of view, it is inappropriate to talk about repentance. There is, of course, some kind of repentance, especially in the countries of Eastern totalitarianism: when someone deviates from the line of the party, then they demand "repentance" from him, or when the leaders of the party themselves deviate from their original plan - only this is called not repentance, but some kind of "reform" or "perestroika" ... There is no real repentance here. Which of you has seen Abuladze's film "Repentance"? There, it is precisely about false repentance, and only at the end of the film is it clear what true repentance is. The film exposes false repentance as a kind of change in the "ideal" or "style" of power, which remains the same in essence. Indeed, such "repentance" has nothing to do with true repentance.

In Scripture there are (in the Greek text) two different expressions for repentance. One expression is metanoia and the other is metamelia. Sometimes this second expression is translated not by the word "repentance" but by the word "repentance." I thought, for example, to go to Frankfurt and "repented," that is, I changed my mind: I won't go. This is what is called "metamelia" in the Scriptures, it's just a change of intention. It has no spiritual meaning. There is also, in the social or psychological sense, something like "repentance," that is, change. In the field of psychology there is a "restructuring" of one's character, one's neurosis... In depth psychology, Adler, or Freud, and even Jung, have no concept of repentance.

Repentance is a religious concept. You have to repent before someone. It does not mean simply changing the style of life or one's inner feeling or one's experience, as is meant, say, in Eastern religions and cultures. These religions say that a person must get his own experience, must know himself, fulfill himself, so that the light, his consciousness, awakens. But such a change does not require God. And Christian repentance is certainly before someone.

And here's an example for you. One of our Serbs - now he is 60 years old - was a communist in his youth and, like all of them, did a lot of evil to the people. But then he turned to faith, to God, to the Church, and when he was offered to take communion, he said: "No, I did a lot of evil." - "Well, go and confess." “No,” he says, “I’ll go confess to a priest, but I have sinned before the people, I need to confess openly before the people.”

This is the expression of the full consciousness of what repentance is. Here you see the church's perception, ancient Christian and truly biblical, that a person is never alone in the world. He stands, first of all, before God, but also before people. Therefore, in the Bible, a person's sin before God always has to do with his neighbor, which means that it has a social, social dimension and consequences. And this is felt both in our people and among the great Russian writers. The Orthodox people have a feeling that some kind of thief or tyrant, or one who does evil to his neighbor, is the same as an atheist. Let him believe in God, but this is useless, in fact he will simply blaspheme God, since his life is at odds with faith.

Hence - a holistic understanding of repentance, as a proper standing before God and before people. Repentance cannot be measured only by social or psychological scales, but there is always a God-revealed, biblical, Christian concept.

Christ begins his gospel, his good news, his teaching of mankind with repentance. St. Mark the Ascetic, a disciple of St. John Chrysostom, who lived in the 4th-5th centuries in Asia Minor as a hermit, teaches that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's power and God's Wisdom, providing for the salvation of all, from all his various dogmas and commandments left one single the law is the law of freedom, but that one comes to this law of freedom only through repentance. Christ commanded the apostles: "Preach to all nations repentance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And the Lord wanted to say by this that the power of the Kingdom of Heaven is contained in the power of repentance, just as the leaven contains bread or the whole plant is contained in the grain. Thus, repentance is the beginning of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let's remember the message of St. Apostle Paul to the Jews: those who repented felt the power of the Kingdom of Heaven, the power of the future age. But as soon as they turned to sin, they lost this strength, and it was necessary to revive repentance again.

So, repentance is not just a social or psychological ability to get along with other people without conflict. Repentance is an ontological, that is, an existential category of Christianity. When Christ began the gospel with repentance, he had in mind the ontological reality of man. Let us say in the words of St. Gregory Palamas: the commandment of repentance and other commandments given by the Lord fully correspond to human nature itself, for in the beginning He created this human nature. He knew that later He Himself would come and give the commandments, and therefore He created nature according to the commandments that would be given. And vice versa, the Lord gave such commandments, which corresponded to the nature, which He created in the beginning. Thus, Christ's word about repentance is not a slander on human nature, it is not an "imposition" on human nature of something alien to it, but the most natural, normal, corresponding to human nature. The only thing is that human nature is fallen, and therefore is now in an abnormal state for itself. But it is precisely repentance that is the lever by which a person can correct his nature, return it to its normal state. That is why the Savior said: "Methanoite" - that is, "change your mind."

The fact is that our thought has gone away from God, has gone away from ourselves and others. And this is a sick, pathological state of a person, which in Slavic is called the word "passion", and in Greek the word "pathos" (pathology). This is just a disease, a perversion, but not yet destruction, just as a disease is not the destruction of an organism, but simply damage. The sinful state of a person is a corruption of his nature, but a person can recover, accept correction, and therefore repentance comes like health to a sore spot, to a sick nature of a person. And since the Savior said that we must repent, even if we do not feel the need for repentance in ourselves, then we must believe Him that we really need to repent. And in fact, the closer the great saints got closer to God, the stronger they felt the need for repentance, because they felt the depth of the fall of man.

Another example from the present. A certain Peruvian writer Carlos Castaneda has already written 8 books about some Indian sage and magician, Don Juan in Mexico, who taught him to take drugs in order to get a state of a second, special reality, enter into the depths of the created world and feel its spirituality, meet spiritual creatures. Castaneda is an anthropologist, and has aroused great interest among the youth. Unfortunately, we have already translated 8 volumes. The other day in Belgrade there was a discussion: what is Castaneda - accept it or reject it. One psychiatrist said that taking drugs to hallucinate is a dangerous path from which one can hardly return. One writer praised Castaneda. I was the harshest critic.

There is nothing new in the diagnosis of Don Juan by the writer Castaneda. Humanity is in a tragic, abnormal state. But what does he suggest to get out of this state? To feel another reality, to free ourselves a little from our limitations. And what happens? Nothing! Man remains a tragic being, not redeemed or even redeemed. He cannot, like Baron Munchausen, lift himself out of the swamp by his hair. The Apostle Paul points out: neither other heavens, nor another creation, nor the other world, nor the seventh heaven can save a person, for a person is not an impersonal being who needs only peace and tranquility. He is a living person, and seeks living communion with God.

