"Let us consider one another, to stir up love and good works, not forsaking our own assembly, as is the habit of some, but exhorting one another" (Heb 10:24-25).
We celebrate the feast of the royal anointing and the royal crown, sons of Russia. We celebrate worthily and rightly. It is the feast of the Sovereign, solemnized by the loyalty and love of His subjects. It is also the feast of the State, rejoicing in its own good.
For although the royal anointing and crown are granted to one king, they are not for Him alone. We do not examine how the bestowal of spiritual gifts is joined to visible anointing. A mystery must always remain a mystery, and therefore inaccessible to explanation.
Yet we may point to one symbolic feature of the sacred action. When one man is simply anointed with fragrant ointment, many around him receive the perception of its fragrance. So from the mystical chrismation of the king, a life-giving fragrance spreads through the whole kingdom.
Likewise the royal crown not only crowns the head of the king. At the same time it crowns the good order, well-being, and splendor of the kingdom. So it ought to be, according to the intention of Providence. So it is with us, Russians, by the goodness of Providence and by the valor of the most pious Autocrat.
But when the festive thought draws nearer to the object of celebration, it rejoices in contemplating His greatness. It considers how the sovereign mind passes through the whole vast structure of the State. It embraces with attention and manifold care the life, safety, sufficiency, morals, enlightenment, and faith of millions of people.
Everywhere it seeks to plant, increase, and guard the good. It seeks to cut off, avert, and prevent evil. It seeks to educate the unformed, perfect the imperfect, and correct what is damaged.
For this purpose, from time to time, it pronounces new laws or completes former ones. It continually moves the many springs of government. It watches over justice, builds up the army, and gives it spirit.
It stretches penetrating and far-seeing eyes beyond its own borders into other kingdoms. It does this to guard and establish peace from every side, to gain and support good allies, and to suppress the seeds of discord, wars, and seditions.
It disarms envy, searches out what is useful for all and makes it its own. It detects from afar the creeping influence of some foreign contagion and blocks its paths.
With such thoughts about the labors of the king, admiration and the anxious care of love are joined to joy over Him. How many burdens, for the relief of us all, are borne by the sovereign shoulders alone! O that we also, mutually, might somehow help to lighten them!
The Holy Church gives us a certain means for this. It is prayer for the king. For if, according to Scripture, "the prayer of one righteous man avails much" (Jas 5:16), then surely the prayer of a faithful people can do no little.
In such a people, we may hope, the Lord has more than one righteous man, for it is for the righteous that He preserves the world.
But let us seek whether there is still another way by which subjects, without touching the affairs of the Autocrat, may help lighten the royal burden. Let us imagine that all subjects lived in love among themselves and did nothing except good works.
How light the king's work would become! There would be no need to multiply laws, because love fulfills the law before it is written. Cares for public order and decorum would be reduced, because "love does not behave unseemly" (1 Cor 13:5).
There would be a long holiday from the works of justice, because it is not good works that give labor to the courts. Then the king would be, in the full sense, what the praying Church presents Him to be: "a father rejoicing over his children."
What then? Can we not ourselves help to make all in the kingdom live in love, and all strive in the doing of good works? We both can and must. I am not inventing this. The Apostle preaches and bequeaths it.
"Let us consider," he says, "one another, to stir up love and good works, not forsaking our own assembly, as is the habit of some, but exhorting one another."
Truly, brethren, if destiny, birth, and law have brought us into one assembly and joined us into one society, it is surely not so each may know only himself. It is not so he may not care to know others and help their good.
This would be contrary to the very idea and essence of society. The bond of society is held together only by reciprocity, by mutual assistance, help, and cooperation.
The mutual obligations of the members of society are partly defined in laws and distributed according to rank and office. They are partly spoken by conscience and extend to all.
When a thief breaks into a citizen's house or into the public treasury, what well-intentioned man, seeing this, will say, "It is not my affair"? Will not everyone feel obliged to assist public and private safety?
If each person has the duty to avert private or public evil, is the duty to spread private good less universal or less strong? Is it not even more noble to spread, as far as possible through private good, the public good?
This is especially true of the highest good, the moral and spiritual good, which is the soul of true public well-being.
Christianity, brethren, unites us by a bond closer than merely human society. It is the bond not only of one authority, mutual needs, and common benefit, but also of one life.
According to apostolic and ecclesial teaching, we are all one body under Christ the Head. The more evident this truth of experience is, that "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it" (1 Cor 12:26), the more unshakable is this law.
The more immutable is this obligation: "that all the members should care equally for one another" (1 Cor 12:25). And what care for one another is more necessary, important, and beneficial for Christians than stirring one another up to Christian love and good works?
