1. Guarantee of our revival

The Apostle Peter says that God regenerated “us to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”(1 Peter 1:3). He does not ambiguously link the resurrection of Jesus to our new birth. When Jesus rose from the dead, His existence took on new qualities: “regenerate life” in a human body and a human spirit ideally equipped for eternal fellowship with and obedience to God. By His resurrection, Jesus acquired for us the same new life that He had. When we become Christians, we do not receive this “new life” completely, for our bodies are still subject to aging and death. But our spirit is strengthened by the life-giving power of salvation. The new kind The life we ​​receive at rebirth is given to us by Christ through His resurrection. This is why the Apostle Paul says that God has “made us alive” "with Christ... and raised up with Him"(Ephesians 2:5). In raising Christ from the dead, God thought about our resurrection “with Christ” and, therefore, considered us worthy of joining Christ's resurrection. Paul says that he sees the purpose of his life as “that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection...”(Philippians 3:10). Paul understood that even in this life, the resurrection of Christ gives new strength to Christian service and obedience to God. Connecting the resurrection of Christ with the spiritual forces at work within us, Paul tells the Ephesians that he prays for them that they will understand “How immeasurable is the greatness of His power in us who believe, according to the working of His sovereign power, which He worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at His right hand in the heavens.”(Ephesians 1:19-20). Here Paul is saying that the power by which God raised Christ from the dead is the same power that works in us. Moreover, Paul views us as resurrected in Christ:

...we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life... So consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus...New Testament, Romans 6:4,11

This life-giving power includes the ability to win more and more victories over sin, despite the fact that we will not achieve perfection in this life ( “sin must not have dominion over you”(Romans 6:14)). Resurrection power also includes the ability to serve in the Kingdom. It was after the resurrection that Jesus promised His disciples: “ You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be My witnesses...”(Acts 1:8). This new, superhuman power to proclaim the gospel, perform miracles, and overcome the resistance of enemies was given to the disciples after Christ's resurrection from the dead and became an integral part of the resurrection power inherent in them. Christian life.

2. The Resurrection of Christ Guarantees Our Justification

Paul connects the resurrection of Christ with our justification (removal of guilt before God) in only one passage « Jesus delivered up for our sins and raised again for our justification.”(Romans 4:25). Christ's resurrection from the dead was God's declaration of approval of Christ's work of salvation. Thanks to the fact that Christ “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death, even death on the cross... God highly exalted Him...”(Philippians 2:8-9). By raising Christ from the dead, God the Father is actually saying that He accepts the ministry of Christ, who suffered and died for our sins, considers this work completed and does not see the need for Christ to continue to remain dead. There were no unpaid sins, nothing caused God's wrath, and no guilt remained to be punished - everything was paid for in full. By the Resurrection, God says to Christ: “I approve of everything you have done, and you find favor in My eyes.” This explains why Paul can say that Christ "risen for our justification"(Romans 4:25). If God raised us up with him (Ephesians 2:6), then, because of our union with Christ, God's declaration of approval of Christ is at the same time a declaration of approval of us. When the Father essentially says to Christ, “All sins have been paid for, and I count You not guilty, but righteous in My eyes,” He is making a statement that applies to us as we believe in Christ for salvation. Thus, Christ's resurrection also serves as the final confirmation that He has earned our justification.

3. The Resurrection of Christ ensures that we will also receive perfect regenerate bodies.

The New Testament links the resurrection of Jesus several times to our final resurrection in the body:

But the most thorough discussion of the connection between Christ's resurrection and our resurrection is found in 1 Corinthians 15:12-58. Here Paul says that Christ is the “Firstborn of those who have fallen asleep.” By calling Christ the firstborn, Paul uses an agricultural metaphor (firstfruits) to show that we will be like Christ. Just as the “first fruits” or first taste of the ripening harvest shows what the entire harvest will be like, Christ as the “firstborn” shows what our regenerate bodies will be like when God raises us from the dead and brings us into the world at the end of the “harvest.” Your presence.

After his resurrection, Jesus had nail marks on his hands and feet and a wound from a spear piercing his side (John 20:27). People sometimes ask if this means that the scars from serious injuries sustained in this life will remain on our reborn bodies? The answer to this is that we will probably not have scars from injuries sustained in this life, and our bodies will be perfect, incorruptible and resurrected “in glory”, since the scars left on the body of Jesus after the crucifixion are unique, they serve as an eternal reminder of His suffering and death for us.

It is also important to note the ethical significance of the resurrection

The Apostle Paul believes that the resurrection has everything to do with our obedience to God in this life. Concluding his detailed discussion of the resurrection, Paul exhorts his readers to:

We must continue to work tirelessly for the cause of the Lord precisely because we too will rise from the dead, just as Christ rose from the dead. Everything we do to attract people into the Kingdom and strengthen their faith will have a truly eternal impact, for we will all be resurrected on the day when Christ returns and will live with Him forever.

Second, Paul encourages us to focus on future heavenly rewards as we contemplate the resurrection. He views the resurrection as the time when all the efforts we have made in this life will be rewarded. But if Christ was not resurrected, and there was no resurrection, then “your faith is in vain: you are still in your sins; therefore those who died in Christ perished. And if in this life only we hope in Christ, then we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19). But since Christ has risen, and we have risen with Him, we should strive for heavenly rewards and think about heavenly things:

So, if you have been raised with Christ, then seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God; Set your mind on things above, and not on earthly things. For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, appears, then you will appear with Him in glory.New Testament, Colossians 3:1-4

The third ethical aspect of the resurrection is the requirement of an unconditional refusal to submit to sin in our lives. Saying that we must count ourselves “dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” because of the resurrection and the life-giving power of Christ at work in us, Paul exclaims: “Let not sin reign in your mortal body... And do not betray your members to sin" (Romans 6:11-13). In encouraging us to sin no more, Paul uses the fact that we have a new life-giving power that can curb the dominance of sin in our lives.

Veniamin Sergeevich Preobrazhensky, the future Saint Basil, Bishop of Kineshma, was ordained a priest in difficult times for the Orthodox Church - in 1920. Just a year later he received monastic haircut with the name Vasily in honor of St. Basil the Great. The saint paid special attention to worship, preaching and missionary affairs, but it was his missionary service that the Soviet authorities did not like and therefore the saint had to spend the rest of his life either in exile or in prison. Saint Basil reposed in exile in the remote Siberian village of Birilyussy in August 1945.

In October 1985, the holy remains of the saint were found and in July 1993 they were transferred to the Holy Vvedensky convent city ​​of Ivanovo. In August 1993, His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II blessed the local veneration of Bishop Vasily, and in 2000 the saint was canonized.

The execution of the cross, to which the Lord was condemned, originally appeared in the East and belongs to those terrible barbaric inventions for which eastern despots became famous. From the East it moved to Rome and was used by the Romans everywhere, wherever the victorious eagles of the Roman legions appeared, until it was finally destroyed by Constantine the Great. The Jews did not have the execution of the cross: for some crimes the law commanded that criminals be hanged on a tree, but they were not nailed down, and the corpses had to be removed for burial when evening came. In Rome itself, only slaves were crucified, who were almost not considered people. Roman citizens were not subject to this execution, and the famous orator of antiquity, Cicero, even demanded that the execution of the cross be carried out far from cities and highways, since the terrible sight of crucified criminals offended the gaze of a noble Roman. In the provinces, only robbers and troublemakers were nailed to the cross. The crucifiers were usually soldiers who carried out all the executions among the Romans. The criminal himself had to carry his cross to the place of execution, while being subjected to ridicule and beatings. There was usually no burial for those crucified. The bodies remained on the crosses until they became prey for birds of prey and carnivores, or decayed on their own from the sun, rain and wind. Sometimes, however, relatives were allowed to bury them. In case of need (at the onset of, for example, a holiday or some kind of celebration), the life of those crucified according to the law could be shortened by a blow to the head or heart; sometimes their legs were broken or a fire of brushwood was lit under the cross, and then the crucified person died from the fire and smoke.

The shape of the crosses was quite varied. Simpler than others and, apparently, more common was a cross that resembled the letter T (the so-called cross of St. Anthony), where the crossbar was nailed to the very top of the vertical pillar. Sometimes this crossbar was attached lower, leaving space at the top of the pillar for a tablet on which the guilt of the crucified man was written in black letters on a chalk background. This was precisely the shape of the Savior’s cross, judging by the fact that a tablet was nailed to His cross, on which Pilate, instead of fully indicating guilt, simply wrote: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (John XIX, 19), which caused an angry protest from the Jews. high priests.

Another small beam, the so-called “seat” (sedile), was attached perpendicularly to the middle of the cross, on which the crucified man sat as if astride. This was done so that the weight of the body would not tear its hands and would not tear itself away from the cross. For the same purpose, the body was often tied to a pole with ropes. As for the footstool, which is necessarily required by our Old Believers, who consider only those worthy of veneration eight-pointed cross, then ancient writers before the 6th century do not mention it anywhere; the evidence of later ones is weak and perhaps represents the fruit of a misunderstanding. The crosses were made low, so that the feet of the crucified person were no more than three feet from the ground. Thus, the unfortunate victim could be beaten by anyone who was able to reach him; she was completely defenseless and exposed to all sorts of manifestations of anger and hatred. She could hang for many hours, being subjected to curses, insults, and even beatings from the crowd that usually came running to look at this terrible spectacle.

Experiencing torments that became more and more intolerable as time passed, the unfortunate victims suffered so cruelly that they often had to beg and entreat the spectators or their executioners out of pity to put an end to their suffering; Often, with tears of heavy despair, they begged from their enemies for a priceless boon - death. Indeed, death by crucifixion apparently included everything that torture or death could be painful and terrible: dizziness, convulsions, thirst, hunger, insomnia, inflammation of wounds, tetanus, public shame, long-term suffering, the horror of premonition of death, gangrene of torn wound All these sufferings intensified to the extreme, the very last degree, as far as a person could endure them, and only in loss of consciousness did the sufferer receive relief. One must imagine the unnatural position of the body with arms outstretched, nailed down, and the slightest movement was accompanied by new, unbearable pain.

The weight of the hanging body increasingly tore apart the ulcers on the hands, which were constantly becoming sharper and more burning; torn veins and stretched tendons beat and trembled with continuous agony; wounds that were not closed from the air gradually became infected with Anton’s fire; the arteries, especially the head ones, became swollen and caused suffering from the flow of blood; obstructed, improper blood circulation caused an unbearable painful languor in the heart, a long-lasting melancholy; to this was added the torment of burning and despairing thirst; and all this bodily torment caused inner suffering and anxiety, which made the approach of death a welcome and indescribable relief. And yet, in this terrible situation, the unfortunates could live up to three, and sometimes up to six or more days.

The torment of the crucified was equaled only by their dishonor. The name crusaders (crucifer) was an extreme expression of contempt. Especially among the Jews, execution on the cross was considered the most shameful and disgusting, because the Law of Moses said: Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree(Deut. XXI, 23).

It was the custom among the Jews for a criminal sentenced to death to be deprived of his life not soon after his conviction. The herald several times publicly announced his name, guilt, witnesses to the crime and the type of execution assigned to him, calling everyone who could to go to court and defend the unfortunate man. And the Romans had a law issued by Tiberius, by virtue of which the death penalty was carried out no earlier than ten days after the verdict. But for Jesus Christ, although He was judged according to both Roman and Jewish laws, this rule was not applied. The postponement of execution extended only to ordinary criminals, and the disturbers of public peace, the enemies of Moses and Caesar, to whom slander presented the Savior, had no right to this mercy: their execution was the more legal the sooner it was carried out. So, after being condemned, Jesus was immediately handed over to the soldiers to carry out the sentence.

Then They took off the scarlet robe from Him, dressed Him in His own garments, and led Him out to crucify Him.(v. 20).

A plaque indicating his guilt was hung around the Savior’s neck; a cross was placed on His shoulders, which He Himself had to carry to the place of execution, as custom required, and the sad procession set off, accompanied by a crowd of assembled spectators. The cross was not particularly large and massive, since the Romans practiced crucifixion so often that they did not spend much labor and effort on the construction of each cross, but, nevertheless, physical strength The Lord was already exhausted, and He could not carry it. The excitement of the previous night, the mental anguish He experienced back in the garden of Gethsemane, three tedious interrogations, beatings, insults, the feeling of frantic, causeless hatred surrounding Him, and finally this terrible Roman scourging - all this brought Him into a state of extreme exhaustion, and the Savior fell under the weight of His cross. In order not to slow down the procession, the soldiers were forced, contrary to custom, to lay a cross on another - on a certain Simon, a resident of the Libyan city of Cyrene, who was returning from the field and, at the very exit from the city, met the guards leading Jesus Christ. He was probably one of the admirers of the Savior and, upon meeting Him, discovered signs of compassion, which is why the soldiers paid attention to him.