One Serbian communist peasant said rather rudely: "Well, where is God for me to take Him by the throat?" Is he an atheist? No, he is not an atheist, but he feels God vividly, quarrels with God, like Jacob. Of course, it is an outrage on the part of this Serb to say so, but he feels a living life... And to consider that salvation is in some kind of balanced bliss, in nirvana, in the inner world of concentration and meditation - does not lead a person anywhere. This even closes the possibility of his salvation, because a person is a being created from non-existence into existence and invited to communication...

In the Song of Songs or in the Psalms we see an existential dialogue between God and man. They both suffer. And God is sorry for man, and man is sorry. Dostoevsky especially clearly showed that when a person moves away from God, something precious and great is lost. Such a mistake, not coming to meet God is always a tragedy. Tragedy is the consciousness of losing what we could comprehend. When a person loses love, moves away from God, he feels it tragically, because he was created - for love. Repentance brings us back to this normal state, or at least to the beginning of a normal path. Repentance, as Father Justin (Popovich) said, is like an earthquake that destroys everything that only seemed stable, but turns out to be false, and then everything that was must be changed. Then the real, constant creation of the personality, the new man, begins.

Repentance is impossible without meeting God. That is why God goes to meet man. If repentance were simply contemplation, repentance, the disposition of one's forces in a different way, it would be a restructuring, but not a change in essence. A sick person, as St. Cyril of Alexandria says, cannot heal himself, but he needs a healer - God. What is the disease? In the corruption of love. There shouldn't be one-sided love. Love must be at least two-sided. And for the fullness of love, in fact, three are needed: God, neighbor and I. I, God and neighbor. Neighbor, God and me. This is perekhorisis, the interpenetration of love, the circulation of love. That is what eternal life is. In repentance, a person feels that he is sick and seeks God. Therefore, repentance always has a regenerating power. Repentance is not just self-pity, or depression, or an inferiority complex, but always a consciousness and a feeling that communication has been lost, and immediately a search and even the beginning of the restoration of this communication. Here the prodigal son came to himself and said: “This is the state I am in. But I have a father, and I will go to my father!” If he had simply realized that he had gone astray, this would still not have been Christian repentance. And he went to his father! According to the Holy Scriptures, it can be assumed that the father had already gone out to meet him, that the father, as it were, took the first step, and this was reflected in the son's motivation to return. It is not necessary, of course, to analyze which is first and which is second: the meeting is double. Both God and man in repentance enter into the activity of love. Love seeks fellowship. Repentance is regret for lost love.

Only when repentance itself begins, then a person feels the need for it. It would seem that first a person needs to feel that he needs repentance, that it is salvation for him. But in fact, it turns out paradoxically that only when a person already experiences repentance, then he feels the need for it. This means that the unconscious of the heart is deeper than the consciousness that God gives to those who want it. Christ said: "He who can accommodate, let him accommodate." Saint Gregory the Theologian asks, and who can accommodate? And the answer is: the one who wants. Of course, the will is not just a conscious decision, but much deeper. Dostoevsky also felt this, and Orthodox asceticism knows that the will is much deeper than the human mind, it is rooted in the core of a person, which is called the heart or spirit. As in Psalm 50: "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in my womb." This is a parallelism: the heart is pure - the spirit is right; create - update; in me - in my womb, that is, only in other words is confirmed what was already said in the first part. The heart or spirit is the essence of man, the depth of man's god-like personality. It can even be said that love and freedom are contained in the very center, in the core of man. God's love called man out of nothingness. The call of God came true, and the answer came. But this answer is personal! That is, a person is an answer to the call of God.

St. Basil the Great says (and this has entered the service of the holy Archangels) that all angelic forces strive with irresistible love for Christ. Let them be angels, let them be great spiritual beings, almost gods, but they also have emptiness without Christ, without God. Dostoevsky put into Versilov's mouth in "The Teenager" the image that humanity has realized social truth, love, solidarity, altruism, but having expelled from the earth the great idea of ​​God and immortality. And when Christ appeared in His Second Coming, everyone suddenly felt—all those happy ones who had realized the kingdom of the earth, "heaven on earth"—felt that they had an emptiness in their souls, the emptiness of the absence of God. So there was no love. And Dostoevsky rightly said that love for man is impossible without love for God.

The two commandments of love are connected. Love for God completely, being your own, and love for your neighbor completely, as you love yourself. They cannot exist one without the other, and together they only create the Christian cross: vertical and horizontal. If you take away one, then no more cross is obtained, and there is no Christianity. Love of God is not enough, and love of neighbor is not enough.

Repentance immediately arouses a person both to love for God and for love of one's neighbor.

Theophan the Recluse in "The Path to Salvation" says (but this is the experience of all the Fathers) that when a person awakens to repentance, he immediately feels that he loves his neighbor. He is no longer proud, he does not consider himself great. He wants everyone to be saved. This is already a sign of true Christian life. This means that repentance opens the way for us in an abnormal state, in a sinful, alienated state, a turn to a normal state, a turn to God and correction before God. It reveals the full truth about the human condition. And repentance immediately turns into confession. Confession is the revelation of the true man. Sometimes even us. It seems to Orthodox Christians that repentance is a kind of "duty" of a person that we "should fulfill." But no, this is too low an understanding of confession. And the confession is similar to what one Russian old woman told me about, who was guarding her little grandson. For some tricks, she spanked him on the arms; he went into a corner and wept with resentment. She did not pay any more attention to him, but continued to work. But, finally, the grandson comes to her: "Grandma, they beat me here and it hurts here." Grandmother was so touched by this appeal that she herself began to cry. The childish approach won over the grandmother.

He opened up to her. So, confession-repentance is a kind of disclosure of oneself before God. Like those words from the psalm that passed into the irmos: "I will shed a prayer to the Lord" ... it seems that you have a jug of dirty water and just pour it out before God ... "And to Him I will say my sorrows, for my soul is filled with evil and life mine has reached the bottom of hell." He simply feels that he has fallen to the depths of hell, like Jonah in the whale, and now he opens himself before God.

