THE MEANING OF THE WORD “JOY” IN THE EASTER EPICTLES OF HIS HOLINESS PATRIARCH KIRILL

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the inner meaning of the word “joy” based on the texts of the Easter epistles of the Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill. The author attempts to consider and analyze different meanings of the word “joy”. This work is based on the texts of the last four messages of Patriarch Kirill (2018 – 2021). It was taken into account that in each of the four messages the word “joy” had different lexical meanings, therefore, the work presents synonymous series that have different interpretations in each of the analyzed texts of the messages. The ambiguous word “joy” conceptualizes several states of joy: joy in helping a neighbor, joy in sharing it with people who are close in spirit and religion by the example of myrrh-bearing wives, joy in being tested by faith in the difficult year of the COVID-19 pandemic, joy in support of neighbors who have lost relatives, work, left without means of subsistence. The definitions of the concept of joy in authoritative secular dictionaries are considered, where it is emphasized that joy is mainly a consequence of satisfying a person’s needs after acquiring some kind of material good, while spiritual sources (biblical encyclopedias and creations of saints Fathers) emphasize that joy is a consequence of the state of mind, union with God, bliss. The word “joy” has a spiritual meaning, in the first place are such concepts as salvation, spiritual satisfaction, grace.