On the Feast of St. Sergius of Radonezh
Today we are celebrating the venerable Sergius of Radonezh, a great among the saints, and that is why we read from the Gospel about beatitudes. The Lord is calling us to a higher perfection. He says: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father.” And today’s Gospel shows what that means – “blessed are the poor in spirit,” blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are those who weep over their sins. When a person climbs on those steps of blessedness, he reaches perfection.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” An average person usually thinks he is good, or at least better than most. But the one who feels that way cannot achieve spiritual life. Its basis is spiritual poverty. A person does not only have to consider himself worse than other people, but worse than all creation. And not because he is imagining something or he is prone to self-suggestion. No, this awareness comes when he is given spiritual sight.
Really, let’s take any person and compare him to an insect. Of course, an insect does not commit such sins like a human does. He acts exactly according to the commandments given by God: he feeds on the things God provided for him; he eats as much as he needs; he multiplies the way he was ordered by God. All his life can serve as an example. Man is a lot worse than an insect: what disgrace he commits, how he deforms his own nature, how he harms himself. That is, in order to lift oneself up to the level of an insect, one needs to go through a very complex path of spiritual development. And an insect does not inherit the Kingdom of God. And many people are truly good, they don’t do evil to anyone, and they even do some good to some people (to their children, relatives, to a colleague), but they will also not inherit the Kingdom of God, because that awaits only the holy.
Holiness – this means a person has received God’s grace. Only God is holy. So, if a person has God’s light inside him, he is holy. And how does one feel God’s grace in his heart? When a person starts leading a spiritual life, how is that manifested? Apostle Paul says: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” That is, when a person aspires toward a spiritual life, then he bears those kinds of fruit. And if this lacks, then there is no spiritual life.
Further the apostle says: “Those who are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with its passions and lust.” There are all kinds of passions nesting in our flesh: envy, greed, vainglory, avarice. And the one who is Christ’s, i.e. holy, he crucifies his flesh. The Lord has given us the example. He voluntarily, having taken our sins unto Him, crucified his flesh on the Cross, thus showing how we are supposed to crucify our flesh. There are things you want. There are things you consider necessary. But one should act the way God commands. And his sinful desires have to be crucified – then you will be Christ’s.
“If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.” If a person is spiritual, he acts spiritually – he lives according to the Gospel, according to God’s commandments, i.e. he submits to God, who is a Spirit. And if a person contradicts God, he does not live a spiritual life.
“Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” If a person is angered, if he dwells in anger, if he has envy, vanity, that means he has not spiritual life. But if he has vainglory, anger, and leads a continuous battle with these manifestations of his soul, that means he is leading a spiritual life. God’s spirit is opposed to the spirit of sin, the spirit of demons – and the person tries to destroy the sin in him with his spirit. The person who continuously opposes the sin that lives in him, is God’s co-warrior. Christ has come to overcome sin – that’s why everyone who ceaselessly fights with sin is Christ’s pupil, a warrior of Christ.
Unfortunately, our spiritual lives, as in all the novices, is black and white: we are either sinners of saints. We got up, said our prayers, started working. While everything is going well, we haven’t forgotten about God. But if we have to do something for our son or grandson against our will, we want to bang, yell, and that often happens. If we persevere in our temptation, if we don’t commit anything bad, even though it’s boiling in us and we are ready to kill the guilty party (how familiar we are with that feeling!), if we, in spite of everything, act according to the spirit of meekness, then we are fulfilling Christ’s law. As Apostle Paul calls on us: “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sing, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” And if we give in to our sinful feelings, that means we are submitting to the devil who is sitting inside us. We will fall again, and our whole day will go down the hill, because only those “who endure till the end will be saved.” Saved from sin…
When an irritable person during an entire day, a week, month, year, decade, the entire life does not let a word of anger come out of his mouth, that anger will disappear in him. The passion goes away, he smothers that passion. Fire can be extinguished with water and it can be covered with a blanket – and without oxygen it will be put out right away. It is the same with any passion: if you don’t give it free will, it will gradually diminish, diminish, and then it will be completely extinguished. But unfortunately, we sometime smother the passion, and sometimes give it free reign, we lift up that blanket again, and it starts burning with new power, and we have to do it all over again.