Confession as a continuation of repentance is the true self-disclosure of man. Yes, we are sinners, that is why we reveal our wounds, illnesses, sins. A person sees himself in a desperate, hopeless situation. But what is truly true is that he looks not only at himself, but, as St. Anthony the Great: put your sin in front of you and look at God on the other side of sins. Through sins look at God! But then sin will not stand the competition of meeting with God. God conquers all: what is sin? Nothing! Nonsense before God. But this is before God! And in itself, for me, it is an abyss, death, hell. As David the Psalmist says: "From the depths I called to You - raise my life from the abyss!" Our soul yearns for God, as a deer in the desert yearns for flowing water.

Like St. Augustine felt: nowhere can a man's heart rest - only in God. As when something happens to a child, he runs and looks for his mother and no one else, and he wants nothing more than his mother, but when he falls into the arms of his mother, he calms down.

Therefore, the Gospel is precisely a book of basic relationships: it talks about a child, about a father, about a son, about a house, about a family. The gospel is not a theory, not a philosophy, but an expression of existential relations - ours among ourselves, and ours with God.

So confession is revealing the truth about yourself. There is no need to slander yourself, that is, to scold yourself more than you are really sinful, but you don’t need to hide it either. If we hide, we show by this that there is no sincere love for God in us. The Bible is a recorded living experience taken from reality. Much is shown in the Bible, there are many sins, both apostasy and theomachism, but in all this you will not find one thing, this is insincerity. There is no area in life where God is not present. One must know, Father Justin said, as the holy prophets knew that there is much evil in man, and the world is lost in evil, but that there is salvation for such a world and such a person. This is our joy! There is a possibility of salvation, and there is a real Savior.

Father Justin once showed this by such an example (he loved the prophet Elijah and John the Baptist very much!). According to him, the Forerunner was the most unfortunate person in the world, because as a child he went with his mother to the desert, and when his mother died, he remained there, and God protected him with angels. So, he lived in a pure desert, with a pure sky, pure stones, pure rain and did not know sin, he lived like an Angel of God in the body. But now, when he was 30 years old, God told him: go to the Jordan and baptize people. And then people come to him and begin to confess... they pour out sins on the Forerunner, which become a hill... a mountain... And the Forerunner cannot endure these sins. Do you know what sins people have and carry in themselves! And the Forerunner begins to despair: "Lord, is this the man whom You created? Is this the fruit of Your Hand?" The Forerunner began to sink. And the masses go to confession - how many more sins must pile up? And when the Forerunner can no longer stand it, suddenly God says to him: "Behold the Lamb of God, among these sinners is One, taking (taking) the sins of all these and the whole world." And then the most unhappy person becomes the happiest. Glory to Thee, Lord! This means that there is salvation from these sins and from all sins.

There is a Savior! This Father Justin expresses, of course, from his own experience, what kind of repentance the Forerunner experienced there. And indeed, I will speak from my little experience with Father Justin. He was a man who lived like the Forerunner: a pure, great ascetic, and he sympathized, like Metropolitan Atony (Khrapovitsky), sympathized with sinners, sympathized with every person, all creatures, and God gave him for this compassion the great gift of tears. And it was not something foreign to us. Human tears are always close to each of us. Near a person who sincerely repents, one can feel that repentance is also necessary for us, that tears are natural water, precious as blood, this is new Christian blood, this is a new baptism, as the fathers said. Through tears, we renew baptismal water, which becomes warm and full of grace.

And fasting is added to such repentance.

St. John of Kronstadt in "My Life in Christ" writes that when a person hates, his gaze prevents another from even walking. A person not only suffers from sin, but everything around him suffers, right down to nature, and when a person begins to repent and fast, this is reflected in everything around him.

Allow me this digression: if modern humanity fasted more, there would not be so many environmental problems. Man's attitude to nature is not at all fasting, not ascetic. It is brutal and violent. Man is already an exploiter, or an occupier. This is what Marx taught: you just have to pounce on nature and use it, master the laws and reproduce. This will be the "story" and so on. Such an attitude is different, only not human, not humane.

The holy fathers ascetics said that we are not carnivores, but passion-killers. Fasting is not a struggle against the flesh as God's creatures. And Christ is flesh, and His Communion is also flesh. But the struggle must go with the perversion of the flesh. Each of us can realize and feel that if a person does not control himself, his body, then he already becomes a slave to food, or drink, or other pleasures. A thing begins to own a person, and not a person a thing.

The fall of Adam was that he did not want to restrain himself: when he ate the fruit, he did not receive anything new. The commandment was not to forbid him to eat this fruit, as if there was something dangerous in it, but to teach him to discipline himself in order to put him on the path of achievement. This is the feat of freedom and the feat of love. No one but man can do it, and therefore he is called to do it. To participate in the freedom and love of God, a person must be an ascetic.

For example, an athlete, a football player, must be an ascetic. He can't drink and eat and do what he wants and be a good athlete. Can not. It is clear as day, as the sun.

The Christian, on the other hand, must tame his body even more so that it serves (in Greek, liturgisalo), that is, that it be in the "liturgy." And "liturgy" means: a complete, normal, common function, a common activity. When we talk about the Holy Liturgy, this is the service of people to God, but the general meaning of this word is the normal functioning of everything that is given to man.

Therefore, a Christian who goes to repent also uses fasting. It is necessary to fast for this, and not just to fulfill a duty or even, as some people think, to earn a reward from God, a crown. No sacrifice that seeks a reward is a sacrifice, but simply a job waiting to be paid. Mercenaries may think so, not sons. Christ, when he made a sacrifice for us, did not seek a reward from God the Father for this, but went out of love. As Metropolitan Filaret says, the Son was crucified out of love for God the Father; out of the love of the Son for us He was crucified, and out of the love of the Holy Spirit He conquered death by His crucifixion. Only love can understand this.

This is the correct understanding of fasting.

