What is the goodwill for death? How to explain the riddle of clinical death? Why do the dead come to the living? Can you give and receive permission to die? We are publishing excerpts from a speech at a seminar held in Moscow by Andrey Gnezdilov, a psychotherapist, doctor of medical sciences, honorary doctor of the University of Essex (Great Britain), founder of the first hospice in Russia, inventor of new methods of art therapy and author of numerous books.
Death as part of life
In everyday life, when we talk with someone from our acquaintances, and he says: “You know, such and such died,” the usual reaction to this question is: how did he die? How a person dies is very important. Death is important for a person's sense of self. It is not only negative.
If we look at life philosophically, we know that there is no life without death, the concept of life can be assessed only from the standpoint of death.
Once I had to communicate with artists and sculptors, and I asked them: "You depict different aspects of human life, you can depict love, friendship, beauty, but how would you depict death?" And no one gave an immediately intelligible answer.
One sculptor who immortalized the blockade of Leningrad promised to think it over. And shortly before his death, he answered me like this: "I would portray death in the image of Christ." I asked: "Christ crucified?" - "No, the ascension of Christ."
One German sculptor depicted a flying angel, the shadow of whose wings was death. When a person fell into this shadow, he fell into the power of death. Another sculptor depicted death in the image of two boys: one boy sits on a stone, resting his head on his knees, he is all directed downward.
In the hands of the second boy, a flute, his head thrown back, he is all directed after the motive. And the explanation for this sculpture was this: it is impossible to depict death without accompanying life, and life without death.
Death is a natural process. Many writers have tried to portray life as immortal, but it was a terrible, terrible immortality. What is endless life - endless repetition of earthly experience, cessation of development, or endless aging? It is even difficult to imagine the painful state of a person who is immortal.
Death is a reward, a respite, it is abnormal only when it comes suddenly, when a person is still on the rise, full of strength. And the elderly want death. Some old women ask: "Here, healed, it's time to die." And the patterns of death that we read about in the literature, when death befell the peasants, were of a normative nature.
When the villager felt that he could no longer work, as before, that he was becoming a burden for the family, he went to the bathhouse, put on clean clothes, lay down under the image, said goodbye to his neighbors and relatives and calmly died. His death occurred without those expressed sufferings that arise when a person struggles with death.
The peasants knew that life is not a dandelion flower that has grown, blossomed and scattered under the breeze. Life has a deep meaning.
This example of the death of peasants, dying, having given themselves permission to die, is not a feature of those people, we can meet similar examples today. Somehow we received an oncological patient. A former military man, he behaved well and joked: "I went through three wars, pulled death by the mustache, and now its time has come to pull me."
We, of course, supported him, but suddenly one day he could not get out of bed, and took it quite unequivocally: "That's it, I'm dying, I can't get up anymore." We told him: "Don't worry, this is a metastasis, people with metastases in the spine live long, we will take care of you, you will get used to it." "No, no, this is death, I know."
And, imagine, in a few days he dies, having no physiological prerequisites for this. He dies because he chose to die. This means that this good will to death or some kind of projection of death takes place in reality.
It is necessary to provide life with a natural end, because death is programmed even at the moment of conception of a person. A peculiar experience of death is acquired by a person in childbirth, at the moment of birth. When you deal with this problem, you can see how intelligently life is built. As a person is born, so he dies, easily born - easy to die, hard to be born - hard to die.
And the day of a person's death is also not accidental, like the birthday. Statisticians are the first to raise this problem, discovering the frequent coincidence of people with the date of death and date of birth. Or, when we remember some significant anniversaries of the death of our relatives, it suddenly turns out that the grandmother died - a granddaughter was born. This transmission to generations and the nonrandomness of the day of death and birthday is striking.
Clinical death or another life?
Not a single sage has yet understood what death is, what happens at the time of death. Such a stage as clinical death was practically ignored. A person falls into a coma, his breathing stops, his heart stops, but unexpectedly for himself and for others, he returns to life and tells amazing stories.
Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva recently died. At one time, we often argued, I told the cases of clinical death that were in my practice, and she said that this was all nonsense, that changes were just taking place in the brain, and so on. And once I gave her an example, which she later began to use and tell.
I worked for 10 years at the Oncological Institute as a psychotherapist, and once I was called to a young woman. During the operation, her heart stopped, they could not start it for a long time, and when she woke up, I was asked to see if her psyche had changed due to long oxygen starvation of the brain.
I came to the intensive care unit, she just came to her senses. I asked: "Can you talk to me?" - "Yes, only I would like to apologize to you, I caused you so much trouble" - "What trouble?" - "Well, how. My heart stopped, I went through such stress, and I saw that for the doctors it was also a great stress. "
I was surprised: "How could you see this if you were in a state of deep narcotic sleep, and then your heart stopped?" - "Doctor, I would tell you much more if you promise not to send me to a psychiatric hospital."
And she said the following: when she plunged into a narcotic sleep, she suddenly felt that as if a soft blow to her feet made something inside her turn, like a screw was twisting. She had such a feeling that her soul had turned out and went out into some kind of foggy space.
Looking closer, she saw a group of doctors bending over the body. She thought: what a familiar face this woman has! And then she suddenly remembered that it was herself. Suddenly a voice rang out: "Stop the operation immediately, the heart has stopped, you need to start it."
She thought that she had died and with horror remembered that she had not said goodbye to either her mother or her five-year-old daughter. Anxiety for them literally pushed her in the back, she flew out of the operating room and in an instant found herself in her apartment.
