Part 1
Christian faith is the restoration by God, in His boundless goodness, of the image of God in humanity—fallen, defiled, corrupted—the reconciliation of the Creator with an ungrateful, disobedient, prideful creation, the release from righteous curse and the granting of blessing, the opening of the heaven closed to us—“from now on you will see heaven opened” ()—victory over death and its elimination, and likewise over the devil, its author, entry into paradise and the bestowal of eternal life. How many countless blessings has God given in Christian faith to the believing human, obedient to the Gospel and Christ’s commandments! So what is the delay, Christians? Why do you sleep? Awake, be watchful, pray, repent and reform, do good deeds and ascend to heaven!
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Christian faith is the restoration by God, in His boundless goodness, of the image of God in humanity—fallen, defiled, corrupted—the reconciliation of the Creator with an ungrateful, disobedient, prideful creation, the release from righteous curse and the granting of blessing, the opening of the heaven closed to us—“from now on you will see heaven opened” (Jn 1:51)—victory over death and its elimination, and likewise over the devil, its author, entry into paradise and the bestowal of eternal life. How many countless blessings has God given in Christian faith to the believing human, obedient to the Gospel and Christ’s commandments! So what is the delay, Christians? Why do you sleep? Awake, be watchful, pray, repent and reform, do good deeds and ascend to heaven!
The Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is for me and for all breath and light, life, strength and justification, wisdom, holiness, all wealth, help, healing from all sickness, prayerful fire, the source of compunction, protection, safety, all good. Eternal thanksgiving to you, my Lord. Receive my prayer for all people, especially for Your Church as the gathering of those who sincerely believe in You.
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Does your heart beat with joy and trembling at the remembrance and utterance of the holiest Name of the Trinity uncreated yet creating all, all-good and all-blessed—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? O wondrous Name! O sweetest and life-giving Name! O beautiful, essential, and eternal Trinity, who has bestowed unspeakable beauty upon all creation spiritual and material! Adorn us too according to Your image and likeness, which we have willfully marred and corrupted through all manner of sins! O rightful Trinity, our God, glory to You!
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The Only-Begotten Son is solely God’s Son, and the sole life-giving Spirit is God’s Spirit, by whom “every soul is vivified and exalted in purity, illumined by the sacred mystery of Trinitarian unity” (Antiphon). Glory to You, Lord, who have revealed to us the mystery of the Holy Trinity, as is fitting. Amen.
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Whose words are these: “Take, eat: this is My Body, broken for you for the forgiveness of sins, and drink all of it: this is My Blood of the New Covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:26-28; 1Cor 11:24)? Are they not the words of the all-good and almighty Creator and the all-merciful Savior of all humanity, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? The heretic Arius degraded the Creator to the rank of creatures and did not recognize Him as consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, one in Being with Him and the Holy Spirit. Can a creature transform the substance of things into a completely different nature—for example, wheat bread into the most pure Body of God and red wine into the most pure and life-giving Blood of God? Is it not the almighty Creator alone who can do this? Arius with his followers, numbering tens of thousands, did not recognize Jesus Christ as Creator. Herein lay the great calamity for the Orthodox and the heretics: had they trusted Arius, they would have lost communion with the Church and eternal salvation. The heretic Arius wished to destroy the Orthodox faith, which brings salvation, and introduce heretical faith, which brings perdition. Therefore, the Orthodox bishops, priests, and faithful Orthodox laity firmly opposed Arius. The pious emperor Constantine, equal to the apostles, gathered from all corners of the Orthodox world holy bishops, presbyters, and some deacons, among whom was the holy archdeacon Athanasius, later appointed archbishop of Alexandria in Egypt. They examined, weighed, and refuted the impious teaching of Arius and his followers and anathematized it as contrary to God, and composed an exposition of Orthodox faith, the Creed, for all times until the end of the age, according to the clear, authoritative, and wise teaching of God’s Holy Spirit. And we to this day all agree and with one mind believe in this Creed and add not one iota to it so as not to lose salvation through a false addition, as the Catholics, Lutherans, and Anglicans have done. Glory to our God, glorified in Trinity, forever and ever! Amen.