In addition, fasting helps us correct corrupted human nature, bring in the necessary order that God has given. It is to eat first of all the word of God, and then - bread. Bread is definitely needed. We cannot live without bread. But bread comes second. As Christ answered the devil who tempted Him in the wilderness: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." By the Word of God, that means fellowship with God.

I remember one Russian sufferer who was a librarian at our faculty. He spent four years at Dachau. He adopted and raised a Serbian orphan, then married him. And this wife kicked the old man out of the house. The old man then died very poor. He said that in Dachau one could see by the face who had a living communion with God. There was no hypocrisy. He told me, among other things, that, in his opinion, Berdyaev had never had a living contact with God. Of course, Berdyaev is a tragic figure, a sufferer, a kind of martyr, and one cannot simply reject him. But he is too pretentious, he did not know humility, he even scolded humility.

And before God you need to humble yourself, but not at all from an "inferiority complex." Job was sick, long-suffering, but he was not "inferior" before God. He was humble, and this humility gave him boldness. "Come down from heaven," Job said to God, and God came down. We do not need to accept psychological or social categories: humility is not powerlessness, but boldness. For example, I came to Vladyka Mark, I have no money, I would die here, but I hope that Vladyka will feed me and will not leave me. This is boldness. Otherwise, I will underestimate not only myself, but also the lord.

And here is how the ancient Christians prayed. One Egyptian monk said: "I have sinned as a man. You, like God, have mercy." Humility and boldness go side by side, together.

All together, starting with repentance - whether repentance presupposes faith or is born in faith - it doesn't matter, they go together. Faith in God immediately includes repentance in my tragedy, in my problem, in my life. I do not agree to solve my problem without God. I am looking for communication. And God showed through Christ that He wants fellowship with us. He gave his Son! He loved us before we loved Him. So He is also looking for fellowship. This is a truly philanthropic God, an active God, who is called by some fathers "anticipatory eros". In order to enter into His omnipotence, He comes out to meet us, and by this He limits Himself to our measure in order to receive us. This is called "kenosis". If He walked straight towards us, then... as if the sun burned us, we would simply disappear. And He belittled Himself out of love, seeking our fellowship not forcibly, simply - He Himself wants it that way. And this immediately gives us dignity. Therefore, in our Orthodox Christian tradition there is a great basis for boldness, for hope in God. Man is sinful, but still: God is greater than sin! In Dostoevsky's Possessed, the elder Tikhon said to Stavrogin: "You have only one step to the saints." Indeed, this one step a person can take and meet God. There is never an impossible thing. It is impossible for man, but it is possible for God. And God has entered into this connection with us and does not want us to solve our problems without Him. And we have no reason to doubt it, since He gave His Son.

These are powerful reasons we have for repentance. This is not just some kind of moral teaching of a person that one must be good, and therefore one must repent. No, repentance renews in us the very foundations of the Christian faith. God wants our salvation, seeks it, and longs for it, and waits for it. For our part, it is only necessary that we want, and then we will be able, not by ourselves, but by God.

Repentance with all the Christian virtues that accompany it, like confession, humility, boldness, hope, fasting, prayer... repentance is already a foretaste of the resurrection, even the beginning of the resurrection. This is the first resurrection of man. The second will be the result, the consummation at the Second Coming of Christ.

Such an experience of repentance does not exist in any religion, nor in any spiritual experience, nor in any mysticism. Even, unfortunately, even in Western Christianity this feeling, this experience, this event has almost been lost.

Father Justin told us that he was from the beginning of 1917 to 1919. at Oxford, where he studied. And then one Anglican monk, after two years of friendship, told him: "You are all young, cheerful, like us, but you have one thing that we, as a church, do not have - this is repentance, we do not know this ...". “The fact is,” Father Justin said, “that we once had a real quarrel. And then I could no longer stand it and went to him to ask for forgiveness, threw myself at his feet, wept, and the man accepted it ... Here he saw repentance."

The fathers have instructions that one should not inflate passions, one should not even "step on the shadow" of anyone ... but in order for this to be real humility, this must be done with love, that is, it should not be simply indifference to the condition of a brother. Otherwise, this is not humility or dispassion, but simply some kind of conventional attitude, "good manners", that is, hypocrisy, officially established: one should not interfere in other people's affairs. (Let people die in Vietnam, Yugoslavia or Cuba). It all comes down to external propriety... As Father Justin used to say: culture is very often a polish, but inside it is a worm. Of course, you don't have to be aggressive either. But God led us Orthodox through history in such a way, we opened ourselves to Him in such a way that we could never be without problems. But the recognition of the status quo, the recognition of the abnormal regime as normal - this is not Christianity. Repentance is precisely a protest against an abnormal state. There are difficulties in the family, in the parish, in the diocese, in the state, in the world - a Christian cannot "reconcile" with this. He definitely fights. But he starts with himself, so repentance is self-condemnation, self-restraint, or, as Solzhenitsyn said, or what Tarkovsky said, shame, shame as a religious concept, in the sense that a person returns to himself and begins to be ashamed. At the end of the film "Repentance" Abuladze shows what true human repentance is. A person begins to be ashamed of his deeds and immediately there is a determination to change this. It can be said that only in Orthodox countries, in Russia, in Serbia, in Greece, there is repentance as a theme (and even in literature). We have recently published Lubardo's novel "Repentance" - about the relations between Serbs, Muslims and Catholics in Bosnia. And in his novel, only the Serbs repent. And the Serbs not only speak, but also do repentance.

Thank God, this means that we are sinners. And this is not pride, we do not praise ourselves, but we cannot reconcile ourselves to such a situation, neither ours nor others. Father Justin called this the genuine revolutionary spirit of Christians against sin, against evil, against the devil, against death. This is a rebellion of a person against a false self, and a rebellion against a false one in another person, and in religion - a rebellion against false gods and a struggle for the true God. Repentance is looking for a true vision of the world, God, man, looking for the right faith.

