Forty days before He was delivered to an ignominious death for our sins, our Lord revealed to three of His disciples the glory of His Divinity. “And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart; and was transfigured before them: and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light” (Matt. 17:1-2). This was the event to which our Lord was referring when He said: “There will be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom” (Matt. 16:28). By this means the faith of the disciples was strengthened and prepared for the trial of our Lord’s approaching passion and death; and they were enabled to see in it not mere human suffering, but the entirely voluntary passion of the Son of God.

The disciples saw also Moses and Elias taking with our Lord, and thereby they understood that He was not Himself Elias or another of the prophets, as some thought, but someone much greater: He Who could call upon the Law and the Prophets to be His witnesses, since He was the fulfillment of both.

The three parables of the feast concern the appearance of God to Moses and Elias on Mount Sinai, and it is indeed appropriate that the greatest God-seers of the Old Testament should be present at the glorification of the Lord in His New Testament, seeing for the first time His humanity, even as the disciples were seeing for the first time His Divinity.

The Transfiguration, counted by the Church as one of the twelve great feasts, had an important place in the Church calendar already in the 4th century, as the homilies and sermons of such great Fathers as St. John Chrysostome, St. Ephraim of Syria, and St. Cyril of Alexandria attest; its origins go back to the first Christian centuries. In the 4th century also, St. Helena erected a church on Mount Tabor, the traditional site of the Transfiguration, dedicated to the feast. Although the event celebrated in the feast occurred in the month of February, 40 days before the Crucifixion, the feast was early transferred to August, because its full glory and joy could not be fittingly celebrated amid the sorrow and repentance of the Great Lent. The sixth day of August was chosen as being 40 days before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14th), when Christ’s Passion is again remembered.

Orthodox theology sees in the Transfiguration a prefiguration of our Lord’s Resurrection and His Second Coming, and more than this – since every event of the Church calendar has an application to the individual spiritual life – of the transformed state in which Christians shall appear at the end of the world, and in some measure even before then. In the foreshadowing of future glory which is celebrated in this feast, the Holy Church comforts its children by showing them that after the temporary sorrows and deprivations with which this earthly life is filled, the glory of eternal blessedness will shine forth; and in it even the body of the righteous will participate.

It is a pious Orthodox custom to offer fruits to be blessed at this feast; and this offering of thanksgiving to God contains a spiritual sign, too. Just as fruits ripen and are transformed under the action of the summer sun, so is man called to a spiritual transfiguration through the light of God’s word by means of the Sacraments. Some saints (for example, St. Seraphim of Sarov), under the action of this life-giving grace, have shone bodily before men even in life with this same uncreated Light of God’s glory; and that is another sign to us of the heights to which we, as Christians, are called and the state that awaits us – to be transformed in the image of Him Who was transfigured on Mount Tabor.

The feast of the Transfiguration is tied in with the mystery of Christ’s Passion. It was precisely in foreseeing the Cross and the Golgotha that Christ’s Face became transfigured and illumined with divine beauty on Mount Tabor. “Wondrously and amazingly did Moses and Elias appear to Thee on Mount Tabor, discussing Thy end, which Thou willst now accomplish in Jerusalem,” – sings the Holy Church in one of the holiday canticles.

Christ quietly conversed with the two Old Testament prophets about His forthcoming Passion. And the voice of the Heavenly Father attested: “This is My beloved Son: hear Him.” And in this glory of transfiguration, in the glittering of divine light was revealed also the glory of humility, the glory of self-effacement, the spiritual feat of exhaustion of divinity.

In just a little while the One with Whom the two pillars of Old Testament righteousness spoke so reverently will be judged and crucified as a transgressor of the law. In just a little while the Face that was so wondrously transfigured on Mount Tabor will be covered with blood. In man’s frail imagination the glory of Mount Tabor will grow dim on Golgotha.

So would man judge.

But God judged differently.