She saw a rather peaceful scene - a girl was playing with dolls, her grandmother, her mother, was sewing something. There was a knock at the door, and a neighbor, Lidia Stepanovna, entered. She was holding a small polka-dot dress. “Mashenka,” said the neighbor, “you all the time tried to be like your mother, so I sewed for you the same dress as your mother's”.
The girl happily rushed to her neighbor, on the way touched the tablecloth, an old cup fell, and a teaspoon fell under the carpet. The noise, the girl is crying, the grandmother exclaims: "Masha, how awkward you are," Lydia Stepanovna says that the dishes are beating happily - a common situation.
And the girl's mother, forgetting about herself, went up to her daughter, stroked her head and said: "Masha, this is not the worst grief in life." Mashenka looked at her mother, but, not seeing her, she turned away. And suddenly, this woman realized that when she touched the girl's head, she did not feel this touch. Then she rushed to the mirror, and in the mirror did not see herself.
In horror, she remembered that she had to be in the hospital, that her heart had stopped. She rushed out of the house and found herself in the operating room. And then I heard a voice: "The heart started, we are doing the operation, but rather, because there may be a repeated cardiac arrest."
After listening to this woman, I said: "Do you want me to come to your house and tell my family that everything is all right, they can see you?" She happily agreed.
I went to the address given to me, my grandmother opened the door, I told how the operation had gone, and then asked: "Tell me, at half past ten, did your neighbor Lydia Stepanovna come to you?" Do you know her? "-" Didn't she bring a dress with polka dots? "-" Are you a magician, doctor? "
I keep asking, and everything came together to the details, except for one thing - the spoon was not found. Then I say: "Did you look under the carpet?" They lift the carpet and there is a spoon.
This story greatly influenced Bekhtereva. And then she herself experienced a similar incident. One day she lost both her stepson and her husband, both committed suicide. It was a terrible stress for her. And then one day, entering the room, she saw her husband, and he turned to her with some words.
She, an excellent psychiatrist, decided that these were hallucinations, returned to another room and asked her relative to see what was in that room. She came up, looked in and staggered back: "Yes, there is your husband!" Then she did what her husband asked for, making sure that such cases were not fiction.
She told me: “No one knows the brain better than me (Bekhtereva was the director of the Institute of the Human Brain in St. Petersburg). And I have the feeling that I am standing in front of some huge wall, behind which I hear voices, and I know that there is a wonderful and huge world, but I cannot convey to those around me what I see and hear. Because in order for it to be scientifically substantiated, everyone must repeat my experience. "
Once I was sitting near a dying patient. I put the music box, which played a touching melody, then asked: "Turn it off, bothers you?" - "No, let it play." Suddenly her breathing stopped, her relatives rushed: "Do something, she's not breathing."
In the heat of the moment I gave her an injection of adrenaline, and she again came to herself, turned to me: "Andrey Vladimirovich, what was that?" - "You know, it was clinical death." She smiled and said: "No, life!"
What is this state into which the brain passes during clinical death? Death is death. We fix death when we see that breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the brain does not work, it cannot perceive information and, moreover, send it out.
So, the brain is only a transmitter, but there is something deeper, stronger in a person? And here we are faced with the concept of the soul. After all, this concept is almost supplanted by the concept of the psyche. The psyche is, but there is no soul.
How would you like to die?
We asked both healthy and sick: "How would you like to die?" And people with certain characterological qualities in their own way built a model of death.
People with a schizoid type of character, such as Don Quixote, characterized their desire in a rather strange way: "We would like to die so that none of those around us could see my body."
Epileptoids - considered it unthinkable for themselves to lie quietly and wait for death to come, they should have been able to somehow participate in this process.
Cycloids are people like Sancho Panza who would like to die surrounded by relatives. Psychostenics are anxious and suspicious people, worried about how they will look when they die. Hysteroids wanted to die at sunrise or sunset, on the seashore, in the mountains.
I compared these desires, but I remember the words of one monk, who said: “I don't care what will surround me, what will be the situation around me. It is important for me that I die during prayer, thanking God for sending me life, and I saw the power and beauty of His creation. "
Heraclitus of Ephesus said: “On the night of death, man kindles a light for himself; and he is not dead, extinguishing his eyes, but alive; but he comes into contact with the dead — while dormant, while awake — he comes into contact with the dormant, ”- a phrase over which one can puzzle almost all his life.
Being in contact with the patient, I could arrange with him so that when he dies, he would try to let me know if there is something behind the coffin or not. And I received this answer more than once.
Once I made an agreement with a woman, she died, and I soon forgot about our agreement. And then one day, when I was at the dacha, I suddenly woke up from the fact that the light came on in the room. I thought I forgot to turn off the light, but then I saw that the same woman was sitting on the bunk opposite me. I was delighted, began to talk to her, and suddenly I remembered - she died!
I thought that I was dreaming all this, turned away and tried to sleep to wake up. Some time passed, I raised my head. The light was on again, I looked around in horror - she was still sitting on the bunk and looking at me. I want to say something, I can't - horror. I realized that there was a dead person in front of me. And suddenly she, with a sad smile, said: "But this is not a dream."
Why am I giving such examples? Because the vagueness of what awaits us forces us to return to the old principle: "Do no harm." That is, “do not rush death” is a powerful argument against euthanasia. To what extent do we have the right to intervene in the condition that the patient is experiencing? How can we hasten his death when he may be experiencing the brightest life at this moment?
