By Saint Simeon of Thessalonica
To a certain pious monk, honored with the priesthood (deaconry); also about the bishop who ordains a priest.
My beloved and good brother in Christ! Being obliged, according to the commandment, to love everyone, we should all the more nourish love for those who are sincere and loving (us). Although love according to God is indivisible and simple, and always of the same nature, and although, according to perfect reason, it should be equal in relation to everyone: however, Love itself and Perfection Itself – Jesus, who gave Himself for all, is willing according to the will of each, just as the sun, pouring out light equally for all, sees each according to the desire to look and the ability of sight. Therefore the Savior Himself says: “I love those who love Me” (Prov. 8:17). Not that He loves some and does not love others; No, He, as Love itself, loves everyone in general, even those who do not want to love Him and move away from Him, without forcibly restraining them; but to those who love Him and want to unite with Him, He gives Himself entirely, and, being Goodness itself, He shows works of love. And the Apostle commands, first of all, to have care for our own, meaning here those who are close to us in the faith. And I myself, although the least of the least, but believing in Christ, a priest in Him, according to His permission, and His servant according to my strength, must necessarily remember His commandments, especially the most important commandment about love, as much as possible, so that, according to the word of the beloved disciple, Christ abides in me, at least a little. For “he who abides in love,” he says, “abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16). Thus, being obliged to keep the commandment of love myself, and to remind everyone of it, as far as possible, and especially my beloved, I now sincerely proclaim it to you, who are especially beloved by me before others. And I do not mean here an admonition, but I wish only to remind you of the service which you have been honored with, and to give you the most reliable knowledge of it: since I entered upon the priesthood before you, became a priest of Christ and, by His highest goodness, a minister of His divine and greatest Mysteries.
Behold, you, beloved, have been honored to become a priest of Christ and to be a deacon (of Christ) and an intercessor and a spectator of the Mysteries, close to Him and a partaker and herald of the Gospels. You are no longer held back by any curtains, but look openly. And it is not through a seraphim, that is, a priest, that you participate in the covenant, but, having been deemed worthy of the priesthood, you yourself have become a seraphim. You call to prayers without being called; raising others up, you bring them closer to God, and you yourself, moreover, serve the divine Mysteries and proclaim to the faithful, exhorting them to listen; you are appointed by Christ and serve as the main path for others, guiding them to the light. And are you not a cherubim, when you see the All-Seeing One in the mysteries, and a fire-bearing seraphim, when you carry the life-giving coal, and a throne, having in yourself the Omnipresent in service and communion, and an angel, as His minister and sacred performer? Moreover, you serve not some image or picture, but the Lord Himself, who is carried in the highest by invisible (ranks). And what they are on high, you do below: for the Creator of all things willed that this liturgy should be celebrated both there and here. And He Himself did so: having become man, He united with us and, being the only invisible one, by His own will clothed Himself with matter and became like mortals. Being infinite and beginningless by nature, when He wished to unite with creation, He did not accept the created nature of invisible spirits. Having created them from nothing, He made them incorporeal and immortal by grace, and in order to make them partakers of His glory, He gives them His gifts, to each in a measure appropriate to Him. But He accepted our created nature and hypostatically united Himself with us, and imparted divine glory to corruptible nature, having clothed Himself in it inseparably and unmerged. “For in Him,” says (Paul), “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). So He was seen, and we can see Him again, according to His good pleasure; He gave Himself up for us, and now continually gives Himself to us. And of such works, O great goodness, are we performers and ministers, and participants in the sacraments! What more than this? In the performance of the sacraments we have received a dignity higher than the angels. O goodness of the Lord! He who contains all things and is not limited by anything, for our sakes dwells in place; the intangible is embraced, the invisible is felt; the incomprehensible to the mind is made partaker of mortals through us, who have debased and corrupted our nature; and, O marvel! through the priesthood given to us in the sacraments He is present and appears, and is given, and is offered, and is divided among all, and dwells, and is clothed, and is wrathful, and is pacified, and is propitiated, and is proposed. What is more wonderful than this? What greater blessing for men? What dignity is higher? What power abounds in greater gifts? Behold how strong and powerful we are – earth and dirt and worms! But we can do even more than this by the power of the priesthood: for we are both reformers to a better state through baptism and the other sacraments, and fathers of the sons of God, and laborers for the law of God, and destroyers of sins, and liberators of souls, and absolvers from eternal bonds, and gatekeepers of paradise, possessing its keys, and powerful in the affairs of God, and helpers to Him in the work of saving people.