The passion on Golgotha revealed the mystery of the transfiguration on Mount Tabor, revealed the power of the world-saving humility of the Only-begotten Son of God. And we, who are celebrating this glorious day, are also summoned by the Lord to embrace humility.

Humility is truly the key to all the doors of the Heavenly Kingdom. Whoever has learned to genuinely humble himself will never perish, will never be lost in spiritual life.

The true evil of the suffering that alienates us from God is not the fact that we are visited by suffering, but that we do not want to be humbled by it, that we do not want to realize that God leads man by His own ways, that He has a different truth, a truth all His own, which we dare not touch upon.

O, if only all those who are visited by sorrow and suffering would humble themselves before God! It is not in vain that in summoning to Him all “who labor and are heavy laden,” the Lord says to them: “Come unto Me… for I am meek and lowly in heart.”

In humility lies the path to heavenly glory, to the heavenly homeland. And in the sorrows and misfortunes that accompany a Christian’s temporal life on earth, the main thing is for him to feel the healing power of humility, and if he does not find this power in his heart, he should turn to God with a sincere and ardent prayer: Lord, teach me to be humble before Thee! Amen.

In these modern times our young people, who are poisoned in the schools with the venom of unbelief and apostasy, often begin to doubt the authenticity of the Gospel and demand proof that it is not simply a figment of man’s imagination, and sometimes even doubt whether the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth at all. But in response to all these doubts, the wonderful feast of the Image of our Lord Not-made-by-hands serves as vivid confirmation of our faith.

In church parlance this feast is called the “Third Saviour,” i.e. the third holiday in the month of August dedicated to the Saviour. (The First Saviour is the feast of the presentation of the Holy and Life-giving Cross of the Lord, celebrated on August 14th [the 1st by the old calendar], while the Second Saviour is our church feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration.)

The Image of our Lord Not-made-by-hands appeared under the following circumstances: during Christ’s life on earth, there lived in the Syrian city of Edessa a certain Prince Augarus. He suffered from an incurable illness – leprosy, so that his entire body was covered with terrible sores, while internally he suffered from a complete paralysis of the body.

Rumors of Jesus Christ and His great miracles reached Augarus, who became filled with a fervent desire to see Christ and be healed by Him. However, being unable to travel to Judea himself, he wrote a moving letter to Jesus Christ, in which he wrote the following:

“Rumors have reached me about You and Your glorious miracles, how You heal illness without medicine or treatment, - You make the blind see, the lame walk, You expel demons, cleanse lepers, heal paralytics with a single word and resurrect the dead. Hearing of You, that You perform such wondrous miracles, I came to the following two conclusions about You: You are either God Who has descended from heaven, or You are the Son of God. For this reason I humbly appeal to You, to make the effort to come to me and heal my incurable illness from which I have suffered for so many years. I have also heard that the Jews hate You and wish to harm You. I, however, have under my rule a city, though small, but beautiful and having everything in abundance; come to me then, and live with me in my city, in which both of us will find all that we need.”

Together with this missive Augarus simultaneously sent a talented artist to the Palestine, commissioning him to paint the face of Christ on a wooden board. So great was Augarus’ love for Christ, inspired by faith in Him, that he wished at least to see His image.

The painter arrived in Jerusalem and found Christ, but despite his best efforts, by the will of God he was unable to depict the face of Christ. Then Jesus Himself called the painter to Him, received Augarus’ letter from him and, after reading the letter, sent Augarus the following reply:

“Blessed are you, Augarus, not having seen Me and yet having faith in Me, for you shall inherit eternal life! You ask Me to come to you, but I must accomplish that for which I have been sent, and then I must return to My Father Who sent Me. And when I ascend to Him, I will send you one of My disciples, who will completely cure you of your illness.”

After writing the letter, the Lord washed His face in water and dried it with a cloth, leaving a miraculous imprint of the Divine face on this cloth. Then the Lord sent this image to Augarus together with His letter.