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“It is better for you that I go away” to the Father, “for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you” (Jn 16:7). The followers of Christ—apostles, bishops, priests, myrrh-bearing women, and all others faithful to Christ—were destined to undergo, in the course of time, the most acute and severe trials, and amid these trials they needed the almighty and most loving Comforter, equal to the Father and the Son, namely the Holy Spirit, equally desirous of our salvation and wishing all consolation to the afflicted and bringing about this consolation—and He, as the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, needed to have equal participation in the salvation of the faithful, according to the unity of the three Persons of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit necessarily had to take a personal, all-good, wise, and almighty part in the salvation of Christians. That is why the Lord entreated the Father to send another Comforter to them after the redemption accomplished by the Son. The enemy devil with his demonic host was to be armed against the Church of Christ by God’s permission and for the testing of all believers through terrible and varied persecutions and torments—great consolation was needed, all-powerful and from the All-Mighty, to stand against all the terrible sufferings and woes of the persecuted Christians of the first and subsequent centuries. This is why Jesus Christ, with God the Father, opposed these terrible sufferings with the all-mighty and all-good Comforter, the Holy Spirit; and He consoled them always and aided them in the brave and joyful endurance of all torments. Read of the sufferings of the martyrs, of their joyful sufferings, and you will see in them the power of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. Amen.
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The Lord God is a beginningless, eternal Being of infinite holiness, righteousness, goodness, and mercy, of unimaginable and boundless brightness, for He is the Light everlasting, from whom all the countless secondary lights come—the choirs of angels, from Whom comes the light of sun, moon, and stars, from Whom thunder and lightning and every blade of grass in the world.
God is a Being of infinite, most firm order, beauty beyond words, eternal peace, unshakeable. Being Holy and having created us according to His holiness, He demands holiness from us and our complete turning away from all sin, which is darkness, confusion, ugliness, lawlessness, and removal from life and falling into curse and death. Judge for yourselves, sinful, fallen, darkened, mortal humans, what you must do with urgency? Repent ceaselessly, pray, reform, do good deeds, and become like God.
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There exists a beginningless, infinite, personal, wise, all-good, and all-righteous Being, to Whom belongs the name “He Who Is” (Being), from Whom all being proceeds, and which cannot not exist. The creatures created by Him are infinite, infinitely diverse, beautiful, beneficial, living; all bear the mark of reason, wisdom, beauty beyond description. From them you can recognize the Artist who devised and created them, His vital nature, goodness, wisdom, beauty, the eternity of His existence, the faithfulness of all His words spoken in revelation to us, His intelligent creatures. We thank Him, our Creator and Maker, Redeemer and Savior, who has given us revelation of Himself in His Word, spoken through the prophets and apostles, and various covenants which He has fulfilled in their time, for example, the covenant of resurrection from the dead and the future blessed life with blessings so surpassing that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of any human” what “He has prepared” (1Cor 2:9). Glory and thanksgiving to You, O Creator and Savior and Redeemer!
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Physical, vegetative, and animal life has been divided, or so to speak, scattered into countless multitudes of lives in an infinite number of beings, infinitely small, then smaller, medium, and great—from infusorians to elephants, from barely visible plants to the greatest cedars and oaks. All physical life proceeds and has proceeded from the first and only personal, wise, all-good, beginningless, almighty Life. This means that the first personal, beginningless Life has granted temporal life to all physical beings—angels and humans, created in His image and likeness and restored from the fall by the Hypostatic Word, incarnate and humanated and redeeming the believing from the fall and curse, sin and death. Glory to You, our Life. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of humans” (Jn 1:4).