And the Lord says: “I will judge you in the state I find you.” When we die, where will the Lord find us, in what part of that black and white picture – in sin or in holiness? That does not depend on chance. In the process of life, a person grows either in sin or in grace. A third state is not given: it does not happen that he stops at a certain level, and he stays that way. A person either struggles, cultivates in him good deeds with perseverent labour, and through falls, temptations, and spiritual hardships increases the good inside him. Or it’s the opposite: his spiritual life increasingly weakens. For instance, he starts praying to God and he is fighting with constant thoughts, with absent-mindedness, he is straining his mind. A year goes by, the strain weakens, the person gets used to praying absent-mindedly, and he just starts reading the prayers. He’s read them – and that’s it, finished; and nothing has remained in the head. The question arises: what happened, the life is gone and it has passed you by.
For that reason one should practice every good deed; then the Lord, when he comes, will find us at the moment when we are in good spirit. The Lord says it thus: the good servant doesn’t know when the master of the house will come, he is always at work, and the lazy servant is asleep. How much labour do we invest in order to clean up the apartment, prepare a meal, arrange our earthly live in general, and we don’t even think about the heavenly life, everything passes us by. And one should do that too, of course, but not leave the other thing either. For spiritual life is heavenly life – it is a lot more important; here we live a short moment and over there we will live permanently.
Here is what Apostle Paul further says: “Do not be deceived: Lord is never put to shame. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.“ The person who has not tasted of God’s grace, even if he is thrice good, if he is the most likeable person on earth, he will never enter the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God was given to murderers, the adulterers, the bandits, the princes and the beggars – perfectly various people, of various states of the soul, but they were all saints. The crimes some of them have committed! But when they came to themselves and started a new life, they managed to overcome the sin in them and they acquired God’s grace.
A saint – that does not mean sinless. A saint – that’s the person who is ceaselessly fighting with sin. Sometimes, having received God’s mercy, sin completely leaves a person, but this happens with God’s chosen ones, who have great resoluteness and a great love toward God. And for us, ordinary people, this fight against sin has to be part of all our life, starting with our first steps and finishing with death bed. Otherwise, even though we have possibly never killed anyone, robbed anyone, we will not see the Kingdom of God, because we are not doing anything to deserve it. It’s as if we don’t need it, we are just trying really hard to organise our earthly life. But even if we perfectly arrange everything here, we will have to die anyway, and we will have to leave our perfectly organised setup. And spiritual life has permanent continuation. That is why it is stupid and futile to live in sin.
“If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” This is again about humility. If God would set up everything justly, and if he would hold us responsible for every sin, we would not live a single hour on earth. According to our sins, we simply don’t deserve anything good. And if we are still alive, and the sun is shining, and we can buy bread in the store – that’s a miracle and God’s unspeakable mercy. It is simply remarkable how the Earth still produces bread, because when the earth is sown, it is not watered with prayer and tears, but with curses. We don’t sow bread our selves, with don’t reap it, we only eat it – isn’t that a miracle? We don’t weave, sew our shoes, yet we are clad and we have shoes – isn’t that a miracle? We are given everything, even though we haven’t deserved it at all, we haven’t made it, we haven’t earned it. Someone, uncles and aunts, are doing that for us, and we even judge it: yeah, this is bad, this is not good. If it’s bad for you – sew it, weave it yourself. We receive everything for free: we have received our life for free, and our faith too. According to our sins, we haven’t deserved to walk in our underwear and rubber boots, and we all have apartments, clothes, shoes, food. We are morally a lot lower than the insects, and we live in luxurious conditions, yet we are still not satisfied: you see, there is a draft here, you see, there’s no water, the elevator is broken.
And why are we dissatisfied with everything? Because due to our stupidity, lack of understanding, blindness and pride we think we deserve better. That’s why we ceaselessly demand – from our children, from grandchildren, from bosses at work, from residential circumstances. We are always dissatisfied, irritated. So, if we want to step on the path of holiness, on the path of acquiring God’s grace, we have to look first of all for humility. One has to consider himself not worthy not only of the Kingdom of Heaven, but also to go to church, even to open a prayer book, and in general to live among people. And if we don’t acquire humility, our life will turn out to be futile. If we instead of humility have pride and vainglory, then all our good works will be harmful. Even if you make the whole world happy, even if a million people are indebted to you – it is not worth it. “What use does a person have if he wins the world and harms his own soul?” Humility is that basis of spiritual life without which salvation is impossible.