What shall we bring for this? How much are we indebted to God for such gifts? But even if we had attained to the contemplation of the many-eyed, we would still not be able to pay (for the gifts of God) to the extent that we have become debtors. And what created being is worthy of God’s mercies? And the first and highest ranks tremble, humble themselves, are terrified, seeing what we do, and are especially amazed, contemplating “the manifold wisdom of God in the Church” (Eph. 3:10), as Paul says; and they, recognizing the One who created them and the excessive goodness of God, are afraid and cry out in amazement, and are amazed at what is happening. And we, who are honored to be ministers and performers of divine and greatest mysteries, how do we conduct ourselves? This wondrous power and terrible duty to destroy sins and passions we sometimes (alas!) make a source of passions and a reason for sin; and some, incited by the spirit of malice, turning it into despotic and worldly power, madly striving for it and using all the means in their power to achieve it, use such power and no longer disdain it. The saints, on the contrary: already being angels in contemplation of such a height (of the Mysteries), but trembling, like seraphim, at the divine Mysteries, (as it is said), avoided it (the power) and turned away from the greatness of the sacred rank. And how they behaved, being honored with it, is evident from what they did. Therefore, we, beloved, having become, by divine goodness, partakers of the dignity of the saints, let us strive, as much as there is strength in us, to manage life and govern it like them. This matter is not only for us, who are too inexperienced, a matter unworthy of our dignity, but even for those who have reached the highest degree of purity, who have become like angels, and for the angels themselves. This matter belongs to the Divine Being alone, who has produced everything from nothingness and now preserves it, and can change everything according to His will. And this is obvious here. Therefore, we alone of all created beings need renewal; and since we have darkened and destroyed the first beauty, have disobeyed the eternal and immortal, and incorruptible, and unchangeable God, and have listened to Him who was created good, but who fell by his own will, and lost divine immortality, and became mortal through separation from the immortal, then grace is necessary for us. And although this apostate apparently lives and abides, in reality he has lost the true life – the life of God, having willfully surrendered to the side of evil and through conceit becoming an adversary of the Lord who created him, and through this he has prepared a similar destruction for us, who have been deceived by him. And this apostate still exists and has not lost his malice. But after the fall, by the goodness of the Creator, we received the means of rising again. For he did not fall as a result of deception; he did not suffer in the flesh and was not bound by matter, but voluntarily fell away from the good, of which he had true knowledge; therefore, having no place for repentance, he remains an ill-wisher and grows stronger in malice. But we, deceived by feeling and crafty deception, have received the grace of repentance, so that, having learned evil by experience, (we) may despise it – having felt the true and divine blessings from which we have fallen away, repent, immediately respond to the calling, be pardoned for this and receive again the gifts of divine goodness. For this purpose, the prophets, and the law, and all its fulfillment, and, finally, the incarnation of God, so that we may learn through the fall, that is, by moving away from it, as well as from the one who tempted us and led us astray, to become such as we were before, or even better, as was already the case when our nature, as has been said, was united with the Creator, and so that, through the incarnation of the most philanthropic Lord, we may be called to Him. Since it was impossible for the Incarnate One to remain here forever, which is not natural to human nature, which has received a limit to life through condemnation, it was impossible for mortals to constantly behold the flesh made immortal through death, especially for wicked and sinful people who still need rebirth: this would be inconsistent with the dignity of His divine and incorruptible body, and would not lead all people, as those gifted with freedom, to obedience when He began to struggle for them; on the contrary, a second rejection could await Him. And if it is possible to suffer and die an innumerable number of times, then He was truly rejected and is rejected to this day, suffered and suffers to this day in the person of those who constantly endure for His sake; and therefore He Himself was ascended. This is what He does for us, who is always present in the bosom of the Father, and who is constantly everywhere present, who lifted up the body and presented it to the Father as a gift, and sat down “far above every principle and power and might” (Eph. 1:21), as Paul says, and made the flesh, received into the person of the Godhead, glorified and worshiped by all creation, the flesh which always stands before us and is offered to the Father as a sacrifice. He is the intercessor, and the propitiator, and the deliverer, and the mediator; from Him come the gift, and the reward, and every consolation.
