Отдел II. О начале христианской жизни чрез покаяние или о покаянии и обращении грешника к Богу

How does Christian life begin in the sacrament of repentance? The beginning of a grace-filled Christian life lies in baptism. But few retain this grace; most Christians are losing it. We see that some are in real life more or less depraved, with evil principles that are allowed to develop and take root in them. Some may have good beginnings, but in their early years young men, either by their own attraction or by temptation from others, forget them, begin to get used to bad things and get used to them. All such people no longer have a truly Christian life within them; they need to start it again. Our holy faith offers for this the Sacrament of repentance. “If anyone sins, Jesus Christ the Righteous will intercede with the Father” (1 John 2:1). If you have sinned, acknowledge your sin and repent. God will forgive sin and again give you “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezek. 36:26). There is no other way: either do not sin, or repent. Even judging by the large number of those who fall after baptism, it must be said that repentance has become for us the only source of truly Christian life. You need to know that in the Sacrament of Repentance, for some, the gift of grace-filled life, already received and acting in them, is only purified and warmed; for others, only the beginning of this life is supposed, or this life is again given and accepted. We will consider it from this latter side. In the said second respect, it is a decisive change for the better, a break in the will, aversion from sin and turning to God, or kindling the fire of jealousy for exclusive pleasing to God with the rejection of oneself and everything else. What characterizes him most is a painful fracture of his will. Man is accustomed to bad things; Now you have to tear yourself apart, as it were. He insulted God; we must now burn in the fire of the unwashed judgment (impartial - Ed.). The penitent experiences the illnesses of those giving birth and in the feelings of the heart in some way touches the torments of hell. The Lord commanded the weeping Jeremiah to “destroy and again build and plant” (Jer. 1:10). And the mournful spirit of repentance was sent by the Lord to earth so that, passing through those who receive it “until the division of soul and spirit, members and marrow” (Heb. 4:12), it would destroy the old man and lay the foundations for the creation of a new one. In the repentant, now fear, now light hope, now pain, now easy consolation, now the horrors of almost despair, now the breath of the joy of mercy, are replaced by one another and leave or keep him in a state of decay, or parting with life, in the hope, however, of the perception of a new one. Это болезненно, но спасительно, и так неизбежно, что кто не ощущал такого болезненного перелома, тот не начинал еще жить чрез покаяние. И нет надежды, чтобы человек возмог и стал очищать себя во всем, не прошедши чрез это горнило. Decisive and living opposition to sin comes only from hatred of it; hatred of him - from a feeling of evil from him; чувство же зла от него испытывается во всей силе в этом болезненном переломе в покаянии. Only here does a person feel with all his heart how great an evil sin is; then afterwards he will flee from him as from the fire of hell. Без этого же болезненного испытания, хоть и станет себя очищать иной, но будет очищать только слегка, больше внешне, чем внутренне, больше в делах, чем в расположениях; а потому и сердце его будет все оставаться нечистым, как не переплавленная руда. Such a change is produced in the human heart by Divine grace. Only she can inspire a person to raise his hand to sacrifice himself and sacrifice himself to God. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). “A new heart and a new spirit” is given by God Himself (Ezek. 36:26). The man feels sorry for himself. Having merged with flesh and sin, he became one with them. Only an outside, higher power can split it into two and arm it against itself. Thus, grace produces a change in a sinner, but not without free desire. In baptism, grace is given to us at the moment this Sacrament is performed on us; and free will comes after and assimilates what is given. In repentance, free desire must participate in the very act of change. A change for the better, an appeal to God, as if it should be instantaneous or momentary, as it happens. But preparatoryly it goes through several turns, meaning the combination of freedom with grace, where grace takes possession of freedom, and freedom submits to grace - turns that are necessary for everyone. Some go through them quickly, while for others it lasts for years. Who can investigate everything that happens here, especially when the ways in which the grace acts on us are very diverse and the states of people on whom it begins to act are countless? It must, however, be expected that with all the diversity there is one general order of change, which no one can avoid. Everyone who repents is living in sin - and grace transforms every one of them. Therefore, based on the concept of the state of the sinner in general and the relationship of freedom to grace, it is now possible to depict this order and define it by rules. The sinner, who is faced with the need to renew himself in repentance, is mostly depicted by the word of God as immersed in a deep sleep. A distinctive feature of such persons is not always obvious depravity, but the actual absence of this inspired, self-sacrificing zeal for pleasing God, with a decisive aversion to everything sinful - that for them piety is not the main subject of care and work, that they, caring about many other things, are completely indifferent to their salvation, do not feel the danger they are in, do not care about a good life and lead a life cold to faith, although sometimes serviceable and impeccable from the outside. This is a common feature. In particular, this is what a graceless person is like. Having turned away from God, a person stops at himself and makes himself the main goal of his entire life and activity. This is also because after God there is nothing higher for him than himself; especially because, having previously received all fullness from God, and now being empty from Him, he hurries and worries about how and with what to fill himself. The emptiness that has formed in him, through falling away from God, constantly kindles in him an unsatisfied thirst, indefinite, but incessant. Man has become a bottomless abyss; He strives with all his might to fill this abyss, but he does not see or feel the filling. That is why he spends his entire life in sweat, labor and great troubles: he is busy with various objects in which he hopes to find quenching the thirst that consumes him. These objects absorb all his attention, all his time and all his activity. They are the first good in which he lives with his heart. From here it is clear why a person, setting himself as an exclusive goal, is never in himself, but everything is outside himself, in things created or invented by vanity. He fell away from God, who is the fullness of everything; itself is empty; It remains, as it were, to spill over into infinitely varied things and live in them. So the sinner thirsts, cares, fusses about objects outside himself and God, about many and varied things. Why is a characteristic feature of a sinful life, with carelessness about salvation, concern for many things, much care (see: Luke 10, 41). The shades and differences of this multi-care depend on the properties of the voids formed in the soul. The emptiness of the mind, which has forgotten about the One, Who is everything, gives rise to a concern for much knowledge, exploration, torture, and inquisitiveness. The emptiness of the will, deprived of the possession of the One, Who is everything, produces multi-desire, the desire for multi-possession or all-possession, so that everything is in our will, in our hands this covetousness. The emptiness of the heart, deprived of the pleasure of the One, Who is everything, forms a thirst for many and varied pleasures, or the search for those countless objects in which to find the delight of one’s feelings, internal and external. Thus, the sinner is constantly concerned about much knowledge, much possession, much pleasure, enjoys, masters, tortures. This is the circle in which he spins throughout his entire life. Inquisitiveness beckons, the heart yearns to taste sweetness and captivates the will. That this is so, anyone can believe for themselves by observing the movements of their soul for at least one day. The sinner would remain in this cycle if he were left alone: ​​such is our nature when it consists in slavery to sin. But this cycle is a thousand times greater and more complicated because the sinner is not alone. There is a whole world of persons who do what they torture, enjoy, acquire, who have put all, in these forms, techniques in order, subordinated them to laws, made it necessary for everyone belonging to their area, who, in a mutual union, inevitably coming into contact, rub each other, and in this friction they only raise inquisitiveness, adoration and self-pleasure to tenths, hundredths and thousandths of degrees, in their ignition supplying all happiness, bliss and life. This is a vain world, whose activities, customs, rules, connections, language, amusements, entertainment, concepts - everything, from small to great, is imbued with the spirit of those three fiends of multi-care, which were mentioned above, and constitutes a joyless collapse of the spirit of peace lovers. Being in a living union with this entire world, every sinner is entangled in its thousand-braided network, wrapped in it deeply, deeply, so that he himself is not visible. A heavy burden lies on the whole face of the peace-loving sinner and on every part of it, so that he does not have the strength to move even a little in an unworldly way, because then it is necessary for him to lift what feels like a thousand-pound weight. That’s why no one takes on such an impossible task, and no one thinks of taking it on, but everyone lives, moving along the rut in which they find themselves. To an even greater misfortune, this world has its own prince, the only one in guile, malice and experience in deception. Through flesh and materiality, with which the soul was mixed after the fall, he has free access to it and, approaching, in many ways kindles in it inquisitiveness, covetousness, and voluptuous self-consolation; With his various seductions he holds them hopelessly, with various inducements he leads them to plans to satisfy them and then either helps to fulfill them, or ruins them by indicating other powerful plans, all with one goal - to prolong and deepen their stay in them. This constitutes the succession of worldly failures and successes unblessed by God. This prince has a whole horde of servants, subordinate spirits of evil. At every moment they quickly rush across all the borders of the inhabited world, in order to seed one thing there, and another in another, to deepen those entangled in the network of sin, to renew the fetters that have weakened and broken - especially to ensure that no one decides to break away from their bonds and go free. In this latter case, they hastily flock around the self-willed man, first one at a time, then in detachments and legions, and finally in a whole horde - and this in different forms and methods, in order to block all exits, mend threads and nets and, in another comparison, again push into the abyss the one who has begun to climb out of it along the steepness. This invisible kingdom of spirits has special places - throne places, where plans are drawn up, orders are received, reports are received with approval or reproach of the leaders. These are the depths of Satan, in the words of St. John the Theologian. On earth, in the midst of their kingdom of people, these places are unions of villains, debauchees, especially unbelievers and blasphemers, whose deeds, words and writings spread sinful darkness everywhere and obscure the light of God. The organ with which they express their will and power here is a set of worldly customs, saturated with sinful elements, always stupefying and distracting from God. This is the structure of the sinful region! Every sinner is completely in it, but is held primarily by one thing. And this alone, perhaps, sometimes looks very tolerable, and even approving. Satan has one concern, so that what a person is completely occupied with, where his consciousness, attention, heart is, is not God alone and exclusively, but something outside of Him, so that, clinging to this with mind, will and heart, he has that instead of God and only cares about that, explores that, enjoys it and possesses it. Here, not only carnal and spiritual passions, but also plausible things, such as learning, artistry, worldliness, can serve as bonds with which Satan holds blinded sinners in his area, not allowing them to come to their senses. If you look at a sinner in his inner mood and state, it turns out that he sometimes knows a lot, but is blind in relation to the works of God and the work of his salvation; that although he is constantly in troubles and worries, he is inactive and careless in relation to the arrangement of his salvation; that although he constantly experiences anxiety or pleasures of the heart, he is completely insensitive to everything spiritual. In relation to this, all the powers of the being are affected by sin, and the sinner is characterized by blindness, negligence and insensibility. He does not see his condition, and therefore does not feel the danger of his position; does not feel his danger, and therefore does not care to get rid of it. It doesn’t even occur to him that he needs to change and be saved. He is in complete, unshakable confidence that he is in his proper rank, that he has nothing to desire, that everything should remain as it is. And therefore, he considers any reminder of another kind of life unnecessary for himself, does not heed it, cannot even understand what it is for, shuns it and runs away. 2. The action of God's grace We said that a sinner is the same as a person immersed in deep sleep. Just as someone who is fast asleep, no matter how close the danger approaches, will not wake up on his own and will not get up unless someone else comes up and wakes him up, so the one who is immersed in a sinful sleep will not come to his senses and will not get up unless Divine grace comes to his aid. According to the infinite mercy of God, she is ready for everyone, she goes around everyone and clearly calls out to everyone: “Arise, sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will sanctify you” (Eph. 5:14). This comparison of sinners with those sleeping provides points for a comprehensive consideration of their appeal to God. Namely: the sleeper awakens, gets up, gets ready to go to work. And the sinner, turning and repenting, is aroused from sinful sleep, comes to the determination to change (gets up) and, finally, is clothed with strength for a new life in the Sacraments of repentance and communion (ready for action). In the parable of the prodigal son, these moments are indicated as follows: “having come to himself,” he came to his senses; “I rise up and go” - I decided to leave my old life; and “rising ide”; Moreover, he says to his father: “those who have sinned” - repentance, and the father clothes him with clothes (justification and remission of sins) and prepares a meal for him (holy communion) (Luke 15:11-32). Thus, there are three moments in the conversion of sinners to God: excitement from a sinful sleep; rising to the determination to leave sin and devote oneself to pleasing God; endowment of power from above for this work in the Sacraments of repentance and communion. 