Quality of life and permission to die
It is not the number of days that we have lived that matters, but the quality. And what does the quality of life give? The quality of life makes it possible to be without pain, the ability to control your mind, the ability to be surrounded by relatives and family.
Why is communication with relatives so important? Because children often repeat the story of their parents or relatives. Sometimes in detail, it's amazing. And this repetition of life is often a repetition of death.
The blessing of the family is very important, the parental blessing of the dying children, it can even then save them, protect them from something. Again, returning to the cultural heritage of fairy tales.
Remember the plot: an old father dies, he has three sons. He asks: "After my death, go to my grave for three days." The older brothers either do not want to go, or are afraid, only the younger, a fool, goes to the grave, and at the end of the third day, his father reveals to him some secret.
When a person passes away, he sometimes thinks: "Well, let me die, let me get sick, but let my family be healthy, let the illness end on me, I will pay the bills for the whole family." And now, having set a goal, no matter rationally or affectively, a person receives a meaningful departure from life.
A hospice is a home that offers a quality life. Not an easy death, but a quality life. This is a place where a person can end his life meaningfully and deeply, accompanied by relatives.
When a person leaves, air does not just come out of him, like from a rubber ball, he needs to make a leap, he needs strength in order to step into the unknown. A person must allow himself this step. And the first permission he receives from relatives, then from the medical staff, from volunteers, from the priest and from himself. And this permission to die from oneself is the most difficult thing.
You know that before suffering and prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ asked his disciples: "Stay with me, do not sleep." Three times the disciples promised Him to stay awake, but fell asleep without any support. So a hospice in a spiritual sense is a place where a person can ask: "Stay with me."
And if such a great personality - the Incarnate God - needed the help of a person, if He said: “I no longer call you slaves. I called you friends, ”addressing people, it is very important to follow this example and saturate the last days of the patient with spiritual content.
Andrey Gnezdilov
Prepared the text; photo: Maria Stroganova
Sermon by the rector of the Holy Transfiguration Church in Kharkov, Archpriest Victor (Burbela) on the feast of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem on April 9, 2017
Today we are celebrating the great twelveth feast of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem. Jesus visited Jerusalem many times during his earthly life, but never before had he come to this city in the same way as this time. This was his last coming to Jerusalem before he was captured and crucified on the cross.
But on that day, when he approached the outskirts of the Holy City, the people accompanying His people and the multitude of people who were going to Jerusalem for the feast of Easter, and the inhabitants of this city, hearing about the approach of Jesus, came out to meet Him to greet Him with honors ... They left because by that time Jesus was very famous throughout the country and especially in Jerusalem. And everyone came out to look at this man, who did such things, spoke such words that no one could either create or say. People were amazed and rejoiced that they had such a prophet.
But there were those who did not rejoice, but envied, there were those who denied all miracles because of their own pride and inability to see the obvious and recognize it as real.
What did the Jews expect from Jesus?
Those people who went out to see Jesus saw in Him not just a preacher, they saw in Him their savior from Roman rule. At that time, Judea was under the rule of the Romans, and the entire people sought to free themselves from this slavery, and they thought that Jesus, who can perform such miracles, is the one who is able to free them in our human understanding, in political terms.
They were especially convinced by the last and loudest miracle, which produced a great shock - the resurrection of Lazarus, whom many knew personally, he lived in Bethany and was a friend of Jesus. As the Gospel of John says, one day Lazarus fell ill, and when his illness became irreversible, he died while still young enough. While he was still alive, his sisters Martha and Mary sent a messenger to Jesus to inform him that Lazarus was very sick and that Jesus would come and heal him. But Jesus hesitated. But then He still went to Bethany. But before His coming, Lazarus died.
When Martha learned that Jesus was coming to him, she went out to meet Him. According to Jewish tradition, when a person died in a village, it was the grief of the entire village. And even if people were not close to the deceased, it was considered correct to come to the house of the deceased and grieve with family and friends. So there were many people in the house of the late Lazarus. When Martha went to meet Jesus, many people followed her, thinking that she had gone to her brother's tomb to weep. Seeing Jesus, Martha fell at His feet, saying, if You were here, my brother would not die. In response to these words, Jesus said: your brother will not die, just believe. Martha answered: I know that he will rise on the last day, on the general resurrection from the dead. To this Jesus said: I am the Resurrection and the Life, therefore, if he believes in Me, if he dies, he will rise again, and he who lives by faith in Me will never see death. And Martha answered: I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, coming into the world.
These words of Christ were a revelation to the people about his Divinity. And when they approached the tomb in which Lazarus was buried, by that time the second sister Mary had approached, and Jesus, seeing that the sisters were crying, and He himself also wept. And he commanded the people to roll off the stone that covered the entrance to the tomb. At that time, in that area, they put the dead people in stone caves and rolled a large stone to the entrance, these were some kind of tombs. The deceased person was completely wrapped from head to toe in a long cloth, anointed with perfumed oils, and then placed in a coffin.
Jesus' command to roll the stone away from the tomb made everyone present in confusion, because this was usually not done, only in rare exceptional cases. First of all, because for the Jews of that time, touching a dead body was considered a desecration. Moreover, Martha says to Jesus: Lord, for the fourth day, as he lies in the tomb, he already stinks, the body decomposes so that the smell can be heard here. But Christ insisted that the stone be rolled away, and standing at the entrance to the cave said: Lazarus, come out. And as the evangelists describe, the deceased came out, completely entwined with burial shroud, and stood at the entrance to the tomb, so that everyone was horrified, not understanding what was happening. And Jesus commanded to untie him, and this miracle of the resurrection of a man who had already died, whose body was possessed by corruption according to the law of our nature, made a very strong impression on the people who knew Lazarus and who were at his funeral, and now they saw him alive.
After this miracle, many people believed in Jesus as a prophet, and the elders, scribes and Pharisees were put to shame, who asserted that Jesus was not a prophet, but a false prophet. Moreover, seeing Lazarus resurrected, many who knew him, who learned about this miracle, believed in Jesus as the Messiah expected by all Jews. This event became the apogee of the totality of all his miracles performed during the years of His preaching, and therefore many people all went out to meet Him, as it should be to meet kings, victors in wars: they spread their clothes along the path along which Christ had to go, and those who did not have outer clothing, they cut off the branches of the date palms, greeted Jesus, waving them, and also covered His path with these branches. And with one voice they shouted: Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who walks in the name of the Lord.
But Jesus was not pleased with this glee
However, Jesus was not proud of such a meeting, as many of us would be proud, He did not bow in response to greetings, how can we nod to people who meet us with glee, being proud of our glory. And He grieved because He knew what would happen, that after a few days the people who solemnly met Him as a king would demand: Crucify, crucify Him!
An absolutely amazing picture appears before us. Why did the huge number of people who believed in Jesus Christ, whom they met as the Messiah, suddenly change their minds so quickly, and suddenly began to ask for His death and execution? Probably because they did not expect from God what He would like to give them. They expected from Jesus what they wanted, earthly, temporary, tangible, what they needed here and now, what their mind prompted them.
But Christ spoke to them about the eternal. He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Jn. 18.36. And since His Kingdom is not of this world, it means that the laws of this Kingdom are different, the goals in this Kingdom are different, the logic of staying in this Kingdom of God is different from the logic of being in our ordinary earthly life. That is why the people did not understand Him. Providing Him with support, when He entered Jerusalem, they thought that He would immediately raise an uprising and overthrow the Roman dominion, become their king and, by His miraculous manifestations, produce bread and circuses for them. What else does a person need? Meal'n'Real.
Therefore, when Christ said that he did not come for this, but for everyone to live forever, they did not understand Him, and were angry with Him that they did not receive what they expected. And they crucified Him. And what?
For 2000 years all nations have learned about Jesus, and the Good News about Christ has come down to us. But we saw His glory not only from the pages of the Gospel, we know Him not only from the stories of our ancestors, priests, preachers. We know He is God through our personal experience. We meet His word with joy, because we know from ourselves: everything that God says brings good to man.
Nevertheless, unfortunately, in our life there come periods when we renounce God, become indifferent to Him, living aimlessly, not understanding the meaning of our eternal stay. And all this turns our life into vanity and hell.
Why don't people believe even now? Yes, for the same reason. Because they seek and demand from God not what is inherent in Him and the order of the universe according to the Divine plan, but demand what they want. And even if they say: Lord, Thy will be done, - but the heart says: but not now. now let my will be. And this obscures us the correctness of setting the goal of our life.
But what is to be done? A person comes to confession, he understands the commandments, tries to keep them in his life, he partakes of the Holy Mysteries of Christ in order to unite with God in his Eucharistic unity, so that the Body of Christ would make up a particle of my body, my nature, so that the Blood of Christ, taught during the Eucharist, would flow and in my veins, and this changed the logic of my life, so that my thoughts were not just a human conclusion, but a Divine revelation, so that events around me would take place not only because I do this, but because God acts so that my environment not like me, but God-like, teaching me the correct meaning, purity, abstinence.
When is God in your soul?
But it often happens that after coming to church, having confessed, having communed, a person leaves the church, immediately forgets who he is, forgets that he is a Christian. And in this forgetfulness days, months, years and even decades pass. And the man says: God is in my soul. But I want to ask a question: where did He come from there, how did you get Him there? After all, God lives only where there is no sin, where there is no condemnation and curses, where there is forgiveness, where there is prayer, where there is abstinence of the tongue, mind, heart, where there is a clear understanding that the meaning, life, and breath is God. Where there is this understanding, there are other goals in life. A person who knows that he is eternal, that he differs from all creatures created on earth by a higher mind, a philosophical mind, a feeling of the soul, warmth and love in his heart, if he is different in all this, then this is given to him in order to comprehend the world completely in on another level, to comprehend yourself, why am I here, why am I here, what will be next, and the one who comprehends unequivocally comes to the conclusion: if we remove God from our life, filled with suffering, hard work, illness and short-term, then we can come into absolute madness. Then the question is, why is all this? Why build something, why study, why work, if everything passes, and even the joy of creation, especially with age.
Everything passes, everything changes, only God does not change. And when a person decided that there is no God, then what is the point? It finds meaning only in temporary purposes, with the approach to which, or with the approach of illness or death, everything generally loses its meaning. Therefore, the conclusion that Christians draw is in life. The Christian sees no meaning in death, there can be no meaning in death. The meaning is only in life. And today Christ says: I am your Way, I am your Life, I am your Truth.