I am personally shocked that young people in Russia are now returning in droves to God, to Orthodoxy. This is how it is with us too. It is not just to find faith in some god, to reject atheism and find some kind of mysticism, but to find the living God, to get involved in the true life of the Church. The other day I read a good article by Vladimir Zelinsky "Church Time". It can be seen how a person found God, found Christ, found the Church. If a person just somehow repented and wants to live, no matter what church he belongs to, then I doubt the authenticity of even this initial repentance. This is some kind of "metamelia", not "throwing". This is not a true restoration of life. That is why the fathers stood so zealously for the faith.

But we must not forget behind this the fact that love is the first dogma of our faith. Love is the true cross, but don't be afraid of love if it leads to the cross. Never forget that when love is on the cross, it still remains love. If Christ had not said: "Father, forgive them!" He would not have been Christ, believe me. He would be a hero, an ideal man, but not the true Christ the Savior. And in Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" Christ even kisses the inquisitor. This is not sentimentality, not romanticism, this is true love that is not afraid. Therefore, we Orthodox always feel that our strength and invincibility is not in ourselves, but in the authenticity of what we seek, desire, what we believe in and what we live for.

In repentance, one must understand that God is on the other side of our good and our evil. You don't have to identify yourself with your evil deeds or with your good deeds. Do not think that you can provide for yourself by doing good. You have to rely only on God. But one must also believe that evil deeds, although I condemn and reject them, cannot separate me from my God. Russians have a tendency to exaggerate their sins, and suffocate, and drown in them, as in an abyss. This is a kind of distrust of God. Such a perception, an exaggeration of one's sins, is at the same time a belittling of God. But the reverse approach presents God as a liar. He sent His Son to save us, and we'll say, "No, don't, I have no sins"...

Christ saves freely! There is no retribution or replenishment on our part. But one must truly realize that sin is sin, and that sin is evil, and that sin is a lie, and that sin is the enemy of man. Full repentance in Orthodoxy becomes courageous, not sentimental. The man rises to fight. The Holy Fathers say that a person has the gift of rage, anger, and that this is a gift from God. As a gift of the ability to eat. But out of the gift of nourishment, a passion for food can grow immediately. It is the same with anger, behind which there is movement - dynamics. Virtue must be offensive - active, not passive. But if it deforms, it can become tyranny for others, turn into aggression.

But you have to be dynamic! We must fight evil. Orthodox repentance has this "fury".

I was told that one of the senior monks in the monastery of Meteora, Father Varlaam, had a stroke, a brain hemorrhage. It happened during the afternoon break. He lies down and suddenly sees that everything around him turns red. Tries to get out of bed but can't. And suddenly the thought escapes from the depths of his soul: “I am dying, but I have not confessed, I have not taken communion! Am I, a monk for so many years, going to die without communion?” And with an effort of will he got up, he doesn’t even know how he found the door. God helped: the abbot was just leaving the cell and sees that he is in such a state. And the monk shouts: "What are you looking at? Communion!" The abbot immediately understood... The monk took communion. Then he still lived. But here is the power of rage!

Are you dying? So what? Will you leave yourself without communion because of this?

St. Demetrius raised Nestor, a young Christian, blessed the gladiator Leah, a terribly cruel villain, to kill. The Church sings about this in the troparion of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica. This is truly saving rage. The strength to stand up. When Job complained, and had reason to complain, God did not comfort him, but demanded that he stand on his feet and submit. But this restored Job.

Only Orthodoxy preserved the ascetic ethos. We endure falls and in patience do not become embittered, but we do not remain indifferent to others. I cannot be indifferent. And I cannot, as a Christian, allow myself to hate, because hatred is an escape from Christian responsibility.

It also happens in parishes. A person believes that the other hates him and thereby creates an alibi for himself not to communicate with him. But one must try to enter into communication, to put the problem of one's neighbor as one's own problem. And it is necessary to regret not with some kind of pride, but really to sympathize.

Christianity is dynamic, not passive. Christianity is not such "apathy" as it was understood by the ancient Stoics. The point is not to mortify oneself, but one must mortify within oneself one's service to evil, sin, and make oneself working for God. Life is not nirvana. Life is communion, glory to God, upliftment, growth. Therefore, repentance is valid if it occurs genuinely and actively, if it immediately excites a person, if he immediately feels called.

If we draw a comparison between the saints - St. Isaac the Syrian and St. Simeon the New Theologian. Isaac Sirin is much more gloomy, sad. And St. Simeon the New Theologian is joy, dynamics, he is all in joy.

So, this sadder, more gloomy side rather expresses the West, for example, St. Clara. When the grace of God leaves them, they are lost in despair. In Orthodoxy - no! Here a man says: "God visited me, gave me His grace, but by this He wants to lift me up."

On Athos, I always had the following impression from the monks: the Athonites are great ascetics, deprived of many of the pleasures of life, but all the time their face is joyful. And they are all original, because everyone lives a living life.

Repentance excites such a good "ambition" in a person. Let us remember the prodigal son: am I, the son of such a father, created to feed pigs in a foreign land? Not! I will go to my father...

Repentance, prayer, fasting, confession - everything happens spontaneously. One must dispose oneself in such a way as to have this freshness of the Christian life, and strive for it. And as the ancient fathers said, every day you have to start all over again.
Speech at a youth congress in Munich in December 1988. Published in the Bulletin of the German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Published according to the brochure: Bishop Athanasius (Evtich). Repentance, confession, post. - Fryazino: Commonwealth Orthodox Pilgrim, 1995.

This refers to the Theological Faculty of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade.

Bishop Athanasius (Yevtich)

Member of the KPE Church in Tashkent

Continuation of the series of publications "Meditating on the word of God"

John the Baptist, the prophet who foretold the coming of Jesus and baptized Him in the Jordan, calls people to repentance in the name of salvation. What meaning did John put into this, and what does his call mean for us today?

Repentance is the realization of one's sinful life and the rejection of it. Awareness does not happen by itself. The Lord Himself, in His great mercy, addresses us through the Holy Spirit, calling to every heart in due time. A person begins to suffer, realizing that something is wrong in his life. This is called the voice of conscience. But does everyone respond to God, who says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), who opens his arms with the words: “I have loved you with an everlasting love, and therefore I have extended my good will toward you” (Jeremiah 31:3) Who promises us: “…do not be afraid, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, and I will help you, and I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10).