The Lord’s promise to Augarus was fully fulfilled after His ascension, when the Apostle Thaddeus came to Edessa and baptized Augarus, who came out of the baptismal font completely cleansed and renewed, both in body and soul.

Let us, too, have this guileless and absolute faith in Christ which Augarus had; let us invite the Lord into our souls through the partaking of the Holy Mysteries; and may the Lord send us His grace and His mercy, cleanse us of the leprosy of iniquity and passions, and lead us into eternal life. Amen.

Blessed is God for having granted us this great day, in which from ancient times and with triumphant hymns the universal Church accompanies heavenward into supreme Zion the incorruptible body of the Mother of God together with Her soul, and allows us to take pleasure in the spiritual fragrance of Her indescribable holiness and in all the virtues with which She was endowed by the Holy Spirit and by the Son of God, Who had issued from Her by taking on human nature! With what tenderness, joy, and piety did the apostles and all the other elect enjoy the wondrous vision of the reposing Theotokos’ visage, all shining with heavenly light, and the indescribable heavenly fragrance of Her God-bearing body, and the contemplation of the brightest visage of Her Son and God, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who had come to take His holy Mother’s soul into His hands! O, this was a celestial vision on earth, never seen before! Even the heavenly angels were visibly present here together with their King and Master.

Only three days did the Most-pure body of the Theotokos, buried by the apostles in Gethsemane, remain in the tomb, only three days did it stay there, and afterwards it was resurrected by the Lord and united with Her soul, and She was taken up together with Her body into heaven. For only three days was She fated to repose in the sleep of death, just as the Lord Himself remained in His tomb for three days and afterwards arose to confirm the universal resurrection of mankind. Death, having been vanquished by the resurrected Christ, became for the faithful a dormition, a passage, a step towards immortality and eternal life, provided we die in faith, repentance, and virtue.

Let us venerate the Most-glorious Mother of God, higher than the heavens and purer than sunlight, Who delivered mankind from its curse, i.e. from God’s damnation. But what exactly is God’s curse? It is the consequence of God’s righteous wrath upon criminal, sinful mankind, so ungrateful to its Creator and Benefactor, for which it had been deprived of God’s mercy, eternally rejected from the face of God, condemned to the eternal torment of hell or to eternal death with the fallen angels, the evil spirits. Eve, our progenitor, was responsible for this damnation together with Adam through the sin of disobedience – and even to this day its consequences continue to overshadow sinners who do not know God, their Saviour. But the Theotokos, through Her humility, obedience, meekness, God-like purity, acceptance of the Archangel’s tidings, and above all through Her wondrous bearing of the Son of God in Her womb, attracted God’s blessing upon the world by giving birth to the Saviour of the world and obtaining the benevolence of the Heavenly Father towards all the faithful. Another consequence of God’s damnation of mankind was death, but Christ, the Son of God, Who was born of the Theotokos in flesh, Who suffered and died for the sins of mankind, took upon Himself our damnation, vanquished our death by His death, and removed the curse from us by crucifying our sins on the cross and granting us incorruptibility, resurrection, and immortality.

Such are the comforting truths which the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos brings to us: it assures us that Christ the Saviour, born from the Most-pure Virgin Mary, removed from us the curse of our sins and granted to all of us resurrection from the dead on the last day of the world. Is this not comforting for every Christian believer?

And having such an expectation of a general resurrection from the dead, let us try throughout our entire life to become worthy of the glorious resurrection into eternal life by means of constant repentance, let us combat our passions and the temptations of the flesh and the world, and strive for success in all virtues, in order to eternally enjoy the blessings of the Heavenly Kingdom – infinite, incorruptible, surpassing all understanding, all feeling, and all expectation, – together with God, the Mother of God, the holy angels, and all the saints. Amen.