3. Awakening the sinner from sinful sleep The awakening of a sinner is such an action of God's grace in his heart, as a result of which he, as if awakened from a dream, sees his sinfulness, feels the danger of his situation, begins to fear for himself and worries about how to get rid of his misfortune and be saved. Previously, he was blind, insensitive and careless in relation to salvation; now he sees, feels, and cares. But this is not yet a change, but only the possibility of change and a calling for it. Grace only says to the sinner here: “You see where you have gone; look, take measures for salvation.” She only removes him from his ever-present bonds, places him and holds him outside of them, thus giving him the opportunity to choose a completely new life and define himself for it. If he takes advantage of this, it will be good for him; If he doesn’t take advantage of it, he will be abandoned again, again plunge into the same sleep and the same abyss of destruction. God's grace achieves this by revealing to man's consciousness and feeling the insignificance and shamefulness of that to which he is devoted and which he values ​​so much. Just as the word of God penetrates “to the division of soul and spirit, and members and marrow” (Heb. 4:12), so grace penetrates to the division of heart and sin and disintegrates their illegal union and combination. We have seen that the sinner with his whole being falls into a region where principles, concepts, judgments, rules, customs, pleasures, orders - and everything completely opposite to the true spiritual life to which man is destined. Having fallen here, it does not remain here as special, cut off, but, penetrating everything, it merges with everything: it is all in all. Hence, it is natural for him not to know or think about what is contrary to this order, and not to have any sympathy for it. The spiritual realm is completely closed from him. It is obvious after this that the door to conversion can only open under the condition that the order of spiritual life is revealed in all its light to the consciousness of the sinner, and not only revealed, but also touched to the heart; the order of sinful life is disgraced, rejected and ruined - also before his consciousness and feeling. Only then can care be born - to leave this and enter into that. All this is accomplished in one act of grace-filled arousal of the sinner. In the manner of its action, God's stimulating grace is always taken into account not only by the bonds in which the sinner is held, but also by the sinner's special condition. In this last respect, most of all, we must take into account the difference in the action of grace, which it shows when acting on those who have never been excited, and on those who have already experienced this excitement. To someone who has never had excitement, it is given, as it were, tuna, as a universal anticipatory or inviting grace. There is nothing to be asked of him in advance, because he is all directed in the wrong direction. But to someone who was already excited, knew and felt what life in Christ is, and again gave in to sin, excitement is not given in vain. Something is required from him himself in advance. It’s as if he still has to earn it and beg for it; not only to desire, but also to do something on oneself in order to attract grace-filled excitement; such, remembering his previous stay in good Christian order, often desires it again, but does not receive power over himself; I would like to improve, but I cannot control myself and overcome myself. He is helpless and hopeless, left to himself for having previously abandoned the gift, “reproaching the Spirit of grace and trampling down the death of the Son of God” (Heb. 10:29). Now he is given the opportunity to feel how great this grace-filled power is, especially since it does not come quickly. Look and work hard, and through the difficulty of acquiring it, learn to appreciate it. Such a person is in a certain painful state: he thirsts and does not get something to drink, he hungers and does not eat, he seeks and does not find, he is tense and does not accept. Others are left in this state for a very, very long time, to the point that they feel, as it were, a rejection of God, as if God forgot and rejected him, betrayed him to an oath, like the earth that was watered by the rain that fell on it many times and remained barren (see: Heb. 6, 7-8). But this delay in the touch of grace on the heart of the seeker is only testing. The period of testing passes, an exciting spirit descends on him again, labor for his sake and sweaty search, just as it descends on others. This mode of action of saving grace points us to: a) the extraordinary actions of God’s grace in exciting the sinner and b) the ordinary order of acquiring the gift of exciting grace. 4. Extraordinary actions of God's grace in awakening sinners from the sleep of sin It is soul-saving for those living a life of grace to know these actions, so that, seeing God’s great care for sinners, they can glorify the ineffable grace of God and be inspired by the hope of help from above for every good deed. Those who seek Divine goodness especially need to know them, because in them, more clearly than anywhere else, the properties of grace-filled excitement are expressed, which we need to be well aware of and understand in order to determine whether the grace-filled excitement is what we experience, and if someone is already acting, then whether he is acting out of grace-filled excitement or through self-made inspiration. A truly Christian life is a life of grace. A self-made life, no matter how beautiful it may be in appearance and no matter how it adheres to the forms of Christian life, will never be Christian. Its beginning lies in a gracious excitement, to which the one who heeds is not then deprived of gracious guidance and communication at all times, as he remains faithful to its suggestions. That is why we need to clearly understand whether there is or has been a gracious excitement in us. To satisfy this requirement, we can say: judge yourself by the properties of grace-filled arousal that are revealed in extraordinary cases, for they are the same both in extraordinary cases and in ordinary cases, only in the former it is revealed more clearly, more definitely and more distinctively. With grace-filled excitement, as has already been indicated, there is an instant destruction in the consciousness of the entire order of self-pleasing sinful life established there and the revelation before it of a different, better Divine order, the only true and pleasing one. In short, this order can be depicted as follows: God, worshiped in the Holy Trinity, who created the world and provides for it, saves us, the fallen, in the Lord Jesus Christ, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, under the guidance and guardianship of the Holy Church, through the cross, probationary life here, leading us to eternal, endless bliss in the future life. It combines persons, events, institutions, and the very beginnings along which everything moves. This whole order, through the action of grace, is vividly imprinted in the spirit of the sinner man and, strikingly presenting the contrast to him and the man himself with his moods, and everything in which he previously lived and enjoyed, while he must be in perfect agreement with him and in a similar mood, it amazes him. Every feature of it denounces and reproaches a person for the unreasonableness and dishonesty of the past, which are all the more impressive because at the same time the contemptible insignificance of the former sinful order is seen in the spirit. Under this action, the heart is released from its previous bonds and stands free, and therefore free to choose a new kind of life. This is the limit of the action of beneficial stimulation. It destroys in consciousness and feeling everything that was previous - the worst, and vividly represents only the new and better, leaving the person in this position, struck, free to choose something new or turn again to the old. It is remarkable that blessed excitement is always accompanied by defeat and some kind of fear; Is it because it suddenly, as if by surprise, seizes the sinner at the crossroads of life, like a criminal, and presents him to the inexorable judgment seat of God, or because the new order, revealed in consciousness, is completely new to him and strikingly opposite to the previous one - and not only new, but also perfect in all parts, and blissful, whereas in the first, insignificant one, there is only tightness of the heart and collapse of the spirit. Yet the starting point of all good actions of gracious stimulation is this living consciousness of the new Divine order. Based on this concept, let us recall all past experiences of this grace-filled action. Consciousness of a new order of being and life is produced in two ways: aa) sometimes that same order, in whole or in parts, is apparently, tangibly, in fact presented to the sought sinner; bb) sometimes the spirit of a person is introduced into him and feels him internally. aa) The Merciful Lord reveals in various ways before the consciousness of the convert His Divine world, in which our spirit is determined to live. Often for this purpose He Himself appears, apparently under some image, while a person is awake or in a dream. Thus He appeared to the Apostle Paul on his way to Damascus, to Constantine the Great (May 21), Eustathius Placis (September 20), Neanias, who was going to torment Christians (this is Procopius the Great Martyr; July 8), Patermuthias in a dream (July 9) and many others. Sometimes he deigns to send different persons from that world, also in reality or in dreams, in his own form or under some other image. Thus, the Mother of God appeared many times, alone, or with the Eternal Child, or accompanied by saints - one, two or many: the Great Martyr Catherine (November 24), for example, was converted by the appearance of the Mother of God to her in a dream with the Eternal Child, who betrothed her to Himself as His bride. Angels appeared many times, one at a time and in whole hosts: for example, St. Andrew the Fool (October 2) in a dream, the whole world of holy Angels appeared in contrast to the horde of dark forces; Saints appeared many times: for example, St. Mitrofan - to a Lutheran doctor, to a sick girl, and to many others. Sometimes that world itself and especially its order and, as it were, the main principles are depicted before an ignorant consciousness in some striking image, as can be seen from the already cited case with St. Andrew the Fool and from many other examples in which the blessed villages of the righteous were presented to converts, like the king of India and his brother, after St. Apostle Thomas (October 6) distributed to the poor the money given to him to build a house; or the terrible torment of sinners, like Hesychius Horivitus (October 3, Prologue), or the production of a posthumous trial, like Peter the baker, who threw a roll in the face of a beggar; or a deep thought about death and fate after it was imprinted, as on Prince Joasaph (November 19), Saint Clement (November 25) and one depraved young man, to whom his dying father bequeathed without fail every evening to go into the room where he was dying. Sometimes it is possible to tangibly feel some invisible force, acting among visible forces and phenomena, but strikingly different from them and emanating from another world. This includes all miracles in general, with the help of which it is impossible to calculate former conversions. And the Savior said that unbelievers will not believe unless they see signs. Most of them were revealed after Christ the Savior, in the first times of Christianity by the Apostles, and after them by the holy martyrs. The striking presence of the invisible power of God here often converted entire villages and towns, but never remained completely fruitless. The blood of martyrs truly lies at the foundation of the Church... There were also cases when the power of God appeared itself, without the mediation of a human face, as during the conversion of Mary of Egypt (April 1), or through the mediation of holy things, icons, relics, etc. Thus, the conversion of the Jews in Virita was accomplished by miraculous phenomena on the icon of the Crucifixion of the Lord. With all such phenomena, consciousness, confused by various objects and seductions of the world and held hopelessly in the visible, sensory, external order, is instantly torn from its bonds by a striking, unexpected and instantaneous presentation of higher persons and forces from some invisible region and is forced into a different order of being and life and, amazed, stands in it. The same thing happens here as when electricity is excited in a body by the electricity of another body. This latter pulls it out of the bonds of matter, and, attracting it to the surface, holds it before itself. bb) Our spirit, as we have seen, is closed and muffled by many veils. But by nature he is a spectator of the Divine order. The ability to do this is immediately ready to demonstrate and indeed demonstrates its strength, as soon as the obstacles that bind it are removed. Therefore, in order to awaken the dormant spirit in a person and introduce him to the contemplation of the Divine order, the grace of God either a) directly acts on him and, filling him with power, makes it possible to break the bonds that hold him, or b) indirectly, shaking off the veils and nets from him and thereby giving him freedom to be in his order. The human spirit is directly infused with Divine, omnipresent and all-pervading grace, imprinting in it thoughts and feelings that break away from all finite things and turn to another, better, although invisible and unknown, world. The common feature of these excitements is dissatisfaction with oneself and everything one has and a worry about something. A person becomes not satisfied with anything that surrounds him - neither with his perfections, nor with what he has, even if it were countless treasures, and walks as if killed by grief. Not finding joy in anything visible, he turns to the invisible and accepts it readily, and sincerely appropriates it to himself, and himself to it. Many, with the question: how will it all end and what will it lead to, left everything and changed not only their feelings and behavior, but also their way of life. There have been cases when such dissatisfaction was expressed mainly in the knowledgeable part, as with Justin the Philosopher (June 1), who primarily sought the light of knowledge of the Divine Being; sometimes in the heart part, as in Augustine 7, who primarily sought peace for his restless heart; and sometimes, for the most part, however, - in the active part, in conscience, like the thieves Moses 8 and David 9. There have been many cases when the inner church of the spirit was suddenly illuminated, an attraction was seeded and the spirit of inuda was directed 10. “Do not consider where it comes from and where it goes,” the Lord said about this (John 3:8). Often the spirit is awakened by reminders of the past. This is how Mary, the niece of Abraham the Recluse (October 29), the disciple of St. John the Theologian Theophilus, a church steward, was converted. From somewhere he comes inside and a speech is pronounced clearly to conscience: “Remember from where you fell!” - and greatly affects the forgotten one. This includes all appeals after youthful falls. There is no doubt that such changes, by the providence of God, are prepared from afar by various incidents that are conducive to the perception of a beneficial influence; therefore, here too, immediacy is only relative. But, on the other hand, we must also know that all grace-filled excitement is revealed in similar attractions and awakenings of our spirit. Grace, although through visible media, always, however, invisibly and directly touches the spirit and extracts it from the bonds that torment it into the light of God, into the realm of Divine life. All means related here are aimed at destroying the bonds of the spirit. Allow the spirit, give it freedom, and it will flow of its own accord back to where it was taken from - to God. The bonds of the spirit, as we have seen, are woven 11, formed by: aa) self-indulgence, bb) the world, ss) the devil. The destructive actions of spirit-stimulating grace are directed against them. aa) The bonds closest to the spirit are the bonds of all-round self-indulgence, quality in our animal-spirituality. They are the point of contact for other bonds, those that come from the world and the devil. Therefore, breaking them is very important, although very difficult and complex. For, since the unconverted lives entirely in animal-spirituality, the bonds on this side expand, intertwining in many and varied ways over such a space as far as the animal-spiritual life extends. To understand how these bonds are destroyed, we must take into account that here what this life is attached to, what it feeds on, what it is primarily expressed in, constitutes a solid support for it, on which, being established, it stands and is not afraid of defeat, does not think about it and does not expect it. When someone, for example, is addicted to artistry, or worldliness, or even learning and lives entirely in one of them, then he relies on it and rests in it with all his strength, thoughts and hopes. Since from here comes all the self-pleasing life that binds the spirit, this support of self-pleasing naturally becomes the basis of the firmness and strength of the bonds that are imposed on the spirit from it, as if the point to which these bonds are attached. Therefore, conversely, in order to free the spirit from the bonds of self-indulgence, Divine stimulating grace usually destroys the supports on which the self-indulgent self rests. Having shaken these supports at the foundation, it loosens the bonds and makes it possible for the tormented and weary spirit to lift its head. Our self-indulgence has many supports; they exist in our being, that is, in body and soul, and in our external life, and in general in the entire order of our life. This is carnalism in various forms, that is, voluptuousness, luxury, lust, idleness, passion for entertainment, worldly carelessness, ambition, lust for power, visible success in business, prosperity, flattering external life, the value of connections, peaceful external relations, passion for artistry, learning, and enterprise. All this, in its most varied forms, constitutes a solid support for our selfhood, which, with confidence in its reliability and strength, calmly rests on it and, extensively nourished, grows day by day, in