Finally, they reached Golgotha ​​(Heb. Golgotha ​​means “forehead, skull”), or place of execution. This was the name of one of the mountainous northwestern hills surrounding Jerusalem, on which executions were carried out and which from then on was to become the most sacred place on earth. While the soldiers were erecting and strengthening crosses for Jesus Christ and for the two thieves condemned with Him, the Savior was offered, according to ancient custom, wine mixed with myrrh. The drink did not so much intoxicate as it clouded the consciousness and darkened the mind, as a result of which the suffering became less sensitive. To a certain extent, this was an act of humanity, but the Lord rejected it. By voluntarily accepting suffering and death, He wanted to meet them with a clear consciousness, without in any way easing for Himself the horror of the torment of the cross. They took off His clothes and then...

Our Divine Savior and Redeemer, the Master of creation and the Lord of glory was lifted up to the cross and nailed.

Then began that terrible, painful agony of suffering on the cross, at the price of which our salvation was purchased.

And perhaps the deep spiritual sorrow that the Savior experienced was even more difficult for Him than the terrible physical torment of the crucifixion. We cannot, of course, know what was happening in the soul of the Divine Sufferer, we cannot, with our sinful rudeness, even approximately imagine the full depth of His grief, but it is possible to indicate the reasons for it.

Alone, abandoned by almost everyone, He saw Himself on the cross. Even His closest disciples abandoned Him, with the exception of John, cowardly hiding from the danger of being captured, and no one, absolutely no one, yet understood the cause for which He was dying. There was a hostile crowd all around; All that was visible were either the dull, indifferent faces of street onlookers with an expression of crude curiosity written on them, or the malicious smiles of the high priests, full of gloating. Yes, they could gloat - these people, who had been accumulating anger in themselves for so long against the One who did not want to recognize their authority and so often revealed to the crowd of listeners their inner falsity and hypocrisy with His truthful denunciations. Now they could take revenge for all the humiliations and make Him feel their strength and power, which He did not want to reckon with. The long-cherished anger was not softened even by the mournful spectacle of the sufferings on the cross and burst out in caustic, mocking remarks, exposing the terrifying, disgusting baseness of the soul that can mock the dying. " Saved others, they said, mocking, but he can’t save himself… Let him now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe.”(vv. 31-32). Even those passing by, who had once followed Him in crowds to listen to His teaching, reviled Him (v. 29). And for these people He died! He did so much good to them, healed so many, encouraged, consoled so many, called so many to new life, showed so much boundless, selfless love - and in gratitude for all this they crucified Him! Even now He suffered and died in order to gain forgiveness and Salvation for them - and they mocked Him! They rejected their Savior... How she must have suffered great love Jesus from this misunderstanding, from the consciousness that these people, His brothers, His fellow tribesmen, are dying, committing a terrible, unprecedented crime and do not even understand this in their wild ingratitude. How hard it was to see triumphant evil in the souls of these lost sons of Israel!

But the heaviest sorrow, the terrible depth of which is completely incomprehensible to us, was, of course, the feeling of sin, voluntarily taken upon by our Savior and weighed down on Him. If on us, sinful people with a coarse soul and a lulled conscience, our sin often falls with a painful weight, barely bearable, often leading to despair, then what must the Lord have experienced with His sensitive conscience, with His divine pure soul who knew no sin, for He did not create sin (1 Pet. II, 22)! After all, taking on the sin of people did not at all mean simply paying Divine justice with Our blood and suffering for someone else’s, extraneous sin in a purely external way, just as we sometimes pay off the debts of our friends. No, it meant incomparably more: it meant accepting sin into your conscience, experiencing it as your own, feeling the full weight of responsibility for it, recognizing the terrible guilt for it before God as if He Himself had committed this sin. And what a sin! Let us not forget that Jesus Christ was, in the words of John the Baptist, Lamb of God take away the sins of the world(John I, 29). The sins of the whole world, of all humanity from the first day of its creation, of all the countless generations of people who have come and gone on earth over a number of long centuries; all evil in all its various disgusting forms; all the crimes, the most heinous and vile, ever committed by man; all the dirt and dregs of life, not only past, but also present and future - Jesus Christ took upon Himself all this and all He Himself lifted up our husks in His body on the tree, so that we, having been delivered from sins, would live for righteousness(1 Pet. II, 24). Along with sin, the Savior had to take upon Himself its inevitable consequences, the most terrible for the soul - alienation from God, abandonment by God and the curse that hung over us as punishment for sin: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us (for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree) (Gal. III, 13).

If we take into account all the horror of this curse and abandonment of God, all the incredible weight of sin taken by the Savior for the sake of our redemption, then to some extent this dying cry, full of anguish and inexpressible torment, will become understandable to us: Eloi! Eloi! lamma sa wakhfani? - which means: My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?(v. 34).

The Lord's suffering was so great that all nature was indignant. The sun could not bear this sight and disappeared; darkness covered the earth. The earth shook with horror, and in the ensuing earthquake the large stones that had covered many of the tombs were thrown down. The curtain in the temple that separated the holy of holies from the sanctuary was torn in half.

But they will perhaps ask: why was this suffering necessary? Why did the cross become a symbol of Christianity - this instrument of torment? Why this sadness that pervades the entire Christian religion?

For many, the meaning of the cross and suffering is completely incomprehensible. The Apostle Paul wrote at one time: “ Slo in the cross there is foolishness for those who are perishing, but for us who are being saved - the power of God... For both the Jews demand miracles, and the Greeks seek wisdom; But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks.” (1 Cor. I, 18. 22-23). This is not surprising: for human wisdom, not illuminated by the power of the Holy Spirit, this is as it should be. The mystery of the cross will always remain a mystery for her, because wisdom of this world there is madness before God, and God's foolishness is wiser than men(1 Cor. I, 20, 25). The very names of the ancient sages disappeared in the distance of centuries, and the cross became a radiant symbol around which the fate of a person revolves. The cross is the soul of Christianity; Without the cross there is no Christianity itself.

The Holy Church answers this question with the doctrine of atonement, which constitutes the cardinal point of the Christian religion. In view of the importance of this teaching, it is necessary to dwell on it in more detail.

Man emerged from the hands of the Creator as a beautiful creation, endowed with all the perfections of mind, heart and will. But, as a condition of freedom, the possibility of sin was inherent in his nature, in the fight against which a person had to independently develop his moral powers, guided by love for God and obedience to His will. For this purpose, the first commandment was given, prohibiting eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But when the evil spirit began to tempt the man, he presented him with the brilliant prospects of this knowledge, and... the man was tempted. Instead of rejecting temptation in the name of love for God, in the name of obedience, he wanted to become equal with God! Pride and pride triumphed over love.

Transgressing the commandment of God, man freely, without external coercion, opposed his own “I”, his egoism - to God, instead of God he considered himself the center of his life, his will - his law, himself - his god, and thus placed himself in hostile attitude towards God, became the true enemy of God. Man isolated himself from God, began to serve his “I” and became enslaved to the world, from which he began to seek happiness. The consequence of this alienation from God was the complete perversion of life not only of the culprit himself - man, but also of all nature. Due to the predominance of egoism, unity was lost: not only of man with God, but also of man with man. In this disunity, love disappeared, enmity appeared and, as its highest and worst manifestation, murder. In the murder of Abel, for the first time, human blood watered the earth. Then life becomes worse and more bleak. The clouds of evil hanging over her are thickening more and more. Depravity and moral savagery reach such a degree that a flood was required to destroy evil and wash the desecrated land. But although almost the entire human race perished in the flood and only a few of the best were saved, the seed of evil remained in them and again sent out its poisonous shoots, growing ever thicker as humanity multiplied. Life was becoming unbearable. The only way out of this hell was the return of man to God, the restoration of communication with Him. But on this path it was necessary to remove the greatest obstacle, which is sin. Grex is exactly what it is main reason the separation of man from God, it is through this that the great abyss between God and people is established and maintained.

First of all, sin in itself serves as the cause of the separation of God and man: sin is the removal of man from God by thought, feeling, desire, deed. In addition, sin leads to separation from God; no less than this, the general mental state of a bad conscience, which is a consequence of sin in us, is created by sin. The removal of the soul from God, or sin, is immediately reflected in a person’s soul, in his conscience, by anxiety, a feeling of fear, and guilt. A person is in the position of a slave who feels the master’s scourge raised above him. Feelings of love and closeness to God are driven out by fear of God, and this fear kills the religious aspirations of the soul, its attraction to God, makes it run away from God, not think about God, drive away the very thought of God, eternity, religion, until it completely disappears or unbelief , to the denial of the existence of God. God is gradually driven out of the soul by fear of Him, fear of His terrible judgment and retribution; from the God of Love and the Father of people in the sinful consciousness of a person tormented by conscience, God becomes a terrible creature and from the bright image of God in the soul, shrouded in the impenetrable, gray mist of spiritual darkness and sin, some kind of unclear, formless ghost remains, frightening already with its mystery, something unknown, unknowable. The ghost of a terrible God, born of spiritual darkness, stands as a barrier between people and God, weakens their desire for God and gives rise to despair.

This barrier between God and people can only be removed by actual atonement for sin. Sin must be atoned for at the request of one of the basic principles of moral life, the principle of justice. The law of retribution cannot be canceled or violated due to the main property of Divine Providence that governs the world - the property of justice.

The truth of God, offended by sin, must be satisfied.

No matter how deeply a person fell as a result of sin, he always felt the inexorable power of this law of truth; always recognized the need for satisfaction for sin. All religions, the crudest and most primitive, sought to find a way to satisfy this, and the very essence of any religion, expressed by the word religio (from religo), consists precisely in the real or imaginary restoration of the connection between God and man. Through sacrifices, religious rites and ceremonies, man sought to appease God, so that instead of an angry Judge, he could again find in Him loving Father. This basic desire took different religions various, sometimes wild and monstrous forms.

The religion of India proposed to achieve reconciliation with God through self-torture and bringing a person to mental unconsciousness. In the name of this reconciliation, the Eastern religions of Assyria and Babylon sanctified debauchery as a means of mortification. Human sacrifice was practiced in many places. Often babies were thrown onto the hot hands of idols. And all this did not achieve the goal. The man could not find peace. In this horror of human sacrifice, in these orgies of debauchery, a temporary intoxication could be found; it was possible to drown out for a while the groan of despair in the soul, but the cleansing of conscience and inner world All this did not give a person.

Humanity has been exhausted for a long time and in vain in search of peace of mind, atonement for sin. Redemption was not achieved through sacrifice, and nothing could overcome the slavish fear of God, the feeling of separation from Him and alienation. And this is quite natural: if the power of resistance to God, manifested by man in the Fall, according to the law of retribution, can only be destroyed by the equal power of obedience, self-devotion, sacrifice to God, then man must present satisfaction to the truth of God with the same pure heart, in the same immaculate state spirit, which he rejected when committing his first sin; he must be the perfect image of God so that his sacrifice is his moral significance covered the power and significance of his crime. But the demand for such a sacrifice is beyond the strength of fallen man; he may have fallen, but he cannot restore himself; could bring evil into himself, but was powerless to destroy it. Hence his obedience to God after the fall is always inseparable from resistance to God; his love for God is inseparable from self-love; evil is grafted onto all good and pure movements of the soul and defiles the purest and holiest moments of moral life. That is why a person could not make a sacrifice sufficient in his impeccable purity and moral dignity in order to cover his sin and satisfy the truth of God. His victims could not wash away sin, because they themselves were not alien to selfishness.

Only the Lord could do this. Only the Son of God could say: “My will is the will of the Heavenly Father,” and make the purest sacrifice without any admixture of selfishness, only the Son of God with His personal incarnation in man, like the new Adam, and with His free self-devotion as a sacrifice to God for the sin of people, like a true high priest could present complete satisfaction to the truth of God for the crime of man and, thus, destroy the enmity between him and God, bring down from heaven grace-filled forces for the revival of the frustrated image of God in man. The holiness and sinlessness of Jesus Christ, His Divine nature gave the sacrifice of the cross a meaning so great and comprehensive that this one atoning sacrifice was not only completely sufficient to cover and atone for all the crimes of the human race, but also infinitely surpassed them on the scales of Divine justice. “...e if by the crime of one many were put to death- says the Apostle Paul, - much more does the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one Man, Jesus Christ, abound for many. And the gift is not like judgment for one sinner; for judgment for one crime leads to condemnation; but the gift of grace leads to justification from many crimes.”(Rom. V, 15-16).

