“My soul, arise from what you have written off”

Photo of the choir from the international festival of church music "Hajnowka"
In the Orthodox Church, some liturgical chants are performed only during Lent. The list of such unique prayers includes, for example, the canon of St. Andrew of Crete. A canon is usually called a large poetic work that is sung and read at the evening service in parts or, in other words, songs. The canon of Andrei Kritsky is named after its author. Saint Andrew was born in the mid-7th century in Damascus. According to his life, he was mute from birth until the age of seven, when he was miraculously healed by receiving Holy Communion. From that time on, he began to study the Holy Scriptures and theological sciences. At the age of 14, Andrei entered the monastery of St. Savva the Sanctified near Jerusalem, where he quickly earned the respect of the monks by leading a strict monastic life. Subsequently, Andrei was ordained to the priesthood and then became the archbishop of the city of Gortyn on the island of Crete. Here he revealed himself as a preacher and poet. Saint Andrew literally put his great talent into the canon, which was later named after him. Many Orthodox parishioners know this work, including thanks to the heartfelt chant “My soul, arise, what have you written down.” Priest Anthony Borisov talks about the meaning of prayer.

The Canon of Andrew of Crete is read and sung in Orthodox churches during the first week of Lent. It is performed in equal parts in the evenings - from Monday to Thursday. Then, already in the fifth week of fasting, the canon is read in full. The chant “My Soul Rise” is imbued with the same repentant feeling as the entire work of Andrei Kritsky. Let’s listen to the Church Slavonic text of the prayer: “My soul, arise, what have you written off? The end is approaching and Imashi is confused. Rise up, so that Christ God, who is everywhere and fulfills everything, will have mercy on you.” Translated into Russian, this text reads as follows: “My soul, my soul, arise, why are you sleeping? The end is approaching and you will be confused; Awake, so that Christ God, Omnipresent and filling everything, will have mercy on you.” The text of the song refers us to the Gospel parable of the ten virgins. Five of them were wise and were ready to meet the Bridegroom. This is how Christ is called in the parable. The other five slept through his arrival, were not ready and, as a result, were not allowed to attend the wedding celebration. Saint Andrew calls us to be collected, to remember that one day our days on earth will end, and we will appear before God.

In the Russian Church, a touching tradition is associated with the singing “My soul, arise, what you have written off.” In our churches it is customary to kneel when the choir begins to perform this heartfelt prayer. The priest also kneels. This is how a feeling of repentance is expressed, regret for sinful mistakes committed. Let's listen to the singing of the prayer “My soul, arise” performed by the choir of the St. Elizabeth's Monastery in Minsk.

Orthodox Life

Very often we hear from people, even deeply religious ones, that the Great Canon of St. Andrei Kritsky is perceived very difficult.

There is no single constant “red thread” in it, as, say, in some novel, life of a saint or story. But we need to understand that this canon is not intended to interest us, to captivate only our mind or the external heart of feelings. He has a deeper task: through a variety of comparisons with the righteous and sinners, whose lives are described in the Holy Scriptures, to move us to a deep awareness of our sinfulness. In other words, the canon itself is a cry, a cry, and sometimes just a person’s calm reflection on his own state of soul and body.

Each troparion is worthy of thorough thought and theological awareness. Today I would like to draw attention to the kontakion that accompanies each part of the canon. It sounds like this:

“My soul, my soul, arise, what are you writing off? The end is approaching, and you will be embarrassed: rise up, so that Christ God, who is everywhere and fulfills everything, will have mercy on you.”

"My soul." We need to think about who is talking to whom. If the body is connected to the soul, then the result is absurd, because the body itself without a soul is dead, as we see in people after death. If there is a certain me, then it turns out that I am soulless? It's also ridiculous.

It should be noted that this stylistic device is used many times in the Bible. Let us give just one example from Psalm 41. “How sorrowful are you, my soul? And why are you embarrassing me? Trust in God, for we will confess to Him” (Ps. 41:6). We see that here there is also an appeal, as it were, to one’s own soul. This technique encourages us to listen to the voice of our conscience, that conscience that is absolutely pure and unbiased. She looks at our body and soul and seems to tell us what to do, and if we listen to her, then our condition improves, but if not, it worsens.