one person predominantly in one kind, in another in another. Saving Divine grace for awakening a sinner from sleep, directing its power to destroy the support on which someone establishes himself and rests in his selfhood, this is what he does. He who is bound by carnal knowledge plunges him into illness and, weakening the flesh, gives the spirit freedom and strength to come to his senses and sober up. He who is seduced by his beauty and strength is deprived of his beauty and kept in constant exhaustion. Those who rely on their power and strength are subjected to slavery and humiliation. He who relies heavily on wealth will have it taken away from him. He who is highly intelligent is put to shame as one of little knowledge. Whoever relies on the strength of connections has them broken. Whoever relies on the eternity of the order established around him is ruined by the death of persons or the loss of necessary things. How else can one sober up those who are held in bonds of carelessness by external happiness, if not through sorrows and misfortunes? And isn’t this why our whole life is filled with disasters, so that it would further God’s intention to keep us sober?.. All this kind of destruction of the supports of careless self-indulgence constitutes turns of life, which, because they are always unexpected, have an amazing and saving effect. What is most powerful in this regard is the feeling of danger for life. This feeling relaxes all bonds and kills the self at its very root; the person does not know where to go. The same quality applies to the tightness of circumstances or the feeling of universal abandonment. Both leave a person alone with himself, and from himself, the most insignificant, he immediately sends him to God, or converts him. bb) The second bonds of the spirit are imposed from the world and lie more superficial than those. The world, with its concepts, principles, rules, in general with all its order, elevated to an unchangeable law, lays a heavy, domineering hand on all its children; as a result of which none of them dares even think about rebelling against him or rejecting his power. Everyone reveres him, adheres to his rules with some timidity, and violating them is considered a criminal offense. The world does not exist as a face, but its spirit somehow holds in the light, influences us and binds us like bonds. It is obvious that his power is mental, imaginary, and not real, not physical. Consequently, we only have to dispel this imaginary power of the world - and the possibility of sobering up from its charm will be close to us. This is how God’s saving providence works for us. For this purpose, it: Constantly before the face of the world and us he holds two other worlds, holy, Divine, and in them and through them, presenting to attention and even letting us feel the best, he constantly repeats about the emptiness of worldly life and worldly hopes. These worlds of God are: visible nature and the Church of God. Experience shows how often the mind, clouded by the child of the world, is sobered by the contemplation of God’s creations or by joining the Church. One winter looked at a tree standing in front of the window and woke up; another, after a noisy conversation, feeling the sweetness of peace of mind in the church, abandoned his previous customs and devoted himself to serving God. Visible nature and the temple of God not only admonished and sobered up often Christians, careless and sinful, but even converted pagans to true knowledge of God and pleasing God. The word Hosanna fell on the heart of one woman and made her a Christian. The conversion of our ancestors was finally confirmed by the influence of the church on them. The Great Martyr Barbara (December 6) was converted from idols to God by the contemplation of the beauties of God’s visible creations. Their strength and influence depend on the fact that they vividly and tangibly represent to a tired, exhausted, exhausted, tormented by the vanity of the world spirit the best, most blissful order of life and, instantly pouring into it the joy of this life, they admonish a person with the fact that, indulging in the dominion of the world, he only torments and torments himself, that happiness is hidden in a completely different world and that if now it is so painful community with the world, then what should we expect after? This gives rise to a call to the peace of God and a separation from the vain world, which, sometimes in the form of a strong impulse, and sometimes gradually, and finally completely extricate the spirit of a person from the bonds of the world. Thus, nature and the Church are the repellents, dispellers, and wipers of the charms of the vain and multi-delightful world. For this reason, the Lord placed them in such a connection with us, so that they act on us all the more often and continuously, most strikingly presenting the contrast of one life with another. The second way of graceful release from the bonds of the world is that by the grace of God the All-Provider, a life is actually presented before the eyes of others that is completely opposite to the one in which he is moving. This includes especially all conversions through martyrdom, and there were countless examples of this. Sometimes the martyrdom of one person converted entire villages and cities. Here the presence of a moral force from another world, not ours, is obvious. Sometimes it seems that defeat should be certain, but it is not; the tormented person remains undefeated, in good spirits, does not know why or how. An instant reflection of this strikes the mind and dispels in it the charm of the old order of life. This also includes the treatment of the robber by King Mauritius, who, instead of executing him, treated him mercifully, as a deserved person; the conversion of a harlot, whom one mother asked to pray and bring her dead only son back to life, and another harlot, who came to repentance from just looking at the monks, who humbly occupied themselves with prayer and the thought of God, when in the same house she indulged in luxury and debauchery. And all appeals with examples of life belong here. The power of their action lies in the fact that face to face they see faces that are contented and at peace, without pleasures and soothing objects, which, although abundantly possessed, the other finds, however, neither contentment nor peace. Hence the disappointment and change in life. The third way to distract oneself from the world is to shame it in the face of one’s children. Julian 12 exalts himself above everyone, fiercely rebels against Christians and threatens to suppress them with his strength, but then unexpectedly falls. This not only confirmed the believers, but also converted many unbelievers to the true God. On Saint Macarius 13, based on false testimony, an entire village rises up, beats, torments, imposes punishment: peace has triumphed; but then the truth is revealed, shames everyone and returns everyone to reverence and the fear of God. This includes all admonitions about the falls and unexpected deaths of the mighty and great of the world. The shaming of the world here humiliates it in the face of its followers, exposes its powerlessness and thus, on the one hand, turns it away from it, on the other, gives courage to resist it. Often, finally, the world itself oppresses and drives us out of ourselves, as if by itself, precisely because it does not satisfy or shames expectations. We are looking for happiness; in the world there is only glory, honor, power, wealth, joy - but nothing like that satisfies the seeker. The sensible one soon notices the deception and comes to his senses. We see in the saints of God that many of them, having considered the vanity and rebellion of the world, moved away from it and resolutely devoted themselves to God. The Prodigal Son, in the parable, said: “I am perishing with famine” (Luke 15:17). ss) The third bond of the spirit comes from Satan and his spirits. They are invisible and for the most part coincide with the bonds of self-indulgence and peace, which Satan strengthens with his influence and through them keeps the mind darkened. But there is something that comes directly from Satan. It gives rise to a certain vague timidity and fear that troubles the sinner’s soul at all times, and even more so when he thinks about good. This is almost the same as a master threatening a servant when he begins to do something not according to his will and plans. From him there are various spiritual flatteries, such as: for some, excessive, without true foundations, hope in God’s mercy, which is not sobering, but deepens more and more into sinfulness; For others, on the contrary, there is despair; this one has doubt and unbelief; he has self-confidence and self-justification, drowning out any feeling of repentance. Yes, many, many things directly depend on Satan, although it is difficult to determine. But everything sinful must be attributed to him as the source, for he is the king of the sinful world. One of his cunning tricks is to hide himself, that is, to make sinners believe that he does not exist, as a result of which he acts arbitrarily with ferocity in the sinful soul, placing the sinful aspirations inspired by him on nature and disposing them to murmur against God, who supposedly forbids what is natural and commands what they do not have the strength to endure. The admonishing Divine grace often snatched sinners from the jaws of hell, putting Satan to shame. She brought him to shame and ridiculed him, exposing his powerlessness and stupidity and exposing his cunning. So he is ashamed in the person of Simon Magus, in the person of Cyprian of Antioch and many others. All such cases were accompanied by the conversion and admonition of a considerable number of blinded people. In the days of the Lord on earth, demons, the source of unbelief and doubt, became preachers of faith. And the holy martyrs, by the power of Almighty God, often forced both the father and the children of lies to speak the truth through the idols in the churches. Such revelation of the machinations of the evil one leads the sinner to the certainty that he is in evil and enemy hands, that he is being fooled to his own detriment, that he is being deceptively led along some dark path to destruction and wants to rejoice in it. This inevitably gives rise to a feeling of fear for one’s own good, caution, suspicion, disgust both towards the cunning man and his inventions - vices and passions, and towards his entire previous life. From here the transition to the source of truth, goodness and bliss - God - is not far. These are the ways and means by which God’s grace influences the spirit of man, pulls him out of the bonds of a life that is unusual for him and shows him face to face another, better one, the one in which he has joy and peace. But it is obvious that all of them, in themselves, are incomplete, as if they do not say everything. For example, a thirst for the best was born: but where is the best and how to achieve it? Or the fear of death and judgment shocked me - what should I do to get out of trouble? So it is in all other cases. They are mute: to all of them an additional and complete method must be added. This is the word, or the sermon. The Word of God, in its various forms, actually accompanies all the methods shown, explaining them and indicating their final purpose. Without it, they still leave a person in an uncertain state and, therefore, do not produce everything that they should. Thus, the Apostle Paul was admonished by a heavenly phenomenon. But the Lord did not accomplish everything in him here, but said: “Go to Ananias and he will tell you what to do” (see: Acts 9:6). Justin the Philosopher, Barbara the Great Martyr, and Joasaph the Prince saw the lie, but in order to know the truth, they needed special leaders and interpreters. That is why the Lord Provider made it a law: “to preach to everyone everywhere until they repent” (cf. Acts 17:30). Faith comes from hearing, therefore, “the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). And this word from the Apostles through their successors is now proclaimed to all ends of the earth. And here is the essential need for the announcement - legends of the general, saving order of God, the need for the well-known persons and places where the excited must turn for interpretation, so as not to lose the excitement in vain or so as not to wander with it along the crossroads, fruitlessly draining strength and time. Catechetical teaching must continually be heard (and indeed is heard) in the Church. Through this, the faithful who stand will be built up more and more; those who are fallen and excited will immediately have an unflattering wayfinder. How valuable is the duty of priests to proclaim the saving ways of God in a timely and untimely manner, without relying on generally assumed knowledge!.. But the word of God not only complements all the methods shown, but also replaces them. It excites more fully and clearly. According to its affinity with our spirit, which also comes from God, it passes inward, to the separation of soul and spirit, revives the latter and inseminates it to bear fruit in the deeds of spiritual life (which is why the word is called seed). Its stimulating power is all the more significant because it acts simultaneously on the whole person, on his entire composition - body, soul and spirit. The sound, or the composition of the word, strikes the ear, the thought occupies the soul, and the invisible, hidden energy in it touches the spirit, which, if it strikes, after the word has safely passed both the body and the soul - these rough outposts - is excited and, coming into tension, breaks the bonds that hold it. The Word of God excites in the same ways shown; namely: either by the most vivid presentation to consciousness of the Divine order, or by the introduction of our spirit into it, through the destruction of the barriers that hold it. For example, one old servant said in simplicity to his sick master: “No matter how much you fight, father, you will have to die,” and thus aroused him to repentance. Another read under the image of the crucified Lord: “This is what I have done for you; What are you to Me?” and woke up from sleep. Saint Pelagia heard about death, judgment and the bitter fate of sinners and fell behind the sinful life. Equal to the Apostles Prince Vladimir is addressed by a description of the entire Divine order, from the creation of the world to the end of all things, the Last Judgment and the eternal fate of the good and the evil. And in general, the preaching of the holy Apostles, and in their footsteps of all preachers of the Gospel, consisted of a simple, without speculation, presentation of the truth. The Holy Apostle Paul says about himself that his word and preaching were not in convincing words of human wisdom, but in a simple legend about the work of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ crucified on the cross (see: 1 Cor. 2:2-4). And this, one might say, is the most natural way of acting through words to depict the truth as it is, without blocking it with mental considerations and especially assumptions about probabilities. Truth is akin to spirit. Simply and sincerely expressed, she will find him; furnished with images, figured and decorated, it will remain in fantasy; cluttered with considerations and evidence, lingers in the mind or soul, not reaching the spirit and leaving it idle. It can be said that the entire unfruitfulness of preaching depends on the mentalities with which it is filled. But explain the truth simply, reveal what it is, and the spirit will be defeated. The Jew read the Gospel and was converted, for he saw the truth in the simple Gospel story. In general, many freethinkers were converted by a living consciousness of Divine things, according to the instructions of the word of God - living or written. Truth dispels the darkness of vain thoughts, refreshes the soul, illuminates the spirit. It would be of great benefit to often, in general conversations, use a brief review of how it all began, how it will end and why. On the other hand, with the power of the word, the barriers of the spirit are often destroyed and freedom is given to it. So, Saint Anthony the Great heard the word about the insignificance of earthly goods - and left everything. One young man listened to a sermon about the prodigal son and repented. By depicting the vanity of life and the world, many saints, already on the marriage bed, persuaded their spouses to lead an immaculate, pure life. In general, the presentation of the Divine order, on the one hand, and the revelation of various charms, on the other, fill the soul with the fullness of saving knowledge, or with a clear and convincing knowledge of the saving path, against which the stubbornness of the heart can rarely resist. Very many, if they do not act as they should, with tension, but remain drowsy and careless, it is because they do not know the saving truths or know them incompletely. The fullness of knowledge is victorious, because then there is nowhere for the evil heart to hide. By virtue of this all-encompassing universality for the awakening of sinners, the word of God travels on earth and reaches our ears in a variety of ways. It is heard incessantly in churches, at every divine service, and outside churches, in every church rite; it is in the singing and songs of the church; it is in the sermons of the fathers and in every soul-helping book; it is in soul-saving conversations and walking edifying sayings; it is in schools, pictures and every visible object representing spiritual truths. Judging by this, we are embraced by the word of God, resounding with it from all sides. From everywhere the trumpets are coming to us to destroy the strongholds of sin, like the walls of Jericho. In all its forms, the word of God has already shown and is constantly showing its victorious power over the human heart. One must only take care that the paths along which the word of God diverges are guarded and uninterrupted - that sincere preaching does not cease, that divine services are performed according to order and for edification, that icon painting is sound and holy, that singing is sober, simple and reverent. The execution of this lies with the altar servers. Therefore, they are in the hands of God’s Providence the most necessary and most powerful instruments for the conversion of sinners. They need to realize this and not be silent not only in churches, but also in homes, taking advantage of every opportunity to either depict the world of God in words, or to reveal the seductions of our spirit by the ghosts of the soul and body 15 . 