This is why, according to God’s wise plan, the suffering and death of the Lord the Redeemer were needed. Through these sufferings, humanity finally found peace of mind, reconciliation with God, bold access to God who lives in the unapproachable light, and the inexpressible great joy of filial closeness to God.

“...God proves His love for us by the fact that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Much more therefore now, having been justified by His blood, we will be saved from wrath by Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we will be saved by His life.”(Rom. V, 8-10).

“...God in Christ reconciled the world to Himself, not imputing their crimes to people, and gave us the word of reconciliation”(2 Cor. V, 19).

“...You, who were once alienated and enemies, because of your disposition to evil deeds, He has now reconciled in the body of His flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and blameless before Him.”(Col. I, 21-22).

“...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God offered as a sacrifice of propitiation in His blood through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness in the forgiveness of sins...”(Rom. III, 23-25).

“...now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near by the Blood of Christ. For He is our peace, having made both one and destroyed the barrier that stood in the middle.”(Eph. II, 13-14).

Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself, to take away the sins of many(Heb. ix. 28) and remove the guilt from us, having destroyed the handwriting that was against us, which was against us, and He took it out of the way and nailed it to the cross.(Col. II, 14). He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we, having been delivered from sins, would live for righteousness(I Pet. II, 24). This sacrifice covers all our sins, not only past, but also present and future.

We find this somewhat incomprehensible. That Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for the past sins of mankind and suffered for those crimes that were committed before the moment of His death - this can be easily imagined. But what relation can His sacrifice have to our sins, and even to future ones? After all, the Savior was crucified nineteen centuries ago, when there was no trace of us, and, therefore, there were no our sins; how could He suffer for sins that did not yet exist, for crimes that did not yet exist? This thought, apparently, reduces the personal significance of the sacrifice of the cross for us and sometimes serves as the reason why we remain cold and indifferent when remembering the suffering of Jesus Christ. A crafty voice whispers: “Let the ancient world, with its crimes, bring the Savior to the cross; let him bear the responsibility, but we have nothing to do with it; we are not to blame for this suffering, for we did not exist then.”

We are wrong.

God is an eternal and unchangeable Spirit. This means that for Him there is no time, or, more precisely, there is no past or future. There is only the present. Everything that we imagine only in the future, everything that is unknown, unknown to us, that is yet to happen - all this already exists in the Divine consciousness, in the Divine omniscience. Otherwise it can not be.

After all, what is time? Nothing more than a sequence of events or changes in us or the world around us. Everything changes, everything flows. Night gives way to day; old age follows youth. This gives us the opportunity to talk about what was and what is; distinguish between past and present, “then” and “now”. Without these changes, there would be no time. Suppose that movement in the world has stopped, everything has frozen in absolute stillness, we can say, together with the apocalyptic angel, that there is no more time (Rev. X, 6). As philosophers say, the category of time is our perception of various changes in their sequence. But this is true only in relation to us, to our limited reason, to our limited feelings. For God, there is no category of time, and the events of world life appear in the Divine consciousness not in sequential order one after another, but are given all at once, as many of them are contained in eternity. If we allowed consistency here, then this would mean the changeability of the Divine consciousness, the Divine Mind. But God is unchangeable.

What follows from this?

It follows that our sins were committed within the time of our life only for the perception of our limited senses. For God, in His Divine foreknowledge, they always existed, nineteen centuries ago, when the Savior suffered, just as real as they do now. Consequently, the Lord suffered for our present sins and He accepted them into His loving soul. Together with the sins of the entire human race, our crimes weighed heavily on Him, increasing His torment on the cross. Therefore, we cannot say that we are not to blame for His suffering, for we also have our share in it.

This must be said not only about our past and present sins, but also about future ones. Whenever and whatever sin we committed, God already foresaw it and laid it on His Beloved Son. Thus, we arbitrarily, although perhaps without realizing it, increase the sinful burden lifted by the Savior, and at the same time increase His suffering. If we firmly remembered this, remembered that with our sins we make our Redeemer suffer, then perhaps we would not sin so easily and, before deciding to sin, we would think about it, at least out of a sense of compassion. But we rarely think about it, and the very idea that we are willing or unwilling crucifiers of the Lord seems strange to us. “I am innocent of the blood of this Righteous One,” Pilate once said, washing his hands. We follow his example.

When we reflect on the circumstances of the Lord’s death on the cross, our attention involuntarily focuses almost exclusively on the main active culprits. We are outraged by the betrayal of Judas; we are indignant at the hypocrisy and deceit of the Jewish high priests; The cruelty and ingratitude of the Jewish crowd seems disgusting to us; and these feelings and images obscure from us the idea that we are also involved in this crime.

But let’s look at it more impartially and more carefully. Why do we see the Lord suffering on the cross? Where is the reason for this? The answer is clear: the cause of this suffering and death on the cross is the sins of mankind, including ours. The Savior suffered for us and for all people. We brought Him to the cross. The Jews are only an instrument of God's eternal predestination. Of course, they too bear a heavy blame; their malice, their hatred, their national self-delusion, their blindness - all this makes them irresponsible before the court of God's Truth, especially since they themselves wanted to sculpt the Blood of the Savior on themselves; but, be that as it may, this does not free us from moral responsibility for the suffering of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul speaks very clearly about this. According to him, the one who was once enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift and became a partaker of the Holy Spirit and fell away again crucifies the Son of God within himself and mocks Him (Heb. VI, 4, 6). When, having received the knowledge of the truth, we sin willfully, then we trample on the Son of God and do not consider the Blood of the Testament, by which we were sanctified, as sacred, and we offend the Spirit of grace (Heb. X, 29).

Never, never should a Christian forget these significant words of the apostle, full of deep and sorrowful meaning. All our vices fall with a painful weight on the divinely pure soul of the Savior, who must suffer them so that they can be forgiven to us. Our sins are the stinging thorns of the crown of thorns, digging into the wounded brow of the Lord, just as they once dug under the blows of Roman soldiers.

Our crimes are the nails that we hammer again into His gaping wounds, burning with burning pain. Is this what we should pay for His great, selfless love?

Jesus cried out loudly and gave up the ghost(Mark XV, 37).

The Lord, our Savior, our Redeemer, has died. A life the like of which has never existed and will never exist in the world has ended. The great, holy life has ended; with His life His struggle ended, and with His struggle His work ended; with His work - redemption; with redemption - the foundation of a new world.

At this great moment of the death of the crucified Lord, there were no His disciples, with the exception of John. They disappeared. Fear overcame their love for the Teacher. But there were more faithful and devoted women to Him, who had followed Him in Galilee before, cared for Him and served Him and the apostles with their property. The danger that threatened them from the hatred of the high priests and from the rudeness of the fanatical crowd did not overcome their affection and did not force them to leave the cross.

“Look at their zeal! - exclaims St. John Chrysostom. - They followed Him in order to serve Him, and did not leave Him even in the midst of danger; therefore they saw: they saw how He cried out, how He gave up the ghost, how the stones were dissolved and everything else. And they are the first to see Jesus, this much despised sex is the first to enjoy the contemplation of high blessings. Their courage is especially evident in this. The disciples ran away, but these were present. Do you see the courage of the wives? Do you see their fiery love? Do you see generosity in costs and determination for death itself? Let us, men, imitate wives, so as not to leave Jesus in temptation.”

Indeed, the zeal of the holy myrrh-bearing women is great, their love for the Lord is fiery and constant. Free from all earthly attachments, their heart lived and breathed the Lord; in Him all thoughts, desires and hopes were concentrated, in Him lay all their treasure. For the sake of their beloved Teacher, they willingly leave their homes, their relatives and friends, forget the weakness of their sex, do not fear the cruelty of the Lord’s many enemies, everywhere steadily follow Him in His wandering life, not fearing the difficulties and inconveniences associated with these journeys, and patiently enduring all the hardships.

It would not be surprising if the holy women, surrounding Jesus Christ with their care and attention, followed Him in the days of His glory, when the rumor about Him thundered throughout Galilee and Judea, when thousands of crowds of people flocked to Him from all sides to hear His teaching and to see His miracles, when hundreds of sick people who received healing spoke with delight about His goodness and mercy, about His miraculous power, spreading the glory of His name everywhere. Then many followed Him, attracted by the noise of this glory, and this is not surprising: the human crowd is always attracted by the false lights of external splendor, and it loves to follow recognized idols. But to remain faithful to your Teacher in the difficult hours of His humiliation and shame, not to abandon Him during His suffering, when any expression of sympathy could cause an explosion of insults and abuse from the unbridled crowd, driven to rage by the slander of the high priests, when the very pillar of faith, the Apostle Peter, was shaken and retreated before the danger of being recognized as a disciple of the Lord - this required great courage and boundless love. To remain faithful at such moments was the sign of a great and noble heart. And the love of the holy women withstood this test: they did not leave the cross. Until the very last moment, when a heavy stone rolled against the door of the coffin blocked the dear ashes from them forever, they did not let go loving eyes from your Divine Teacher.

They were the last to leave the garden where the Lord was buried, and for that they were the first to receive the joyful news of the Resurrection, first from a radiant angel, then from the Savior Himself. Mary Magdalene, His most faithful and devoted disciple, was the first to receive the inexpressible joy of seeing the risen Lord. With this phenomenon, the Lord seemed to recognize the holiness and greatness of women's love.

It is interesting to note that neither in the Gospel, nor in the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles is there any mention of a single woman who was against Christ or against His teaching. While on the part of men the Lord often encountered unbelief, ingratitude, ridicule, contempt, hatred, which, growing, turned into a whole sea of ​​anger raging around the cross, on the part of women we see sincere devotion, touching care and selfless love. Even pagan women, like Claudia Procula, the wife of Pilate, treat Him with deep respect.

Why is that?

“Because women are mentally less developed than men,” followers of atheism will say, of course.

No, not because, but because women have a purer and more sensitive heart, and with their hearts they feel the truth and moral beauty of Christ’s teaching. A woman often does not need mental, logical proof: she lives more by feeling and perceives the truth by feeling. This method of knowing the truth often turns out to be more reliable, more faithful and faster in relation to Christianity, where there are so many questions that are revealed not to an inquisitive, arrogant mind, but to a pure, believing heart. For, as the Apostle Paul says, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world... to shame the things that are mighty... For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and destroy the understanding of the wise... and God has turned the wisdom of this world into foolishness(1 Cor. I, 27, 19, 20). And with what delight and ecstasy the women listened to the words of the Divine Teacher. Let us recall, for example, Mary of Bethany, who forgot her duty as a hospitable hostess and chose the “good part” at the feet of the Savior to listen to His wondrous speeches. And how could women not heed the words of the Lord and not surrender with all their souls to the new, great teaching, which raised women to equal dignity with men, for in Christ neither male nor female(Gal. 3:28). Everyone is equally equal before God, the Lord suffered and died equally for everyone, and everyone has the same right to the future bliss of eternal life. In the ancient pagan world, a woman did not know this equality and was always in a subordinate position, in oppression and contempt. “This so despised sex,” in the words of John Chrysostom, whose life was so full of sorrow and humiliation, could not help but feel with a grateful heart the great benefit that the Christian religion opened up for him in the bright prospects of joy, love and respect. That is why, from the very beginning of Christian history, we meet on its pages many names of women who, in the firmness and sincerity of their faith, in their zeal and zeal, in their asceticism, were not inferior to the great righteous. The names of the great martyrs, Paraskeva, ascetics like and many others tell us about the highest levels of Christian perfection and holiness that believing women have achieved.

When Jesus gave up His spirit, the sun was already setting. Evening came and the Sabbath day approached. That Saturday was a great day(John XIX, 31), distinguished by its special splendor and solemnity, because the celebration of Easter was connected with it. Apparently, this circumstance worried the high priests. The people, who did not consider it a desecration to begin their holiday by killing the Messiah, were seriously alarmed lest the sanctity of the next day, which began at sunset, be violated by the fact that the bodies were hanging on crosses. Therefore, when they came to Pilate, the Jews asked to break the legs of the crucified people in order to speed up their death and remove them from the crosses. Pilate allowed, but the Lord had already died and His legs were not broken. This was no longer necessary. Meanwhile, a new petitioner appeared before Pilate, wanting permission to take down the Body of Jesus from the cross and bury it.