Throughout the course of our entire life we must often repeat King David’s utterance: “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains, O Lord; Thy judgments are a great deep” (Psalm 36:6). This depth is illustrated in the Bible in the example of the two high-ranking servants of the Egyptian Pharaoh: the cupbearer and the caterer. Both were servants of the same king, both came under his displeasure, both were arrested and imprisoned, and both were remembered by the king during a palace feast; the Pharaoh could have pardoned them both, if such were the will of God, or could have condemned them to execution. However, he ordered the caterer to be hanged, while the cupbearer he returned to favor and his former position. Such was the will of God; some He removes from His presence in accordance with His righteous judgment, while others He covers with great mercy. “And who can search out His mighty deeds? Who can measure His majesty’s power? And who can fully recount His mercies?” says the son of Sirach (18:3-4).

Equally mysterious and unfathomable was God’s will in regard to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and the Pharaoh of Moses’ time. The blessed Augustine has rightly said of them: “Nebuchadnezzar was punished by God for his countless iniquities and in this way was brought to salvific and very beneficial repentance. The Pharaoh, on the contrary, became hardened even despite God’s scourges, disdained them, and perished in the Red Sea together with his entire host.” Both of them were pagan kings and both were punished. Why did they reach such an unequal end? – One of them comprehended God’s punitive hand, repented, and rectified his conduct; the other did not submit to the will of God that was announced to him, remained in his sinful obduracy, – and perished.

Here is another example of the incomprehensibility of God’s judgment: one of the best Judean kings was Asa, who did good in the eyes of the God and fortified his kingdom, destroyed the idols in the entire Judean land, and eradicated idol-worship. However, this glorious king, who for a long time reigned admirably, lost his initial glory at the end of his reign, having changed for the worse. King Menaces, on the other hand, being most wicked and evil throughout his entire life, and having brought the Jewish people to the very edge of iniquity, recognized the hand of God in his misfortune, returned to God, repented of his iniquity, and was granted forgiveness and God’s mercy. O Lord! Thy judgments are truly a great deep, a deep without measure!

At this point questions such as “why is this so?” and “how is this so?” are inappropriate. Such questions arise at the instigation of the evil spirit and have spiritually destroyed many people. “So, did God truly say: do not eat the fruit of any tree in the Garden of Eden?” – the most cunning of all creatures once asked Eve. To this question Eve should have replied thus to the wicked creature: “We know that God commanded us not to eat only the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but why and for what purpose He commanded thus – it is not our place to ask Him.” Such was His holy will, and we must not question the reasons for His willing thus. “For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counselor? Or who hath first given to Him, for Him to recompense again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:34-36). I am sure there will be people who will assert that it is not forbidden to sometimes ask the reason for one or another commandment. Ask whom? Do they mean God, Who alone knows everything, knows what is good and what is only tolerable? If a servant from his master or a subordinate from his superior demand the reason for such-and-such an order or directive, then the first will look upon it as an insult to himself, while the second will regard it as rebellion and insubordination, and yet you dare to exhibit even greater insolence towards God? God’s Providence needs no other reason except His holy will.

St. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, describes the following event in the life of St. Anthony the Great: two monks undertook a journey to visit St. Anthony in his desert. However, traveling through the arid and hot desert, they became completely exhausted from thirst, and one of them already died, while the other was on the threshold of death. St. Anthony was several miles away from them. Sitting on a rock in his monastery, he hurriedly summoned his two monks and said to them: “Run as fast as you can to such-and-such a place in the desert, taking vessels with water with you, for one of the two brothers who were coming to visit us has already died of thirst, while the other is still breathing, but is suffering and has become very weak; if you delay, you will not find the other one alive either: this has been revealed to me by God while I stood in prayer.” Having received such instructions, the messengers immediately and willingly went off, and after finding the travelers, they buried the body of the deceased one, while the other one they revived with water and fortified with food, and then brought him back with them to St. Anthony. In describing this event St. Athanasius wisely remarks that someone may very well ask: “Why did St. Anthony not send his monks earlier to save the travelers, before one of them died?” Such a question is quite inappropriate for a Christian, because it was not St. Anthony’s affair, but God’s judgment: God Himself pronounced a fair verdict in regard to the dying man and the thirsty living one; and He likewise revealed to St. Anthony His will concerning the saving of one of the travelers.