5. The usual procedure for acquiring the gift of exciting grace It has already been noted that in the variety of actions of grace-filled excitations, what is especially worthy of note is the manner of its action 16 which it uses in relation to a sinner who has already experienced these excitations and has again fallen into sin, decisively falling into his usual mortal sins. The more often these falling away are repeated, the weaker the excitement becomes, because the heart seems to get used to it, and it turns into a series of ordinary phenomena of mental life. Together with such derogation, it moves from the energetic feeling, which is characterized in its present form, closer and closer to thought and finally turns into one simple thought and memory. This thought is accepted with consent for the time being, then it is only tolerated, although without displeasure, but coldly, without special attention, and then it becomes bothersome, they rush to get rid of it as quickly as possible and, finally, they feel unpleasant and disgusted from it; he is no longer loved, but hated, persecuted, driven away. Accordingly, the conviction in the need for a better spiritual life decreases; At first this necessity seems only probable; then it closes with doubts, in the form of questions about different aspects of oneself; even further, its uselessness and redundancy becomes more than probable; finally, a decision is made within: “Live as you live, and you can live that way; everything else is unnecessary trouble.” Here a person becomes deeply angry and negligent, a state similar to the state of someone who has never been excited. It is obvious that the latter's salvation is in extreme danger. God's mercy is great, but it may not be able to do anything with it, as with the earth, which has repeatedly drunk the rain that falls on it and is barren, which has become “cursed near” (Heb. 6:8). And it is this consequence of instability in the order of life required by grace-filled stimulation that especially needs to be imprinted in the memory of those who need it. True, Divine grace is not bound in its actions by such measurements and definitions, but it happens that it is consistent with them. Therefore, although one should not despair of the possibility of conversion and salvation, no matter how weak the call to return to a good life may be, one should always think with timidity and fear about one’s position in such weakness. Have we not fallen to the last opportunity to receive blessed stimulation? Haven’t all the paths of Divine grace, all-desirable for our salvation, blocked its action on us? Are these not her last approaches to us with the goal of bringing us to reason and putting an end to the ugliness of our lives? Therefore, since such invocations are weak, we must hasten to use them with all the firmness of intention, albeit more rationally, and strengthen them, as much as is given to human freedom. Obviously, such an effort will be nothing more than an opening of ourselves for the called and sought grace, an opening, for in previous falls we became more and more hardened and closed ourselves to grace in one part or another. It will be accomplished by surrendering oneself to grace in the way that will now be indicated for the ascent to the energy of the first excited one, for one must think that the latter will grow along with how this or that object will be accepted to the irritation of the lulled spiritual movements. Thus, while for the first-excited one everything is done zealously, quickly, fieryly, for the latter, the work proceeds coldly, slowly, and laboriously. It’s as if grace leaves him to himself in order to make him feel how precious unchanging obedience to God calls him is, and to instill the disposition to value God’s benefits. At the same time, the Lord preserves the desire, but does not suddenly give renunciation, but keeps a person in the middle, in languor, as if inclining him neither here nor there, in order to test zeal and form a desire and promise of constancy. Then he rejects the tested one. With these few features we had in mind to distinguish two modes of action of God's grace, of which the Lord says about one: “Behold, I stand at the door and tell” (Apoc. 3:20), and about the other: “... seek, and ye shall find; press, and the door will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9). We have described the first image; Regarding the second, the question is: how to look and what to push? In extreme cases, the grace of God exerts its effect quickly and decisively, as we see, for example, on the Apostle Paul, Mary of Egypt and others, but in the ordinary course of conversions, for the most part it happens that only the thought comes to a person - to change his life and become better in his deeds and internal dispositions. A thought comes - but how much must be given to it so that it prevails over the soul! For the most part, these kind of good thoughts remain fruitless, not due to their own fault, however, but due to the inappropriate attitude towards them of those whose souls they visit. The first and main mistake in relation to them is that they are left unfulfilled, put off from day to day. Delay is a common ailment and the first cause of incorrigibility. Everyone says: “I still have time,” and remains in the old order of the usual unkind life. So, a good thought has come to improve - grab hold of it, get busy with what it was sent to you for, and for this purpose, first of all, drive away procrastination. 1) Drive away procrastination. Don’t allow yourself to say: tomorrow or sometime after, I’ll do this, but now get down to business. Take sound reasoning as your tool and use it: Imagine more vividly the foolishness, ugliness and danger of delay. You say: “after,” but after that it will be more difficult to do this, because you yourself will become more accustomed to sin and your sinful circumstances and connections will become more complicated. But what is the point of a entangled person entangling himself more and more and keeping in mind that even then it will be just as easy for him to unravel as now? If you realize that you can’t remain like this, what are you like now, why are you procrastinating? After all, finally, God can say: “You have been my satiation” (cf. Is. 1:14), and you yourself can go beyond the line from which there is no return. And this is the kind of misfortune to avoid which there is no labor that could be thoroughly regretted. If a conscientious thought takes the trouble to present all this clearly and vividly, then all the main figures of the soul will turn away from delay, and there will be no intercessor for it within. You will see that it is hostile towards you, and you yourself will look at it with hostility. We put it off because the good thought that has visited us still stands in us only as a thought, has not yet attracted sympathy, does not move desire. She, among our other interests, appeared, an alien guest, beckoning from afar, acting unimpressively. To take her further into the depths of her soul and indicate her price and attractiveness is up to you. So, put it in the foreground, imagine its correctness, show the joy and height that it promises, assure yourself of the ease of its fulfillment. A good thought has a weak effect and does not attract the heart because there are other plans in your head, there are more interesting objects, according to the instructions of the inclinations that preoccupy you. So call on Wednesday and compare impartially. In comparison with what a good thought represents, nothing can stand; everything will be relegated to the distant, distant background. What is indicated by a good thought will remain alone and, as the only valuable and beautiful thing, will attract. We suffer from procrastination most of all because at this time we allow our energy to weaken, we indulge in laziness, lethargy, drowsiness, indecision both in thought and in active forces; so you can take yourself from this side, imagining more vividly how humiliating it is to allow this to happen in ordinary affairs, especially in the most necessary matter of salvation - that in everything you must show yourself alive and quickly, it is a shame to admit the opposite, a shame to put off until tomorrow what can and should be done today. Use these and similar techniques to drive away procrastination. How can anyone do this, just do it. A good thought has come - persuade yourself not to delay its implementation, arrange and force yourself to immediately begin to act according to its instructions. Anyone who has put the matter off until the next few days has nothing to offer further advice today. But we believe that the good thought has been accepted and has occupied attention. Now we must hasten to bring it to such a degree of excitement that it will become a lever that easily and powerfully sets in motion all of our inner being. To do this, you need to give her space to go inside, and for this you need to perform, let’s say, some operations on yourself, as the most necessary and most effective preparation for arousal. These operations must be opposite to those subtle networks, or that order of arrangements, by which a person is detained in sin. Sin entangles the soul in many nets or hides itself from it with many veils, because in itself it is ugly and could push away from itself the first time. The deepest and closest layer to the heart is made up of self-delusion, insensibility and carelessness; higher above it, closer to the surface, lie absent-mindedness and over-concern, the main figures that hide and nourish sin and sinful customs and orders; the uppermost cover is the predominance of flesh, a cover that is more visible than others, no less, however, their strong and significant. The first cover is the essential cover. It produces the fact that a person does not see the danger of his position and does not want to change it. The last two are only tools; they only reveal and maintain that sinful state. When Divine grace comes, it, passing “to the separation of soul and spirit,” directly strikes the first covering and tears it apart. Under its influence, a sinful person immediately becomes naked and stands before his consciousness in all his ugliness. But when a person is still looking for blessed stimulation, he needs to begin to act from the outside and reach inward. So, if you want to properly deal with the thought that has come over you about changing your bad life, begin to remove the sinful veils from yourself, just as they remove the layers of the earth in order to reveal what is hidden there. First of all, take hold of the body. Deny him pleasures and pleasures, restrict the satisfaction of his most natural needs; extend the hour of vigil, reduce the usual amount of food, add new labor to the work. The main thing is, as you want and as you can, lighten the flesh, refine its plumpness. By this, the soul will be freed from the coherence of matter, it will become mobile, lighter, and more receptive to good impressions. The material body, dominating the soul, communicates its immobility and coldness. Physical exploits weaken these bonds and eliminate their consequences. True, not every sinner lives incontinently and indulges the body, but there is hardly a person among the ordinary people who would not have something to refuse the body when the desire for salvation sets in the heart. And a goal means a lot: it completely changes actions. What you did before out of custom or for the benefit of your studies, begin to do now, with some, of course, changes and increases in severity, for the sake of salvation, and you will tangibly feel the difference. The body burdens the soul from the outside; worries and plundering thoughts torment her inside. Let us assume that the flesh has already been humbled - this has taken the first step; but two barriers separate the soul from itself. Worries leave no time to take care of yourself. With them, one thing is in their hands, and dozens are in their heads. That is why they drive a person forward and forward, not giving him the opportunity to look around and look at himself. So, put aside your worries for a while, all without exception, put them aside only for a while; then you will take up your usual affairs again, only now stop them, throw them out of your hands, throw them out of your thoughts. But even then, when caring matters are stopped, confusion remains in the head for a long time: thought after thought, now in agreement, now one in defiance of the other; the soul is scattered, the mind staggers in different directions and thereby does not allow anything permanent and solid to be established within itself. Gather your scattered children together, like a shepherd gathers a flock, or scattered rays like glass, and turn them towards yourself. The desire to go deeper into oneself and take care of oneself, to stop the scattering of thoughts and care, will, of course, require, as an inevitable means, on the one hand, solitude, on the other, the cessation of ordinary activities, both everyday and official; first, the indicated humility of the flesh will require a change in the order of satisfying natural needs. Judging by this, the most convenient time to arrange a change in your life should be considered the time of some kind of fast, especially the Great Fast. Here everything is preset for this - at home, in church, and even in society. Everyone looks at this time as preparation for repentance. However, it does not follow from this that when a good thought has come about changing one’s life, its implementation should be postponed until the onset of fasting. Everything required in this case can be fulfilled at any other time except for fasting. But, of course, when the holy fast has come, it is a sin to miss it without taking care of the salvation of the soul, just as other times are missed. Anyone who receives a saving thought about changing his life not during fasting and who finds any obstacles in his life to carrying it out, it is best for him to retire for a while to some monastery. It's easier to control yourself there. Now you are standing next to your heart. Before you is your inner man, immersed in a deep sleep of carelessness, insensibility and blindness. Start waking him up. The good thought that came to him already disturbed him a little. So proceed with greater trustworthiness and the strongest tension of thought, gathering all your attention, begin to induce various kinds of ideas on yourself, more or less strong and striking, however, applying them to your inner state. First of all, remove from the eyes of your mind the coverings that keep it blind. If a person does not lag behind sin and does not run away from it, then this is most likely because he does not know himself and the danger in which he is for the sake of sin. If his eyes were opened, he would run from sin, as he runs from a house on fire. Such blindness also occurs from inattention to oneself: a person does not know himself because he has never entered into himself and thought about himself and his moral state; but for the most part blindness is maintained by certain definite prejudices about oneself. Man himself constitutes a certain network of thoughts that systematically close him off from himself. Even if these thoughts are a web of cobwebs, only the lightest probabilities, the mind has no time to sort them out clearly; and here the heart speaks so loudly for their reality and truth. These are actually our moral errors or prejudices, resulting from the interference of the heart in the affairs of the mind. That is why, from this moment on, it is necessary to add to deep attention a certain sobriety, which removes all flattery of the evil heart. From now on, if the heart needs to feel anything, let it feel under the influence of the ideas of the mind, and not on its