It was Joseph of Arimathea.

Arimathea, the fatherland of Joseph, is ancient, Rama, the birthplace of the prophet Samuel, a city in the tribe of Benjamin, mentioned by the Evangelist Matthew (Matthew II, 18). Joseph was a rich man of high character and blameless life. His great wealth made him a significant person, especially since at that time in Jerusalem everything could be bought for money, from the position of the last publican to the rank of high priest. In addition, Joseph was one of the most prominent members of the Sanhedrin and, together with other well-meaning advisers, probably formed an opposition to the party of Caiaphas. He was a secret disciple of Jesus Christ and did not participate in the last attempts of the Sanhedrin against the Savior, as well as in the trial of Him (Luke XXIII, 51) - perhaps because, not seeing any means of saving the Innocent One, he did not want to be a witness to His condemnation, or because the cunning of the high priests found a means to completely remove him from this matter. There is no doubt, however, that this forced inaction was difficult for a noble heart, which is ashamed of cowardice, to leave an innocent unprotected, even when there is no hope of saving him. And so, when it was all over and only the lifeless body of the Savior hung on the cross, grief and indignation inspired Joseph with courage. It was now too late to profess sympathy for Jesus Christ as the living Prophet; all that remained was to show Him the last duty of friendship and respect - to save at least His mortal remains from shame, for, otherwise, the Jews, without a doubt, would have thrown the Most Pure Body into a common pit along with all the executed criminals.

Joseph dared to go to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus(v. 43).

This determination was fraught with serious danger - not on the part of Pilate, from whom one could expect a favorable decision in favor of Jesus Christ, whom he recognized as a righteous man, but on the part of the high priests, who saw in the slightest sign of respect for the Savior a betrayal of their plans, and an attempt burying Him with honor could be viewed as nothing other than an indignation against the Sanhedrin, all the more dangerous since it was now being undertaken by a famous member of the Sanhedrin, whose example could influence the people, already committed to the memory of Jesus.

However, Joseph did not stop in the face of this danger and, despising fear, appeared in the Roman Praetorium. His request was the first news for Pilate that Jesus Christ had already died. The hegemon was surprised at such a quick death and, sending for the centurion, asked him whether death really followed, and whether there was fainting or lethargy. Having received a proper answer, Pilate ordered the Body of the Lord to be given to Joseph for burial. Although the Romans left the bodies of those they crucified to be devoured by dogs and crows, the procurator did not want to refuse the venerable and prominent member of the Sanhedrin his request, especially since he undoubtedly felt the injustice of his sentence, snatched from him by the high priests against Jesus Christ. The very inattention to the enmity of the high priests, who should have looked at the permission given to Joseph as a new shame for themselves, was like a sacrifice that Pilate made to the memory of the Righteous One.

Having received permission, Joseph, without wasting any time, appeared at Golgotha ​​and took the Body down from the cross. Together with him, another secret follower of Jesus Christ, Nicodemus, a member of the supreme Jewish council, who once came to the Savior at night for a secret conversation, came to Calvary (John III, 1-21). Now he was no longer hiding and, full of love and compassion, he brought truly royal gifts for burial - one hundred liters of an aromatic composition of myrrh and aloe. It was necessary to hurry, since the Sabbath was approaching, when, according to the law of Moses, every faithful Israeli had to leave all his affairs and be in complete peace. Therefore, all the ceremonies of the Jewish funeral rite could not be observed; but everything that could be done, taking into account the shortness of time, was done. The body of the Lord was washed clean water, then sprinkled with incense and entwined with a wide quadrangular cloth (shroud). A narrow head towel was wrapped around the head and face. Both are tied with laces. Some of the incense was probably burned, as there are examples of this in the history of Jewish funeral ritual.

Not far from the place of the crucifixion there was a garden that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, and in its enclosure, in the rock, a burial cave was carved, according to Jewish custom. Joseph, in all likelihood, intended this tomb for himself and for his family, wanting to be buried close to the holy city, but no one had yet been buried in it. Despite the sacred significance that the Jews ascribed to their tombs and burial caves, despite the petty sensitivity with which they avoided any contact with the dead, Joseph did not for a moment hesitate to provide his Divine Teacher with this resting place. They laid Jesus there for the sake of the Friday of Judea, because the tomb was close(John XIX, 42).

A huge stone (goalal) was rolled at the entrance to the cave - a necessary precaution in Judea, since there were many jackals, hyenas and other predatory animals and birds there. They had barely accomplished all this when the sun set behind the mountains of Jerusalem. Saturday began - the last Old Testament Saturday. In a day, the first Resurrection of the New Testament was supposed to dawn.

How gloomy and joyless this day was now for the disciples and friends of the Lord! Grief filled my entire soul, suppressed all other thoughts, did not allow me to come to my senses in order to comprehend or understand everything that happened in its terrible surprise. The future was covered in impenetrable darkness; the past was more confusing than comforting. The memory of the miracles of Jesus, of His former greatness, made His cross and tomb even more terrible. Hitherto, His disciples had walked an uneven, narrow, often thorny path, but they followed in the footsteps of the Teacher, invested with the power of the Son of God, drawing everyone’s attention to themselves, sharing His glory with Him, consoling themselves with majestic hopes in the future. And this path suddenly leads them to Golgotha, is interrupted by the cross of the Teacher, and completely ends with His tomb!

The situation is sad, inconsolable!

The grief of the Lord's disciples would not have been so excessive if they had been less confident of His dignity. Then it could soon turn into cooling towards the One who so suddenly betrayed their hopes, subjecting Himself to death and them to shame. Then only deceived pride would suffer.

But love and respect for the Savior did not diminish in the least in their grateful hearts. The souls of His disciples were united with Him by an eternal heavenly union. His tomb became for them a sanctuary, in which were contained all their holy thoughts, all pure desires, all faith.

And with this holy love the terrible thought was constantly mixed: “He died! He is not what we thought He was! He is not the Messiah! He, who was and is everything for us!..” (Works of Innocent, Archbishop of Kherson).

It seemed that everything was over, evil triumphed. The most pure lips closed, speaking with such power the words of eternal life; The hands that once lovingly blessed those who came to Him and healed the suffering fell lifeless; the great, loving heart that contained the whole world stopped beating. The stamp of death fell on everything. And under this cold breath of death, the hopes of the disciples to see their dear Rabbi in an aura of glory and messianic greatness faded.

With what hopeless sadness they admit: “ But we hoped that He was the One who was to deliver Israel.”(Luke XXIV, 21).

There seemed to be no light in the clouds of sorrow hanging over the heads of the students...

But now we already know: Saturday has passed, and the radiant joy of the Resurrection has shone upon sorrowful hearts! The Lord has risen, the buried truth has risen! And neither the stone, nor the seals of the coffin, nor the guard, nor all the power of hell could keep her in the dark cave. The light of resurrection, like blinding lightning, pierced the clouds of evil. The Lord has risen and appeared to the world again!

Which great lesson for us - a lesson of hope!

How often in private and public life there are situations that seem hopeless. They are especially often experienced by a Christian who has broken ties with worldly aspirations and habits and has embarked on a narrow but direct path to Christ. The whole world is arming itself against him. " If you were from the world, - the Lord warns His followers, - then the world would love its own; But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you too... In the world you will have tribulation; but take heart: I have overcome the world."(John XV, 19-20; XVI, 33). You are haunted by the injustice of your superiors, the mockery and contempt of your comrades, the anger and envy of your inferiors. A serpentine stream of slander poisons your peace. You are called a holy fool, a hypocrite, a saint, a hypocrite. Those around you do not find any friendly support or words of sympathy. In the darkness that has enveloped you, not a single point of light is visible; there seems to be no way out! And this can last for years!

But do not be discouraged: remember the lesson of the Holy Sepulchre. The truth can be suppressed, it can be buried, but only for a while. Sooner or later she will resurrect - this is a great, living force! And nothing in the world can defeat her. There is nothing stronger than God's truth. It does not shine with effects, does not need decorations, does not trumpet itself like a vain lie: it is a quiet, calm force, but completely irresistible.

There are stripes of pitchless darkness in public life. Sometimes lies and evil thicken to such an extent that it becomes difficult to breathe in this toxic atmosphere. Hope fades, and the spirit of involuntary despondency approaches like a nightmare, like a heavy cloud. But remember the lesson of Saint Sepulchre. It is unlikely that anyone will ever have to experience such a difficult mood of hopeless despondency as the disciples of the Savior in the agonizing hours after His burial; but the light that shone from the tomb dispelled the darkness of despondency, and deep sorrow was replaced by the joy of the Resurrection.

This constant miracle of the triumph of truth fills the entire history of Christianity.

At the moment of the Lord’s death, it was difficult, for human reasons, to think that His work would continue and would not die with Him. He left behind eleven apostles to whom he entrusted this mission: “And Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.”(Mark XVI, 15). But who were they? How much influence could they have? Were they noble people who could rely on the authority of their noble origin, which always carries weight in the eyes of people? No, they belonged to the lowest class, the class of fishermen who supported their miserable existence by small-scale fishing in the waters of Lake Gennesaret; came from Galilee, which was considered the most rude and ignorant country. Were they educated, learned rabbis, lawyers, so that they could captivate people with the power of eloquence and the logic of their convictions? No: the most inspired and thoughtful of them, John, at the time of his calling, according to the testimony of John Chrysostom, was illiterate. Were they rich in order to impress the common people with the brilliance of luxury, always greedy for external effects? No: they had old, torn nets that needed repairing, and they abandoned even those when they followed Christ. Were they strong, brave warriors to spread the teachings of Christ by force of the sword, as the Mohammedans did much later, spreading Islam? No: they had two knives, and the Lord ordered them to be sheathed at the most critical moment.

Let us not forget, moreover, that they were frightened by the fanaticism of the Jewish crowd, shocked by the death of the Savior, and lost all hope for a better future.

And there were only eleven of them, after the election of Matthew - twelve.

And against them stood the entire vast pagan and Jewish world with its centuries-old culture, with its education and learning, with its colossal military and economic power, with its strong power of political organization. And they had to conquer this world.

Was it possible to hope for this?

And yet these timid people, who fled for fear of the crowd of bishop’s servants, let's go and- faithful to the Savior's covenant - preached everywhere, with the Lord's assistance(Mark XVI, 20). Under what conditions they had to preach - this is best explained by the Apostle Paul in his 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, speaking about his missionary exploits: “ I... was in labor, immensely wounded, more often in prison, and many times at the point of death. Five times the Jews gave me forty stripes minus one; three times I was beaten with sticks, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the depths of the sea; I have been on travels many times, in dangers on rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from fellow tribesmen, in dangers from pagans, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the desert, in dangers at sea, in dangers between false brothers, in labor and in exhaustion, often in vigil, in hunger and thirst, often in fasting, in cold and nakedness.”(2 Cor. XI, 23-27). And, despite all the obstacles, already during the lifetime of the apostles, a solid foundation of the Church of Christ was laid in almost all the countries known at that time.

And then the entire pagan world rose up to fight Christianity. It was a fierce, desperate struggle, a struggle for life and death. The then cruel state had at its disposal many terrible weapons to combat the rebellious. Trial and persecution, interrogations and torture, fire and hot iron, beatings and mutilations, deprivation of property, damp and gloomy dungeons, exile to the mines, this hard labor ancient world, even the death penalty - all this, like one fiery river, rushed towards Christians at the behest of state power. Little of. The cruelty of the torturers invented special terrible executions for Christians. They were doused with resin and lit like torches. Whole crowds of them were brought out to the spectacles, and wild, hungry animals tormented the defenseless for the amusement of the idle, cruel and bloodthirsty crowd. Everything has been tried.

But barely three centuries passed, and paganism collapsed irrevocably with all its political and military power, with its philosophy and culture. And Christianity triumphed in a complete and brilliant victory with the edict of Constantine the Great. Is this not a miracle of Christian faith and hope?

Even the most last times before the second coming of the Savior, when hell mobilizes all the forces of evil to fight the Church, when faith becomes so impoverished that the Son of Man, when he comes, will hardly find it on earth, when By reason for the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold when they betray each other and hate each other(Matthew XXIV, 12.10) - even these terrible times of widespread darkness and malice will end in the triumph of truth, for the last, most fierce enemy of the Church of Christ on earth, the Antichrist, whose coming, according to the work of Satan, will be with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception of those who are perishing.(2 Thess. II, 9-10), will be defeated. And him The Lord Jesus will kill with the spirit of His mouth and destroy with the appearance of His coming(2 Thess. II, 8). And the devil, who deceived the nations, will cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and will be tormented day and night forever and ever.(Rev. XX, 10).

