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(1) Temperance is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Those who believe in Christ should know that they receive from Him the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that those who do not know that they receive gifts from Christ have believed in vain. 1. The God-bearing fathers say that Christ came into this world and granted people deliverance and the removal of sins. So, if Christ is the one who delivers people from sin and takes them away, then how do they again say that believers mortify the aspirations and movements of the passions through abstinence? To this we answer that both of these positions are true. For those who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ; they are clothed in Christ with grace from the Father who proceeds the Spirit, and from the fruits of the Holy Spirit there is also abstinence. The fruit of the Holy Spirit, says the divine Paul, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Therefore, when someone abstains from sin, it is not he who abstains, but this is the fruit of the Spirit, which is abstinence. So, let the abstinent person not think that the abstinence he contains is a matter of his own strength, but a matter of the grace of Christ. For Christ, through the Holy Spirit, grants abstinence to those who previously desired to be freed from passions and get rid of sin, and began to resist it, but were all overcome by it due to their weakness and were burdened - to such, I say, Christ grants abstinence, so that they would know, judging by the abstinence by which they now abstain from all sin, from what great evil they were delivered, and so that, when the very movement towards evil is taken away from them (sympathy for him), they humbly glorified the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who sent Him to deliver His people. Just as Christ did not commit sin, so how is it possible for one who puts on Christ to sin? Whoever sins is clearly not clothed in Christ. May such a Christian strive to put on Christ again, and may he ask day and night with faith, fasting and tears to be vouchsafed again to put on the robe of Christ’s justification. For he was already clothed in Christ in holy Baptism, but either he did not know it, or he despised it, and for this reason he again became naked from Christ, and because of this nakedness he began to sin. However, Christ does not completely abandon such a one, but allows him to come to his senses, to recognize his nakedness and, praying with a contrite spirit, to seek the endowment in Him. For whoever is not clothed in Christ, how can he keep His commandments? He Himself says: without Me you can do nothing, just as a branch cannot bear fruit unless it remains in the vine (John 15:4–5). Christ commands us to believe in Him not just as it happened, but also to believe that He gives gifts to those who believe in Him, so that those who have not received such gifts have not yet believed in Christ. A Christian is called faithful because gifts are entrusted to him. A Christian is called faithful not only because he believes in Christ, but also because he has been entrusted with sacraments from God, which even the Angels did not know before us. In this sense, the Lord said: he who is faithful in little and in many is faithful (Luke 16:10). Do you see that the faithful is the one to whom he entrusts his trust? Whoever does not feel and does not know that something has been entrusted to him, either has not received the grace of the Holy Spirit, or is insensitive, and because of his insensibility it has departed from him. For the Holy Spirit, who gives people wisdom, and knowledge, and piety, and the fear of God, and faith, does not want to dwell in the insensible. Just as no one can conduct trade without money, the Lord gives to every faithful person, according to his strength and ability, a spiritual denarius, that is, the gift of the Holy Spirit, which would always remain with him at all times and in every matter. Whoever has been entrusted with such a denarius and who has received it must guard it well and try with all diligence and patience to increase it. And listen to how he can multiply it. For example, someone receives the gift of faith and the gift of patience: by faith he believes in what God has promised him, and with patience he endures the sorrows and misfortunes that come upon him. Seeing that he is met with many things contrary to what God promised him, he endures complacently, waiting until the time finally comes for the fulfillment of God’s promises. Here, outwardly, it seems as if the person himself is enduring, but in fact, the power of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which he received, makes him patient and firm. If he does not forget about this power of grace bestowed upon him, then the gift in him multiplies, and he is deemed worthy to receive what God has promised to give him, for Christians, through faith and patience, inherit the promises of God. If he forgets about grace and thinks that he himself bore the burden of trial and patience by his own strength, and not by the power of God’s grace, then he loses grace and remains naked from it; and the devil, finding him naked from Divine grace, pushes him around wherever he wants and how he wants - and his last is a pot of the first. So, those who are called faithful by the grace of faith should also be worthy to receive the grace of reason, so that they truly understand that patience and complacency work in them by Divine grace, and let them give thanks to Him who was pleased to act in this way in the faithful, as He Himself testified: My power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). In other exploits, the one who acts is the winner, but in the exploits of faith and piety, the winner is the one who suffers and endures to the point of death. He who endures to the end is saved; not the one who faints and lags behind in the middle or at the end of the exploits, but who endures to the end. And our God is not called the God of idle inaction and pleasure, but the God of patience and long-suffering. He effectively produces patience and complacency in those who surrender themselves to Him, so that they win a wondrous and new victory, similar to the one won by Christ the Lord. Having been crucified and tasted death, He defeated His murderers and the world, and now He imparts some of His victorious power to those who suffer for Him, and through them He again defeats the same murderers and the world. Every Christian needs to know this sacrament, so that no one turns out to believe in Christ in vain, as if he does not know the sacraments of Christianity. For not everyone himself, but Christ with everyone enters heaven again, that is, every person then receives entry into heaven when he becomes partaker of the Divine grace of Christ and by faith again acquires what he had in the beginning and what he lost through unbelief, not believing the words of God, but believing the words of the serpent. Labor and sweat always accompany a person in real life, according to the providence of the man-loving God, so that otherwise he would not lose again what he had acquired through labor and sweat. The soul is spiritually granted the highest good for us, that is, the grace of Christ, through holy Baptism, for as soon as it is baptized, Christ is immediately imagined in it. But since the majority do not know the grace acceptable in this way, especially among those who were baptized as small children, little by little a change occurs in them over time, and in some the grace of God is completely extinguished, while in others there remains at least a small spark of it, which, by the great mercy of God, sometimes flares up in them again through faith, pastoral instruction and guidance. In those who, having been rebuked and instructed, arise to faith and the hope of salvation, grace in a short time flares up again and makes itself felt in the spirit. Then, if someone applies to this with joy and hilts (that you can grab with your hands, armfuls. - Ed. ) humility and alms (humility, because such mercy is not from us, but from God; alms, because he who receives mercy must ultimately be merciful), then a great flame flares up in him, which even illuminates all those who come into contact with him - in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion forever. 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