How does one look for humility? Primarily through long-suffering. One has to long-suffer through one’s anger, one’s dissatisfaction and always remind oneself that he is worse than everyone else. And in order to see oneself in that light, you have to ask God: Lord, reveal my sins to me. And when the Lord shows you your sins, you will not judge others anymore, you will not be angry with anyone. For how is it possible to be angry with a person when you are worse than he or she is. We will simply be wrong to be angry, and anger will truly leave you. Humility is medicine for many, many passions and sins. That’s why we have to try hard to acquire it.
Since we are evil according to our nature, we have to try to do good. And, as Apostle Paul calls on us “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” So, one should finish the work begun. Let’s imagine a person who has taken in a cripple, and for sixty years has washed, clad and fed him, and then he said: no, Lord, I can’t do it any longer, I will give him to someone or I’ll take him to the street from where I took him. Will that person receive the reward? No, he will not and all those sixty years will be lost in vain. Because if we ironed the shirt, and the collar remained dirty, will someone say that the shirt is clean? Of course not. Or a chandelier has hung for twenty years, and then fell and broke into a thousand pieces – that’s it, it’s not a chandelier anymore. If a person was holy all his conscious life, and then fell, has to start from the start if he wants to return all that is lost. For that reason every spiritual work has to be finished. It is very important to keep that loyalty to God until the end, and not to despair when we are doing good works. And in order not to despair, humility is needed again. One should consider him/herself worse than everyone else and deserving of a worse fate all the time.
Then everything else can gradually be cultivated: trying pray, going church more often, reading the Gospel more often. If one has the opportunity to do something good to someone, the opportunity mustn’t be missed, but used with joy. For those who have just started going to church, usually the question arises: where do I start? Someone has given a book, the other gave a prayer to the Holy Virgin to be read. Went to the cathedral, over there they said to do prostrations – three hundred a day. And a person is usually confused. In the Gospel we read today, the Lord says: one shouldn’t poor new wine into old wineskins. Because the new wine will ferment, boil, and it will make a hole in the old wineskin. We understand better the other story , which the Lord said at the same time: put an old patch on the old clothes, because if we put a new patch on the old clothes, the new patch will tear the old clothes, and the hole will be even bigger. That story teaches us we should not take on things we are not capable of bearing. Before new wine of God’s grace is poured into us, our soul has to be prepared with struggles in order to make away with passions, with the old self. For that reason, spiritual labour has to be gradual. There is an old monastic rule: if you see a young monk aspiring with all his strength toward heaven, grab him by the legs and pull him down to earth. For if a person who cannot fly, goes too far up, he can fall from there and smash into smithereens.
Progress in spiritual life has to be gradual, from the simple to the complex, and one should never take up more unto himself than one can accomplish. And a lot of people take on a lot, and then drop everything, and they can’t do anything anymore. Do that which you have grasped, what you have adopted, what you have already tested. If a year has passed and works have become an easy habit, you can add a bit. And thus in everything: in fast, in prayer, in Bible reading, and in good works. In everything a measure is needed, and we, due to our pride, vainglory, misunderstanding, stupidity still aspire somewhere. They are reading the Psalms in turns – I’ll do it too. I was given a praying rope – that means I will pray with the rope. I read a chapter from the Gospel, and I found out someone has been reading five – that means I will read as many. Someone has taken a trip – I am going there too. And as a result the person does not accomplish anything.
A tree cannot grow from the top, but from the root, gradually. At first a green bud, then it is covered in bark, then it grows for a long, long time, while it doesn’t acquire fruit. Look how long an oak tree grows until it starts bearing acorns. It is the same with a Christian. We shouldn’t wonder why our prayers are absent-minded, why we can’t reach anything, why we trip and fall. Many say: look how much time has gone by, and I haven’t budged. What’s strange about that? We are only beginning, we haven’t understood anything, we haven’t created anything. This process has to be gradual. If it comes out differently, a crack is due to appear and the wine will be spilled – the young wine of God’s grace will tear our sinful, old flesh.
For that reason holy fathers have said: if someone starts theologising or aspiring toward a pure prayer not having freed his heart from passions – that’s the road to insanity. It’s not that Jesus’ prayer leads to insanity – no, it cannot lead to insanity – but to an incorrect way of life. Let’s say, a person reads “Our Father” every day: “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And there he gets offended at someone and cannot forgive him. He had just told God: forgive me my sins the way I forgive – and you haven’t forgiven. That means he puts himself in such a position not to be forgiven by God. And what does that mean? That means that the sin he has committed will stay with him. And under the burden of sins the person very quickly falls and then wonders: what is the matter? And the matter is that he is supposed to be praying and pleasing god, and in reality he is not living the way God has commanded.