If so, if truth is invincible, then can a true Christian become discouraged in the most difficult circumstances of life?

Currently, the Orthodox Church is going through a difficult crisis. The persistent persecution brought against her, systematic and crafty, confuses and worries even the most persistent and sincere Christians. The majority of the people are ready to plunge headlong into the swamp of materialistic ignorance and debauchery. The muddy waves of general disbelief, it seems, are about to overwhelm and extinguish the lonely lights of bright faith, still flickering here and there. Involuntarily, many people’s hearts clench, and the coldness of sad doubt creeps into the soul. But remember the Holy Sepulcher - this living, speaking, triumphant, victorious Sepulcher - and not vague hope, but calm, completely irresistible confidence will fill your heart and strengthen your worried thought. The Church cannot perish, for the Lord created it, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her(Matt. XVI, 18). May the Lord lead us through the failures and abysses of unbelief, through the cleansing fire of persecution. This is His holy will, His wise Providence, “with the depth of wisdom, love for mankind was built and given to everyone that was useful.” That's how it should be. The reasons and secret goals of His unknown ways are useless to us and should not be explored. It is enough for us to know that the Lord is with us all the days until the end of the age. Amen(Matt. XXVIII, 20). May the Lord lead us through the sea of ​​wickedness and unbridled wickedness, where everything that is holy, everything that is best in the soul and that only gives the right to the great and sacred title of “man” has perished, let it be! We know that these waves, standing “here and here” and ready to swallow us, are dangerous only for the “chariot of Pharaoh” himself. This is the law of moral life, the law of history. The evil sown ultimately falls on the heads of those who raised and raised it. Even if we personally are not destined to see this joyful moment of the triumph of truth, the Lord will be pleased to call us from this life before it comes. What a disaster! We know that this moment is inevitable, and if we don’t see it here on earth, then we will see it from there... And then, looking back at the past abyss of life, we will join the jubilant chorus:

“Let us sing to the Lord: gloriously thou art glorified!” If even formidable public disasters, ready to shake both the Church and the faith of Christ, should not confuse a true Christian and lead him to despondency, then our personal, private failures in life no longer deserve attention at all. These are little things that are not worth talking about. Moreover, all this is so changeable, impermanent: today - joy, tomorrow - grief, today - success, tomorrow - failure, today - at the height of glory, tomorrow - under the yoke of shame and misfortune. Everything flows, everything changes. You just have to wait a little, and circumstances will change. Life will smile again, grief will be forgotten, the very memories of past misfortunes will be erased.

“When someone is in sorrow,” says St. Macarius of Egypt, “or in troubled passions, one should not lose hope; because despair introduces sin even more into the soul and makes it white. And when someone has unceasing hope in God, the evil seems to thin out and become watery in him.”

Let us conclude with the verses of one small, unknown poet:

You cry, you suffer, my dear sister!
Oh, believe me: suffering will not last forever!
One by one the sad clouds will dissipate...
Be all you are prayer, be all expectation;
Just be able to surrender to Christ in obedience,
Just be able to believe... and the sobs will subside,
And everything will become clear and quiet...
Oh, my friend, my dear sister.

The night passed after the Sabbath, spent by the disciples of Jesus Christ and the women devoted to Him in peace, that is, in complete inactivity, as required by the law of Moses. That day they could do nothing, but their hearts were restless, and the anxious, tedious night did not ease their grief. It is unlikely that they closed their eyes, thinking with sadness about how wretched and hasty the funeral of their dear Rabbi was and how little they corresponded to the dignity of the Great Prophet, “strong in both deed and word.” A loving and yearning heart imperiously demanded to pay the last debt to the Beloved Deceased and to complete the unfulfilled ceremonies of the funeral rite, completing the complete anointing of the Body, hastily begun by Joseph and Nicodemus. The aromas and fragrant ointments had already been purchased, and the dawn had barely turned red, dispelling the silvery dusk of the first Easter night, as the faithful disciples of Christ were already walking hurriedly through the streets of Jerusalem, carrying the prepared aromas. They apparently knew nothing about the guard posted by the high priests at the Holy Sepulcher and the fact that the entrance to the cave was sealed, but they were worried about another question: how to roll away the stone from the door of the Sepulcher? The huge goal was too heavy, and moving it seemed to be an impossible task; for weak feminine forces. Imagine their surprise when they saw that the stone had been rolled away!

With trepidation and bewilderment, they entered the cave, and involuntary horror seized them: the stone bed where the dear Body lay was empty! The Lord was not in the cave!

Before they could comprehend the mystery of the disappearance of the dead Body and recover from the amazement and pain of this new grief, they noticed on the right side a youth dressed in a white robe. From the lips of this young man, for the first time, great news was heard, sounded first in an empty cave and then repeated by millions of lips, changing the entire life of the world. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, crucified; He has risen, He is not here. This is the place where He was laid. Myrrh-Bearing Women, going out, they ran from the tomb; they were seized with trepidation and horror, and did not say anything to anyone, because they were afraid.

The news was truly amazing, extraordinary, and they were so little prepared for it!

Meanwhile, this message formed the basis of our entire faith! Only two words - He has risen - but what enormous power they contain! These two words turned the whole world upside down, overturned and destroyed paganism to the ground and created a great Christian Church, strong not so much in numbers, not so much in material means, but in its faith and moral power.

Recognizing the great significance of the Resurrection of Christ, the Apostle Paul directly says: “... If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also in vain.”(1 Cor. XV, 14).

Without faith in the Risen Christ there is no Christianity.

That is why all the opponents of our faith, starting with the pagan Celsus, the writer of the ancient world, and ending with modern infidels of all stripes, are trying with especially fierce persistence to shake the truth of the Resurrection and discredit the gospel stories on which it is based.

Before moving on to clarifying the great significance for us of the fact of the Resurrection of Christ, it is not useful to deal with the objections of these skeptics and, having examined at least the most popular ones, clear the ground from the debris of arbitrary fabrications and eliminate possible doubts.

So, first of all, they say that the resurrection of Christ cannot be understood in the same sense in which it is understood Christian church. This understanding presupposes death. Meanwhile, one might think that Christ did not die on the cross. He just fell into a deep faint, from which he later woke up in a cool cave.

“Well, what next?” we ask. Next, obviously, we must assume (again, just assume, without any basis in the Gospel text) that Christ got up from His bed, rolled away the huge stone from the door of the tomb and left the cave... And this with his legs and arms pierced through! Is it possible! To this it should be added that on the same day, as Saint Luke narrates, the Lord, together with two disciples, traveled to the village of Emmaus, which was 60 stadia (about 12 versts) from Jerusalem. All this is so impossible that the assumption of the Lord fainting is reduced to the level of the most absurd invention. “A man with broken legs,” writes professor, doctor of medicine A. Shistov, “not only could not walk to Emmaus on the third day, but, from a medical point of view, he could not stand on his feet until a month after he was taken down from the cross ” (A. Shistov. Thoughts about the God-Man).

In addition, as the rationalists themselves rightly note, the unfortunate sufferer, half-dead, with difficulty crawled out of the tomb, in need of the most attentive care and then nevertheless died, could not have impressed the students as a triumphant conqueror over death and the grave.

Finally, one detail noted by Saint John, an eyewitness to the last minutes of the Savior’s life, leaves no doubt about the actual death of Jesus Christ. The soldiers came to Jesus and saw Him dead,” the Apostle John narrates, “ They did not break His legs, but one of the soldiers pierced His ribs with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out. And he who saw it bore witness, and his testimony is true; he knows that he speaks the truth so that you may believe(John XIX, 33-35).

The expressiveness with which John emphasizes the truth of his testimony does not allow one to doubt it, and the ancient fathers of the Church always referred to the fact indicated by him in their polemics with the Docet heretics, who recognized the death of Christ only as imaginary. The fact is that, as can be judged from the words of the evangelist, the blow of the spear apparently tore the atrium, from where the flowing blood turned out to be mixed with serous fluid - a symptom of undoubted death, as many doctors claim. Due to the absurdity of the considered theory, other voices are heard: yes, Christ died on the cross. There can be no doubt about this. But one might think that He was not resurrected, that soon after His death His body was stolen, and then a false rumor about His resurrection was spread. It was not without reason that the high priests affirmed this (Matthew XXVIII, 13-15).

But who could have stolen the Body of the Savior? Scribes? High priests? Pharisees? It cannot be, because at the first news of the imaginary resurrection of Christ, they, as interested in suppressing this kind of rumors, would have shown His corpse to everyone and with this, undoubtedly, would have put an end to all rumors, all rumors and assumptions. This is, firstly. Secondly, from the Gospel of Matthew it is clear that the high priests and scribes were even afraid of suspicion about themselves in this matter.

Maybe the Roman guards kidnapped the Savior? No, this cannot be said either. First of all, they were not at all interested in this matter. And then, with the iron discipline that reigned in the Roman troops, with the terrible responsibility that the soldiers were subjected to in this case, they would never have decided on such a dangerous and risky undertaking.

It remains, therefore, to admit that the disciples of Christ themselves stole the Body of their Teacher and then spread rumors about His resurrection.

But if neither the high priests nor the soldiers could do this, then the apostles were even less able to dare to do this. People, overwhelmed with fear and horror, cowardly hiding from Gethsemane, in no case could a few hours later, in the middle of the night, in front of the eyes of the Roman guards, penetrate into the depths of the cave and steal the Most Pure Body of Christ the Savior, and even being in a state of mental and physical exhaustion.

Further, for preaching about the Resurrection of Christ, the apostles were persecuted, tortured, burned at the stake, and crucified on crosses. The question arises, what was the reason for the disciples to resort to such deception? Then, how could this lie gain a foothold in the minds of people and, without revealing itself, last for centuries? You can’t help but ask yourself, could these simple-minded fishermen really be such skillful actors as to proclaim a deliberate lie with the greatest aplomb and then never break out of their role until the very end of their lives? Did not one of them protest against such deception? No, the lie had to be revealed sooner or later, and such a gross deception could not remain hidden for long.

If the apostles spread false rumors about the Resurrection of Christ, then how could they be believed? How did the Mother of Christ and His brothers believe this? After all, during His lifetime His brothers did not believe in Him. Has the lie now convinced them? In addition, such an invention could only appear if the apostles were awaiting the Resurrection of their Teacher. But the fact of the matter is that they did not even think about the Resurrection of Christ, and when the Lord warned them that He had to be killed and then rise again, they did not even understand Him (Mark IX, 10, 31-32) - this thought was so far from them.

Even if we assume that the disciples and apostles stole the remains of their Teacher, then we can say with confidence that such a plan would have been completely fruitless.

The world cannot be converted to a new faith by such deceptions and tricks perpetrated, moreover, by such people. To convince others, it is necessary that the preacher, first of all, be deeply convinced of the truth of his sermon. If he himself does not have this conviction, then he will never be able to attract others with him.

So, these arguments of our religious opponents do not in the least shake our faith in the risen Christ.

Third objection. It is the most common and, it should be noted, the most false.

They say: Jesus Christ died and was not resurrected. But some of His disciples, “thanks to their excited state,” saw the ghost of Christ and imagined that they saw the Teacher himself. Since then there have been rumors about the Resurrection.

This assumption is in complete contradiction with the Gospel account of the appearance of the Risen Savior. In the text of the Gospel we read the following: “ Jesus stood in the midst of them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They, confused and frightened, thought that they saw a spirit. But He said to them: Why are you troubled, and why do such thoughts enter your hearts? Look at My hands and at My feet; it is I Myself; touch Me and look at Me; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have. And having said this, he showed them his hands and feet. When they still did not believe for joy and were amazed, He said to them: Do you have any food here? They gave Him some of the baked fish and honeycomb. And he took it and ate before them."(Luke XXIV, 36-43).

From the above text it is clear that the thought of a ghost flashed in the minds of the apostles when they saw the Lord suddenly appearing. But the Savior Himself decisively refuted this idea, inviting them to touch Himself and demanding food. Of course, a ghost cannot drink or eat, and it is impossible to touch it with your hands. Rationalists are thus forced here to reject one of two things: either the gospel narrative or their own fiction about ghosts. Let us add, in addition, that the disciples of Christ were not at all faint-hearted, hysterical, prone to hallucinations, as they are sometimes tried to portray. On the contrary, they were stocky, healthy, clear-headed fishermen who were not prone to nervous breakdowns or to hallucinate in reality.