Each of us has our own truth, and we are all right in our own way, at the household level, at the social, family level. But there is truth, in the light of which it becomes clear that defending only his own truth, a person is acting crazy, because he cannot see the Truth. Christ turned to the people not in order to take away their personal truth from them, but in order to fill this truth with the truth, and when we fight for our earthly goods, the way we do it every day, remembering what is God, then these benefits will not be achieved in an unrighteous way, by infringing others, by violence against them or deceiving them, but they will be achieved by righteousness.
If we listen to the commandments, if we ponder the words that Jesus spoke to people, including to us, then our earthly meanings will acquire eternal growth, then our mind will be able to protect eternity. And if we want to feel in ourselves what God's Kingdom is, then we must learn the laws of this Kingdom, take the book of His commandments, and live as He said.
And then our life will pass not according to the logic of self-exaltation, this is how smart I am, how well I thought up, but according to the Divine logic. And then a person will begin to understand why he lives. And from this understanding, he will begin to see how he lives, figure out what is right and what is wrong with him, then he can learn the correct purpose of his life, he can distribute the time of his life so that there is enough time to be a man and please God, and not to ruin your soul, and to find in yourself the resources of gray matter in order to figure out that the whole world around us, and all nature, everything testifies, everything cries about God, everything in Him and breathes Him.
How much we need to be blinded and deaf in order to drown out the voice of God in ourselves. The person who says that God is in his soul often deceives himself. It is not God in his soul, but the voice of God in the form of conscience, this natural feeling given during the creation of man, a feeling of unity with God, reminding from the inside that there is God.
But man does not cultivate this feeling, he does nothing in order to be at least a little like his Creator, and confuses the call of God with God himself.
And today we are all standing in the temple, in our hands we have willows as the same symbol as the date branches were for the Jews. Dates do not grow here, but willow grows. And today we came, like those people two thousand years ago, to meet Jesus before His suffering on the Cross, saying: Lord, come to our city, and to our family, and to my ears. But if we want God to come to us, then we should not demand from Him earthly perishable and wrong, but we need to ask Him for wisdom in order to know how to live.
First of all, seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything that you have need, everything will be added to you by itself, for before your asking, I know what you need, the Lord Himself tells us. God is a loving father, and he gives to everyone who asks, but will a loving father give his child something that will surely harm him? Of course not. In the same way, we, who on this day came to the temple with palm or willow branches, ask God to come into your soul, and listen to what He says, and apply it in your life, and then you will see God living and acting in the world and in you. Amen.
Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem (Vai week, Palm Sunday) - the twelveth feast, which takes place on the sixth Sunday of Great Lent and is set to commemorate the solemn entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. This holiday rolling,that is, its date changes every year and depends on Easter. Passion Week begins on Palm Sunday, the last and most important part of Great Lent.
Palm Sunday. Holiday event
Solemn the Lord's entry into Jerusalem preceded by the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus from Bethany. We find a touching account of this event in the Gospel of John. When Lazarus fell ill, his sisters Martha and Mary were immediately sent to tell the Savior about it. Lazarus soon died and was buried, and only four days later did the Lord come to Bethany. “Lord, if you were here, my brother would not have died!” Said Martha. The Savior replied that Lazarus would be resurrected and went to the cave where he was buried. When the stone was rolled away, the Lord prayed, and then in a loud voice called out: "Lazarus, go out!" And Lazarus, wrapped in burial shroud, came out of the tomb, in which he lay for four days.
The Lord raised the dead before, soon after death. But this miracle especially shocked everyone present, because the smell of decay was already emanating from the deceased, he was buried and lay in a coffin for several days. Many who saw and heard about this event believed in Christ.
When the next day the Savior entered Jerusalem, where many pilgrims had gathered before the Old Testament Passover, He was greeted as a victor. The scribes and high priests, looking for the slightest reason to kill Jesus Christ, wanted to kill the resurrected one. Lazarus went into hiding and was subsequently the first bishop of Cyprus. He lived for another 30 years.
All four Evangelists describe the Lord's entry into Jerusalem, his solemn meeting. The disciples, at the command of the Lord, brought a donkey and a young donkey to him, on which they laid their clothes, and He sat on top of them. Many people, who learned about the great miracle, met the Savior: they spread their clothes on the road, others put cut branches. The attendants and greeters loudly exclaimed:
Hosanna to the Son of Davydov! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!
The donkey and the young donkey, who had not yet walked under the saddle, symbolized Old Testament Israel and the pagans who also believed in Christ. Evangelists draw attention to the fact that Jesus Christ, like the Son of David, enters Jerusalem on a young donkey, like David after the victory over Goliath.
The people greeted Christ as a victor and triumphant, but the Lord went to Jerusalem not for earthly power, not in order to free the Jews from the power of the invading Romans. He went to suffering and death on the cross. Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday. In just a few days, many people will gather again. But this time the crowd will shout: "Crucify, crucify Him!"
Palm Sunday. history of the holiday
Celebration Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem known from the first centuries of Christianity. Already in the third century, Saint Methodius of Patarsky mentions him in his lecture. The holy fathers Ambrose of Mediolan and Epiphanius of Cyprus, who lived in the IV century, in their sermons say that the holiday is celebrated solemnly, many believers walk on this day in a solemn procession with palm branches in their hands. Therefore, the holiday received another name - the Week of Vai or Flower Bearing. Since the climate in Russia is cold, palm trees do not grow, they were replaced by a willow, on which fluffy earrings bloom just at this time. Hence the popular name of the holiday - Palm Sunday... On this day, food with fish is allowed. On the eve, on Lazarev Saturday, it is customary to eat caviar.
Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. Festive worship
In the stichera of the holiday, first of all, the humility of the Savior is indicated, modestly walking on a dumb foal, and an appeal is made to the believers to meet the Coming One with exultant singing: “ Blessed is the One Coming in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest". The texts of the Orthodox service not only describe the events that took place in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, but also show us their significance, in particular, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. The first pair (Gen. XLIX, 1-2, 8-12) contains the prophecy of the patriarch Jacob to the son of Judas that kings will come from his family until the Reconciliator appears (ie, Lord Jesus Christ); in the second pair (Zephaniah III, 14-19), it is prophesied about the triumph of Zion and the jubilation of Israel, because among them is the Lord, the King of Israel. In the third pair (Zechariah IX, 9-15), it is predicted about the solemn entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem on a young donkey:
Your king is coming to you, righteous and saving; He is meek and rides on a young donkey and colt.
The canon portrays the joy of true Israel, who was worthy to be a witness of the Royal entry of the Lord into Jerusalem, and the malice of the scribes and Pharisees and the chief priests of the Jews, with which they looked at the triumph of the Son of David. All living are called to glorify the Lord, who goes to free and saving suffering.
The evening service has a feature that distinguishes this holiday from others: after the Gospel, the priest reads a prayer over a willow, in which he recalls the dove that brought Noah an olive branch, and children who greeted Christ with branches of olives and palm trees with the words: “ Wasted in the highest! Blessed of the Coming in the Name of the Lord". Adhering to the Gospel, worshipers receive from the priest several branches of the consecrated willow and hold them in their hands for the rest of the service along with burning candles. Back home, believers place the willow next to the icons. It is not customary to throw away last year's "bouquets", they are burned or lowered into the river.
In the Apostle (Phil. IV, 4, -9) believers are called to meekness, peacefulness, prayerful mood and faithfulness to the teachings of Christ. The Gospel tells about the entry of the Lord into Jerusalem (John XII, 1-18) and about the supper in Bethany.
Troparion Feast explains to us the spiritual meaning of the solemn entry of the Lord into Jerusalem:
General resurrection before one's own passion is ўversz, and 3s8 dead in € dv1gl ъ3s2 lazarz hrte b9e. dark and3 we2 ћkw trinity, victorious џimages are still, for you, the winner1, death crying out, nsanna in8 external blgsven gzdhi in2 and3mz dne.
Russian text
The universal resurrection before Your sufferings, certifying that from the dead You raised Lazarus, Christ God. Therefore, we, as children, wearing the symbols of victory, say to You - the Conqueror of death: Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who walks in the name of the Lord!
Kontakion to the holiday. Church Slavonic text:
On pt0le on nb7si, on a die on the ground2 we carry 1 xrte b9e, t ѓнGl praise, and 3 t child1 praise of the primes, who call to the tee, blessing є3si2 come and go to the message.
Russian text
Christ God, carried on the throne, and on earth on a colt, You have received the chant from the children and the praise from the Angels crying out: "Blessed is the Lord coming to call (from hell) Adam."
"Procession on a donkey"
In the XVI-XVII centuries. In Russia, in Moscow, Veliky Novgorod and other large cities, there was a custom to make a procession on the day of the holiday in a special way. In Moscow, the solemn procession of the cross went from the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin to the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat (St. Basil's Cathedral), one of the chapels of which was consecrated in the name of the Lord's entrance to Jerusalem. The patriarch rode on a young donkey, which was led by the king. Most often, the "donkey" was symbolic - a horse of light suit. The “willow” became the same symbolic over time. In the 17th century, it was already a tree decorated with artificial flowers, nuts and candied fruits. After the end of the choir of the cross, the tree was cut into pieces, the food was sent to the royal chambers and distributed to the people.
In Russia, this custom did not arise independently, but was borrowed from the Greeks. In the Church of Constantinople " donkey march”Was known back in the 9th – 10th centuries. The earliest Russian evidence of such a custom is in the expense books of the St. Sophia Cathedral of Veliky Novgorod for 1548. The Novgorod governor drove a donkey on which the archbishop sat. The procession went from St. Sophia Cathedral to the Entry into Jerusalem Church and back. It is known that such a ceremony was also held in the 17th century in Rostov the Great, Ryazan, Kazan, Astrakhan and Tobolsk. At the end of the 17th century, the custom was abolished.
Palm Sunday in folk traditions
Some folk rituals and customs were timed to coincide with Palm Sunday. During Matins, the peasants prayed with a consecrated willow, and when they came home, they swallowed palm buds in order to protect themselves from illness and drive away all ailments. On the same day, women baked nuts from dough and gave them for health to all household members, not excluding animals. The consecrated willow was protected until the first pasture of cattle (April 23), and every pious mistress drove the cattle out of the yard with a willow, and then the willow itself was then either "put into the water" or stuck under the roof of the house. This was done so that the cattle would not only be preserved intact, but that they would return home regularly, and would not wander in the forest for several days.
Russian historian and ethnographer of the second half of the 19th century M. Zabylin in the book “Russian people. His customs, rituals, traditions, superstitions and poetry ”describes the traditions of the Palm week.