So, if we go to church, we take the Holy Sacrament of Christ, and our life does not change, we continue to live in our sins, do not fight with them, we are preparing a horrible fate for ourselves. For the one who does not know and does not do will be beaten, and the one who knows and does not do will be beaten even harder. From us, the faithful, the demand is a lot greater, because we know, we read, we listen. That is why it is necessary to try hard to experience that graduate movement toward sainthood, toward the grace of God, to always have that spiritual labour in our souls. Then everyone – not like the venerable Sergius, but at least according to one’s effort – will achieve grace and will manage to reach the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are many rooms, everyone has his own: Sergius has one, Seraphim another, the Mother of God has a room even higher. Let us have one somewhere on the edge, at least the last one, but at least it would be there, for between the Kingdom of Heaven and the underworld there is a vast abyss no one can cross. For that reason it is better to be last, yet there, in the Kingdom.
And if we prove faithful to God, if in spite of tiredness, of our ignorance, the weakness of the soul we still show zealousness, if we aspire toward Kingdom of Heaven, struggle for it, the Lord will help us because of his mercy. He knows our weaknesses better than we do. Moreover, He wants to save us all. And for every person who is born on earth there is a room in heavens. Only because of his own love toward sin man does not enter it. And the Lord then waits for a new person to appear on Earth: maybe he will inherit that room. All mankind lives only to fill that tenement created by the Lord.
For that reason everyone who struggles enters it, and who is lazy for the spiritual goes to the underworld, to Hades. They are building a house, bringing material, cutting planks, making the floor, the roof, walls – and only scraps are left. What should be done with them? They are cut, dried and then burned because they are not good for anything else. And the person who has not struggled for the grace of God – he, strictly speaking, is not good for anything. He has only sin and rotten flesh, and that’s it. You can only throw that into a furnace, nowhere else. So, it is not surprising the burning Hades exists. Everything good, everything nice is already used up for the house, for the construction of human salvation. And what is rotten, what cannot be used, what has destroyed itself – that has to be cut of, dried and burned.
We are not planks, we are not logs, we are live beings. And each one of us can either know his place in that house prepared for him by the Lord, or rot – and then only the furnace is left. So, each one of us decides his fate by himself. The venerable Sergius decided his fate – he left the world, started praying to God and purified himself from sin. He became “the struggler of virtues,” he acquired all the possible virtues. And he didn’t only save himself, but he saved hundreds and hundreds of people. A great number of his pupils became saints, and the pupils’ pupils became saints. He filled Russia with his holiness. He covered Russia with monasteries, he gave it back the spiritual pivot. For that reason Russian managed to free itself from the Tartars. And if it weren’t for that, everything would have rotted, we would have turned into Tartars’ serfs.
That’s what we have to do, like Sergius. And around us there is evil, curses, hatred, envy, empty chatter, judgments, cries. Why is that? Because we are burning in that cauldron. And if we would shine with God’s grace, people would be turning into saints around us, right here on Earth. For it is impossible to utter a bad word in front of a holy man, because the presence of God’s grace has the power to regenerate a person. Recently I was told: a priest came to visit a woman in the hospital. And her roommate in the hospital somehow felt he was a priest. And it’s interesting how it made an impression on her. She went right away to her husband, who was lying in the same hospital and with whom she had an argument – and she asked for forgiveness. No one told her anything, no one talked her into anything, but God’s grace itself came into her and see how effectively influenced her.
God’s grace regenerates a person, it makes him do good. So, if there are arguments in our family, fights, curses, other disorders – this doesn’t happen because all people are bad, they don’t listen, don’t understand, but because we don’t have God’s grace, there is no power that can regenerate everything. If in the world, a city, a building around us there is only evil, scandals, drunkenness, it’s because we have lost strength, we don’t have enough grace even for ourselves, not to mention children, grandchildren, relatives. So, it is not surprising we have non-believing children. Faith comes from grace, and if we don’t have, like those women in the Gospel, enough to lighten ourselves – we live in the dark, in sin, in envy, in evil, in judgment, in anger, in fornication – we cannot even mention someone else. What words can convince us? No, words do not convince, only grace convinces. So, no matter how well you speak, even if you are the greatest orator, it’s all in vain. Only grace is the true witness. So, the goal of our life is acquiring grace. Then we will be holy. And if we are saints – we will reach the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
Church of the Elevation of the Cross, October 8, 1986.