Leaving aside some other, even weaker objections, and summing up all the above, we must admit that neither the deception nor the self-deception of the disciples could ever lead to such wonderful and lasting consequences. One inevitably comes to the conclusion that the so-called natural explanations of the fact of the Resurrection of Christ require more faith than the Gospel account of this event.

In the Gospel, moreover, we have such clear, positive, undoubted grounds for our faith in the Risen Lord that, without completely rejecting or distorting the Gospel text, we cannot in any way deny the reality of the fact of the Resurrection of the Lord.

First of all, the Savior Himself spoke about His Resurrection. He spoke not just once, but several times. He spoke not covertly, not in parables, but directly, clearly, intelligibly.

Thus, while in Galilee, Jesus said to His disciples: “ The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and on the third day He will rise again.”(Matt. XVII, 22-23; see: Mark IX, 30-31).

After the Apostle Peter confessed Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus began to reveal to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day rise again(Matt. XVI, 21; see: Luke IX, 22).

After the Transfiguration, when the disciples came down from the mountain, Jesus rebuked them, saying: Tell no one about this vision until the Son of Man rises from the dead.(Matt. XVII, 9).

The angels also reminded the disciples of these words when, appearing to them after the resurrection of Christ, they said: “... Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here: He has risen; remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. And they remembered His words"(Luke XXIV, 5-8).

So, Christ repeatedly spoke about His Resurrection. What right do we have to distrust Him and question His words? Has He ever spoken a lie? Have any of His promises come to pass? Did the prophecies fail? On the contrary: all His predictions were fulfilled literally. Therefore, in this case, we have no right to doubt and must believe that Christ has risen, for He spoke about this, and His words have always been fulfilled.

Further, we believe in the Resurrection of Christ because after His actual death we saw Him risen. If you carefully study the Gospel text, then such visions or appearances of Him to different persons can be counted up to ten.

The first appearance was to Mary Magdalene (Mark XYI, 9; John XX, 11-18). Immediately then the Lord appeared to other myrrh-bearing women (Matt. XXVIII, 9-10). The third appearance was to the Apostle Peter (Luke XXIV, 34; I Cor. XV, 5); The details of this phenomenon are completely unknown. The fourth was to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke XXIV, 13-35). Fifth - to ten disciples gathered together, and among them was not the Apostle Thomas (John XX, 19-23). Sixth - to the same disciples together with Thomas (John XX, 26-29). The seventh - to the seven apostles on Lake Tiberias, which St. John tells in detail (John XXI, 1-23). The eighth is on a mountain in Galilee; more than five hundred disciples and eleven apostles with them (Matthew XXVIII, 17; 1 Cor. XV, 6). Ninth - to the Apostle James. There is no mention of this phenomenon in the Gospels, but the Apostle Paul speaks about it (1 Cop. XV, 4). The tenth appearance was a farewell one and ended with the Ascension of the Lord (Luke XXIV, 50-51).

In addition to these phenomena mentioned in the Gospel, there were undoubtedly others, about which detailed information has not been preserved, for, according to the book of Acts, the Lord, after His Resurrection, appeared to the disciples for forty days, telling them about the Kingdom of God (Acts I, 3 ).

If the Lord appeared so many times in different places to different persons, then how can we not believe the testimony of so many eyewitnesses? Were they all deceivers or exalted dreamers daydreaming? The assumption is completely incredible, and we cannot allow it to please non-believers.

Without the Resurrection of Christ, it is impossible to explain the turning point that occurred in the souls of the apostles. After all, the apostles and disciples of Christ until the last moment did not know why the Divine Teacher came, did not understand His teaching, and warned Him against the suffering awaiting Him. And all the words of Christ were interpreted in an earthly, material sense. And suddenly, after some three days, no more, they understood everything, comprehended everything, comprehended the teachings of Christ as deeply as perhaps none of our contemporaries were able to comprehend. From weak, frightened people, they suddenly become brave, decisive, convinced preachers of a new teaching, for the triumph of which they almost all gave their lives. It is clear that in this short period of time something extraordinary happened that shook them to the core and left an indelible mark on their beliefs. One has only to reject the Resurrection of Christ, and this turning point will be completely incomprehensible and inexplicable. With the recognition of this wonderful fact, everything will be simple, clear and accessible for us.

Without the fact of the Resurrection, the extraordinary enthusiasm of the apostolic community, and in general the entire original story Christianity would present a series of impossibilities. The Resurrection of Christ forms the starting point for new life in the hearts of the disciples. It transforms their sadness into extraordinary joy. He inspires courageous determination in the fallen spirit and makes world teachers and preachers out of poor fishermen. Not a single fact has left such deep traces in history as this one. The entire history of subsequent centuries represents the development and spread of Christian ideas, and the central one is the message of the Resurrection. Without recognizing this fact, the whole story would turn into a crude and absurd phantasmagoria, which is impossible to understand and explain. Indeed: if the news of the Resurrection was nothing more than a deception or a trick of the imagination, then how could all of humanity, at least the humanity of the cultural world, be hypnotized by this deception for entire centuries?

Nobody can explain this.

No, no matter what the opponents of Christianity say, we will still say with firm conviction and joyful faith: “Christ is Risen!” In this fact of the Resurrection of Christ is the triumph of our faith, the triumph of truth, the triumph of virtue, the triumph of life, the triumph of immortality.

The risen Christ is the cornerstone of our faith. " Nazdani formerly, says the Apostle Paul, - on the foundation of the apostle and prophet I am the cornerstone of Jesus Christ Himself.”(Eph. II, 20). If Christ has risen, then He is not as mortal as we are. We can believe in His Divinity and in the Divine origin of our faith. If He was not resurrected, then He is, of course, only a man, and not the embodiment of the Divine. If He was not resurrected, then we have the right to strongly doubt all His miracles, everything that He said about Himself, everything that He promised people. If He rose again, then this is a miracle of miracles, before which all other gospel miracles pale, and there will be no difficulty in accepting them. Without the Resurrection of Christ, the preaching of the apostles, based on faith in the Risen Lord and spreading this faith throughout the world, would have been impossible. Didn't all the apostles doubt that Christ was the Messiah until they were convinced of His Resurrection? Haven’t they all, as the Savior predicted, scattered like “sheep without a shepherd”? Even after the Resurrection of the Lord, how difficult it was to convince some of them that He had really risen. Without this confidence, would they have gone out to preach worldwide? And would the world, immersed in the darkness of paganism, turn to the Christian faith without this sermon? And what would they start preaching? How would they say: he who believes in the Son of God has eternal life (1 John V, 13), when the Son of God Himself would remain dead? How would they say: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever(Heb. xiii. 8), when would everyone know that He was alive and then dead?

Thus, without the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Tomb would have been at the same time the tomb of the Christian faith: because everyone who had previously believed in Him would have ceased to believe; because no one would take the trouble to preach faith in Him; because, finally, this sermon in itself would not be worthy of trust. But now the tomb of Jesus Christ has become a sanctuary, for the triumph of the Christian faith took place in it.

The Resurrection of Christ is the triumph not only of our faith, but also of truth in general.

If Christ was not resurrected, then we are forced to admit something terrible, incredible, namely, that the Pharisees, scribes and high priests of the Jews were right, but the Son of Man was wrong. Why? Because, certifying His Divine dignity, Christ indicated that He would rise on the third day. " An evil and adulterous generation, - He said to the Pharisees who demanded a sign, - looking for signs; and no sign will be given to him except the sign of the prophet Jonah; For just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.(Matthew XII, 39-40).

With these words, the Lord quite definitely points to His Resurrection as a sign of His Divine mission, and, therefore, if He was resurrected, then His testimony is true, the prediction was justified - we can believe in Him and in His teaching. If He was not resurrected, then it means that in His answer to the Pharisees He told a lie; this means that He Himself was mistaken, and the high priests who recognized Him were right a simple person and those who crucified Him as a deceiver because, being a man, He made Himself God (John X, 33).

Once you reject the Resurrection, you will also have to reject the Righteous, Holy God; you can no longer believe in the victory of truth and goodness if Jesus Christ died a shameful death, died just like Judas, like a blasphemous robber.

How can there be talk about victory in general over evil, over unrighteousness, when Christ has not been resurrected?

If this all-perfect moral personality, without any spot or blemish, pure, infinitely great and strong in His selfless love, is defeated by hatred, suppressed by sinful and unworthy people, suffered the most pathetic failure in His ideal aspirations; if this purest Being, who was in such sincere communion with the Lord of the world as the Son with His Father and who served Him alone, was condemned by an unjust court, tortured, disgraced, crucified and killed on the cross, and God did not show any compassion for Him, allowed Him to die ingloriously and did not glorify Him in the triumph of the Resurrection, then it means there is no truth on earth, there is nothing pure and holy in this sinful, dirty and vulgar world of ours.

If Caiaphas and Judas won, then the very principle of truth was destroyed. Then good is powerless and will never be able to overcome untruth. Then evil is the rightful king of life. Then something terrible happened on the cross: evil triumphed over embodied good, lies over Truth, vulgarity over Greatness, baseness over Purity, self-love and hatred over Love and Selflessness. Who, after all this, can still sincerely believe in the final victory of goodness and truth?

But if Christ was resurrected, this means that truth and good turned out to be more powerful than evil. Then His Resurrection is a firm guarantee for the possibility of salvation for every moral personality and for the final victory of truth on earth. Then you can believe that there is a just God, there is truth, there is goodness. Moreover: one can believe that The Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father... and when He will reward everyone according to his deeds.

The Resurrection of Christ is, finally, the triumph of immortality. Here life has triumphed over death, and we, together with the apostle, can say: “ Death, where is your sting? hell, where is your victory? (1 Cor. XV, 55). If Christ was not resurrected, then we could argue that the law of death is invincible, and that death will never ultimately release anyone from its jaws. We would not have a single example of a complete victory over death, for even if we know cases of resurrection, for example, Lazarus, the son of the widow of Nain and others, then this victory was only temporary: death only yielded its victims for a while, but then again swallowed them up. Without the Resurrection of Christ, the idea of ​​immortality would thus always remain in great doubt. But if the Son of Man alone has risen and is not consumed by death, then it means that immortality is not a dream, not an idle fantasy; This means that it is possible in eternity as a real fact, and in this we have an undoubted guarantee of our immortality - the immortality of all sons of men. We can believe that we too will be resurrected after Christ, which is why the Apostle Paul states: “ Christ rose from the dead, the firstborn of the dead. Just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will live, each in his own order: Christ the firstborn, then those who belong to Christ at His coming.”(1 Cor. XV, 20, 22-23).

From here we must draw a further conclusion, which has enormous significance for us: if immortality exists, then all life acquires deep meaning as a preparatory period for future eternity. If there is no immortality, then life is nothing more than a strange, incomprehensible nonsense, an absurdity. " For what, - let's say in the words of the apostle, - and we are subjected to calamities every hour?.. Let us begin to eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die!”(1 Cor. XV, 30, 32).

The gloomy fantasy of one unbelieving writer, who was stuck with this fatal question: “for what?” becomes understandable.

“I am in a coffin,” he writes, “worms are gnawing at my body, and the mole is quietly digging his tunnel over my grave. Strange, meaningless silence...

Was it worth wandering around the world for so many years in order to finally end up in this terrible place? Was it worth experiencing the enormous amount of moral and physical torment that I had to endure throughout my life in order to end up in the merciless hands of Death - this only real deity - which gloatingly lowered me into the hopeless darkness of the grave? What purpose does nature pursue, incomprehensible to us, in this wild process of decomposition? Why have I and many other mortals tried to accumulate in my brain throughout my life this store of information, this wealth of knowledge? I studied ten languages, I went through high school, I worked on many questions of human knowledge, expending a lot of nervous energy on all this. Now my corpse is in a coffin. Where did all this mass of labor I spent go and what did it turn into? She disappeared, died irretrievably.

A huge worm crawled into my left nostril and, with difficulty making its way through the swollen, decomposed mucous tissue, reached the nerve substance of the brain. I reached it and began to penetrate deeper and deeper into it, gradually eating away those divine parts of my brain in which the treasures of the knowledge I had accumulated during my life were stored...

Is it worth being born, is it worth living, is it worth working after all this?”

Of course, it’s not worth it, if there is no resurrection, there is no immortality.