“My soul, arise.” In Greek ἀνάστα - from the verb to rise, resurrect (sya) άνίστημι , from which in turn comes the noun resurrection or uprising - ἀνάστασις . Kontakion St. Andrei Kritsky not only calls us to rise after another fall, but also to rise from our fallen state, as from a grave. Yesterday in the 8th canto we heard how Saint Andrew compared his soul with Saints Martha and Mary, who wept over the body of their beloved brother Saint Lazarus. We must love our souls, just as sisters love their brothers, because according to their faith, as the Lord Himself said, Lazarus rises and is resurrected. During fasting, we should constantly think about the ultimate goal of our mental and physical fasting, since the builder of a house also has a general plan on the way to his goal. We have one goal - to be resurrected, not in the sense of the Second Coming, because this resurrection does not depend on us, but in the sense of rising from our personal sins and vices, so as not to sleep anymore, not to enjoy them.

"The end is approaching." Our time is filled with all sorts of horror stories about the Apocalypse, and a person of the 21st century is so carried away by calculating the exact date of the Second Coming that he completely forgets about the end, which for him personally will be the Second Coming, that is, the last point when he can no longer change anything. It's about death. But it’s even more terrible when we still live in the body, but are already spiritually dead. And, being in such spiritual death, a dream from which we need to get up, we forget that the end will come and dot all the i’s in our further posthumous fate.

"Imashi will be embarrassed . We must become confused (in Greek θορυβεῖσθαι - worry), not in the sense of being despondent, but according to the general patristic principle “to realize that our sins are like the sand of the sea” and try with all our might to rise up, “to perk up”* , that is, to cheer up, as is the case with we find ourselves in difficult life situations.

“May Christ God have mercy on you.” Unlike a worldly court, when a criminal realizes his guilt and, although there is relief from guilt, is still sentenced to punishment, if our soul realizes its sins with a clear conscience, then it will certainly receive mercy from Christ, Who is “ everywhere and fulfills everything . He knows every movement of our soul.

We need to listen to the kontakion of St. Andrey Kritsky. It is important, while listening to the canon, to try to look at yourself personally from the outside, not as happens when someone corrects you, but at yourself personally, without embellishment. We need to remind ourselves of all the events described in the canon that can be useful to us, like the nervous system in the body. After all, if we hit the table, we feel pain and, most likely, will avoid collisions in the future. If we break our arm, our nervous system reminds us that we don’t need to do it one way or another. One should listen not only to the impulses of the soul, but also to the voice of conscience, which is the voice of God in us. After the Fall, our soul, because of sin, began to live in another world, its own. If she feels bad (and this happens often), she cries out and calls to us, like the nervous system of the body. However, even if we hear it, it’s not for long: for some reason we forget about the pain, enjoy fleeting joys, but our souls feel bad again. But our conscience shows us what to do, how to be guided by the commandments of God. And this voice of conscience is strengthened precisely by Great Lent, which, combined with prayer, will certainly lead us to the Risen Christ. Glory to Him forever and ever!

Archim. Filaret (Voloshin) Vice-rector for educational and methodological work of KDAiS

Note:

*The verb ἀνάνηφω means to sober up after being drunk.

“My soul, my soul, arise...” - Lent

“But let us remember the year 1812: why did the French come to us?
God sent them to destroy the evil that we adopted from them. Russia then repented, and God had mercy on her. And now, it seems, that lesson has already begun to be forgotten. If we come to our senses, of course, nothing will happen, and if we don’t come to our senses, who knows, maybe the Lord will again send us the same teachers to bring us to our senses and put us on the path of correction. This is the law of God’s righteousness: to heal from sin is the one who is attracted to it. These are not empty words, but a deed affirmed by the voice of the Church” - Theophan the Recluse, saint. Nativity of Christ // Theophan the Recluse, saint. Contemplation and Contemplation and reflection. M., 1998. P. 241 The Holy Church has clothed itself in mourning today. To repentance, During the days of Lent for all sinners, the tongues of the bells are calling us in alarm from the very early days. And prayers, And chants that are close to the choir in the wings of the white retinue, All - in the aspiration to awaken And the conscience that sleeps day and night! And we should repent... Forget about all the passions that ring in the darkness Until they roar loudly!

“My soul, arise, what are you writing off? The end is near"*...

Let's go! - Which is richer than everyone else! The world is poor:

The blood does not ooze, it flows in full swing! - From bodies that - ... already, or maybe - ... soon; From the eyes of those who gave birth...