What prevents a person from turning to God? Pride? Disbelief? Ignorance?

Yes, pride! A person is proud and arrogant, confident in his strength, wisdom, and sometimes omnipotence.

Yes, disbelief! We believe fortune-tellers, psychics, horoscopes more quickly and willingly than God, Who "gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son" (1 John 5:1), Who "Proves His love for us by the fact that Christ died for us while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8), who is "the same yesterday, and today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).

But perhaps the biggest obstacle is ignorance. God sends His people into the world, who even today say: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Gospel of Matthew 3:2). Yes, these are Christians who talk about God, about how He is “Generous and merciful, long-suffering and many-merciful” (Psalm 102:8), about God who addresses everyone without exception, for He has no partiality: “Call me on the day of sorrow; I will deliver you, and you will glorify me” (Psalm 49:15); “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9); “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

But do we listen and hear Him? Do we want to get closer to Him, to know and understand Him? Have you tried, dear friend, at least once in your life to take a step towards the One who redeemed you with His blood and gave you salvation and eternal life? If not, I can help you do it right now by telling the truth about the living God.

So, we found out that the best source of knowledge of the Almighty is the Word of God, or the Bible. Of course, you can say: “Why should I believe what is written there?” Well, firstly, if you open the Revelation of John (22:18) and read there: “And I also testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds anything to them, God will put on him the plagues that are written in the book this; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his participation in the book of life and in the holy city and in what is written in this book, ”I think half of your doubts will already disappear, because, no matter how you are confident in yourself, you will not tempt God and check whether these words are true. And secondly, why shouldn't you believe? Do you know Scripture so well that you can refute it?

Preacher Derek Prince, recognized as the world's leading interpreter of the Bible, wrote in one of his books The Foundations of the Doctrine of Christ: unless the Father who sent me draws him, John 6:44). For this reason, the moment of calling the Holy Spirit to repentance becomes a real crisis in the life of every person. If we answer this call, it leads us to saving faith and eternal life; if the sinner refuses this call, then he continues on his way to the grave and endless darkness without God. Scripture clearly says that already in this life a person can lose the right to repentance, i.e. reach such a point that the Holy Spirit will never again call him to repentance, and all hope is thus lost before he enters the gates of eternity.

) and had hope in the desert alone, or, better, in God alone, rejecting human help. Remember also that you do not live in the desert, but in a society of people, moreover, Christians, who are ready to help you at any time and from whom you yourself, in fact, receive help every day.

“Here are the great holidays, beloved, we have come: the Nativity of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His Baptism in the Jordan. Now the baptized Christ walks through the cities and villages and says to all people: (). To all of us are addressed these sweetest words of the Lord; He invites everyone to repent of their sins, so that all may be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven, because without repentance no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Yes, beloved, the sins of all lead and will lead to hell, to eternal torment, if we do not repent of them, if we do not hate them, if we do not decide to live and do not live according to the will of the Lord! Patterns of sin, said in Scripture, death(). So, look, repent: now the Kingdom of Heaven is closer than ever to us. Amen."

“Run such a way of life to live only by animal impulses and desires, to sleep, eat, dress, walk, then again drink, eat and walk. Such a way of life finally kills the completely spiritual life of man, making him an earthly and earthy being; while a Christian must be heavenly on earth. Repent, the kingdom of heaven draws near , Our Father, Who art in heaven! It is necessary to read the word of God more, to pray at home and in church, and in every place, more, of course, inwardly than outwardly; meditate on God, on creation, on the purpose and predestination of man, on Providence, on redemption, on the inexpressible love of God for the human race, on the life and deeds of the holy men of God, who pleased God with various virtues, etc., also to fast, to test one’s conscience, repent sincerely and deeply of their sins, etc. .

"Let your kingdom come those. the kingdom of life, for now the kingdom of death continues under the dominion, for the most part, of the one who has the power of death - the devil. How does the Kingdom of God come to a person in this life? Through heartfelt repentance. Repent, the kingdom of heaven draws near. Let the ungodly leave his advice, the greedy man his love of money, the deceiver his deceptions, the drunkard his drunkenness, the glutton his gluttony, the prodigal his fornication, the proud his pride, the conceited his vanity, the envious, the insatiable his envy and his insatiability, the impatient and grumbling - impatience and your grumbling; and let everyone learn the deeds of Christian love, especially - bear the infirmities of the weak » .

“How pleasant it is for you, how fun it is when you find some lost, necessary and valuable thing! You are ready to jump for joy. Imagine, then, how pleased the Heavenly Father is at the sight of His lost child - a sinner man, but found, at the sight of his perishing and revived sheep, at the sight of his lost and found drachma, i.e. this living image of God - man! It is impossible to describe this joy. The joy of the Heavenly Father over His lost and found prodigal son is so great that it moves all loving and benevolent heaven to joy: for there is joy in heaven over the only sinner who repents. Dying brothers and sisters! return from the path of death to the Heavenly Father. Repent, the kingdom of heaven draws near » .

"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand(). Sins remove a person from God, the Source of life, and plunge him into death. To get closer to God, you need sincere repentance. He himself is looking for a retired person. He himself leaves heaven and comes to earth, becomes a man, enters into close communion with him, converses, blesses the waters with His Baptism, grants the bath of resurrection, establishing the Last Supper - communion of the Body and Blood, brings down the grace of the Holy Spirit on believers, grants repentance, the resolution of sins , sanctification, renewal, affirmation, procreation and deification. What else has He not given? Everything, everything in abundance. How do people use the means of salvation? They trample them like beads on pigs (cf.). But it will be strictly exacted from the unbelievers, the ungrateful, the proud and the evil-tempered.

“All who begin to work for the Lord in prayer, learn to be, like Him, meek and humble and true in heart; do not have guile in your soul, do not be duplicitous, do not be cold; try to have His Spirit, for whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ, this one does not have Him(), and - the Lord is looking for something similar to Himself and kindred in us - to which His grace could be grafted. – Remember that not a single word is wasted in prayer if it is spoken from the heart, and the Lord hears every word, and every word is in His balance. It sometimes seems to us that our words only beat the air (Compare:) in vain and in vain are heard, like the voice of one crying in the wilderness(): no no..." .