St. Anthony the Great, being in a state of contemplation, was amazed at God’s hidden and unfathomable mysteries and humbly called out to God: “O Lord my God! Thou art sometimes pleased to grant a long life to people who seem useless and immersed in an abyss of iniquity, and yet sometimes Thou deprivest of life people who are very beneficial to society” During such reflections Anthony heard a voice saying: “Be attentive to thine own self. That upon which you are reflecting is God’s judgment, and it is not your place to analyze or question it.”

In the year 1117, when the whole of Italy was being shaken by earthquakes, some of the residents of the city of Milan assembled at a certain home to discuss public affairs. Suddenly a voice was heard from outside, calling upon one of the people present in the house to come out. The person being summoned was unsure of who was calling and for whom, and thus delayed in going out, waiting for a repeat call. Unexpectedly a stranger came up to the door and asked that the person being called come out quickly; no sooner had the latter moved several paces away from the building than the house fell down and destroyed all who were within. This begs the question: why was only one person from all those within the house saved from death, while all the others perished? The Lord’s judgments are a great deep! Who cannot clearly see in this event a repetition of ancient miracles? Thus did the angel of the Lord lead Lot and his children out of Sodom, leaving all the other inhabitants to become victims of fire. In a similarly miraculous manner other people are left unharmed amid multitudes who perish in general catastrophes.

We often see extraordinary upheavals and changes in the universe, unexpectedly-occurring events, and of each of them we say: “Let us see how this will end.” Occasionally we ourselves experience events that amaze us by their unexpectedness, and then we grumble in vain and say: “I could never foresee or think of such a thing happening.” We are poor illiterates in the matter of foreseeing future events! Even in currently occurring events we cannot always easily understand their true cause, except the one that is operative in all events and, moreover, is a genuine and undeniable cause. Such-and-such happened strictly because such was the will or tolerance of God according to His benevolent Providence. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, – saith the Lord. – For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

There are many things in our earthly life which we will never comprehend by means of our intelligence. It is sufficient for us to know, be convinced, and believe implicitly that God is not unjust, and that on the last day of judgment there will not be a single person on trial saying anything to the Lord except the following words: “Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgments” (Psalm 119:137). We must put off gaining complete understanding of the unfathomable judgments and purposes of God’s most-high wisdom until the future life!

Thus, let us cease expanding the wings of our curiosity and judgment of subjects that are above our heads. The waves of the boundless ocean of the Supreme Mind exceed the quick reasoning of all wisdom, not only human, but also angelic. And how could we ever hope to understand the end purposes of God’s profoundest destinies? Who can comprehend God’s determination in the following: why does God’s punishment for sin temporarily pass by some people and strike others? Why are those who are innocent of crime sometimes put on trial, while the sins of some people fall upon the heads of their children and descendants? Why do some die in infancy, while others live to a ripe old age? Why does one person, having sinned only slightly, perish without repentance, while another, mired for a long time in the bog of iniquity, finally rectify himself and become worthy of a Christian end? Why does one person wallow in wealth and luxury, while another does not have a single morsel of bread or a single penny?

O restless and overly curious mind! Why should you brood over this? The Lord allowed, the Lord wished, the Lord created all. We should look upon God’s will as the ultimate truth, and a willing and tranquil adherence to it as the ultimate wisdom.

On August 23rd (the 10th by the old calendar) the Church commemorates the holy martyr archdeacon Lawrence.