What does the mother have to do with it? What to expect: rejoice or what?!

Spring came. Posting suits her! Oneself in clean clothes, favorable to the Father, and the body - yes, but first the soul would be clothed with all, like every animal creature, trees, changing the cover for a bright outfit for joy! So we too would purify ourselves on holy days, to put off the rags of sin, with fasting, prayer, from the heart and tears of repentance, so that the temple would see!

Isn’t it better than “feats” between brothers, Children, husbands, fathers, strangers - A feat in the name of God?! Enough! Spring is blooming and we...

For a life! And - for Christ's Resurrection! Hasten to glorify the Lord with the Mother of God in singing: “The soul magnifies...”*!

Fast!

Amen

* My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! (cf.: Luke 1, 46-47)

* “My soul, my soul, arise, what are you writing off? The end is approaching and Imashi is confused. Rise up, so that Christ God, who is everywhere and fulfills everything, will have mercy on you...” - These words, which are in some sense central in the Great Canon of Repentance, were written by St. Andrei Kritsky, the author of this canon, is one of God’s great saints. He turns to his soul: “My soul, my soul, arise, what have you written off?” And if this great righteous man accused his soul of falling asleep spiritually, then what can we say about ourselves?

Illustration - Icon of the Mother of God “AUGUSTOVSKAYA” (“AUGUST APPEARANCE”)

The appearance of the icon of the Mother of God took place on September 14, 1914 during the First World War, during the struggle for East Prussia, in the Augustow region. At that time, Augustow was a county town in the Suwałki province of the Kingdom of Poland. On the eve of the decisive battle, the Gatchina and Tsarskoye Selo cuirassier Life Guards regiments moved to the battle site. At about 11 o'clock at night, the Mother of God appeared to the soldiers of the cuirassier regiment in the dark night starry sky. The vision of the Mother of God lasted 30-40 minutes. All the soldiers and officers knelt down and prayed. The Mother of God appeared in an unusual radiance, with the Infant Jesus Christ sitting on Her left hand. With her right hand She pointed to the west, towards the direction of movement of the Russian troops. Soon after the battles at Augustow, the Russian army won a major victory. Therefore, this appearance of the Mother of God was called the “Sign of the August Victory” or “August Appearance”. The icon of the Mother of God was painted with the blessing of Metropolitan Macarius (Nevsky) of Moscow in 1916 and, accordingly, did not have time to circulate in a large number of copies until 1917. In addition, after the revolution, the lists of this icon were destroyed with particular bitterness, like the lists of the Sovereign Icon of the Mother of God. Only five surviving editions of this icon are known, one of them is in Canada and is especially revered in the family of descendants of the Royal Romanov family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJZddkiAzNM Stamatis Spanoudakis — — Hidden Signs

One of the most powerful passages in the Gospel is Jesus’ prophecy about the end of the world. Today many see it as a description of our times. Moreover, eschatological sentiments are widespread not only among Christians who read the Gospel, but also among those who know about his prophecies firsthand. Sensitive to the state of public consciousness, mass art capitalizes on these sentiments and inflames them even more with vivid descriptions and film adaptations of the impending death of our civilization. Numerous sects also add fuel to the fire, from time to time announcing the exact date of the end to humanity. For example, the now infamous Aum Shinrikyo sect informed us that history would end in 1997. There have been many such quite definite predictions recently, but so far, as we see, not a single one has come true. True, this did not bother the predictors very much - when the appointed date passed without any extraordinary incidents, they declared that an error had crept into the calculations, which they had now corrected, and set a new date. This is what the Great White Brotherhood sect did, for example, after the Last Judgment scheduled for November 24, 1994, never took place.

It turns out that all this is not new; this kind of expectation arose many centuries ago. Let’s say, when 7000 years “from the creation of the world” were approaching, that is, in 1492, in Rus' they were so seriously waiting for the Second Coming that in some villages they didn’t even sow the fields, they released the cattle on all four sides, put on white shirts and sat down to watch the the sky, so as not to miss Jesus coming on the clouds, rising like lightning from east to west. They waited and waited, but seeing nothing, they changed clothes and wandered into the forest in search of feral cows.

In principle, every generation feels it to some extent. yourself as final, and this deceptive feeling is rooted in every person’s completely healthy expectation of his exit from this life, in other words, in the death instinct. That collective eschatology to which people have been subject in all ages is, to a large extent, a projection of individual eschatology onto the surrounding society, and individual eschatology has no direct relationship to the end of the world.

If we talk about universal eschatology, then it is immediately necessary to make one important clarification. Many people, maybe even the majority, today understand the end of the world as some kind of cataclysm, such as a nuclear war, a huge earthquake, or a collision between the Earth and an asteroid. This is a fundamentally wrong understanding. The apocalyptic ending means the abolition of everything that was once created by God, that is, not only the entire material universe with its countless galaxies, but even the “angelic world.” This will be a return to pre-created existence, although with some addition, for the sake of which the world was created. What this will look like is prophesied by Isaiah: “And all the host of heaven will be destroyed; and the heavens will be rolled up like a book scroll; and all their army will fall, like a leaf falling from a vine, and like a withered leaf from a fig tree” (Isa. 34:4). Yes, our entire ball of the universe, filled with matter and light, with a diameter of thirty billion light years, will then curl up like a scroll and disappear like smoke, and in the existence that will remain after this, there will no longer be any radii or diameters, for there will be no distances there and lengths, and most importantly - there will be no days, years and centuries, for there will be no time. Therefore, the end of the world is also called the “end of times.”

A material catastrophe and the final withdrawal of matter are fundamentally different things, even opposite, since they have the opposite deep meaning. These are, by their very nature, different events arising from dissimilar previous situations. Catastrophism and finalism are two different states of the Divine spirit, leading to different decisions. Until we understand this difference, it is too early for us to open the Gospel or the Revelations of John the Theologian, hoping to read something that will clarify for us the question of the end that interests us all today. How can anything become clear to us if we do not give ourselves a clear understanding of what the word “end” itself means? So let's start by understanding this concept for ourselves.

When creating the world, the Creator set some goal for Himself, did it for something. What was the main thing for Him in this creation? And the Holy Scriptures, and the patristic works, and the wisdom of the Holy Apostolic Church, and Christian theology agree here in one opinion: man was conceived as the crown of creation and its justification. Having created man and woman on the sixth day, God said to them: “fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the beasts, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28) . Man was placed on the top of a huge pyramid, reminiscent of the step pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser: its upper step, on which he directly rested, were the higher animals (“birds of the air, fish of the sea and beasts”), the next, if you go down, were plant and unicellular forms ( “grass that sows seed in its own kind and likeness”), representing a food supply for higher forms and a testing ground for developing and improving the mechanism of life reproduction through the synthesis of proteins under the control of nucleic acids. Even lower is the level of dead matter - physical and chemical reality, governed by the “laws of nature”. The basis of everything is the organizational and regulatory principles of the world order - physical constants, mathematics and logic. The fact that each lower level is specially designed so that the next one in height can be located on it is confirmed by modern science (the so-called “anthropic principle”), therefore we can say that physics is the foothills of biology, biology is the foothills of zoology, and zoology - the foothills of anthropology. Therefore, if man did not exist or if he had not succeeded in the form in which God intended, then all these stools would lose their function and would become as meaningless as a pedestal on which there is no statue. The correctness of this conclusion is proven by the following biblical text: “And the Lord saw that the wickedness of men was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually; and the Lord repented that he had created man on earth and was grieved in His heart. And the Lord said: I will destroy from the face of the earth man whom I have created, from man to beast, from the creeping thing, and from the birds of the air I will destroy, for I have repented that I created them” (Genesis 6:5). As we see, man has become unnecessary, and the animals that carry him have also become unnecessary.

True, thanks to the righteous Noah, these emergency measures were canceled at the last moment: God decided to produce from Noah a new human tribe. With the help of the Flood, He cut off all the branches of the tree of humanity except this one, and began to grow from it a new top of the pyramid, so that there was no need to dismantle its lower tiers. What if the righteous were not found? How many tiers would the Creator demolish in this case—maybe all of them? If so, then this would be the end of the world, since it means precisely the liquidation of the entire pyramid.

When reading the Bible, it is useful to pay special attention to its most popular passages, since it is precisely because we hear them often that a habituation effect arises, and therefore the illusion that we understand them, although in fact we do not. One of the most famous phrases of the Bible is the one with which it begins, that is, the first phrase of Holy Scripture in general. It goes like this: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). What does it mean? It is clear that this was not the astronomical sky, which God created only on the second day and called “firmament,” nor the geological earth, created on the third day and called “dry land.” These “earth” and “heaven” are the same as the “visible” and “invisible” in the Creed. It is natural to assume that the words with which the inspired book opens are of key importance and to skip over them without properly thinking, so It is unacceptable, as when reading Newton’s Principia, to jump over their first axiom straight to the second. However, we do not comprehend them, hurrying to move on to what we believe are more meaningful events that took place in the subsequent days of creation. But it is impossible to understand what happens on days one through six unless one understands what was created on “day zero.” Why, before beginning the creation on “earth” described in the Sixth Day, did God first create, in addition to “earth,” also “heaven”? The importance of this act is emphasized by the use of the Hebrew verb bara, which expresses a special creative effort. On the first, second, third and fourth days, God no longer “created”, but “made,” and returned to true creativity only on the fifth and sixth days, when he created the higher animals (“living soul”) and man. Why are these three creative acts designated by the same word? This is explained by the fact that the problem solved by the Creator was essentially the same in all three cases. After all, what is “heaven”? These are, first of all, its inhabitants, the “heavenly powers”, myriads of animate beings with their own mind, their own feelings and their own will. Although these beings are incorporeal, or rather, clothed in finer matter than us, they are similar to us in that they are also free-reasoning individuals and therefore can use their minds and their will not as the Creator would like, but in a completely different way , and even use them against your Creator, challenging Him. There is a plan of a very special kind here: this plan must certainly be realized, for “God cannot be mocked,” but at the same time, it itself contains the possibility of its non-realization. In the person of free beings, God creates a stone that cannot be lifted, but which, nevertheless, will be lifted by Him. It is this “engineering problem” that is incompatible with human understanding and falls outside of human logic and requires the level of ingenuity of the “bar”; everything else is much easier to do. Therefore, this term is referred in the Sixth Day only to the creation of animate creatures - first angels, then animals and people. Only God Himself can do it; no one can help Him here. But when luminaries were created or the protein synthesis mechanism was designed, the use of apprentices was quite appropriate - they could, for example, carry out mathematical calculations or do some other work of a technical nature. In many near-Christian philosophical texts, these apprentices are called “demiurges” (always in the plural), and this use of this word is much more correct than that which goes back to Plato, who called the Supreme Creator “Demiurge”. After all, in Greek this word means “folk craftsman”, that is, a craftsman, and in relation to God it is not only inaccurate, but also disrespectful. This, of course, is an accident, but it turned out that the term “demiurge” sounds most adequately in French, where it can be understood as “half-creator.” This is exactly how this word sounded to the French ear of Rabelais, who played with this sound and gave his main character the name “Panurge”. For a book that was a manifesto of atheism that had raised its head, this was a brilliant find: your God, they say, is only half a creator, and my mortal man is “all-creator.” How can one not remember what a boastful “panurgiad” the ideology of humanism grew into in the twentieth century: “we have no barriers either at sea or on land,” etc. But this, and space projects, and genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence - everything burst like a soap bubble, and now it is becoming more and more clear to us who is the All-Creator and who is the half-Creator.

During the first five days of creation, only angels could be demiurges helping God - there were no other animate beings then. When man was created, the Lord immediately assigned him to work: he instructed him to come up with names for animals. And before that, the Creator had to rely only on the help of “the forces of heaven, which, of course, it was for the sake of this help that they were created even before the beginning of creation. Before serious work can begin, it is necessary to prepare a toolkit, and they were just such a toolkit. Overall, they not only justified their creation, but were also praised in the Bible. At the beginning of the second chapter of the Book of Genesis, as if summing up the creation of the world, the author says: “Thus the heavens and the earth and all their hosts were completed” (Gen. 2:1). Since it was too early to talk about the perfection of Adam and Eve at that moment, we can only talk about angels, and their perfection can only mean that they greatly helped the Creator in these super-intense six “days.” But everything could not go absolutely smoothly - after all, the heavenly powers were given such a dangerous thing as freedom. One of the best apprentices of God - an angel named Dennitsa, having successfully solved those particular tasks that were entrusted to him, imagined himself beyond measure and decided that he could not only work completely independently, but could create his own universe, which would be better God's. How subtle and insidious temptations can be, how keenly vigilant everyone who has freedom must be! Dennitsa, aka Lucifer, began with a seemingly harmless and even commendable creative passion, but what a terrible end it was! Carried away by his work and seeing that he had succeeded, he wanted no one to limit him, and began to be irritated by God’s intervention and His advice: don’t bother me, I’ll do it myself! He did not understand that if it were not for the Spirit, which, by the grace of God, descended upon him all the time, he would not have had any creative abilities at all. Having gone too far, he entered into a streak of failures, but instead of sobering up and repenting, he became even more angry about the failures and began to blame God for them, who allegedly envies him and deliberately harms him. This more and more incited in him hatred towards God and deepened his falling away from Him, but, nevertheless, he remained attached to God, for he did not have the ability to create from nothing, and therefore could create his universe only from material stolen from Him, that is, from seduced angelic and human souls. And souls cannot be seduced except by flattery, lies and deception, so he became “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

How many angels he seduced is of little concern to us. But the fact that he seduced our ancestors had a direct impact on our fate. Man, created by God, distorted his nature through sin, and he did not become that friend of the Lord for whose sake everything was started. It really turned out to be a very heavy stone. But, as people say, God will not lift up a stone and put down the earth - he will still achieve his goal, albeit in a different way. That measure of holiness, which, according to the Plan, was supposed to be concentrated in Adam alone, now began to be gained by God from a sequence of successive generations introduced into the mainstream of historical time. And it is in the light of this circumstance that the eschatological theme must be comprehended.

Let us remember again: “God is not mocked” (Gal. 6:7). What He has planned will certainly come true. Put into effect after original sin, the backup option for the creation of a godlike man, called the Economy, consists in collecting the fullness of godlikeness that Adam should have possessed, like a mosaic icon, from a multitude of saints, each of whom is not completely perfect, when in this synthetic the last pebble will be inserted into the image, the further existence of “heaven and earth” will lose meaning, and the Eighth Day of Creation will come - the adjusted and tested “materially” pyramid of life with a host of saints at the top will be taken from our world to the Kingdom of God. This means that “Day X” will not come before humanity produces the required number of saints. This is directly stated in the Apocalypse. The Seer tells us that when the holy martyrs who suffered for Christ cried out to Him with loud voices, asking why the Last Judgment had not taken so long, He answered them: wait until your number is replenished (Rev. 8:10). If, before this moment, humanity deteriorates so much that it ceases to produce saints at all, the Lord will resort to implementing some third option. Of course, for us it is as unpredictable as the Calvary sacrifice was unpredictable for the old man, but in any case, radical alterations in the tiers of created existence will be associated with it, which will be perceived by human consciousness as catastrophes and cataclysms. It could even be the destruction of all living things, which almost happened during the days of the Flood, but still the lower tiers of the pyramid will remain, that is, it will not be the end of the world at all, but, on the contrary, a prolongation of its existence. That is why it was said that eschatology and catastrophism are opposite categories. The first means the end of the work, the second means its continuation or resumption.

Here you are tempted to speculate a little on your own - this topic is very tempting for mental exercises. It seems that if you look at them precisely as intellectual gymnastics, they will not be a sin.

Looking through the Chetii-Minea, you notice a pattern: there were the most saints in the first centuries of Christianity, in the Middle Ages their number decreased, but remained quite large, and in modern times there were very few of them. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote about this, St. Seraphim of Sarov said this, and this was predicted in the Gospel itself. But that's how it should be! After all, if you want to fill a certain vessel with oil without overflowing, you will first pour it in a thick stream, as the level rises, make it thinner, and towards the very end you will begin to drip it, so as not to miss that drop that turns out to be the last . If this analogy is valid, we can conclude that one of the signs that the end of the world is near is the impoverishment of holiness. The apocalyptic chapter of the Gospel (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) confirms this - it says that due to the increase of lawlessness in people, love will grow cold, and without love there can be no holiness. Applying this sign to our time, we can say that we have much more reasons for eschatological sentiments than our ancestors who lived at the end of the fifteenth century, when Rus' was filled with prayer books and righteous people. But there is another basis for these sentiments, a more serious one, contained in the same chapter, and for this alone we need to read and re-read this chapter. The fact is that other prophecies of Jesus about future terrible events have three plans: the first is related to the Jewish war that followed forty years later; the second - relating to the fall of the great kingdoms of the ancient world, and the third, which is only interesting to us today - carrying information about the end of everything. But the fourteenth verse of this chapter in the Gospel of Matthew, according to the unanimous opinion of all commentators, refers only to the end of times, that is, it is purely eschatological. Here it is: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.” And we see that this purely apocalyptic sign, the only such definite and concrete sign in the entire chapter, for the first time in the entire history of mankind can be noted as taking place. Until now this sign was not there, and if someone saw it, it was a mistake or a stretch. St. Augustine spoke about it this way: “If anyone thinks that the words: the Gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the entire universe means that this was done by the apostles themselves, then on the basis of reliable evidence it can be proven that this did not happen. Because there are countless peoples in Africa among whom the Gospel has not yet been preached.” Now there are no such peoples not only in Africa, but throughout the world. The Gospel is distributed everywhere in billions of copies, found in every hotel, sent out free of charge, sold from northern Greenland to Cape Horn in every bookstore, and costs less than a bad breakfast. What follows from this?

Together with another sign, which is the obvious impoverishment of holiness, this sign directly indicates the nearness of the end of times. And yet there remains uncertainty here: we do not know exactly what “closeness” is, the Gospel does not name dates, but simply says: “and then the end will come.” But what does “then” mean?

The interpretation of this word encounters a certain paradox. On the one hand, Jesus says: “at an hour you do not think, the Son of Man will come” (Matthew 24:44). On the other hand, He indicated signs that characterize our time and no other. How, given obvious signs, can we “not think”?

The solution to the paradox lies precisely in one of the signs - the impoverishment of holiness. The last pebble inserted into the mosaic of God's likeness will turn out to be the only saint living on earth - others will no longer be needed. And this means that all other people will be sinners, and sinners, even reading the Gospel, cannot learn anything from it and cannot think correctly about such things as the end of times. They will be unprepared at the last hour, not for lack of warning, but because of their frivolity.

However, the very concept of timing becomes questionable here; dating makes sense only in the event of a catastrophe, but not in the case of the finale. When the last saint enters the Kingdom, historical time will be abolished, for it was necessary only for the cultivation of saints, which means that physical time, which ensures the existence of the historical, will also be abolished. But what date can we talk about if there is no time? Indeed, for the second time, God the Son will appear to us no longer in human form, but in the Divine, that is, in the Holy ontological essence, and it is inconceivable in space and time. This essence was revealed to the three apostles on the day of the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor, and then time undoubtedly disappeared there, for they saw the living prophet Moses, who, according to the scale of historical time, had long been dead. In our space-time world, “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18), which means he will not see it, so first time will be abolished, and then Christ will appear to us, and this His coming cannot be recorded by any means. clock, because even before that all clocks will stop at zero. This is precisely the sequence of events given in the Gospel eschatology: “the sun will darken, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven” (Matthew 24:29). Thus, “closeness,” which we so often talk about today, is more correctly understood not in a positive sense, but in a negative one: it is not the presence of any grandiose incidents in the future, but the absence of the future itself. It is less about “closeness” and more about “brevity”—the brevity of the time we have left.

However, this phrase is unfortunate; you shouldn’t say “with us” here. In this turn, our herd nature, generated by our godless civilization, comes out. When people lose God, they begin to huddle close to each other, forgetting the Psalmist’s instruction: “Do not trust in princes, in the sons of men, for in them there is salvation; his spirit shall depart and return to his land; in that day all his thoughts shall perish.” Have you noticed that, expecting the end of the world, we are somehow little afraid of it: in the world, they say, even death is red. But this is a dangerous delusion, we will not have any collective death, everyone will die individually, alone, as all the people who have ever lived on earth died. If there are, say, 12 years left in historical and physical time, this only means that if I am 65 years old and my neighbor is 20, then I will die at 77, and he at 32. So, what is important to me is that he will die at thirty two years? I shouldn’t have anything to do with this at all, but should only care about the fact that I personally face such a mysterious thing as death, and such a terrible consequence as answering before God for the life I’ve lived. Therefore, what was said above, let's say it differently, more precisely: reader! According to the signs indicated in the Gospel, you have little time left, do not waste it. This, in fact, is what Christ tells us in the Gospel:

“Therefore, be ready” (Matthew 24:44). These words are addressed not only to our generation, which seems to be the final one, but to all generations. Consequently, if the end of the world is now really near, this has for every person only the fact that his own death is near, and no other. And this should remind him of the need to be prepared for it, for the readiness that Christ spoke about is the path to salvation, and salvation is the goal and meaning of our earthly existence.