January: Day 2: Teaching 2:
Saint Juliana of Lazarevo
(We Must Visit the Temples of God)
Saint Juliana of Lazarevo
(We Must Visit the Temples of God)
By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko
I. Saint Juliana, now being commemorated by the Church, came from a wealthy noble family, the Nedyurevs; her father served at the court of Ivan the Terrible (16th century). Left an orphan at the age of six, Juliana lived with her aunt, Natalia Arapova. In her aunt's house, she had to endure many insults. Juliana loved to pray, look after the sick, give alms and do needlework; her cousins ridiculed her pious life, but her aunt did not stop them. No matter how bitter it was for Juliana to live in such a family, she tried to patiently endure insults and honored her aunt as her own mother. When Juliana was 16, she was married to Yuri Osoryin, a wealthy landowner from the village of Lazarevo near Murom. With her hard work and complete obedience, Juliana earned the love of her father-in-law and mother-in-law. She treated her servants meekly and indulgently, did most of the work herself and was even burdened by their services. When her husband had to leave home on business, Juliania secretly spent days and nights working, and gave the money she earned from selling things to the poor or to decorate the temple. During the famine that came to the Murom region, Juliania distributed food to the starving, and when a severe pestilence appeared, she herself looked after the sick, washed the dead and often buried them at her own expense.
Juliana suffered greatly when her two sons were killed: one by a servant, the other in the war. Grief-stricken, she began to ask her husband for permission to enter a monastery. Her husband held her back, reminding her of her other children, who would then lose their mother. Having yielded to their requests, Juliana remained to live with her children, but increased her fasting and prayer even more. Every Friday she locked herself in a special room and prayed all day without eating, usually sleeping no more than two hours a day, putting sharp wood under her head. After her husband's death, Juliana gave almost all her property to churches and monasteries, and even before that, her love for the poor had led her to the point that she often had neither bread nor money. Once, during a severe winter, not having the means to buy herself warm clothes and shoes, Juliana did not go to church for several days. The priest of the Church of Lazarevo, having come to it for the service, heard a voice from the icon of the Mother of God: “Tell the widow Juliana that she should go to church; prayer at home is pleasing to God, but not as pleasing as prayer in the temple. Respect her, for the Spirit of God rests in her.” When the priest told Juliana what he had heard in the temple, she began to attend the service daily, regardless of the weather, although she was about 60 years old at the time.
Saint Juliana died on January 2, 1604. In 1614, when her son was buried, her coffin was opened, full of fragrant myrrh. Many sick people who anointed themselves with this myrrh were healed.
II. Brethren! The voice of the Mother of God, commanding Saint Juliana to go to church without fail for prayer, leads us to reflect on how useful and salutary it is for the soul to visit the temples of God.
a) What is the temple of God? It is heaven on earth. For how is heaven adorned? By the glorious, blessed and joyful presence of the Triune Deity; by the fact that the blessed inhabitants of heaven always see the face of the Heavenly Father, constantly converse with the Lord Jesus Christ, and are always filled with peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Is not the same the privilege and purpose of the holy temples of God? Here the Inviolable One in essence touches us, sometimes by the manifold actions of His all-accomplishing grace, sometimes by the manifold manifestations of His all-filling glory. Here the Indescribable One essentially appears to us in that holy form in which He dwelt on earth in the flesh and lived among men, in which eyewitnesses and servants of the Word saw His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Here the all-perfecting grace of the Spirit of God is revealed to us in various blessings, sacred rites, and mysteries. True, all this is hidden here from the eyes of the senses under the humble cover of external images; but everything is open before the eyes of faith in the essential power and internal grace-filled effects on the soul and heart of man. How else can we reveal to ourselves the heavenly and spiritual, which in our present state we can neither see nor touch, if not under visible images accessible to us? And if the Lord were pleased to appear to us in His magnificent, but inaccessible to the unworthy and terrible for sinners glory, then would we not ourselves flee from here and "cry out to the mountains: 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'cover us' from the face of him who sits on the throne?"
b) So, do you want to visit heaven someday, to hear what they say there, to see what happens there, to converse with the Lord of Glory Himself? Come with faith and reverence to the temple of the Lord. Here you will see the Throne of God and on it the Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world, surrounded by myriads of holy angels, you will hear the same songs of praise that the holy angels and the choirs of the holy righteous sing in heaven, which the holy seers heard from the cherubim and seraphim and handed over to the holy Church. Join their sacred ranks, confess and glorify, together with them, the greatness and glory of God, worship, together with them, your Creator and Lord, your Savior and Judge. Here you will see the Divine face of the Lord Jesus Christ, full of goodness and mercy, meekness and long-suffering: pour out before Him your whole soul, express your whole heart, reveal all your thoughts, tell all your desires; He will hear your prayer, accept your repentance with fatherly love, fulfill your good desires, bless your good intentions. Here you will hear the Holy Gospel - this living and active word of the Only Begotten Son of God, this good news from heaven from the Heavenly Father. Accept it with an open heart in faith, and it will nourish your soul, delight your heart, pacify and calm your spirit. Here at the Lord's table such food and drink is offered that will nourish our soul for all eternity, revive and resurrect our very flesh to eternal life and immortality, to eternal glory in the Kingdom of God. Here you will finally see such a sacred rite as does not exist even in heaven; for here is offered to God that terrible sacrifice which the Only-begotten Son of God offered on the cross for the sins of the whole world; so that, standing in the temple during the sacred rite of the liturgy, we stand as if on Golgotha in those terrible minutes when the Lord Jesus Christ suffered on the cross, when heaven was reconciled with earth, when He uttered His great word, “It is finished,” that all-encompassing word, the fulfillment of which will be all eternity. What pure, heartfelt prayer will not be heard at such a time? What sigh of repentance will be despised and rejected by the mercy of God? Who of those standing with faith and heartfelt tenderness will not be looked upon by the Heavenly Father with His love and mercy?
III. For this reason, my brethren, one cannot but rejoice in spirit when the temples of God are filled with those praying; when even those burdened with the needs and cares of life try to steal, so to speak, an hour of time in order to devote it to prayer in the temple of God. When those present in the temple pray with the warmth of faith and love, with a contrite and humble heart, when a conciliar, unanimous, God-pleasing prayer is raised here for the peace of the whole world, for the well-being of God's holy churches, for the salvation and prosperity of the most pious king and fatherland, for the goodness of the air and the abundance of the fruits of the earth, for deliverance from every sorrow, need and grief, so that our good and philanthropic God may be well disposed and may turn away His wrath, righteously moved against us: oh, how the holy ones rejoice then. Guardian angels, with what fervent zeal they pray for these good souls entrusted to their care!
In the same way, one cannot help but grieve with all one’s heart when in the temples of God there are almost only those who officiate and only the holy angels, when one does not see in them precisely those people who have most of all not only free time, but also completely idle time, and who do not know how to kill it; or, what is even more criminal, when into the very temple of God they bring with them absent-mindedness, irreverence and lawlessness. You can imagine, my brethren, what sorrow, what undried tears such people cause their guardian angels! How grievously they offend the love and goodness of the Heavenly Father! How criminally ungrateful they are before our Savior, the Son of God, whose most pure Body and Blood are offered on the holy altar! Remember, brethren, that during His earthly life the Lord Jesus Christ, who everywhere and always showed only goodness and mercy, who dined with sinners, forgave publicans and robbers, who did not condemn the woman caught in adultery, did not hold back His anger only when He saw the dishonor of the holy temple and, having made a scourge from the ropes, drove everyone out of the Temple. Amen.
Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