The holy martyr Lawrence came from Spain and was brought up in the Christian faith from childhood. He grew up in Rome, where he entered into God’s service, becoming an archdeacon under Pope Sextus. When Emperor Decius (reigned in 249-251 A.D.) triumphantly returned to Rome after a victory over the Persians, the Roman ruler Valerian imprisoned Pope Sextus and a group of clergymen and lay Christians.

St. Lawrence also wished to join his hierarch and embrace martyrdom for Christ, but St. Sextus ordered him to first distribute the church property among the poor and the needy, and then forecast an even more glorious martyrdom for him. St. Lawrence took all the church treasures and gave them to needy Christians. At the same time he healed many of them of various illnesses, especially blindness. He was then seized and thrown into prison, where he likewise healed a number of blind prisoners and converted the prison warden Hippolyte and his family to Christ. Soon the saint was brought before the persecutors Decius and Valerian, who gave him over to many harsh tortures. St. Lawrence fearlessly confessed Christ, and by his courage he put the tormentors to shame, receiving a crown of glory from the Lord for his martyric feat.

Such was the way of Saint Seraphim.

“From a tender age thou hast loved Christ, O blessed one,” – sings the Church, glorifying the great wonderworker of Sarov.

From his very youth he loved, and until the end, until his repose at a ripe old age, the venerable saint retained this love. His image is the wholesome image of genuine spiritual sobriety, foreign to all wavering and deviations from the right path. In this sense St. Seraphim is primarily a pillar of sobriety. He is an embodiment of spiritual health and genuine spiritual simplicity.

In our times the example of his life is especially instructive, and his prayerful intercession is especially needed. The world has become lost in complexity, has drowned in contradictions, has deviated from simplicity in Christ. And it is being called back to the abandoned path of God by the entire life’s labor of the great saint of Sarov… To love Christ, to turn one’s heart to Him, to serve Him and not oneself and one’s whims – such is the path of Christian life…

Brethren, how fearful it is to realize (and often we are forced to do so) that we love ourselves more than God. It its final development this is a spiritual dead end, this is the second death… And the only way out here is to strive towards simplicity, reject one’s own self, take up one’s cross (no matter how hard it may be), and follow Christ.

O venerable Father Seraphim, pray to God for us!

“Bless the Lord, dews and rime, praise and exalt Him above all forever!”

“Bless the Lord, nights and days, light and darkness, heavens, mountains, and hills, all winds, springs, seas, and rivers… all birds of the air”… “Bless the Lord, ye who are holy and humble at heart, praise and exalt Him above all forever!”…

There was a certain wild forest path here, and always at this spot an old bear came out of the forest – an enormous brown bear, who knew and loved the elder for many years, – and joined him, waddling along at St. Seraphim’s right leg. In this manner they walked together through the forest glades, and the elder sometimes picked wild raspberries and blackberries for his companion, or gathered red and black whortleberries for him.

This morning the bear also came out and went along with the elder, touching his leg with a furry ear. And suddenly St. Seraphim’s heart was overwhelmed with great joy and ardent gratitude to the Lord. And he cried out loudly, placing his hand upon the bear’s muzzle:

– Bless the Lord, ye bears, praise and exalt Him!

And the huge, black, clumsy bear then stood up on his hind legs facing the sun, stretched his hairy sharp-clawed paws upward, and roared throughout the entire forest. And responding to the voice of the fearsome chief bear, all the other forest bears, large and small, blacks and grizzlies, roared towards heaven…

And the moved elder cried tenderly…

He read the prayers as though he saw the Saviour, or the Mother of God, or the saints right in front of him, and he either prostrated himself in great humility before them, or spoke boldly, as if demanding the fulfillment of his entreaties. Sometimes St. John used special movements that accorded with his inner emotions. Thus, during the hymn about the Son of God’s incarnation, he would pick up the holy cross from the altar table and kiss it several times with tenderness and sometimes with tears. After the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts he sometimes bowed deeply over the diskos with the Holy Body or the sacred chalice with the Blood of the Saviour, kissed the edge of the sacred vessels, and tears of tenderness streamed abundantly down his face.

It was impossible not to notice that immediately after partaking of the Holy Mysteries, St. John’s face became illuminated, shone with joy, his usual fatigue and tiredness disappeared, and he became “young” and energetic.

It should be said that the priests and the faithful greatly valued prayerful contact with St. John during the liturgy. He was constantly invited to serve at feasts and church celebrations. While he was still alive, a church feast felt incomplete without him, and thus he not only served in all the churches of Kronstadt and almost all of St. Petersburg, but also in many churches of Moscow and practically all the major cities of Russia. Wherever he served, many priests and deacons would always gather there; wherever he went, there were always myriads of believers, those people upon whom faith rests in this sinful world, and even the world itself stands only because of such people. Wherever he went, there was always a triumph of love and brotherhood, there was always a feast of faith. The importance of St. John in this regard is immense. Being continuously surrounded by a host of clergymen while serving the liturgy, he was always a teacher to them in this most important aspect of their service. In this case he was truly a pastor of pastors!

According to biblical teaching, God directly brought into existence not the world per se, but an amorphous chaos of universal elements. But the almighty power of divine creation instilled into the essence of this chaos an immutable law of systematic development; thus, as soon as the chaos appeared, there sequentially began to be accomplished within it that which God said about it (Genesis 1, 2), i.e. in the necessary processes of its mechanical creation blind nature gradually began to realize that which was pre-eternally comprised within the divine design for the world. Therefore, at each step of its sequential development nature invariably turned out to be worthy of its Creator, and God Himself invariably praised it as “good’; moreover, He enhanced its creative activity by creating the first people on earth. The biblical narrative tells us that man was created by God not through the mechanical forces of nature, but by a direct act of divine power, which formed man’s physical organism out of the earth and imparted to him a special soul in the image of God’s personal being, and so in this, too, was quite obviously realized God’s design, which served as the pre-eternal foundation for the existence of the world and in which is expressed the eternal purpose of this existence. The biblical narrative further assures us that in the initial period of its existence the world truly accorded with this purpose of creation.

The Bible definitely indicates that the creation of the world was achieved over the course of six days. But if these days bear any likeness to our days, then it is only in terms of the periodic alternation of evening and morning, and certainly not in terms of the duration of time from morning to evening, because the duration of our day is defined by the time it takes for the earth to make one revolution around its axis, while on the first day of creation, according to the Bible’s description of the process of universal creation, our earth did not yet exist. From the point of view of biblical cosmology, the primeval chaos at first undoubtedly organized itself into a dense indivisible mass and formed a single material body of matter, because the break-up of universal matter into a multitude of individual planetary worlds, by biblical indication, occurred only on the second day of creation, our earth was formed only on the third day, while the entire matter of our planetary world fashioned itself into a solar system only on the fourth day of creation, and thus only on this fourth day of creation was finally achieved the 24-hour alternation of our day and night. Thus the first days of creation could under no circumstance be like our days, and thus there is no doubt that they were days of a totally different kind. What kind of days were they?

On the basis of the universal laws of physics and mechanics, we can picture the initial process of universal creation as a complex process of the joining and the break-up of the chaotic mass in a continuous redistribution of matter and motion. Due to just the mutual attraction of the material elements of chaos, there inevitably had to occur within it a mechanical formation of stable masses of matter, and the greatest of these stable masses inevitably had to become the central point of universal gravitation. In other words, all dispersed elements of the chaos, as well as linked groups of these elements, inevitably had to fall upon this greatest mass and specifically upon the center of this mass, and thus out of their mobile totality there invariably had to emerge a spherical material body. However, it is obvious that a multitude of elements falling upon one and the same center and along one and the same straight line in reality cannot fall on one and the same point in space. Therefore, when the chaos became organized into a material body, its farthest elements had to be discarded, and thus their relation to the center of universal gravitation in reality had to be expressed in terms of repellence. Consequently, despite the cohesion of the primeval globe, by the law of centrifugal motion a powerful stream of matter had to be rushing towards its equator, and this powerful movement would have constituted a limitless source of the physical energy of light, even though our sun did not yet exist. In this case the single revolution of the universal globe around its axis naturally had to produce a change of evening and morning at its poles, and thus form a single day. But exactly how long was the duration of this first day of creation we will never know of course, because we will never know the entire planetary world of the universe and, therefore, we will never be able to calculate the entire mass of matter in the universe. However, to provide some satisfaction to human scientific curiosity, we may at least illustrate the enormity of this issue through existing attempts to calculate the duration of the second day.

