Слово 12

(1) He who repents of his sins will receive no benefit if he does not seek to receive from Christ the Lord and the healing of that weakness for which he sins. – (2) Whatever a person does in real life, he does it in vain, if it does not contribute to his mental health. – (3) How does sin happen according to our will and without our will? It is good to cry and grieve over your sins and pray to God for their forgiveness. But there will be no benefit from this if our Lord Jesus Christ does not heal those infirmities of the repentant, because of which he sins, as if reluctantly, for if he is not healed of them, then he cannot refrain from sins. Why should everyone who repents focus his entire effort on this one thing, in order to be healed by Christ the Lord, to be sanctified and to receive strength to fulfill the will of God and His commandments. For whoever is not healed by Christ the Lord sometimes commits sins, being carried away by his weakness, and sometimes with great difficulty and embarrassment he fulfills some commandment, but what is the benefit to such a person? He is like one who builds and again destroys what he has built. Why is there every need for our infirmities to be healed by Christ the Lord, Who alone is the true Physician, who came to earth to heal our infirmities, because of which we sin. He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, which is the weakness of our damaged nature. For after Adam transgressed the commandment of God and was expelled from paradise, every person became weak and sick. And these weaknesses, since they are both in nature and in our will, are somehow strange: sometimes it seems that they are from nature, and sometimes from will. The weaknesses I am talking about are the following: every person is weak and cannot have pure love, cannot help but envy, revile, condemn, despise, ridicule, not tell lies, not be angry, not lust after the blessings of this world that he sees, not be vain, not be covetous. Be he the most prudent among the prudent, the wisest among the wise, the most courageous among the courageous, the most honest among the honest, be he all others better and more perfect, but since the weakness of our nature remains in him (unhealed), it is inevitable that he will either not be able to maintain chastity, or will not overcome himself in order to forgive someone who has sinned against him in anything, or does not find good in himself. dispositions - to give alms and always thank God, in general to abstain from all evil and do all good. It cannot help but be obvious to the observer that all such infirmities sometimes depend on autocratic will, and sometimes on violence on the part of nature. However, not all people are equally weak, but some are more, and others are less. Such infirmities need to be healed in us. But first of all, it is necessary to find a doctor who would heal them. Why did the holy fathers order us, Christians, to always pray to God like this, calling out to Him with a contrite heart: “Look upon us, O Lord, according to Thy mercy, and heal our infirmities for Thy holy name’s sake.” That is, look at our infirmities and heal them with Your grace, may Your name be glorified, that You are merciful and gracious, and You are the only Physician, and let no one boast about himself when he is healed, but let him boast about his Doctor, and let him thank Him day and night with all his heart, truly being humble. And so, in whom his infirmities are healed in this way, he has become a (real) Christian, and whoever still has some of those infirmities about which we have spoken, it is clear that he has not yet been healed. And he suffers either from ignorance or from foolishness, like someone who does not know what he is saying to God when he prays, and what infirmities he asks God to heal. And if he dies unhealed, he will forever cry about it in hell, not expecting to ever be freed from its fiery burning sensation. For this reason, we must weep bitterly over the pitiful state into which we have come. Let Christian people cry day and night: Lord, look upon us and heal our infirmities. But the Lord cannot heal them if they do not know what kind of infirmities they are asking for, despite the fact that there are so many of them and they are so varied. This is the reason for the destruction why so many Christians perish, rich and poor, rulers and simple, young and old, monks and priests. There is only one cure for all these infirmities - the communion of the Divine nature or the acceptance of God's grace. If a Christian does not accept Divine grace and power, according to the measure of his faith, then even though he keeps vigils, even though he sleeps on the bare ground, even though he sings psalms day and night, prays and fasts, he still remains unhealed and is outside the part of Christ, like the infidels. 2. No matter what good deeds he does, no matter what deeds he strives and toils himself in this life, every person, wise or unwise, knowledgeable or ignorant, prudent or unwise, learned or unlearned, rich or poor, - if this does not contribute to the healing of his soul from its infirmities, all this is vain and useless for him, and leaves the soul outside the kingdom of heaven, for in the kingdom of heaven Only healthy souls who do not have any weakness are accepted. But these infirmities that we have previously indicated, these indecent desires of carnal lusts, these addictions to earthly and worldly things, wealth and vain glory, no soul can heal within itself and become healthy, either on its own or with the help of another person. Only by our Lord Jesus Christ can they be healed, as it is written: He accepted our illnesses and suffered our illnesses (Matthew 8:17). For if human souls, not to mention pagans and atheists, even the very Jews who believed in the true God, could conveniently hate worldly lusts and carnal inclinations and thus escape the ruler of the world, the devil (for through these passions he acquired for himself the power of death), then there would be no need for the good, gracious and humane God to become a man, to be crucified and to descend after death to the underworld, that is, to hell. But the fact of the matter is that no one can hate the world and everything worldly and carnal unless he becomes a partaker of Divine grace and receives the power to do so from the Lord Jesus Christ. And whoever, strengthened by the Divine power of Christ, does not first, with all his heart, hate everything worldly and carnal, he cannot in any way fulfill the commandments of Christ, or, as it is written, always turn away from evil and do good. Therefore, everyone who believes in Christ, first of all, let him ask the merciful God for grace and strength to hate the world and everything worldly, all the passions and lusts of the flesh, and after he hates them, let him work on them with warm faith in order to achieve their deadness, which is the deadness of Christ, as the Apostle Paul says, that he always bore the deadness of the Lord Jesus in his body (2 Cor. 4:10). Such requests are pleasing to God, and He listens to them graciously, as St. John the Theologian attests: if we ask anything according to His will, He will listen to us (1 John 5:14). For this is only what God wants for people to seek from Him, that is, what leads a person to eternal salvation. Why should none of the people care about anything else and do not rely on anything else for his labors in this life, except so that his soul at the last hour of death turns out to be healthy and free from all worldly and carnal passions. So it is necessary that the soul becomes healthy from every illness, and then, as it becomes healthy, it can serve God adequately, fulfilling His divine commandments, and appear unashamed when it appears before the terrible judgment seat of Christ. If she does not do this, that is, does not serve God and does not fulfill His commandments, although not to a great extent, then, of course, on the day of judgment she will turn out to be unhealthy from passions, and for this she will be cast into the fire of Gehenna, which will consume her in its unquenchable furnace and will burn eternal eyelids. For the fire of Gehenna cannot burn any others, but only those who left their souls unhealed in this life and so passed unhealed into another life. 3. Sin is committed both according to our will and not according to our will. For sin always appears before us only as some kind of deceptive bait. But as soon as a person’s soul inclines mentally towards sin, a tyrant and rapist of souls immediately jumps up to her, who always stands behind her and vigilantly watches her movements, jumps up and drags her to commit sin by deed; so it is obvious that sin happens both according to the will of a person and not according to his will: it happens according to his will because the mind itself is inclined to sin, it happens not according to his will because when he decides to commit a sin by deed, then it is attracted and forced by the devil. Therefore, the Wisdom of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, cuts off the very roots and germs of sins when He commands in His Holy Gospel that no one should allow vicious desires, and not even look with lust with his eyes, because when the soul reaches the lust for sin, then it is inconvenient to turn back, it is inconvenient for it to refrain from doing something, due to the push towards it from demons who do it faster blink of an eye. Thus, the soul must try in every possible way not to allow demons to approach itself, and it cannot achieve this in any other way than by not giving in to the lust of sin, in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory forever. Amen. You might be interested in: