Today we read the “Gospel of the Blind Man”, which recalls Jesus Christ's giving sight to a man born blind in Jerusalem in the third year of His public ministry, on the Feast of the Renewal of the Temple. The Lord approached the man born blind, who did not even have eyes, and having made a bead* from His saliva and earth, put it into his empty eye sockets, and the man gained sight.
It is very important for us today to experience and feel this Gospel story, to feel that the Gospel is not just a book, but the Lord is knocking in the heart of each of us. And you must not pass by, you must change your life, be reborn in Christ.
And here is a brother standing among us, who for all of us was a living confirmation of the Gospel parable. He was not just a man who had closed his spiritual eyes and became spiritually blind and stopped seeing the Lord. He was homeless, an alcoholic, lying unconscious on the street, and had completely forgotten the Lord. It was as if he had torn out his spiritual eyes and thrown them away, no longer remembering the Creator.
At some point he was suddenly healed! Spiritual healing, and then physical healing! God heals the body as a consequence of healing the soul, not vice versa. And seeing the healing of our brother Serozhka, we think: “What a miracle! Let's rejoice!”. But we do not only rejoice for him. In his healing we are all healed! This is a clear, living, working example of spiritual healing happening before our eyes! We have, you might say, had the opportunity to put our fingers into his wounds...
We hospitalized him. The doctors said: “That's it, we have to say goodbye to him! Father, recite the prayer “For the Exodus of the Soul”.” But he survived! We prayed for him, came to him, smeared him with holy oil. He had a double death sentence: internal hemorrhage, which the doctors could not stop, and complete cirrhosis of the liver. At first the diagnosis of “hemorrhage” was removed, the man came out of the coma and regained consciousness. We continued to pray as much as we could. My brother first confessed in a whisper, saying “yes” and “no” with his eyes, then he received Holy Communion. After a few weeks he was able to confess and receive Holy Communion again. Then one day a Hindu doctor called me and said:
- “Father, if you are standing now, please sit down so that you don't fall down. I want to tell you that the liver cirrhosis is completely gone! It's gone! But it never happens, because it never happens! And here I am, as a doctor, testifying that it happened!
I say to him:
- Doctor, are you saying that a miracle of God has happened?
- You, Father, can say that, but I am a doctor and I can't say that, but I completely agree: a miracle! You can't call it anything else! And so our brother slowly, slowly began to climb from earth to Heaven, began to regularly participate in the Sacraments of Confession and Communion..... And now he has really seen, he was yesterday without eye sockets, blind, could not even conceive what the Light of God is.... And now he sees this Light, reaches out to it! And God grant us all such rebirth, such healing from spiritual blindness. Amen. Christ is Risen! Truly He Is Risen!
Brothers, we need to understand why the Lord has gathered us all here in the House of Labor. And He has gathered us all for the sole purpose of saving our souls. That is, for the salvation of the soul of everyone sitting here. And the Lord took me by the scruff of the neck and stuck me to you. Think about it: what for the sake of what? So that I could escape hell with you. Why me and not someone else? Because the Lord sees the spiritual pit I'm in. And my task is to say to you: “Guys, let's climb out together!”. That's it!
I mean, there is no such thing as a saintly bishop coming here, and you should try to be like him. No, on the contrary. I realize that it's no accident that I'm here. For me and for you, I have the same chance for salvation. I found myself in the Church, you found yourself in the Church, we were thrown a lifeline from the Ship, so that we would not drown in this world, where the waves hit everyone. And now we have been thrown a lifeline! And it was thrown by the Captain of this Ship. And the Ship is the Church of Christ. If you want - cling to the circle and try to swim out, if you want - don't cling, nobody will stop you. But if you cling and cry with all your being: “Lord, save me! I'm dying!”, that's it! Then God rushes to your aid. Then with a rope, you climb up, and God drags you to the deck.
And on deck, do you think someone will hold you? They'll wash you away if you don't grab on with your teeth! You'll be overboard in no time! You have to work very hard not to fall out of the bosom of the Church of Christ. This is a special task. How many years have I, a sinner, been in the Church? And I realize that every day is a storm! And you stand there and pray: “Lord, don't throw me overboard from Your saving ship.
In such conversations, I always try to convey the essence of what I want to tell you first. Otherwise, all the details of our life seem to be obscured by everyday life.
What good things have happened in the Labor House recently?
More and more there is a spiritual merging of our House of Labor with the monastery of St. Nektarius'*. The monks are standing up for us in prayer. That's very serious! It's not like us - we prayed, crossed ourselves and forgot! The people there take it very responsibly. Every day the monks of St. Nectarius Monastery offer holy prayers for each of us. They are very impressed with our ministry, they have already brought two cars of all kinds of good things, food and ask us to come to them as pilgrims.
I said:
- Fathers, we will come and maybe we will help you in some way.
They thought about it and said:
- Okay, we'll give you some service, since you're from the Labor House.