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By whose laws and ordinances is conception, formation, and growth of the human body in the mother’s womb accomplished, its maturation and emergence as a complete human organism? By whose laws are food and drink received, hunger and thirst satisfied, the nourishment of our body accomplished? Who conceived and created such wondrous diversity of flavors pleasant to the tongue and beautiful in appearance—countless fruits of the earth, wisely and intricately arranged and prepared for our food and enjoyment? By whose laws is blood produced in our body, without which human life is impossible? Is it not the greatest Wisdom and Artist, all-perfect, beginningless, and almighty—our Lord God! Fall to the dust, give thanks, show reverence before Him, love Him, yet also fear Him if you do not do His will, do not obey Him. Amen.
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In all the animal and plant world, life beats as an abundant, pure, joyful spring that delights the eye and heart: we see ceaseless births in the realm of four-footed animals, domestic and wild, in the realm of birds, fish, insects, crawling and leaping creatures, in the plant kingdom we see marvelous, countless, beautiful, and nourishing growths and fruits in which we marvel at their beauty, taste, and varied fragrance. All of nature is full of life—earth, water, air. What harmony everywhere, what order, usefulness, beauty; how wisely and purposefully all creatures are arranged! The eye cannot have enough of gazing, nor the mind of wondering. Glory to You, Lord, who have created all and everything for humanity! Or rather, humanity and all things for the glory of God: for the Lord created everything for Himself, for the manifestation of His goodness, holiness, wisdom, and power. Glory to You, Lord, glory to You!
Infinite triumph in the animal, organic, and inanimate world—plants, verdure, flowers, shrubs, and all manner of trees. In spring and summer it seems to me that there is infinite merriment and joy, infinite triumph of all living creatures—crawling and leaping, flying birds of every sort and kind, insects, fish, beasts various and domestic, finally—people, especially the gay and jumping children, people busy or laboring, and I conclude: The author, Artist, and Source of life and joy of all these creatures is the Lord, one in three Persons, beginningless, all-good, wise, almighty, life-giving for all and everything; how blessed He is in Himself, if His creatures are so blessed and life-joyful, how beautiful He is, if His creatures are so beautiful and so purposefully arranged! How living, what fragrance do they emanate, how they please the eye of every reasoning being! And finally, how vital, intelligent, beautiful, active are people—capable of countless artistic and useful works in society, mental pursuits, and all else! The mind cannot wonder enough at how good, living, and almighty is the Creator and Artist, the Lord God! How it burns with desire to love Him, to kiss His creative hand, to reverence Him, to worship Him, to glorify Him, like the three youths in the fiery furnace of Babylon! O my Creator! All Your creatures, as many as there are, all raise my gaze to You as the source of vitality and joy. But what a feast, what a triumph of life is in heaven, in the world of angels, in the world of the righteous who have attained eternal life and stand before the throne of the Lord, the Life of all! Read the last chapters of the Revelation of the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian and you will see what an eternal feast, what eternal blessedness there is and will be in the kingdom of glory! Glory to You, Lord, who have created all so and provide for all thus!
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O human, endowed with reason and understanding, do you look rationally upon the beautiful world of God, created infinitely rationally by the Creator, one in three Persons? Do you look rationally upon each individual of the plant kingdom, each tree and sapling, shrub, herb, flowers of countless kinds, upon fruits, upon the animal kingdom of domestic and wild beasts, upon all infinitely diverse creation? Do you not look upon all this unreasonably, foolishly, without reflection and wonder? Oh, how it delights and amazes me—the wisdom, purposefulness, usefulness, beauty of all things created, in every herb, tree, and shrub! In every animal I see a wise, all-good, almighty, beautiful God, and I kiss His hand, which creates, gives life, shapes, instilling into every plant flavor and fragrance, organization, life, and beauty. I cannot marvel enough at the infinite wisdom of God, saying with the psalmist David: “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable” (Ps 144:3), and at the same time I burn with a strong desire to see the Artist who also created me wisely in His image and likeness with reason, feeling, free will, and the immortality of my soul. When shall I see Him, the desired one, all-good, beautiful, all-blessed, immortal Creator and Master, and bow before Him and thank Him personally for all, for all!