« Palm week, or the week of Vai, we liven up purely with the holiday of the beginning of spring; The willow or willow, which has not yet given leaves, blooms, and thus as if declares that our northern nature will soon reward us and everyone living on earth with new benefits. The very holiday of the Resurrection of Lazarus serves as a symbol of the renewal, revitalization of powerful nature. During Palm Sunday, children's bazaars were established in the capitals, where they sell mainly children's toys, pussy willows, flowers and sweets, as if to commemorate the fact that young children met the spring of their lives and should rejoice in this life, and looking at the toy, learn the essence of it his future, since each toy is a visual literacy, a visual teaching that develops further understanding in a child, brings him closer to life and develops his thinking through clarity, comparison of actions and images. On Lazarev Saturday, everyone is allowed to eat caviar, lean pancakes and various kitchen cookies.
On Palm Sunday, returning from church with consecrated twigs of willow, village women whip their children with them, saying: “ Whipping pussy willow, beat to tears!»In Nerekhta, peasant women bake lambs on Palm Sunday, and when they come from church, they feed the cattle with these lambs, and stick the willow in the hermitage at St. icons and cherish it all year round until St. George's Day. This habit persists in many provinces. It is known that our first spring pasture of cattle begins on St. George's Day. On this day, the peasants take a one-year-old willow, soak it in holy water, sprinkle it on the cattle in the yard and then whip the cattle with this willow, saying: “ God bless and reward with health!"And sometimes just:" Bless you Lord and be healthy“… And with a willow in their hands they bring them to the place of pasture. The consecrated willow in Russia is the same as the palm branch of Palestine, it is highly respected and is usually preserved by the Russian pious people for images for a whole year. In some provinces, the willow, consecrated on Palm Sunday, is used as a sympathetic remedy and put into the swill of sick cows or calves. "
"Palm Sunday", "Verbnitsa" - the sixth week of Great Lent, the last Sunday before Easter, the feast of the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. On this day, Jesus was greeted with palm branches and songs of praise. In Russia, palm branches were replaced by willow. We sanctify and decorate the verb, it is a talisman, the personification of life and growth.
When is Sunday Saturday?
Palm Sunday Eve - Lazarus Saturday - the day when Jesus healed Lazarus a few days after his death. Since then, Christianity celebrates the holiday of the Resurrection of St. Lazarus. On this day, it was customary for Russian peasants to go to the forest for a willow before sunrise. The brought twigs were immediately decorated with paper flowers, fruits, and often a paper angel, the "willow cherub", was hung from the twigs. We went to church to bless the willow on the same day for the evening service or on Sunday morning. Consecrated branches were placed in the front corner on the shrine or behind the icons. In Siberia, a special "teremok" of straw was made for willow, which was decorated with rags, ribbons, and then hung in front of the icon.
"I'm not hitting, the pussy willow hits, the pussy willow whips to tears"
As soon as they returned home from Matins, all the household members by all means hit each other with the consecrated willow branches, saying: "Beat the red willow to tears, be healthy." This custom had a magical character: during contact, the willow transferred its life-giving powers to a person, filling him with energy. So, when they whipped the kids with a willow, they said and conjured: "As the willow grows, so do you grow", thereby transferring the properties of the plant to the child. The pussy willow and its blossoming earrings, the appearance of which was the first visible manifestation of spring, in the popular belief was the focus of fertility, plant strength, and health.
Egoriev day
Both the children were whipped, and the cattle on the day of the first pasture pasture, on Yegoryev's day, they hit with a consecrated willow to protect animals from death, the evil eye, snakes, wolves, to ensure a good offspring, as well as to pacify the cattle, make them obey shepherd. Then the branches were stuck in a stable under the roof, "so that the cattle would not wander," or they were allowed to float, sometimes burned in a furnace, or fed to the cattle. But throwing out the willow after the first pasture was a sin. Sometimes the consecrated branches were kept for a whole year behind the images until the next "Verbnitsa", and only then they burned and put a new consecrated willow. Also on Yegoriev day, after pasturing the cattle, twigs could be broken and scattered across the field, and the buds could be crumbled into grain intended for future sowing, thereby affecting the forces of nature, increasing the harvest.
"Sheep", "babashki", "akatushki"
So that the sheep were kept and not transferred, but reproduced, they were fed with specially prepared loaf and loaves, inside of which they baked willow buds. In some places, kidney-shaped cookies were baked according to the number of cattle and poultry in the house, and in other local traditions, for all family members. It was customary to consecrate cookies together with the willow. In the Kostroma province it was called "lamb", in the Moscow province - "lamb", "babashka" or "akatushka", in Ryazan - "nuts", "kytka".
Yelling young people
In the Penza province, there was a rite of calling out to young people. At midnight on the eve of Palm Sunday, young people walked around the houses where the newlyweds lived, and shouted at the gate: "Otop, open, young, beat with a willow, give health more than ever before." The young man had no choice but to unlock the gate, after which the crowd entered with a song: "There would be a harvest of grain, multiplication of cattle." All sleeping in the hut were lightly hit with a willow, saying: "We beat them to be healthy" and also: "Get up early, beat the ram." The latter was whipped by the young one when she bowed, seeing off the intruders.