own, as if running ahead, otherwise it will again force the mind to imagine things in its own way, again subjugate it to itself, again introduce disorder into concepts and, instead of enlightenment, plunge it into even greater blindness. Having now placed yourself in such a position, begin to drive out the various thoughts that keep you blind, and subject them to strict and unhypocritical judgment. “I am a Christian,” you say and calm down on this. This is the first flattery - transferring to oneself the advantages and promises of Christianity, without caring about rooting true Christianity in oneself, or assimilating the name of something that can rest and be supported only by strength and inner dignity. Explain to yourself that the hope in the name is deceptive, that God can raise up children for Abraham from stones and will cancel His promises at any time, as long as the conditions for participation in them are not fulfilled. The main thing is to understand for yourself what it means to be a Christian, compare yourself with this ideal - you will see how solid this support of your blindness is. “But we are not one of the last; we know something, and if we decide to discuss something, we will be able to discuss it, and we do not conduct our affairs at random and not without tact, like others.” So others are seduced by their spiritual perfections. Others, on the contrary, are attracted by physical perfections - strength, beauty, gender. Both become blinded the more sharply the higher we stand above everyone else in the environment around us. Convince yourself: That natural perfections generally have no moral value, because they are not our acquisition, but are given to us by God; Moreover, in Christianity everything natural is not valuable due to the corruption of nature in the fall. Sanctify your good by faith in Christ the Savior and by living according to this faith, then look at it as good. Again, have you done everything that you can and should do according to your gifts? You are more subject to an answer, because more has been given to you. It's not about abilities, but about their use. Tell me what you bought with them? Does the profit correspond to the expenses incurred? There is nothing to say about physical or any random benefits. Saint Chrysostom in one place shows a man who praises another for being good-looking, stately, rich, having a good house, riding well-dressed horses, etc., and then addressing him with the following speech: “Why didn’t you tell me anything about him? Everything you said is not him.” And there is nothing to look at others; let them be on their own. Everyone will give an account for himself. Look at yourself and, cutting yourself off from others, judge yourself alone without comparison with others. Or if you really want to compare yourself with someone, then compare yourself with the holy saints. They are the living Christian law, or the living example of those who are being saved. If you judge yourself by them, you won’t be mistaken. “We are not so thin: it seems that we are not disgraceful, and others do not look at us as thin, do not deprive us of their respect and attention - and, moreover, not only simple ones, but also important people.” The thickest darkness is a blanket of blindness by the appearance of external behavior and external relations! Make it clear to yourself that the external is not valuable without the internal. External correctness of behavior – leaves; internal good dispositions are fruit. The fig tree promised fruit with its leaves, but the Savior, not finding them on it, cursed it. The same is true before Him of everyone who is outwardly correct, without a sincerely kind and God-fearing heart. “Son, give me a heart,” says the Lord to the Wise One (Proverbs 23:26). From the heart, both everything good and everything evil. As you are in your heart, so are you before the face of the Lord. If you are proud in your heart, then no matter how humble you are on the outside, the Lord still sees you as proud. Same with everything else. And the judgment of others is deceptive flattery. Others do not know us, but treat us well, either by assuming us to be good, or by obeying the law of decency. Doesn’t it happen that those around us see bad things in us, but do not hint to us about it for their own reasons? Don’t there also be such experiences that others, seeing bad things in others, praise them for this and thereby arouse a certain spirit of youth in doing bad things; and their unreasonable heeder went without stopping deeper and deeper into evil and evil, for when a person sees in those around him a smile of pleasure from his deeds, he remains in evil with some complacency. We wouldn’t tolerate something like this if we were so sensitive only to the judgments of others about us!.. “But even if there is something bad in me, as if I’m the only one? The same is so-and-so, and so-and-so, even this is who. But you never know if you can find those who are bad, even worse than me...” We blind ourselves to the commonness of sin around us. Understand that the multitude of sinners does not change the law of righteousness and does not relieve anyone from responsibility. God doesn't look at numbers. Even though everyone has sinned, he will punish everyone. How many people were born before the flood, but everyone died except eight souls, and with Sodom and Gomorrah, fire devoured five cities from heaven, and no one escaped except Lot and his daughters. And in hell the torment will not be any easier because there will be many tormented there; on the contrary, won’t everyone’s suffering there at the same time increase? With such and similar reasoning, hasten to disperse the darkness of prejudiced thoughts that keep you blind and do not allow you to look at yourself properly. Set the goal of this first work on yourself to bring yourself into doubt and hesitation regarding the safety of your condition. You will reach this naturally when, one by one, you begin to take away the supports on which our blindness is falsely affirmed, little by little you begin to destroy empty hopes for yourself and anything of your own, little by little you begin to break the “reluctance of guilt about sins,” that is, the tendency to always justify yourself in everything. Convince yourself that your Christianity is of no value if you are bad, that your perfections convict you more than justify you, that your external goodness is a God-hating hypocrisy, with a defective heart, that neither the praise of others nor the broadness of fellowship in artistic performance will protect you from God’s judgment and wrath. Little by little you will separate yourself in thought and become one - alone before the gaze of your mind and conscience, which will raise a strong voice against you, especially after, having compared yourself with what you should be in Christ, you find that you have fallen far behind your original image. As a result of this, if your consciousness does not dissemble before itself, it is natural for you to be afraid for yourself. Cut off as if from anyone and everyone, deprived of all support, you will have to be struck by a feeling of hopelessness and fear for yourself. In every possible way, you must bring the aforementioned work on your blindness to this very limit. The revival of this feeling is always the threshold of sinful flight, just as in war the wavering of the enemy’s ranks is a sign of their imminent flight. As soon as in this way even a slight movement of the feeling of your sinfulness and the danger of remaining in it occurs, go even deeper into yourself and, with even greater tension of thought, amaze yourself with some formidable and sobering ideas; shake and soften your insensible heart with them, like a heavy hammer softens a hard stone. Remember your last one. Tell yourself: “Alas, death is coming soon.” One, another dies near you; your hour is about to strike. Without moving the hour of death away from you, inspire yourself that the Angel of Death has already been sent, is coming, has approached. Or imagine yourself as a man with a sword over his head, ready to strike him. Then imagine more vividly what will happen to you in death and after death. "Judgment at the door". Your secret will be exposed before the Angels and all the saints. There, in front of everyone, you will be alone with your deeds. From them you will either be convicted or acquitted. What is heaven and what is hell?.. In heaven there is bliss that cannot be described; in hell there is torment without joy and end; it bears the stamp of a decisive rejection of God. Take it all into your senses and force yourself to stay in it until fear and horror fill you. Then turn to God and place yourself, defiled and burdened with many sins, before the face of Him, omnipresent, omniscient, all-generous, long-suffering!.. Will you still offend the eye of God with your vile appearance of sin? Will you still ignorantly turn your back towards someone who harms you in every way? Will you still close your ears to the fatherly voice that graciously calls you? Will you still turn away the hand stretched out to receive you?.. Take into account this incongruity and hasten to arouse and strengthen in yourself pity and sadness for God. Remember that you are a Christian, redeemed by the Blood of Christ, washed by the water of baptism, received the Holy Spirit, you are at the Table of the Lord and are fed by His Flesh and Blood. And all this has been trampled by you for the sake of sin, which destroys you!.. Ascend mentally to Golgotha ​​and understand what your sins are worth... Will you really still wound the head of the Lord with the thorns of your sins? Will you still nail Him to the cross, pierce His ribs and mock His long-suffering? Or don’t you know that, by sinning, you participate in the torment of the Savior and for that you will share the fate of the tormentors, and if you give up sin and repent, you will partake of the power of His death? Choose one of two things: either to be crucified and perish forever, or to be crucified and inherit your life with Him eternally. Consider further what the sin is that you are so drawn to. This evil, the most miserable of all evils, it alienates us from God, upsets the soul and body, gives us to torment of conscience, subjects us to God’s executions in life, in death and after death, plunges us into hell, concluding paradise forever. What a monster we love!.. Take into your senses everything evil from sin and strain to abhor it and turn away from it. Finally, look at sin from the side of the devil, its first producer and multiplier, and consider to whom you are working with sin. God has done and is doing everything for you, but you don’t want to please Him; the devil does nothing for you and only tyrannizes you with sin, but you willingly and tirelessly work for him. You are friendly with him through sin, and he is malicious towards you through it. Allures one to sin with the promise of sweetness from it; those who fall into sin are tormented and tormented by it. Here he inspires that sins are nothing, but there he will expose them to our exposure as important points. He shakes with evil joy when someone falls into the net of sin and remains in it. Consider all this and arouse in yourself hostility towards this misanthrope and his deeds. When in this way you force crushing and softening feelings into your heart one after another - now horror and fear, now sadness and pity, now disgust and hatred - it will little by little warm and begin to move, and behind it the relaxed will will begin to move and tense. Just as streams of electricity impart some tension and excitement to the body, or just as the morning, clean and cool air imparts some freshness and mobility, so these feelings, having filled the soul, will awaken its dormant energy, revive the urge and readiness to act to get out of its dangerous situation. These will be the first beginnings of active concern for your salvation. Hurry even more decisively from now on. 2) Drive away the sleep of carelessness. The will for good has been weakened by a long stay in sin - now gather around it such thoughts that usually excite energy: imagine on the side of good salvation, height, universality, ease of fulfillment and removal of obstacles, joy that is now ready, and most importantly - necessity; on the side of sin - everything opposite to this; Explain this to yourself longer and more sincerely until you stir yourself up and bring yourself into vigorous tension, ready to immediately get down to business. Say to your soul: After all, one of two things: either perish forever if you remain like this, or, if you don’t want this, then repent and turn to the Lord and His commandments. Why hesitate? The further it goes, the worse it gets. Be careful, because death is at the door. Is it a lot of work? Just get started, just get moving. The Lord is near, and all help from Him is ready for you. And what a blessing!.. You will throw off this burden and these bonds, you will enter into the freedom of the children of God. Why are you torturing yourself, like some kind of enemy? You don’t see peace either day or night. There is confusion and anxiety everywhere. Just make one turn inside, and all this will disappear, you will see the joy of life. Look, everyone has already gone to the Lord... and he turned, and another, and a third. Why are you standing? Go! Are you worse than others? Everything around you lives and everything calls you to life. God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Join those who live His life. Go, drink from the springs of living water. The energy of a weakened will is always aroused when a person puts himself between extremes - either to die or to change his life. The feeling of self-preservation will immediately begin to motivate you to action. After this, indicate how great a benefit is expected from changing life for the better, how easy it is to do it, and how you are capable of this and called, and have all the means at hand; how all the good, both on earth and in heaven, will be rejoiced, will enter into fellowship with you, will take you in their arms, and there will be joy in a common life with all who live in Christ Jesus our Lord - point out all this, and your weakened will will perk up, your weakened knees will be straightened. Thus, by working on yourself, you will increasingly drive away your blindness, insensibility and carelessness. But work, and work without weakening. There is deceit in the sinful soul that it avoids the work of salvation in every possible way. Come, take it and carry it; she won’t cross her - she just doesn’t want to work hard herself. In your inner being, no one can be master except yourself. Enter into yourself and break yourself, amaze, admonish; deal with yourself before the face of God; persuade and convince yourself. Therefore, in the matter of conversion, reasoning with oneself, one might say, is the only door to this. If you don’t judge for yourself and don’t think about what to do, who will do it for you? That is why it is said to you: “Judge this, imagine this, delve into this and that.” By this one can judge what a great blessing it is for a sinner if his corruption has not yet completely extinguished the light of the knowledge of truth in him. Even if the character has deteriorated, even if the feelings are unclean, but if sound concepts are held in the soul, there is still something to take on for those who began to think about salvation. When they are no longer there, when the mind becomes corrupted - or falls into doubt, loses conviction, or accepts completely false teachings - then there is nothing for a person to influence himself with, then it is necessary to admit that from head to toe there is no wholeness in him. However, it’s rare that things get to this point. And those who reach, if there is a possibility of conversion for them, are converted by extraordinary and amazing actions of God’s grace. The majority of sinners do not lose faith, or the image of sound words, according to the Apostle, but only become morally corrupted. It is enough for such people to clear away darkened concepts by oblivion and restore weakened conviction in them - from inattention and neglect of all good in general. Sit down and look at everything yourself, what you should believe, how to live and what to hope, according to the Creed and the commandments of the Lord. If you are at a loss, look in the catechism; if you cannot do this, talk to someone, closest to your spiritual father. When you do this, the royal truth will rise victoriously in you - and will begin with power to crowd out the untruth of deeds, dispositions and feelings that has taken possession of you. Then it will be easy for your reasoning to expose your blindness, to defeat your insensibility, and to drive away your carelessness. When so many objects are indicated about which one must judge with oneself, one should not think that only scientists can do this. Anyone can reason with himself about salvation, even a child. This is not like scientific reasoning. Any truth brought to mind immediately suggests what it requires. Just be conscientious and revive a sincere desire for good for yourself, with a readiness to follow the instructions of the truth 17. But