And for those who do not believe in the future life, all the painful questions - “for what?” For what?" - No answer.

Only darkness, despondency, horror...

But Christ has risen, and for us everything becomes clear, transparent, understandable. In His resurrection all questions about the goals and objectives of life are resolved. Life is no longer a “vain gift, a random gift,” not an “empty and stupid joke,” but a great gift from the Creator to man, given so that he can achieve eternal, highest bliss. Our activity, our service to our neighbors is not the work of the Danaids, filling a bottomless barrel, not empty labors without any hope of making a person truly happy, but participation in the work of Christ, which must end in the kingdom of love and glory of God. The very sufferings that life is full of no longer confuse us, for we begin to understand that these sufferings prepare us and our neighbors for a blissful life with God, that the future will not only make sufferers forget the past, but will also make them bless this past as a path to joy and happiness. Even death is not scary, because for us it is only a transition to another life, brighter, more joyful, if, of course, we are worthy of it.

Christ has risen, and the gates of the Kingdom, tightly closed for man after his fall, have opened for us.

Christ is risen and entered... into heaven itself, to appear now for us before the face of God(Heb. ix. 24). All we have to do is follow Him.

Christ has risen and given us a new life full of grace-filled powers. Our job is to use these forces.

That is why for us there is so much deep, mysterious, joyful meaning in the troparion of Holy Pascha, which we will never stop repeating:

“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tombs.”

Bishop Vasily Kineshemsky “Conversations on the Gospel of Mark”
Publishing house “Father's House”, 2006.

In the Church we not only remember history that happened two thousand years ago. These exciting events appear there in a completely different light. Holidays have deep spiritual significance in the life of the Church. The experience of the saints shows that the events taking place in the earthly Church have a direct and organic connection with the heavenly Church of God, the Church of Angels and Saints. In these exceptional days, we are called to partake of grace and become participants in the event that unfolds before us.

If we come unprepared to worship services, without understanding anything, we are depriving ourselves

But in order for us to be able to participate in these events, preparation is necessary; we must know what exactly happened in these days. If we come unprepared to worship services, without understanding anything, we deprive ourselves. Perhaps, when we see the Crucifixion or the Shroud, something will resonate in our hearts, but true participation in what is happening is possible only if we prepare correctly. How to prepare properly? If these days we are focused and not distracted by a thousand things, if we attend all the services, if we pray, if we read, if we ask God in prayer so that we too feel something, then the All-Bountiful God and Father will certainly ours will give us what we ask. So that the feeling of Christ’s suffering remains in us, so that we do not grumble when we encounter difficulties, so that we descend from heaven to earth and understand that this is our path in this world. If we want to follow Christ, we will go through two terrible things: first, giving up worldly success, and second, willingly accepting our suffering. We must understand this. We do not seek worldly prosperity and recognition, so we should not be tempted when the world pushes us away, when we are faced with pain, suffering, the need for sacrifice - all this is necessary in order for us to follow Christ, to have a loving relationship with Him.

Christ Himself occupies a central place in the event. Everything that Christ endured for us - spitting, strangling, mocking, the crown of thorns, bile - everything that the Church describes in such detail is necessary not so that we feel sorry for Christ, but in order to help us love Him. To show us how Christ loved us and to move our hearts to love Him. So that, being in love for Him, we will be saved and live forever with Him. So, the passion of Christ is not the cause of sorrow, but of salvation. Likewise, the Cross of the Lord, with which Christ was killed, became life-giving, became a sign of life, salvation and joy and, thus, ceased to be an instrument of murder and damnation, as it had been before. God Himself calls it the sign of the Son of Man.

When we look at the icon of the Crucifixion, we see that Christ is filled with holy dignity: it is obvious that He went into suffering voluntarily, that He is the Lord of what is happening, and not a victim of fate and human malice. Christ is the King of Glory, officiating in the Sacrament of human salvation through suffering and the Cross and giving resurrection. Of course, if someone looks at Christ and His suffering as a human being, they will feel pity. However, the Church presents us with the God-man Christ, who saved man. Christ is not a pitying victim of human malice. He, as the Great Bishop, offered Himself to God, became a sacrifice and opened the gates of heaven for us. The Church, when it depicts Christ, the Mother of God and the saints, presents us not only with the circumstances and history of the event, but at the same time conveys what is implied, that is, what is not visible - the very essence. Yes, Christ is on the Cross, He suffers and dies. But the Cross would have been a completely sad and human end if the Resurrection had not followed. Therefore, in the end, the Cross is pushed aside, and the Resurrection predominates. Every week the Church celebrates not the crucifixion, but the Resurrection. It is this that is the basis and center of the Church. Based on the Resurrection, the Church lives its entire life. Sunday is the day of Resurrection; it is he who determines the entire weekly holiday circle and everything else in the Church.

It is repeated as a holiday in the Church every Sunday. Not Christmas, not Baptism, not the Crucifixion, but the Resurrection is the foundation of the Church. If Christ has not been resurrected, then, as the Apostle Paul says, our faith is in vain, our labors are in vain, because man would remain a captive of death (see: 1 Cor 15:17).

It is impossible to escape the cup of suffering. The main thing is how we drink it - swearing or praising

So the Resurrection has freed us from death, but what does this really mean for us? We say: “For through the cross we have brought joy to the whole world,” “having seen the resurrection of Christ, let us worship the holy Lord Jesus, the only sinless one.” What does the resurrection of Christ mean for us, and what does it change in Everyday life? The Resurrection of Christ means the Kingdom of God, means another life, so we also walk in newness of life(Rom 6:4); as we sing in the canon of the Resurrection, new life shone from the tomb. We, as children of the Church, must live this reality of new life in Christ. We cannot live as if we are slaves of death and decay. Our life cannot be a life mired in the mustiness of hell. Of course, we are bound to experience a lot of difficulties in life, a lot of sadness and struggle. It is impossible to escape this cup of suffering, no matter what we do. The main thing is what benefit we will derive from it, how we will drink it - swearing or praising.

Nothing remains, only Christ remains forever

Although we live in the Church, pray, sing, read, often we clearly lack this, because we have not freed ourselves from the things of this world. We are still attached to this world and we are occupied with human affairs. We have not transcended humanity, we have not grasped this spirit of Christians who said: we do not have a permanent city here, but we are looking for a future(Hebrews 13, 14). There are people in whose hearts you can see the living presence of Christ. This does not make them insensitive and indifferent; they participate in the life of the world in the same way as others, but with a different state of spirit and having eternal life within them. The feeling of the eternal Kingdom of God does not allow us to choke, because we know: everything human is transitory. Nothing remains, only Christ remains forever. If a person lives this way, then he perceives everything that happens with true dignity.

Christ opened the gates of hell, broke the locks and chains and everything that binds us, and freed us from sin. Slavery is everything that keeps us captive in this world. It’s not that we despise this world, we use this world as if we do not use it, as the Apostle Paul says (see: 1 Cor 7:31). That is, we use this world, but are not used by the world. We use all the joys, all the blessings that God gives us through this world, all that is good and gives joy, but we are not slaves of this world - Christ freed us from slavery. And only when we are freed from the shackles of this world can we truly enter into the joy of God.

It is indeed a tragedy for a Christian, instead of joy, to live under the heel of despondency from the ordinary adversities of human existence. God gives us such a gift, but we don’t take it, we remain unhappy and small people. God offers us the freedom of the Resurrection, but we do not take it, do not use it, although in it we will find the meaning of our life and feel completely free and joyful.

Christ gives you the joy of the Resurrection so that you can breathe in the air of freedom, and you make carbon dioxide out of it

Christ said: and no one can take your joy away from you(John 16:22) - that is, no one can take your joy away from you; This is not the joy that the world gives, but the joy of Christ. If you do not experience pain, you will not tear yourself away from this world to breathe the oxygen of the presence of Christ. Christ gives you the joy of the Resurrection so that you can breathe in the air of freedom, and you go and make carbon dioxide out of it. Christ made you a royal son, and you went and became a slave and herded pigs, because, although you were invited to Christ’s supper, you did not want to accept His invitation. This is what is seen in the Church. We are invited to live in the palace of Christ, real princes, and sin makes us slaves, trifles make us unhappy, and we do not break these shackles in order to break out and say that we do not want this slavery. We do not want to live in the freedom of God, which will make our life joyful in this world.

The Resurrection of the Lord gives meaning to our whole life, and only thanks to the light of the Resurrection can we understand and endure what is happening around us, resist it and endure first of all ourselves, then our brothers, who upset us with their weaknesses just as we upset them. And one is called to support the other: Nose And bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ(Gal 6:2).

The portal "Orthodox View" asked the priests about what is main meaning Resurrection of Christ.

Archpriest OLEG STENYAEV,cleric of the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist in Sokolniki, writer, theologian and publicist, preacher and missionary.
The Holy Fathers write that it would be better for many not to be resurrected at all, so as not to inherit eternal torment, therefore the meaning of Easter is not that “Christ has risen and we will rise again,” but that Christ, by his atoning death, defeated spiritual death.

The Orthodox Church speaks of the existence of two deaths and two resurrections from the dead. The first resurrection from the dead is when an unbeliever becomes a believer, a pagan becomes a Christian, a heretic becomes Orthodox. The Holy Scripture says: “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection; the second death has no power” (Rev 20:6). The second resurrection from the dead is associated with bodily resurrection, but it is not of fundamental importance, since if a person does not reconcile with God before the first death, nothing will help him.

The first death occurs at the death of the body, and the second will occur when sinners on the day Last Judgment They will hear the words: “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Therefore, if a person participates in the first resurrection, then the second death no longer has power over him and other words will be spoken to him: “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).

After the Lord Jesus Christ died, His friends and enemies began to wait to see if God the Father would accept this sacrifice, which would mean the resurrection from the dead. The Jews understood that this was the most important point, and were very afraid that the disciples would steal the Body of Christ and announce His resurrection, so they placed a guard near the cave. And when God the Father resurrected his Son by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Son of God by the power of his own hypostatic deity rose from the grave, this became the most important evidence that the sacrifice was accepted. And this is the main point Christian Easter, because before this sacrifice all people went to hell, and there was no justification for sinners.

The Apostle Paul emphasizes that the Son of God was “delivered for our sins and rose again for our justification” (Rom. 4:22-24), therefore we are justified by the Resurrection of Christ and redeemed by His holy blood, and those who believe in Him will receive the gift of eternal life.

HIEROMONCH MAKARIUS (MARKISH),cleric of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk diocese, church publicist and missionary.
The answer to this question is all Christian faith and life to its fullest! And if so, then one will inevitably have to limit oneself to only a fragment, a reflection, in which, nevertheless, one can see the life-giving and saving light. The main thing in Christianity is Christ, God, Who became Man and went through the full extent of human suffering, including the Crucifixion. And Easter (the Resurrection of the Savior) is the point, the focus, where the human and the Divine converge with the greatest strength and brightness, and it converges in such a way that each of us has the opportunity to connect to it, to become not a spectator, but a participant in the event, a partaker of the Divine. I emphasize that this is an opportunity, the implementation of which depends on the free will of everyone. Hence the meaning of Easter for humans.

Archpriest ALEXI OKNIN,rector of St. Nicholas Church in the city of Chekhov.
Without the Cross there is no Resurrection, therefore suffering will always precede the spiritual and physical rise of a person. Every Christian must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Christ. The First Letter of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Corinthians says: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18).

The wearing of the cross is the basis of Christian life, but many people wear a cross around their neck only as a beautiful decoration, but do not have a real Cross. But it was only through the Cross that Christ saved the human race and ascended to Heaven. In the Gospel of Mark there is a passage that is read during the service on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord: “And so the Lord, after talking with them, ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God...” (Mark 16:19).

Every person must follow the path of Christ and be resurrected not only spiritually, but also physically. Christ, after his resurrection, ate food with the apostles to show that his body was real, therefore the Holy Scriptures speak of the resurrection of the whole person, and not of the resurrection of the soul or body.

In the history of the church there have always been many heresies on this score, in particular in the teachings of the theologian Origen of Alexandria, but we, on the basis Holy Scripture we can claim that the resurrection will be in the body, and this is the most important argument for us.

Archpriest IGOR FOMIN,rector of the Church of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky at MGIMO.
Easter gives hope for salvation, because “if Christ is not risen, then our faith is vain” (1 Cor 15:14), therefore the Resurrection of Christ is for Orthodox Christian is the source of life and it is precisely the presence of Easter that makes Christianity fundamentally different from all other religions.