When this had happened and He Himself sat at the right hand of the Father, and those who were being saved felt the need of a savior: then the Savior, O great compassion! granted the grace of salvation to those who were akin to Him by nature, that is, to the like-minded people who were being saved. Therefore He Himself, desiring to save people, became man. He did not grant this to the angels, because He did not unite with them, except spiritually, and because they did not need renewal. In His place He appointed guardians and mentors of souls, leaders to heaven, light and life, and fathers and pastors, and guards and priests, who received His power not for their own merits and were appointed to this work not for themselves alone, but for the sake of others. Therefore, we must strive in every way to prepare ourselves as worthily as possible for the high sacrament, as befits those people who have received power and authority and grace on earth, and we must use these gifts not only for ourselves, but even sacrifice ourselves for others, not sparing our lives, following the example of our Prototype. “I lay down my life for the sheep,” He says (John 10:15); and Peter says: “Christ suffered for us” (1 Peter 2:21); and Paul about the Father: “Who did not spare even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32). This also applies to all priests.
The divine and cross-bearing garment in which they are clothed, is it not a sign of the impoverishment of Jesus? Yes, this is the symbol of the cross, the image of death, the direction of all thoughts to the sky, the renunciation of everything earthly. Therefore, those experienced in the knowledge of this avoided the glorious sacred rank – not because one should avoid the priesthood, but because it requires a worthy and great soul, able to perform sacred works, a soul, as far as possible, pure and caring for the benefit of the brothers: since this work is God’s and pleasing to Him (God), and is given for love, as Christ taught Peter. Therefore, the humble-minded fathers, knowing themselves, avoided the great rank of priesthood; but now it is especially granted to those clothed in the monastic image; and it is given to them for the sake of their great dignity, height and purity. Many rightly think that a powerful and purified soul is needed for this; and purity and fear of God especially accompany the schema. This is the opinion of many, or rather, the opinion of the universal Church, which has established that the leadership of almost every Church should be entrusted to monks. Even after careful investigation, you will hardly find that any layman has ever been honored with the priesthood, and it seems to be destined for monks by lot; you will hardly notice that any one living in the world has attained the priesthood, and that the Church has chosen him for this before he is clothed in monastic clothing. This is the opinion of all the faithful in general, and especially of the divine heads of the Church, who give honor to the divine schema, as if it were instituted and proclaimed from above. But the evil behavior of many has spoiled everything, and the importance of the schema has been debased and weakened. Some use all means to attain the divine priesthood as quickly as possible, and having attained it, they do not use it as they should, and very often commit acts unworthy of this rank; sometimes, it is true, they conform to its requirements, but rather they act as they themselves see fit. Therefore, it is better not to be clothed in the schema and to be obedient to the Author of it; and those who have been honored with the priesthood and have decided on it must live in godly fear and be humble, like the humbled Master, whose place and image they have received. It is easy to see that this divine office is often a cause for pride and vanity for many, and this is not from it itself, but from our will, which does not obey the divine mind, striving for one thing only and completely immersed in the earthly and sensual. We should not think like this; I will not deny that I am writing this about myself, since I often have similar (vain) thoughts, and I think that it is a good and useful thing to speak about oneself in this way and to reproach oneself along with others. It is impossible that we, overwhelmed by evil thoughts, should not receive any benefit from the remembrance and representation of blessings. Of course, we cannot always notice the emergence of thoughts and the germ of thoughts, and our darkened mind is usually seduced; but to think about what is useful and immediately strive for the best is in our power; therefore, if we neglect this, we will be subject to condemnation. Constant care for the acquisition of blessings usually gives birth to something divine. However, we must reflect on whose servants we are, what work we serve, and whose image we bear. We are the servants of God, who created all things, and not only created all things good, but always desires that creatures who have voluntarily turned to evil, especially men, should turn to good, – who has desired and is pleased to bring them into a good state, and does this through the priests. We are the servants of the greatest work, in which the earth was united with heaven, and enmity was destroyed, God was reconciled with mortals, and all unrighteousness ceased, and the power of demons was destroyed, and we – men, together with the angels, by grace, became both sons of God and gods, and the performers, and the clergy, and the stewards, and those initiated into the sacraments.
(to be continued)
Source in Russian: Writings of the Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church, relating to the interpretation of Orthodox worship. Volume III. – St. Petersburg: In the Printing House of Grigory Trusov, 1857. – P. 225-248.