in every possible way one must conduct one’s reasoning in such a way that it is adapted to the goal - to act on the soul and excite. For this: When you reason, do not get smart, asking different questions, but, having understood the subject for yourself, put it to your heart with the side that you hope will be more impressionable, and contemplate it like that. Do not quickly run from one thought to another - this will rather scatter than gather and have any effect on the soul. And the sun would not warm a single creature on earth if it ran across its face instantly. Let sympathy be the measure of reasoning about this or that. Bring every thought to a feeling and do not retreat from it until it penetrates your heart. If possible, do not leave the thought bare, in one, so to speak, rational form, but clothe it in some image and then carry it in your head as a constant stimulus. It's best if you can concentrate several amazing performances in one image. So, Saint Tikhon, in order to impress in the mind of a sinner the thought of the danger of his position, this is what he says: “Above you is the sword of righteousness, below you is hell, ready to devour you, ahead is death, behind you is a multitude of sins, on the right and left sides are crowds of evil enemies: should you be careless?..” The image is easier to remember and stays in the mind, it acts stronger and more impressionable. Pick up short but powerful sayings that apply to your condition, and then repeat them more often within yourself mentally or with an external word. For example: “The ox and the donkey knew the master’s manger, and what about you? Or are you careless about the wealth of kindness and long-suffering?.. Because of your cruelty and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of God’s wrath and righteous judgment. Watch, don’t worry, when the Lord comes. For seven the grave lies ahead, for seven the death awaits. How can I walk away from Your Spirit and whence will I flee from Your presence? – Samples of sin are death. The enemy walks like a lion, roaring. Give a report on the assignment to the housewife; to whom much has been given, much will be required from him; a slave who knows the will of his master will receive many beatings; remember where you fell from” and so on. Collect and remember such sayings and beat your heart with them. Perhaps one of them will become a fiery arrow that will strike and ignite. However, do not remain with reasoning alone, but alternate it with prayer. After all, we do the same now as we did then when we wanted to pull out a tree that had grown into the ground. We approach and peg, straining the power of reasoning with ourselves, persuading ourselves, convincing ourselves. We peg it, but we can’t pull it out - the roots have grown deep. Because we don’t have the strength, we don’t have the strength to cut these roots. So look for help! Whether during the discussion some feeling falls on your heart or some tenderness is aroused, get up and pray. Pray that God will sanctify your work on your petrified heart, that he will give some of your thoughts the power to destroy and create, or that He Himself will come and soften, awaken, and wound. In this prayer, pray yourself; express what is in your soul, and reliably reveal your deepest need in a simple, childish, short word, or better yet, without words, so fall to God in a painful appeal to Him. Don't get smart, don't make up prayers. Approach in simplicity, with your only need, as a sick person to a doctor, as a bound person to a liberator, a paralytic to a restorer, with a sincere confession of your weakness and powerlessness to overcome yourself and with surrendering yourself to God’s all-action. Fall on your face, bow down - many, many, hit your chest. And do not leave prayer while prayer is moving. If prayer cools down, take up meditation again, and from this again move on to prayer. And for prayer, as for reasoning, collect short appeals to God and repeat them more often: “Spare Your creation, Master! - God, be merciful to me, a sinner! - Oh, Lord, save me! Oh, Lord, hurry up!” Remember the church's stimulating songs and sing them: “Behold the bridegroom is coming... I think about the many evil things I have done, and, thinking about the damned one, I tremble at the terrible day of judgment. My soul, my soul, arise from what you have written down!” - and similar... Thus laboring yourself, continually strike at the door of God’s mercy. What are we looking for when we work? The grace of God is exciting. The grace of God is accustomed to choose certain means to influence us, as stated in the description of the extraordinary actions of grace. So, apply these means to yourself and walk under their shadow and influence. Will not a ray of grace fall on you from somewhere, as it fell on other sinners like you? God's grace chose God's churches and church rites for its action. Go to church too and patiently, attentively and reverently stand through the sacred rites. And the sight of the church with its structure, and the order of the services, and singing with reading - everything can have an effect. And it is not surprising that, having entered the church idle, you will leave from there having conceived the spirit of salvation. Grace acted through the word of God. And take it for yourself and read it. Perhaps you will come across a place that will amaze you, just as Augustine was struck by the place on which his eyes fell upon the opening of the New Testament. The hearts of some sinners were softened by conversations with pious people. Come and talk. Word for word in a conversation - won’t something fall out that will lead to the separation of your soul and spirit, judging the thoughts and thoughts of the heart? Perhaps a living word, warmed by love, will penetrate to the depths of your heart and shake the strongholds of sin that have been built there. The prayer of the poor was powerful. Go and increase alms, wipe away the tears of the unfortunate, and, if you can, arrange for the ruined. The prayer cry of a beggar reaches the sky and passes through the heavens of heavens. Will he not bring a guiding angel to you as to Cornelius the centurion? As you walk among these and similar things, you will touch the vessels and bearers of grace. 18 Perhaps its life-giving dew will fall on you from somewhere and revive the frozen sprouts of spiritual life in you. So, the thought came about correcting your life and your character - having driven away procrastination, oppressed and lightened your body with physical exploits, put aside worries and entertainment by stopping ordinary activities for a while and solitude, and then, concentrating in yourself with attention, with various saving thoughts, strain to disperse blindness, insensibility and carelessness through reasoning with yourself or arguing with your soul, alternating it by prayer and by directing oneself under the influence of such cases, which Divine grace has already chosen as a medium for its influence on the souls of sinners. Work, strain, search - and you will find; push - and it will be opened to you. Don't weaken and don't despair. But with all this, remember that these works constitute only experiences of efforts on our part to attract grace, and not the very thing that we are still looking for. The main thing is missing - blessed excitement. It is very noticeable that, whether we reason, pray, or whatever we do, we seem to push something alien into our heart, from the outside. It happens that, according to the force of tension, a certain impact from these works descends to a certain depth in the heart, but then it erupts from there again, due to some elasticity of a rebellious and unaccustomed heart, just as a stick vertically immersed in water erupts from water. Immediately after this, coldness and dullness in the soul begin again - a clear sign that there was no beneficial influence here, but only our work and our effort. Therefore, do not calm down on these matters alone and do not rest on them, as if they were what you should find. Dangerous misconception! It is equally dangerous to think that in these works there is merit for which grace must necessarily be sent down. Not at all! This is only a preparation for acceptance; the gift itself is completely dependent on the will of the Distributor. So, with the diligent use of all the prescribed means, the seeker should still walk, waiting for the visitation of God, which, however, does not come with discretion, and no one knows where it comes from. When this exciting grace comes, only then will the real work of changing life and character begin within. Without this, success cannot be expected - there will be only unsuccessful attempts. A witness to this is Blessed Augustine, who struggled with himself for a long time, but overcame himself only when grace overshadowed him. Work while you wait, in sure hope. He will come and arrange everything. After this, the question is natural: what is blessed arousal? In what condition does it put a sinner? And how does this condition differ from other similar conditions? One must know the characteristic features of excitation so as not to miss it fruitlessly and so as not to accept some natural state in its place. The state of the soul excited by grace is determined by the opposite of the state of the soul lulled by sin: Sin separates God and man. A person, turning away from God to sin, does not feel his dependence on Him, lives as if he is not God and God is not his, like a self-willed slave who has fled from his master. Now this mediastinum is being destroyed. The feeling of dependence on God returns. Man is vividly aware of his complete subordination to God and complete responsibility before Him. Previously, the sky was copper for him and seemed to stretch over his head like a thick cover, but now some ray passes through this gloomy cover and shows him God, the Lord and at the same time the Judge. The feeling of the Divine, with all His perfections, is strongly aroused in him, and stands irresistibly in the soul, filling it all. Here is the foundation and possibility of a future grace-filled spiritual life. Sin previously shrouded man in blindness, insensibility, and carelessness. At the moment of the influence of grace, these three-layer petrified scales fall off the soul bound by it. A person now clearly sees all his ugliness inside and not only sees, but also feels. At the same time, he realizes the danger of his position, begins to be timid for himself and worry about his fate. And not only timidity sinks into the soul, but, with a sense of responsibility before God, fear, languor, annoyance, shame begin to greatly affect his heart. His conscience gnaws at him. But immediately he is given some feeling of the sweetness of life according to God. Feeling all the indecency of a sinful life and disgusted with it, like a sea of ​​​​evil, he at the same time foretells that in the area of ​​​​good that has now opened for his spiritual eye, joy and consolation are hidden. They contemplate it as the promised land, as the most blissful and safest place from all worries. This premonition is primarily a phenomenon in the sinful soul that a person cannot produce on his own. These are the blessings of God and are in His power. Thinking about them does not mean feeling them. God Himself introduces the spirit of man into His treasury and gives it a taste of its blessings. Notice how necessary this action of God’s goodness is on the path of liberation of the soul from the area of ​​sin. The purpose of the arousal of grace and its power is that it removes a person from the bonds of sin and places him at the point of indifference between good and evil. The scales of our will, in which it leans now to one side or the other, must now be level. But this will not happen if the sinner is not allowed to taste, at least in anticipation, the sweetness of goodness. If this was not given, then the sweetness of sin, having already been experienced, would attract him more strongly than goodness, and the choice would always fall on the side of this latter, as happens in plans to change life without a gracious stimulation. For this is a general law; ignoti nulla cupido, that is, what you don’t know, you don’t want. But when, in a gracious excitement, he is allowed to taste the sweetness of good, then it begins to attract him to itself, as something already known, known and felt. The scales are equal. In the hands of a person there is complete freedom of action. Thus, like the brilliance of lightning, everything in a person and around him is illuminated with blessed excitement. He is now introduced by the heart, for one moment, into that order from which he was expelled by sin, he is inserted into the chains of creation into that connection from which he was willfully torn out by sin. That is why this action of grace is almost always indicated by fear and instant shock, just as someone walking quickly and thoughtfully is shocked by the suddenly heard “stop!” If you look at this state in psychological terms, then it is nothing other than the awakening of the spirit. Actually, it is characteristic of our spirit to recognize the Divine and some higher world or order of things, to elevate a person above everything sensory and carry him into a purely spiritual realm. But in a sinful state, our spirit loses its strength and dissolves with soulfulness, and through it with sensuality, to the point that it seems to disappear into them. Now, by grace, it is removed from there, placed, as on a candlestick, in our inner church and shines on everything that exists there and is visible from there. The state into which the soul is brought into a state of grace is similar to many natural states, with which, however, it should not be confused. In a state of grace, a person is in a certain languid, sorrowful state of dissatisfaction with himself and his position: however, this is not the same as boredom. In boredom there is no specific object: here a person is crushed and sad, not knowing why and about what; on the contrary, in grace-filled excitement there is a defining subject of grief, namely: insult to God and desecration of oneself. That one is spiritual, and this one is spiritual; it is painful, gloomy, killing, which is why they say: “Melancholy is choking,” but this enlivens and excites. In our ordinary life there are many of these vague longings, each with its own shades. Among them, worthy of special note is the longing for the heavenly homeland, the feeling of dissatisfaction with anything created, the feeling of spiritual hunger. And this is one of the natural movements of our spirit. When passions little by little fall silent, he raises his cry, clearly echoing in his heart, about the shy and humiliated state in which he is kept, why he is not fed what he should, but is tormented by hunger. This is longing for the homeland, a sigh that the Apostle heard throughout all creation (see: Rom. 8:22). However, this is not the same as blessed excitement. It is one of the natural movements or functions of our spirit, and alone it is dumb and fruitless. Blessed excitement descends on him and gives him lightness and liveliness. With grace-filled excitement there is a collapse of the spirit, the awakening of anxieties of conscience; however, this is not at all the same as ordinary annoyance with oneself for mistakes in our everyday life, more or less significant. We are tormented when we say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, and in general in all cases where, as they say, we had to disgrace ourselves, we say even at the same time: “Oh, how ashamed!” But this is not at all the same as the voice of conscience in the spirit that is now audible. There a person has in mind only himself and his temporary relationships, but here, on the contrary, he completely forgets himself and everything temporary and sees only God alone offended and his eternal relationships upset. There he stands for himself and human rules, and here - for the will of God and His glory. There he grieves over the fact that he has disgraced himself before people, and here over the fact that he has disgraced himself before God, but he doesn’t even care about people or even the whole world. Then there is joyless sorrow, but here it is dissolved by some joy. For there all his support is on himself and others, and when this foundation is upset, he has nowhere to turn, but here everything is from God, by whom he does not expect to be rejected, but trusts in Him. And our ordinary consciences imitate the actions of a true conscience: we can say that they are also the actions of a conscience, only distorted, demoted from its rank. Together with the spirit, she also fell from her characteristic heights, from the spiritual realm, and fell into the hands and power of the soul-body, began to serve only earthly goals, became, so to speak, a secular conscience, which feels more strongly the insults of man than of God. When excited by grace, the heart is given the sensation of some other better, more perfect, most joyful life; however, this is not at all what happens to those who feel the awakening of bright impulses and the noblest aspirations (I would call it a movement of ideas). These phenomena are similar in that they rise