Healer Willow
In the popular mind, the willow was able not only to give life-giving power, but also to protect from diseases and heal from them. Palm buds were swallowed as a preventive measure against various ailments. They ate nine willow buds each, considering it a cure for fever. Infertile women were also advised to eat consecrated kidneys, after which they gave birth safely. In the Kuban, willow was used in the treatment of childhood diseases. To do this, early in the morning before sunrise, they went to the river, where they cut off three bundles of willow, nine branches each. Then at home they put one bundle in hot water and bathed the child by the window that faced east. At noon, the second bundle was lowered into the water and the child was bathed at the window where the sun was at that moment. At sunset, similar actions were performed with the third beam in front of the window, looking at the setting sun. After that, all the branches and water, accompanied by prayer, were poured into the river. It was believed that after these ablutions, the disease would go away. They also fumigated sick cattle with willow, ground it into powder and poured it into the wounds, made a decoction of it and drank it, used it as a lotion for tumors and bruises.
Willow-amulet
From time immemorial pre-Christian pagan times, a willow branch was endowed with magical supernatural properties: in addition to enriching and healing, it was able to protect, protect from lightning, storms, and evil spirits. According to legend, a pussy willow thrown against the wind can ward off a storm, and thrown into a fire - pacify it. It was widely believed that the willow would protect the house from thunder and lightning, since the willow, in the beliefs of the Slavs, is the Thunderer tree, Perun, which strikes with a cleansing fire. In spite of Christian symbolism, witchcraft was also attributed to the palm branches, poetic inspiration, sorcery, witchcraft were associated with them. So, if you believe the belief, in the spring the devils are warmed up on the willow, and after it is consecrated on the holiday, they fall into the water, and therefore from Palm Sunday to Easter you cannot drink the water gleaned under the willow.
06:36 - REGNUM
Today the Orthodox Church celebrates the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem - Palm Sunday. As we said before, Christ's path on earth can be characterized as "one warrior in the field." The characterization is true for all His works on earth. He also went to arrest and death alone, none of the apostles was taken or tried, because the "judges" could not figure out that the seed had already been sown, and soon the seedlings would begin, which, however, would then aggressively weed out.
« Behold, the hour is coming, and it has already come that you will scatter each one to his own side and leave Me alone; but I am not alone, because the Father is with Me". No matter what crowds sometimes accompanied Jesus, He never really had helpers. There were disciples whom He taught until the last hour. And the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, from which many of the witnesses expected more - declaring Himself King - ended exactly the same as before. Quite traditionally for Himself, he dispersed the merchants, disrupting their business, pushed them out of the Temple and then, in a cleared place, began to do the usual: to heal and teach. The next day, continuing to teach the people, the evangelists narrated, He told two parables. The first is about two sons: “ One man had two sons; and he, going up to the first, said: son! go and work in my vineyard today. But he answered, I don’t want to; and then, repented, he went. And going up to another, he said the same. This one answered and said: I am going, sir, and did not go. Which of the two fulfilled the will of his father? ".
The second immediately after this about evil winegrowers: “ Listen to another parable: there was a certain owner of the house who planted a vineyard, surrounded it with a fence, dug a winepress in it, built a tower and, having given it to the tenants, left. When the time of the fruit was near, he sent his servants to the tenants to take his fruit; the husbandmen, seizing his servants, beat another, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same. Finally, he sent his son to them, saying, They will be ashamed of my son. But the husbandmen, seeing the son, said to one another: This is the heir; let us go and kill him and take possession of his inheritance. And, seizing him, they took him out of the vineyard and killed. So when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do with these vineyards? " Both parables denounced the ostentatious religiosity of that time, in essence they boiled down to one thought. Those who call themselves believers, obediently, in words promised to fulfill the will of God, but in reality they only settled on the fruits that religion gave. And they were so used to feeding on them that they did not let anyone near them, who even obviously spoke from God.
Christ summed up His parables by saying that “ i tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and will be given to a people who bear its fruits". "People" does not mean any ethnic group. It is not said that some people will be chosen "from above" and will be granted patents for the use of the correct religion. Any group of people that gives the expected fruits will be that people, and not those who once again say “ i go, sir, and did not go". As stated in today's apostolic reading, “ my brethren, what is only true, what is honest, what is just, what is pure, what is kind, what is glorious, what is only virtue and praise, think about this". It is the collective, "fraternal" ones: honesty, justice, virtue, listed by the Apostle, that are capable of producing these fruits. Jesus did not teach the apostles to be glorified as saints afterwards and for this reason they would have to pray. He did not prepare the righteous, concerned exclusively with their own salvation. He sowed a seed that was to grow into a people capable of working together to do the same things that Christ did.
Today's church holiday prescribes to remember the entry of Christ into Jerusalem. His very return to the city was a risky step, not approved by the apostles. If not for the death of a friend, perhaps He would have delayed for a while. The rumors of the resurrection of Lazarus, confirmed by witnesses, added to Jesus' popularity among the people, who, as said, "Listened to him unremittingly"... Therefore, despite the ongoing aggressive inquiries of His religious leaders, they could not arrest Him in public, and Christ had another week to continue teaching, and He took advantage of these days. Realizing the inevitability of His execution, Jesus saw that the time had come to leave the apostles alone, not fearing that they would scatter home and forget about everything: “ Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; and if it dies, it will bear much fruit».
Knowing how everything would end, Jesus also understood that, being with Him, the disciples are still dependent, unable to make decisions. But a little more, and together they will make up His Body, not separately, but only together. But not only the apostles, of course, He prepared for this. Much of what Jesus did in his last days on earth was "For the people" (John 12:30). The people, too, should have known that nothing would end with His death. Everything was just beginning. The "winegrowers" who promised to do the job did not manage, rushing to get rid of the "heir". But instead of one heirs, there were many at once.