So last weekend a number of brothers went there. Hieromonk Michael called me from there and asked me to tell everyone who worked in the monastery that he was praying for him:
- God save him!
He was especially impressed by the diligence of the two Alexanders. You know, they are new to us, only four months old, you could say they are newcomers on the Path. One of them had recently received Holy Baptism. And here's an interesting phrase Fr. Michael:
I pray that they feel what the monastery has given them. It seems like they have been there for a short time, worked a little, stood at a couple of services, tasted a bowl from the monastery kitchen.... But really, it's a very mysterious thing. You have entered a place where an army of monks is moving, and they can't help praying for you, because you are their laborers. I hope the boys felt what monastic prayer is! They felt that obedience in the monastery without prayer is unthinkable. You have to pray hard before the obedience and repeat during the whole work: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!
I'll tell you one more thing. Our brothers, brother headman Alexander and brother Sergei Pavlovich, raised their visors and calmly talked to journalists at our request. It is not easy to overcome oneself and answer their questions sincerely. And it turns out that the headman and Brother Sergei Pavlovich entered our missionary ministry lightning fast. How? It would seem that a journalist came, took pictures, asked something, say: “How do you live here, brother?”. And the brother sincerely said: “This is how it is and this is how it is.” And it turns out that the man, without realizing it, immediately became a missionary, because this report was watched by 20 million people in Russia and America.
Can you imagine, 20 million people! Some of them are addicted to alcohol, drugs or gambling, and they need to hear how we are recovering from our common misfortune. Not everyone knows about the intercessor of all addicts - the miracle-working icon of the “Irreplaceable Cup”. Of course, everyone perceives everything through the prism of his sinful fall, his hatred or on the contrary, love for the Church of Christ. But I think that through the prayers of the Mother of God, through the prayers of St. Martyr Vonifatius, our patron saint, the patron saint of sober life, many people heard it in the right way.
For example, right now I, a sinner, am getting calls from all over America..... I go into a store, a grocery store, and different people come up to me and ask me to help them get rid of various addictions. Now they are calling from Russia, although it's been so long, and the report was only four minutes on Channel One, but people haven't forgotten. That is, they felt that the only way to get rid of addiction is to take the Path to the Lord. Not to some hypnotists or sorcerers, and in general, it is unclear who to turn to, but the other way, the direct road to the Lord! And one of our brothers in this report says so calmly one single phrase: “Without the Lord - nowhere!”. It is interesting how our endeavor, our desire to be saved, has suddenly acquired such a broad missionary sound.
Thank God, guys, that we are gathered here today. Let's establish a tradition - every Saturday we gather for spiritual conversation. Spiritual life in our Labor House, like everywhere else, goes in waves: it rises and falls. There is no need to be discouraged, it is normal, it happens in monasteries too. As my close spiritual co-brother monk Vsevolod says: “The main thing is that our spiritual airplane, in spite of the pits and falls, at least a little bit, but still gaining altitude. If we feel that it is flying parallel to the ground, it means that in fact it is slowly but surely losing altitude, we just do not notice it. And the lower it descends, the less and less chance we have to notice it ourselves, because the evil one blinds our eyes, our spiritual eyes, more and more. And then it is very difficult to ascend, and the fall becomes inevitable, and there is destruction, unless the Lord in His mercy does not give us sight, and then we again get a chance to be saved. How? By crying out to the Lord for help again with all our souls...
I would like each of us to realize God's Providence for him. We're all here for a reason. And if someone had told me 15 years ago that I would be a priest here in the Labor House, I would not have believed it! It never seemed to me that this was my path - to be together with you, and to be saved together with you. But the Lord has arranged it this way - not by my human will, but by His Providence. I look back on my life and think: “What an interesting Providence! Where the Lord has brought me!”.
And I thank Him very much that He showed me your struggle - those of you who have somehow broken through to this Path, who have literally gnawed with blood a nook to Him, and then, falling, falling, sometimes crawling, steadily making their way up.
The Lord shows me: Look, a man was dying, but now he is alive! We read the Gospel, and there the Lord says: “Lazarus, get out!”. And here was a four-day old corpse, half decomposed, suddenly got up and walked. And here among you I have seen more than once: a spiritual corpse suddenly got up and walked! That's a real victory over death, a real Easter... And I really want everyone who came here to realize that this is the only chance to defeat death. There's no other!
I would like to end by recalling the Old Testament and the story of King Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet Daniel warned him: Do not fall into pride, or you will turn into a beast. And one day the king opened a window in his palace and looked at Babylon and thought: “This is what I am like, I have built such a city”, and immediately turned into a beast and fled into the forests. That's how the Lord humbled him. And this story is very instructive for us all. If any of you, leading a sober life now, thinks that he is doing it himself, he may resemble Nebuchadnezzar.
Exerpt from a sermon by the Priest Vadim Arefiev
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