above the ordinary order of things and strive for the implementation of what is suggested; but they diverge widely in directions and goals. The latter rests on some foggy area, but the former turns to God, indicates peace in Him and gives a foretaste of it. The goal of the former is life in God with eternal bliss, while the latter mean something, of course, always great and special, but about which nothing more can be said other than “something.” Their most striking difference is that the latter are interrupted and act one by one: the spirit awakens here in one by one side, in the other by the other; the first embraces the entire spirit comprehensively and, placing it at the goal, satisfies it or gives a foretaste of complete satisfaction in this order. The impulses of the highest aspirations of the spirit are the remnants of the image of God in man - a broken image, and therefore they are revealed like fragmented and scattered rays. It is necessary to collect these rays into one, as if to concentrate them, and then an igniting ray is formed at the focus. This, so to speak, concentration of the rays of the spirit, individual in itself, but fragmented in the many-part soul, produces the grace that excites it and ignites the fire of spiritual life, placing a person not in cold contemplation, but in some kind of life-giving burning. Such a gathering of the spirit comes together in the feeling of the Divine: here is the germ of life. So it is in nature: life does not appear until its forces act fragmented, but as soon as a higher power gathers them together, a living being, for example a plant, immediately appears. So it is in spirit. While his aspirations break through fragmentarily - now one thing, then another, and one in one direction, and the other in the other - there is no life in him. When the highest, Divine power of grace, simultaneously inspiring the spirit, brings all its aspirations together and holds them in this one thing, then there is the fire of spiritual life. By such signs, it is easy to distinguish grace-filled excitement from ordinary phenomena of spiritual life in a person, so as not to confuse and, most importantly, not to miss using it for your salvation. This is especially necessary to know for those on whom the grace of God influences without their preliminary labors and not with special force. An excited state cannot be ignored without attention, but it is possible not to pay due attention to it and, having been in it, again descend into the usual circulation of movements of the soul and body. Excitement does not complete the work of converting a sinner, but only begins it, and after it comes work on oneself, and the work is very difficult. Everything, however, that relates to this takes place in two turns of freedom: first in movement towards oneself, and then from oneself towards God. In the first, a person regains the power over himself that he had lost, and in the second, he sacrifices himself to God - a burnt offering of freedom. In the first, he reaches the point of determination to leave sin, and in the second, approaching God, he makes a vow to belong to Him alone all the days of his life. 6. Rising to the resolve to leave sin and devote oneself to pleasing God A. Rising to the Determination to Forsake Sin Whether grace visits someone by itself or someone seeks it and finds it - the state into which it puts a person in its first effect on him is the same in both cases. The excited person is brought by grace into a state intermediate between sin and virtue. She removes him from the bonds of sin, depriving him of this power to determine him to act, as if against his will, but does not transfer him to the side of good, but only makes him feel its superiority and joy with a sense of obligation to be on his side. Man now stands exactly between two crossroads, and he is faced with a decisive choice. Saint Macarius of Egypt says that the grace that comes to him (a person) in no way “binds his will with a coercive force and does not make him unchangeable in goodness, even if he wanted or did not want it. On the contrary, the power of God inherent in man gives place to freedom, so that the will of man is revealed, whether it agrees or does not agree with grace” (Homily 1. On guarding the heart, ch. 12). From this moment the combination of freedom with grace begins. Grace acted from without - and is from without. She enters inside and begins to possess parts of the spirit no other way than when a person, by his desire, opens the entrance to himself for her, or opens his lips to receive her. A person desires - and she is ready with help. Man himself cannot do or affirm goodness in himself, but he desires it and strains; For the sake of this doing, grace strengthens the desired good for a person. Everything will go on like this until man’s final mastery over himself in the forms of goodness and pleasing to God. Everything that a person must do in this work on himself or how to reach a decision is the same as what usually happens when we decide on any business or enterprise. Usually, after the thought of doing something is born, we are inclined to this thought by desire, remove obstacles and make up our minds. The same is true in the determination for the Christian life, you must: a) be inclined by desire to it, b) remove the obstacle within the formation of determination and c) make up your mind. Although the action of grace puts the spirit in an excited state, yet its suggestion to change life is only a thought, albeit more or less living: “Shouldn’t we leave sin,” or: “We must leave it.” One who awakens from sleep sees that it is time and must get up, but in order to get up, he must use special efforts, make special movements with different parts of the body. He tenses his muscles, throws off what he's covering, and stands up. So, having felt the grace-filled excitement in yourself, hasten to bend your will to his demands, agree to his suggestion that you, unrequited before God and unclean, need to correct yourself and start doing this right away. For someone who was looking for grace-filled help and now feels a visit from it, such a desire should be inherent - it has already guided him in all the indicated labors; but something is added to its composition, or to its perfection, here too. There is a mental desire: the mind demands, and the person forces himself; such desire drives the preparatory work. There is a sympathetic desire; it arises under the influence of blessed excitement. There is, finally, an active desire - the consent of the will to now begin the task of rising from the falls; it must be formed now, through a gracious stimulation. And here is the first case of the instigated case. Everyone knows that not everyone who is excited starts the task of changing their life for the better, just as not everyone who wakes up immediately gets up, but sometimes falls asleep again several times. Graceful arousal, on the one hand, puts a person in a privileged and lively state, and on the other hand, makes rather shy demands. Whoever now leans more closely to the first side can allow himself to float in his thoughts and prematurely indulge in the joy of life, as if he already had everything that should be had. This privilege given to oneself does not allow one to pay due attention to what has happened, and the associated internal dispersion will soon cool down - both the favorable time and the state are missed. Again, the usual plumpness sets in, during which you can’t control yourself. Whoever, on the contrary, is more close to the other side, can allow himself to free himself somewhat from this constraint, just as a child throws off the bandage from a wound with a healing plaster simply because it is constricting. At the same time, another, in order to dispel what seems to him to be gloomy thoughts, takes up seemingly innocent entertainment, conversations, reading, while another subjects the born weary feeling to research in order to find out why and how it could have been formed. There are external impressions, but here the corrupting effect of research is erased by the salutary change that has taken place within. Because of this, this one finally falls into ordinary, motionless plumpness. It seems that this should not be the case, but it happens, because the beneficial excitations are in different degrees and the circumstances in which they come can be such that they obscure the importance and value of their appearance within. All-wise grace allows this, tempting the free will of man. That is why we say: as soon as you have felt the grace of excitement, realized that this is it, and not something else, then hasten to incline your will to its suggestions. And for this: Believe in the simplicity of your heart that this is from God, that God Himself is calling you to Himself, He Himself has approached you in order to make a saving change in you. Having believed, do not allow yourself to miss this action of God’s mercy, which is fruitless. Only this excitement gives you the strength to overcome yourself. If you go away, you won’t be able to overcome yourself. You can’t say whether he will come again. Perhaps this is the last time this condescension appears to you. After it you will fall into a state of bitterness, and from there into despair and despair. Use diligence and effort as much as possible to keep yourself in the saving state in which you are placed. Just as a flammable substance, if kept in front of a fire for a long time, not only warms up, but can even catch fire, so the desire for a grace-filled life can naturally flare up if you hold yourself longer under the influence of grace. Therefore, remove everything that can extinguish this incipient flame, and surround yourself with everything that can feed it and bring it to flame. Sit alone, pray and think with yourself what to do. That order of life, occupations and works, which has already been indicated and which you forced yourself to go through, seeking grace, is the most favorable for prolonging its action in yourself. The best of them in this case are solitude, prayer and meditation. Solitude will be more collected, prayer will be deeper and meditation will be more effective. Reason with yourself, go through all the thoughts that you had previously collected, trying to drive away blindness, insensibility and negligence. Even if these three are no longer there, you must rekindle your desire and start a business now. Direct all action towards this. Now your reasoning with yourself will not be what it was before. Without excitement it usually retreats into generality; now, on the contrary, imitating grace and under its guidance, it will relate everything directly to you, without any apologies or deviations, it will turn objects towards you with the sides most capable of influencing you. Therefore, in fact, in this case you will not be thinking so much as moving from sensation to sensation. It is in this work of yours on yourself, with the help of grace, that the word audible to you will finally be spoken in the heart of the only God: “It is finally necessary; So, I’ll start now.” Apparently this is a conclusion; but according to what laws and from what provisions it is derived, no science can determine. All the subjects of the previous discussions may be clearly understood, but the conclusion may not be there. It even happens that someone expresses all those objects so strongly in words that from the action of tens and hundreds of them they reach that conclusion, but he himself does not pronounce it in his heart. And no one can say who is active here - grace or freedom, for it happens that the grace-filled action passes away and all the efforts of freedom remain fruitless. Both are combined in a way that is incomprehensible to us, but each retains its own nature. One can say this: freedom betrays itself, grace accepts and penetrates it. Hence the power of desire: “So, now let’s get down to business.” Now, finally, a person has bowed to the side of good, is ready to enter this holy path, is ready to walk in good deeds to please God; but at this moment the entire abyss of evil hidden in the heart is thrown up like dust and strives to again cover the entire soul. At the moment of excitement and inclination, sin is silent, as if what is happening in a person has nothing to do with it; but now, when they want to trample him, he, the thousand-headed one, as the holy Climacus calls him, emits thousands of screams at the person who is planning this. Just as someone who has awakened, while still thinking about getting up, everything in his body is calm. But as soon as he gets down to work and tenses his muscles a little, all the pains in the body that had not bothered him before now make themselves known and raise complaints. So, for one who has bowed down to the call of grace, the pains of sin are silent until he reaches this inclination, but as soon as he gets down to business, all these infirmities raise an alarm - strong and confusing. Thought after thought, movement after movement, strike the poor man and drag him back, attacking without any order, engulfing the soul from all sides and immersing it in its excitement. Everything good in a person hangs on, as it were, by a thread, and he himself is constantly ready to break away from what he is holding on to and again plunge into the same environment from which he wanted to leave. One thing saves him - that sweetness, benefit and joy that he was honored to taste at the moment of excitement, and that strength that he felt when he said in his heart: “So, I’ll begin now.” Anyone who has seen how a small spark rushes back and forth in the smoke, but still seems to stand on its own, or how a small particle of wood rushes in an agitated stream, now up, now down, now to the right, now to the left, has in this an image of what happens at this moment with the good desire of a person. Not only is there confusion in the soul, but the whole blood is agitated, there is even ringing in the ears and fog in the eyes. It is not difficult to understand that such a rebellion is not only from sin living in the heart, but even more from the parent of all sins - the devil, who cannot remain calm when such a troublemaker appears in his kingdom. Saint Tikhon says: “When a sinner, moved by the grace of God, begins to repent, he meets various temptations. A person begins to approach Christ, and Satan follows him in marriage 20 and distracts him from Christ, he stumbles and lays out various snares.” We talk about ghosts - both scary and charming, which are encountered by the miners of some flower in order to find treasures; This psychological myth best depicts all the efforts of the devil to distract a person from his good intention to buy valuable beads or get a treasure hidden in the village. Here a person is faced with a strong struggle with himself, as if a general battle with sin. Here he must decisively capture and defeat his enemy, step on this serpent, bind him and drain all his strength. The hope and reality of all subsequent overcomings of sin in its private uprisings are based here on the successful overcoming of sin. It is impossible to determine everything that happens here due to the variety of characters. However, the main points, or phrases, of this battle are not difficult to indicate; more, however, for the benefit of those who are fighting, rather than in the interests of knowledge. Apparently, there is no fulcrum in the soul: it flails 21, although it is still whole, not broken in its good intention, aided by the grace of God. And who else will support, who will install it? That is why now she must most of all cry out to God intensely, like a drowning man cries out. The enemy has grabbed and wants to devour - he cries out like Jonah in the belly of the whale or drowning Peter. The Lord sees your need and labor - and will give you a helping hand, support and establish you as a warrior should be when going to battle. This is where the support is! It is most dangerous if the soul decides to find it in itself; then she will lose everything. Evil will again overcome her, eclipse this still weak light in her, extinguish this barely lit flame. The soul knows how powerless it is alone; Therefore, expecting nothing from yourself, let him fall in humiliation before God, let him turn himself into nothing in his heart. Then all-effective grace will create everything in her out of this nothingness. Whoever, in final self-abasement, places himself in the hand of God, attracts Him, the compassionate one, to himself, and becomes strong by His power. With all this, however, one should not descend from self-abasement to mental relaxation and, having surrendered oneself to God, at the same time indulge in inaction. No, expecting everything from God and nothing from yourself, you must strain yourself to act and act according to your strength, so that there is something for Divine help to come to, something for Divine power to overshadow. Grace is already inherent, but it will act after personal movements, replenishing their powerlessness with its strength. So, take a firm foot in self-abasement, prayerfully surrendering yourself to the will of God, and act without relaxing. Act against sin in general, but especially against its root pathogens. When