Hearing this, do some not answer me inwardly: it is your task to stir others up to Christian love and good works; fulfill your duty. I do not dispute this. I acknowledge my duty. I accept your encouragement to fulfill it.
I confess with the Apostle that "woe is me if I do not preach the gospel" (1 Cor 9:16). But you also must not evade the duty which the apostolic word lays equally upon me and upon you.
In another place, Saint Paul said to me, that is, in general to a minister of Christian teaching appointed by the Church: "Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and teaching" (2 Tim 4:2).
But here he does not speak by distinction: pastors, stir up the flock to good; priests, rouse the people. He speaks to all without distinction and without exception: "Let us consider one another, to stir up love and good works," and "exhorting one another."
He does not extend this duty in vain. For the teachers appointed by the Church alone would not suffice for it.
How many people there are, how many directions of mind, inclinations, and occupations. How many varied circumstances and events of life require instruction, counsel, and admonition, yet ecclesial instruction and the ecclesial instructor cannot pursue them all.
Thus it is necessary that those being instructed also often admonish one another, warn one another, and stir one another up to good.
Here one may meet a new objection. Must everyone, they will say, become a teacher of others? By no means. Against this extreme we have a clear apostolic prohibition: "Let not many of you become teachers" (Jas 3:1).
God "gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers" for His Church (Eph 4:11). He did not leave it to everyone at will to appoint himself a spiritual instructor.
It is precisely of this that it is said, "No one takes this honor for himself, but he who is called by God" (Heb 5:4). This calling is either immediate, as with the Apostles in the beginning, or by succession, through those earlier called by God.
Concerning the multitude of uncalled teachers, the Holy Spirit warns us as something belonging to unhappy times: "The time will come when they will not endure sound teaching, but according to their own desires will choose teachers for themselves, having itching ears. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to fables" (2 Tim 4:3-4).
Against this self-made teaching, and therefore deceptive and dangerous teaching, the God-appointed instructor sets a barrier. When he exhorts us all to stir one another up to good, he immediately adds, "not forsaking our own assembly, as is the habit of some."
For true Christians, "our own assembly" is the Catholic Orthodox Church. One must hold to her and remain in obedience to her, so that zeal to move others toward good may not pass into self-will and lead to divisions and errors.
When the matter concerns dogmas, mysteries, or ecclesiastical hierarchy, beware lest you appear as a laborer whom the Lord did not send into His vineyard.
If He by whom "the whole body" of the Church, "nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase of God" (Col 2:19), has not made you an eye or mouth of this body, do not appropriate to yourself the special duties of these members.
The hand or another member cannot say to the eye or mouth, "I will fulfill your office." Yet there are duties foreign to no member of the body, such as preserving life and averting danger.
The life of the spiritual body is love, just as, on the contrary, "he who does not love abides in death" (1 Jn 3:14). Good works are the manifestations of spiritual life.
Therefore all members of the Church without exception must care for this: that the vital power of Christian love not be extinguished, that its fruits not grow scarce, and that the dead works of vanity and vice not smother it.
Can any member of the body say to another, "I do not care whether there is life in you or whether there will be"? We must all, brethren, as fellow members of the one body of the Church, guard one another from sinful death.
We must stir one another up to love of God and love of the brethren. We must rouse one another to good works.
But how is this to be fulfilled without the right of teaching and without misplaced claims to teach? Good intention can perhaps teach this better than reasoning. The occasions for stirring one another up to good are countless.
If we zealously use even some of the most convenient, then we have already entered the good path. Whoever has entered the path and does not wish to stop will find the further path opening of itself before him.
The Apostle's exhortation has a noteworthy form of expression: "Let us consider one another, to stir up love and good works." This points to our knowing one another, and through it a path is laid for mutual encouragement to virtue.
Indeed, how many people we know, become acquainted with, see, and spend time with, thoughtlessly giving ourselves over to diversion. Often we do not even think to ask ourselves about the benefit of our associations.
Why not make this knowing more reasonable? Why not give acquaintances a more exalted direction?
"Let us consider one another," not only according to the visible form, but rather according to the invisible image of God in us. Not according to gracious greetings, but rather according to words of truth and chastity.
Let us consider one another not only according to earthly kinship, but also according to the heavenly kinship of the children of God. Not only according to ties of temporal needs, benefits, and pleasures, but much more according to the holy bond of seeking eternal goods.
Let us consider one another not according to aims of ambition, but according to the striving for the honor of the high calling in Christ Jesus.
Considering one another in this way, how much time and activity we could save, which we sometimes carelessly squander on idle conversations, amusements, and vanities.
THEOSIS