Yes, Lord Jesus, only the righteous, who comprehend Your greatness more than all of us, can fully revere Your glory, and we, sinners, blind in our minds, barely contemplate Your greatness only sometimes, and bear Your fear before our eyes. - Further, the Baptism with the Holy Spirit is worth special attention here. Oh my God! Only in part can we understand the greatness of Baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. We know that the Spirit of God fills everything, tests everything, and the depths of God, that He is the Spirit of truth, the Life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of purity and holiness, the Spirit of love. What kind of people should be after you baptize them with the All-Holy and Life-Giving Spirit? Oh, they must be holy and life-giving themselves, as Holy and Life-giving Spirit of God.

. “His shovel is in His hand, and He will cleanse His threshing floor and gather His wheat into a barn, and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

“So, Lord, this world is Your threshing floor, in which wheat and tares are gathered together - good and evil people. At Your beckon, the wheat will be separated from the chaff on this threshing floor and You will take the wheat into Your granary - the righteous into the eternal heavenly abodes, and you will burn the weeds with unquenchable fire, that is, you will plunge sinners into eternal torment in hell. It is in my will to be wheat or tares; I want to be wheat, but the flesh, the world, and the devil make useless tares out of me. Oh, how horrified I am, Lord, lest she sow tares in me, and after death I would not be subjected to the fate of tares! Consume in me, O Lord, my Creator, all that is bad and worthless, cleanse me and turn me - unclean tares - into wheat favorable for You.

“I love the great Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord John for his meek, but formidable and decisive, sermon to the Pharisees and Sadducees: And he has a shovel in his hand, and he will cut off his threshing floor, and he will gather his wheat into a barn, but he will burn the weed with unquenchable fire.(). Listen or read more often these formidable words of the Lord - and repent, modern Pharisees and Sadducees and all intellectuals and ignoramuses in the Law. Look forward to the terrible fulfillment of the latter, and all who strive for the blessed promise of the Lord. Amen."

“What a playwright the devil, what scenes he produces in a dream in the spirit of the present time of self-will, disobedience of the lower to the higher, their rudeness, mockery of the elders. Exercise, cursed, for endless eyelids in inextinguishable fire() with all your temptations.

"What means deny yourself()? - It means to reject your old one, passionate a person (Compare:;), proud, prone to hatred, envy, pride, covetousness, love of money, stinginess, irritability, gluttony, drunkenness, marriage, adultery - an old man in whom he lives, has his own throne and which he acts and controls Satan. - I, or my old man, completely damaged by sin, completely infected by the breath of the devil, by his will, is no good, except perhaps in eternal fire. – That is why unrepentant sinners are called straw, which will be burned by unquenchable fire (Compare: ; ). “This old man must be completely rejected.”

“You consider yourself alive, not dead. Do you really live, are you a walking ghost? - If in your heart there is faith and love for God and love for your neighbor, as for yourself: then you live; if not: you are dead, you are no better than an idol. Rather, come to your senses: understand what our life consists of, and begin to live a true, human, Christian life. Gathering wealth for the pleasure of eating and drinking, and not just to quench hunger and thirst, is the most ridiculous, and not only ridiculous, but criminal deed, childish play at full age, inexcusable game in itself. We have turned all life into childish play, having perverted everything from our Creator in ourselves and turned it upside down; we play - oh grief and horror - with the very organs of procreation, these sacred organs of life, which the Creator has made the instruments of our being and life; we laugh at the greatest priceless gift of life, we, impudent creatures, senseless creatures, laugh at our Creator, the Giver of life, who said; do not commit adultery() and threatening adulterers with deprivation of the Kingdom and torment (See:) in inextinguishable fire(). We have turned our whole life into childish, blind fun: we have invented various empty amusements in order only to kill precious time, which our Lord commanded to cherish when He said: every idle word, if the people speak, they will repay a word about it on the day of judgment (). Watch, as if the day does not know an hour, in which the Son of Man will come(). And the holy apostles saying: Redeem the time, like days are cunning (); walk in wisdom()... Oh, we are foolish people, completely crazy people, of our own free will... what will we say in justification to our Creator when the time of His Dread Judgment comes? – Yes, the Judgment will truly be terrible: how can the Judgment of the all-good, long-suffering, but also the all-righteous Lord not be terrible? When you think about the human deeds now taking place, you will involuntarily say to yourself: yes, the universal Judgment must certainly be, and must certainly be terrible, because people terribly, devilishly offend God’s holiness, goodness, longsuffering and justice. My brethren! Turn from your crooked ways and create right paths with your feet(Compare:) ".

“The devil himself incites to sin, and when you sin, he says: you are now mine, and he will begin to torment you with despondency. And you tell him: no, not yours, but even a sinner, but God's; but my Lord there is a cleansing() of all my iniquities. - And I consider your despondency as a dream. My hope is the Father, my refuge is the Son, cover my Holy Spirit. – Strongly resist all the passions instilled by the devil, including the passion of despondency. - Resist the devil, and he will flee from you() (that is, so that I live in love for God and my neighbor, repent of my sins sincerely, try fulfill all righteousness(Compare:), every virtue) and this whole(external goods) will be added to you(). “And from the inner admonitions of God, I see this clearly.”

“What humility of the God-man! What unquestioning obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father! When John the Baptist, knowing the greatness of the One who came to his baptism and his insignificance before Him, did not allow Him to be baptized, the Lord said to him: leave it now, for thus it behooves us to fulfill all righteousness (a bath of resurrection and renewal by the Holy Spirit (Compare:), and sanctify us; in order to drown human sin in the waters and open to us the sky enclosed by the fall of Adam, and bring down to earth the Holy Spirit, who had no place on earth to lay his head (See:), due to the extreme incarnation and corruption of the human race; to cleanse from filthiness and raise the justified into heaven.”