Easter is the goal that all of humanity has strived for throughout history, and that goal is immortality. Christ showed that only through the Resurrection of Christ, through Easter, humanity can achieve this immortality.

A person must be ready to accept happiness, but happiness does not depend on external conditions, but on the internal state, which can be achieved only by living a spiritual life.

IN Orthodox Church There is a dogma that the Lord Jesus Christ, having become incarnate on earth, was eternally united with the flesh, and in the future life He will meet us in the flesh in which He was resurrected. And we will be resurrected in a renewed body, like Christ, but it is a mystery how and when this will happen, but it will definitely happen.

Archpriest VLADIMIR CHUVIKIN,rector of Perervinsky Theological Seminary.
Easter is the central Christian holiday; it is not without reason that it is called the Feast of Feasts and the Solemnity of Solemnities, because if Christ had not been resurrected, then the salvation of the human race would not have occurred. As the Apostle Paul said: “If Christ has not been raised, then our faith is vain” (Cor 15:14).

The Easter holiday is of central importance in the life of all humanity, because through the Resurrection of Christ we are given the opportunity of eternal life. If the Lord has risen, then He will resurrect us for eternal life, which is why the Holy Church attaches such great importance to Easter and prepares in advance for this holiday, starting with Cheese Week and ending with the period of Great Lent, during which believers fast and pray intensely.

And, of course, during this period, wonderful services are performed in churches, which dispose us to repentance and change our lifestyle. Saint John Chrysostom in his Easter sermon says that the joy of Easter embraces everyone: both those who fast and those who do not fast, and the lazy, and the rich, and the poor. But those who worthily passed through the period of Lent: fasted, improved in prayer and Christian virtues - will experience the joy of Easter to a fuller extent.

The last week before Easter is called Holy Week, because these days the Holy Church invites us to remember the events before the Death on the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ. And we empathize with Christ, we have compassion, we are crucified together and buried. Much has been written about this in church hymns that are sung during Holy Week.

The difference between Christianity and all other religions is that only in Christianity does Almighty God the Creator suffer, sacrifice himself for the sins of all mankind, being sinless Himself, and in other religions God is usually the ruler, ruler, autocrat, formidable and punishing. This is a paradox that is humanly difficult to understand, but this is the essence of great secret. We believe that the Lord created man not for corruption, not for death, but so that man would live forever.

When a person dies, the soul continues to live, it goes to ordeal, and on the fortieth day - to worship God, where its temporary fate is determined until the Second Glorious Coming of Christ.

When the second coming comes, then all people will be resurrected, no matter what death they died, their bodies will again be united with souls, but they will be different. Those people who live to see the Second Coming will not die, but will also change, as the Apostle Paul says: “Then we who are left behind will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).

The Lord will gather everyone for the final Judgment, which will be incorruptible, unhypocritical and not subject to revision; only some will inherit eternal life, while others will inherit eternal damnation.

ARCHPRIESTER ROSTISLAV YAREMA,Doctor of Theology, professor, secretary of the Council of the North-Eastern Moscow Vicariate, editor of the website www.patriarch.ua.
Christ is Risen and by his death on the cross he gave us the opportunity to enter eternal life. We are wanderers on earth, but our further fate after death depends on how we spend our earthly life.

Our whole life is to unite with Christ, worthily bear our cross, which the Lord gave us, and ultimately receive life in heavenly abode God. Christ told us that we need to endure, and that the Kingdom of Heaven is in need, and only he will achieve it who accomplishes the feat for the sake of Christ. And if a person spent his earthly life worthily, then he will receive eternal life, and an unrepentant sinner who lived according to his lusts will receive eternal torment.

Before the Resurrection of Christ every year in Jerusalem comes Holy Fire, and legend says that if this fire does not go down, the end of the world will come. The Lord gives us something like this to strengthen our faith, so that we know that there is the grace and mercy of God.

Elena Yurefyeva - “Orthodox View”

Culturology. Dictionary-reference book

Resurrection of Jesus Christ

(Greek lat. Resurrectio), in Christian doctrine the return of Jesus Christ to life after His death on the cross and burial. The Gospels tell us that Christ repeatedly predicted His violent death and V. “on the third day” (e.g. Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19). This period is symbolically correlated with the Old Testament prototype - the three-day stay of Jonah in the womb of the sea monster (Matthew 12:40: “as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” ), named in accordance with the counting of days adopted in ancient times, when any small part of a day was taken as a day (although in fact between the death of Christ and his V., as they are depicted in the Gospels, there is less than two days - approximately from 15 o'clock on Friday until the night from Saturday to Sunday). The V. event itself as such, that is, the revival of the body of Christ and His exit from the tomb filled with stones, is not described anywhere in the canonical Gospels, since none of the people witnessed it (for the same reason it is not depicted in Byzantine and Old Russian iconography ). Only in the apocryphal “Gospel of Peter” are there visual pictures of V. himself. The canonical Gospels report only: firstly, the sight of an empty tomb with a shroud folded in it (John 20: 5-7) and a rolled away stone, on which a young man sits, clothed in white clothes (Mark 16:5), that is, one of the Angels (Matthew 28:2), or two Angels (Luke 24:4), speaking in clear words about V.; and secondly, about the appearances of the risen Christ to His followers. The empty tomb as a material sign of V. is seen by the myrrh-bearers, that is, women who came early on Sunday morning to complete the work of burial and anoint the body of Christ, according to Eastern custom, with fragrant and embalming substances (Matt. 28:1-8; Mark 16:1- 8; Luke 24:1-11). Then the Apostle Peter and “another disciple” (John the Theologian) appear and enter the empty tomb (John 20:2-10). The appearances of the risen Christ are distinguished by miraculous features, they are physical (Christ eats with his disciples, the Apostle Thomas feels the wound from a spear on the body of Christ with his finger), but this physicality is no longer subject to physical laws (Christ enters through locked doors, instantly appears and instantly disappears, etc.). d.). He ceased to be immediately recognizable to those closest to him: Mary Magdalene first takes Him for a gardener (John 20:15), the disciples to whom He appeared on the way to Emmaus, having walked with Him a long part of the way and spending time in conversation with Him, suddenly they recognize Him when their “eyes are opened,” and He immediately becomes invisible (Luke 24:13-31); but not everyone believed in the bodily V. Christ (Matthew 28:17, cf. the story of Thomas’ unbelief, John 20:25). According to tradition, which has no support in the Gospel text, but is shared by the Orthodox and Catholic tradition After the Resurrection, Christ appeared to the Virgin Mary before anyone else. According to the canonical version, the appearance of the resurrected Christ and His conversations with his disciples lasted 40 days and ended with the Ascension. One New Testament text mentions the appearance of Christ after the Resurrection “to more than five hundred brethren at one time” (1 Cor. 15:6).

Orthodox iconography of Byzantium knew, along with the motif of the descent into hell (so closely related to the theme of V. that Byzantine and Old Russian images of the descent into hell are perceived as icons of V.), the motif of the myrrh-bearers in front of an empty tomb. The motif of the victorious appearance of Christ over the trampled coffin stone, with a white banner with a red cross on it, developed in Catholic art of the late Middle Ages and passed into the later cult painting of Orthodoxy.

Sergey Averintsev.

Sophia-Logos. Dictionary

Orthodoxy. Dictionary-reference book

Orthodox encyclopedic dictionary

Resurrection of Jesus Christ

After the Sabbath, at night, on the third day after the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, an earthquake occurred: “The angel of the Lord came down from heaven and came and rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb and sat on it; his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was white, like snow; fearful of it, those who guarded it trembled and became as if they were dead” (Gospel of Matthew 28:2-4), and then, waking up from fear, they fled. As soon as it began to get light, Mary Magdalene and other pious wives went with incense to the tomb (to the cave in which the body of the executed Christ was laid). They were concerned that the entrance to the coffin was blocked with a heavy stone, which they were unable to move. But when they approached, they discovered that the stone had been rolled away and there was no one in the cave. Two angels told them that Christ had risen. Coming out of the cave. The women hastened to tell the wonderful news to the disciples of Christ. John and Peter, who ran to the tomb, saw in the cave only the shrouds with which the body of Christ was wrapped and the folded cloth with which His head was wrapped. Then Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene and His disciples. Only then did they cease to doubt the reality of the resurrection of Christ.

Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms

Resurrection of Jesus Christ

♦ (ENG resurrection of Jesus Christ)

The divine resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to life on the third day ( Sunday) after his crucifixion (Acts 4:10; 5:30; Rom. 10:9). Christ, that is, is alive and revered as the ascended Lord (Phil. 2:6-11), who rules the world and is present in the world and with his church (Matt. 28:20).

Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron

Resurrection of Jesus Christ

According to the Gospel story, on the night of the first day of the week, an earthquake occurred at the tomb of Jesus Christ: an angel descended from heaven, rolled away the stone from the tomb and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The soldiers guarding the tomb of Jesus were frightened by this phenomenon and out of fear they became as if dead (Matt. 28:2-4). As soon as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and other pious women, with fragrant ointments, went to the tomb. They were concerned about who would roll away the stone from the coffin for them. But, approaching the tomb, they saw that the stone had been rolled away. Mary Magdalene ran back and said to Peter and John: they took the Lord away from the tomb, and we do not know where they laid Him. The other wives entered the cave, did not find the body of the Lord there, and wondered what to think about it. In the cave, they noticed two young men in shining white clothes, received from them the news of the resurrection and the command to quickly convey to the disciples of Christ and in particular Peter that Christ had risen and would meet everyone in Galilee. Coming out of the cave, they ran hastily and told all this to their disciples. They did not believe what was told (Mat., 28, 1, 5-8; John, 20, 1-2; Mark, 16, 2-8; Luke, 24, 1-11). Only Peter and John, who had now heard for the second time that something extraordinary had happened at the tomb of Christ, stood up and hurried to the tomb. John ran faster than Peter and came to the tomb before him. Leaning over the opening of the cave, he saw that only shrouds lay. Then Peter came, entered the cave and saw that there were shrouds and a folded cloth with which the Head of the buried Jesus was entwined. John also entered the cave, saw all this and believed that Christ had risen (John 2:3-10; Luke 24:12). Meanwhile, Mary Magdalene again returned to Joseph’s garden and mourned at the tomb, not knowing where they laid the body of the Lord. Now the risen Christ appeared to her and talked with her. Mary Magdalene informed the still grieving disciples about this joyful event. But they, hearing from her that Christ was alive and that she had seen Him, still did not believe (John 20:11-18; Mark 16:9-11; Matt 28:8-10). Next, the evangelists tell about various appearances of the risen Christ to their disciples, who now could no longer help but believe His miraculous resurrection from the dead. Meanwhile, the guards reported to the high priests about everything that happened at the tomb and what they witnessed. The Sanhedrin gathered, and its members bribed the soldiers to divulge that during their sleep the disciples of Christ came and stole His body from the tomb (Luke 24:13-26; Mark 16:12-13).

The miracle of the resurrection, according to the teachings of the church, serves as the completion of those extraordinary events that testify to the divine dignity of Christ and at the same time the divine origin of the Christian religion. The rationalism of the last century used to deny the reality of the resurrection the above-mentioned fiction, namely, that the disciples of Christ stole His body and spread the news of the resurrection of the Teacher. This explanation was replaced by another one at the beginning of our century: about lethargic sleep. Paulus and Schleiermacher say that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, but only fell into a lethargic sleep, and then was brought to life in a cool stone coffin with strong aromas, with the diligent care of his friends. Criticizing this hypothesis of lethargic sleep, Strauss says: “Having emerged from the tomb half-dead, walking in a sickly state, in need of medical aid and care, and, finally, exhausted from agonizing suffering, Jesus Christ could not have made on his disciples that impression of the conqueror of death and master of life, which served as the basis for all their further activities. Such a return to life would only weaken the impression that Jesus made on the disciples during his life and death, would have taken out their lamentable cries, but could not have turned their sorrow into inspiration, their to bring reverence towards Him to the point of adoration.” Rationalists of modern times (Weisse, Ewald, Strauss, Baur, etc.) admit that Jesus Christ really died, but was not resurrected. They do not accuse the apostles and witnesses who talk about the resurrection of knowingly, deliberately and consciously lying. They were truly convinced of the resurrection of Christ; but their conviction was purely subjective; reality did not correspond to it at all. All the visions they described were subjective visions, pure illusions generated by the activity of an overly excited and intense imagination. This so-called “visionary” theory has already met with the most decisive rebuff in orthodox theological literature.