According to the biblical narrative, the universal globe in its universal unity had time to make only one revolution around its axis and to create only one day, and then the centrifugal force in the mobile masses of matter around the equatorial belt overcame the force of centripetal motion, so that on the second day of creation these masses were dispersed into space along the tangents of their movement, and in this manner a myriad of individual world bodies emerged, united among themselves, of course, by a single center of universal gravitation and invariably subordinate to the same law of physical evolution that had just been realized in the activity of the universal globe. On that same second day of creation the material mass of our solar system also emerged, but this mass existed in its complex enormity likewise only one day, because in the subsequent period of the third and fourth days it similarly broke up, in turn, into a system of individual bodies of our planetary world. This world is known to us to a certain extent, and we may propose certain scientific hypotheses concerning it. Knowing the mass of each individual planet of our solar system, and allowing the density of matter in the past to have been such that the mass of our entire system occupied a space equal to the current orbit of the Earth, astronomer Babinet calculated that in terms of the present measurement of time it took 3,181 years for this mass to make one complete revolution around its axis. Of course this calculation cannot in the least degree pretend to be an exact astronomical measurement of the actual duration of the second day of creation, but as a conditional hypothesis it can still provide us with a certain understanding of how long the second day of creation may have lasted.

And this same calculation may also give us a certain understanding of the length of the first day of creation, the duration of which was to be measured by one complete revolution of the mass of all the planetary worlds in the universe around its axis, since at that time there could be no other measurement of time. In any case, when some astronomers and geologists speak of thousands of years that were needed for the formation of the world, although such calculations cannot be absolutely reliable, at the same time there is nothing unbelievable in them, and at least there is nothing in them that contradicts biblical teaching.

The days of creation described in the Bible by the prophet Moses have been considered for a long time and by a great number of theologians as being periods of great duration. And this is not without foundation.

Firstly, one should not forget the well-known words of the Old and New Testament: “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8; Psalms 90:4).

Secondly, one should bear in mind that in describing the creation Moses lists not six days, but seven, and naturally all the days in this cosmological week should be regarded as being so-to-speak equal and typical.

The last day, however, the seventh day, when in God’s relation with the world creation was replaced by nurture, continues to the present time, for of all other days it was said: and there was the evening and the morning of such-and-such a day, i.e. a completely finished cycle was presented, while the seventh day is not so indicated. Thus the seventh day is continuing and will continue to the very end of time, which for this reason is called the eighth day.

Thus, if the seventh day should be properly understood as a period of time lasting millennia, then the days that preceded it should be regarded accordingly.

And finally, let no one think that to understand these days in terms of long periods of time is a new thing. A number of Church fathers, some of them quite authoritative, understood them in a similar manner – as, for example, Saints Clement of Alexandria (2nd century), Athanasius the Great (4th century), Basil the Great (4th century), blessed Augustine (4th-5th century), and others.

The following verses describe a wondrous vision of the holy Princes Boris and Gleb, who are commemorated on 24 July/6 August, sailing on the Neva River to invisibly provide aid to their descendant, the holy Prince Alexander Nevsky, on the eve of one of his famous battles, against the Swedes in 1240 A.D., that is known in Russian history under the name of the Battle of Neva.