“What does the feast of the Presentation of the Lord teach us? – First of all, the truth that God is faithful in all His words and promises. He also promised Eve, our forefathers universally fallen in Paradise, that He would send a Savior to them and to the whole human race, namely the blessed Seed of the Woman, which erase the head of the serpent murderers (Compare:), which was fulfilled, is being fulfilled daily and will be fulfilled until the very end of the world, until faithful people and believers in God and His Christ are born and live on earth, for through them He, Christ, tramples and erases the head of the serpent . Such were the patriarchs, forefathers, prophets, apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, reverend and righteous, and all the saints - such are there now among the faithful, who overcome the ancient serpent, seducing the whole world ().

Secondly, the Feast of the Meeting teaches us that the Lord Himself comes to meet only those who do the truth, or those who hunger and thirst for the truth, like the elder Simeon, because He came to earth in order to fulfill all righteousness() God and teach us to do the right and deliver us from all unrighteousness, from all lawlessness and grant us repentance with saving fruits.

. “And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up out of the water, and lo, the heavens were opened to him, and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and descending on him.”

“Why did the Holy Spirit descend in the form of a dove on Jesus Christ (See:; Ps. 138:7), seeing Him everywhere - in all four directions: in heaven, in the underworld, in the east and west. - Further - the same bird expresses with its outstretched wings and revival. So the kokosh, sitting on the eggs, revives them by its incubation; The Spirit of God everywhere do this and all and pass through all() - revives heavenly and earthly creatures at once, like a bird incubating its eggs.

“The bird depicts the Trinity with its body and two wings; cattle with a head and two horns on it, and a man with a head and two hands, all animals with a head and two equal eyes. The eyes of God signify both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. The All-Holy Spirit Himself appeared in the form of a dove (See:), because, in order to imagine with the appearance of a flying bird the overshadowing of the whole world from Him and the revitalization of every creature from Him - similar to what a bird does, sitting on eggs and communicating its life to them, - so also in order to represent the Trinity of the Godhead and also His omnipresent, meekness, purity of His Being by the form of a flying bird.

12. When Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, he withdrew into Galilee.

13. And leaving Nazareth, he came and settled in Capernaum by the sea, in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali,

14. May it be fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah, who says:

15. the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, on the way by the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles,

16. The people who sat in darkness saw a great light, and to those who sat in the land and shadow of death a light shone forth.

17. From that time Jesus began to preach and say: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

(Matthew 4:12-17)

In today's Gospel reading, dear brothers and sisters, the Apostle Matthew tells about the beginning of our Savior's preaching. Shortly after the events of baptism and the forty-day stay of Christ in the wilderness, misfortune befell John the Baptist. He was arrested by King Herod Antipas and imprisoned in the castle of Macheron. His crime was that he publicly denounced Herod Antipas for having seduced his brother's wife and married her, sending his lawful wife away from him. It is not safe to denounce an Eastern despot, and the courage of John the Baptist led him first to prison and then to death.

But time passed inexorably, and the Savior had to begin to fulfill His mission. Lord went to Galilee and, leaving Nazareth, came and settled in Capernaum by the sea(Matthew 4:12-13). There is some symbolic irreversibility in this. The Savior left His home and never returned there again. Before opening the door that was ahead, He seemed to slam the door that remained behind Him.

But why does the Lord leave after the news of the arrest of John the Baptist? As St. John Chrysostom affirms: “In order to teach us not to go towards temptations ourselves, but to retreat and evade them. He is not guilty who does not rush into danger, but he who does not have courage in danger. So, in order to teach this and tame the hatred of the Jews, Christ retires to Capernaum, fulfilling the prophecy, and, together, hastening, like a fisherman, to catch the teachers of the universe, who, practicing their art, lived in this city.

The city of Capernaum itself, or to be more precise, Kafernaum, where the Savior went and where He delivered His first sermon, was unfortunately completely destroyed. Archaeologists still do not have a single point of view about its location. Two suggestions have been made. Most often (and this seems the most plausible) it is identified with Tel Hum on the western shore of the northern end of the Sea of ​​Galilee. Another and less likely suggestion is that Capernaum was about four kilometers southwest of Tel Hum. In any case, where Capernaum could have stood, now there is nothing left but ruins.

Capernaum is a city of Galilee. But what do we know about Galilee herself? This is the northernmost region of Palestine and the most fertile. There was a saying that it is easier to grow a grove of olive trees in Galilee than it is to grow one child in Judea. Flavius ​​Josephus, who at one time was the ruler of the province of Galilee, says: “It is rich in fields and pastures, on which all kinds of trees grow. Even those who are least disposed towards agriculture are ready to work on this soil; every piece of it is cultivated, nothing is wasted, and everywhere it is fertile.”

And therefore in Galilee the population density was enormous. But Galilee differed not only in the number of inhabitants; the Galileans were, moreover, people of a special kind. Surrounded on many sides by pagans, they more easily perceived everything new, but at the same time they firmly adhered to the Jewish tradition.

The natural qualities of the Galileans and the course of history made Galilee the place in Palestine where a new teacher with a new message had a chance to be heard, and it was there that Christ began His mission and delivered His sermon for the first time: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand(Matthew 4:17).

These words are already familiar to us. It was with such an appeal that John the Baptist addressed the people on the Jordan River. And the Lord addresses people with the same call. And in this Blessed Jerome sees a special providence of God: “After the trial of John the Baptist, Christ Himself immediately begins to preach, that is, after the actual operation of the law ceases, the Gospel begins. If the Savior preaches the same thing that John the Baptist preached before, then by this He shows that He is the Son of the same God, whose prophet John was.

The sermon of our Savior, dear brothers and sisters, consists in the commandment, without the fulfillment of which our salvation is not possible: “Repent!” It is a call to each of us to turn away from our sinful ways and turn to God. Lift our eyes from the ground and look up to the sky. This commandment has become extremely important, because the Kingdom of God has come near. Eternity invaded life. God invaded the world in Jesus Christ, and therefore it is extremely important that each of us follow Christ. Help us in this Lord.

Hieromonk Pimen (Shevchenko)