everything is troubled in the soul, and thoughts, like ghosts, stand and envelop it, shooting arrows from all sides into the very heart, it is not difficult to notice the main, so to speak, instigators of evil. Behind the multitude of private warriors stand there, at the very back, the main warriors, giving orders, in charge of all orders, the entire course of the war. These are the root causes of sin. We must direct all our attention to them, directly arm ourselves against them, overcome and destroy them. When they are defeated, the small warriors will disperse on their own. What are the main causative agents of sin and the main warriors in its defense, the Savior indicated this when He called to follow Himself (see: Mark 8:34-38). Whoever wants to follow Me, He said, “let him deny himself,” will turn away from himself, consider himself as a stranger to himself, not worthy of attention and sympathy, for whom he is not worth standing. This presupposes that in a sin-loving heart the opposite disposition, self-pity, constantly lives and is present, as it really is. A sinner treats himself like a mother treats her dearly beloved child: it is a pity to deny himself something, to cross something; cannot overcome himself in order to raise his hand in anything. Further, the Savior obliges us to renounce everything in the world in order to save the soul: “What good is it for a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” (Mark 8:36). The world is a collection of things outside of us, visible, tangible, sensory. Consequently, the above obligation presupposes in a person’s heart an inclination towards the material, a penchant for the tangible, a certain passion to feed oneself and delight only with the visible, the sensual. And indeed, the quality of a sin-lover is sensuality: he has no taste for the invisible and spiritual, but everything sensual is so well known and so re-experienced. Then the Lord inspires us not to be ashamed of Him in this adulterous and sinful generation. This makes us assume in a sin-loving heart that people are shamed to the detriment of goodness and truth. That's how it is. A person usually lives by this inviolability of the established order or established relationships around him, which is why he is timid to shake them and, in order to maintain them, is ready to bend his soul rather than do something contrary to someone, disrespect him, or get into trouble. This is people-pleasing: “What will they say and what to do if they have to break ties?” This must be the most sensitive bond of sin, if in order to break it, he is threatened for this shame with shame at a universal judgment: “If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38). This final appeal to the future century indicates in a sin-loving heart the absence of a feeling for a future life, forces one to assume that there is no such life for him, but that it is all immersed in the present life. That's how it is. A person usually lives on earth as if he would live here forever, but forgets about the future; he knows only earthly happiness, and all his goals converge on one thing: how to live well here, and what will happen next, he has no idea. So, self-pity, sensuality, people-pleasing and worldliness (which is the only thing in life on earth) are the characteristic features of a sin-loving heart, and therefore the root causative agents of sin and the main warriors for it. We ourselves, sinners, would not have discovered them, and if the Savior had not indicated them, of course, we would not have known them. Now that they are open, it is clear that this seems to be the case. Man, who fell from God, turned to himself - and was punished by self-pity: this comes from the main property of the Fall. The fallen one became upset within himself, fell from the spirit into the flesh - and languishes in sensuality. The main field in which sin is revealed and rampant is the society of people who sin, with such orders and relationships between them that feed and support sin. When everything goes well in all these dues of sin, that’s happiness. But since this kind of course of affairs can only take place in this century, while the future century requires something completely different, there is no thought about it - it does not fit in the head and, much less, does not find sympathy in the heart. So it is these roots of sins that are the causative agents of all thoughts that rise up against a person when he is ready to make a movement from the area of ​​sin to the side of good, they raise a whole swarm of tempting thoughts that confuse, horrify, and suppress. Self-pity screams, “What kind of life is this? Ahead one sees only work, hardships, sorrows, hardships, to which there is no end in sight; walk, as if walking among thorns on thorns with your bare feet, and you will be stung every minute!” Sensuality speaks up: “Leave this thing, and the other, and stop doing this, and the other - in a word, everything in which I found taste, and do only spiritual things! It’s abstract, dry, unnutritious, lifeless.” “What will they say? They will consider it strange and will become alienated; meanwhile, it is necessary to break both this and that connection - what to do after? But on this side you can still expect hostility.” This is a cry of humanity. And here is the cry of earthiness: “The future, of course, will exist - who can argue against this - but it’s still far away, and how can we live here? Others lived... We know what is earthly, but what is there? This is in your hands, otherwise where is it?” Yes, a man will begin to work for the Lord, and all this will cry out against him. And it would be good if these were some light thoughts, but otherwise they are not: they go to the depths of the soul, amaze and draw to one’s side as if someone had hooked a fish hook onto a living body and pulled it towards oneself. What is a person to do here? Help is near... Just use effort and you will overcome, but use your efforts expediently. Prayerfully affirming, as it is said, in self-abasing surrender to the will of God and the all-effect of grace: Hurry to drive all these thoughts out of the soul, drive them out of consciousness with a special tension of self-activity, push them back into the secret place from which they came and return peace to the heart, because until the heart calms down, nothing can be done further. For this, for the first time, do not engage with them at all and do not engage in conversation, even if it is not peaceful. A crowd of uneducated people will soon scatter if you treat them harshly the first time; if you say a condescending word to one, another, a third, they gain courage and become more persistent in their demands. Likewise, a crowd of tempting thoughts becomes more persistent if you allow them to slow down in the soul for some time, and even more so if you also enter into negotiations with them. But if they are pushed away the first time by strong tension of will, rejection and turning to God, then they will immediately withdraw and leave the atmosphere of the soul pure. But let this gloomy horde of evil thoughts be driven away, let the heart be calm again and the soul become light, we must remember that nothing has actually been done here for our cause. These enemies are still alive. They were only pushed out of attention and, perhaps, deliberately disappeared, so that in an accidental attack at a favorable time, the more surely they could regain victory. No, you shouldn’t stop there, otherwise there will be neither peace nor success. They must be killed, lured out and sacrificed on the altar of selflessness. So, having once again established yourself in prayerful surrender to God and His grace, call out each of the agents of sin and try to turn your heart away from them and turn it to the opposite - by this they will be cut off from the heart and will have to freeze. For this, give freedom to sound reasoning, and lead your heart in its wake. Enlightened by the truth and assisted by secretly active grace, your reasoning: let first imagine all the ugliness of these, one might say, incarnations of hell; You force your heart to feel disgust for them; then let him more vividly depict the danger into which they plunge him, let him point out the most evil enemies in them; Move your heart to hate them; then let him more fully depict before you all the beauty and sweetness of life, which they prevent you from entering, all the charm of freedom from these tyrants; But you, having already developed disgust and hatred towards them, strain your heart to rush from these to those, like a tree to springs of water. This will achieve what is required. The program is short, but the job will be done, maybe not so soon. Here only the sides are indicated to which the reasoning should turn, but the thread of the reasoning itself must be led and brought to the goal by everyone himself; personal reasoning reveals an effective and strong thought in one respect or another. However, you need to know that reasoning is a lever; after all, it’s all about the turns of the heart. We can say that as soon as the indicated turns occur in the heart, then we are at the goal. This work is the most essential in the matter of changing the will. It is necessary to carry it out energetically, and not to retreat until the heart reaches, in its turns, to its final limits; the last limits are counter-feelings to sinful excitations - dispositions opposite to the fundamental demands of sin. Thus, everyone must work on oneself until, instead of self-pity, ruthlessness towards oneself and no mercy are revived, the thirst for suffering is felt, the desire to torment oneself, to exhaust both one’s body and soul; until, instead of people-pleasing, there is formed, on the one hand, an aversion from all unkind customs and connections, some hostile, with irritation, opposition to them, and on the other hand, dooming oneself to all untruths and all human reproaches; until, instead of taste only in one material, sensual, visible, tastelessness and disgust will come to them and the search and thirst for one spiritual, pure, Divine will begin; until, instead of earthliness, limiting life and happiness only to the earth, the heart is filled with the feeling of wandering on earth, with the only desire for the heavenly fatherland. When such dispositions are formed, then all the supports of sin will be undermined. He will lose his tenacity and determining power, which now passes to the man himself. Sin was cast out, it became out. From now on, it will be tempting and not determining. And every time you just have to set in motion the counterfeelings you have now acquired to drive him away. From this it is clear what great importance the work now described is: it creates a new face within us, with a decisive aversion from evil and a direction towards good - a change in will is made, as a result of which everything in us must take on a new order. Now a person is already standing on the very edge of the sinful region, nothing separates him from the land of light, freedom and bliss. The bonds fell asleep, the soul felt light and joyful; she is ready to soar to God. But the enemy’s cunning has not yet been exhausted. He also has an arrow, which he saved for the last minute. As soon as the soul strains its strength to take the last step out of the realm of self-indulgent sin, its attention is struck by a plaintive cry: “One more day, and that’s enough, tomorrow you will cross this border.” Is it because in the previous struggle the soul becomes tired and requires rest, or because such is the law of sin, only this voice is heard. There is no resistance to good here, but only a request to somewhat ease the acquired tension. This is the most seductive cry: the enemy seems to stand for us, begging us to take pity on ourselves, but bend just a little to this cry, to this suggestion, and you will lose everything that you have gained. In some secret way, those driven away agents of sin will creep into the heart, without our knowledge they will commit adultery with it - and they will relax and upset everything that was intended, so that, having come to their senses, a person sees himself on the old line, as if he had never attempted to do anything about himself. Coldness, debility and immobility again overcome him, even if he starts all over again, everything that seemed to have already been passed. Therefore, do not despise this seemingly small demand: it is small and insignificant in appearance, but in reality it is a reduction of all evil, there is a charming presentation of slavery in the form of freedom, a flattering friendship hiding an irreconcilable enemy. Hate him with all your hatred and, as soon as you notice him - and he flies by quickly, like lightning, hasten to erase his trace so that not a sign of him remains. Put yourself again in the same state in which you were before, and decide to keep yourself in the same internal and external tension forever. Having defeated this enemy, you will remain a decisive winner, having pulled yourself together, you will become your own complete master. Thus, following the arousal of grace, the first thing that is presented to human freedom is a movement towards itself, which it accomplishes in three acts: leans towards the side of good - chooses it; removes obstacles, breaks the bonds that held a person in sin, expelling from the heart self-pity, man-pleasing, inclination towards the sensual and worldliness and in their place inciting ruthlessness towards oneself, lack of taste for the sensual, surrendering oneself to shame to everyone and moving one’s heart into the next century with a sense of pilgrimage here; finally, he is inspired to immediately take the good path, without easing himself at all, but keeping himself in constant some tension. Thus everything calms down in the soul. Excited, freed from all bonds, say to yourself with complete readiness: “I have risen, I am walking.” From this moment another movement of the soul towards God begins. Having conquered himself, mastered all the outcomes of his movements, regained his freedom, he must now sacrifice all of himself to God. This means that the job is only half done. B. Rising to the vow to dedicate oneself to God It would seem that everything has already been done if the decision is made to leave sin and all that remains is to act. And sure enough, you can act; but what kind of activity will it be and what kind of spirit is in it? The man stopped only at himself. If he begins to act starting from this point, he will act from himself and for himself, albeit in a moral order. This will be egoistic, pagan morality. There are people who say that they do good as good, they do it because the dignity of a person requires it, or because to act otherwise would be ignoble, unreasonable. All such workers denounce that the formation of the inner, moral person in them has not been completed to the end: they returned to themselves, but did not move from themselves to God and did not sacrifice themselves to Him; they stopped, therefore, halfway. The purpose of human freedom is not in itself and not in man, but in God. In freedom, God conceded to man as a certain part of His Divine power, but so that he himself would arbitrarily sacrifice it to God, as the most perfect offering. And therefore, if you have mastered yourself, go and now give yourself to God. When you sinned, you not only lost yourself, but by losing yourself, you also moved away from God. Now, returning from sinful captivity, after you have mastered yourself, return yourself to God. It would also seem that turning from oneself to God should be neither difficult nor complicated, like, for example, turning from West to East. But a sinner who approaches God is not a person independent of Him and does not approach Him in such a way that there is nothing behind him. No, he is the same as a runaway slave returning to his master, as a guilty person appearing before the king-judge. Therefore, we must proceed in such a way as to be accepted. In human orders, the master accepts the slave and the king returns mercy to the guilty person when, approaching them, each of them recognizes his guilt, repents of it and makes a sincere promise to be completely correct in the future. It is the same in the return of a sinner to God. He will be accepted by God if a) he acknowledges his sins, b) he repents of them, and c) he vows not to sin. These are necessary acts in heartfelt reunification with God, on which firmness in the new life, perfection in it and reliability of constant action according to its requirements depend. The prodigal son, returning to his father, said: “the river: those who have sinned” - consciousness of sin; “I am not worthy” - damnation of oneself; “Accept as one mercenary” - a vow to work. So, returning to God: Know your sins. And in the excitement of your determination to leave sin, you knew that you were a sinner, for otherwise what is the need to plan a change in life? But this sin was presented in a vague form at that time. Now you need to definitively find out what exactly is sinful and to what extent - clearly, separately, as if to find out numerically your sins, with all the circumstances that diminish or increase the sinfulness of your actions: critically reconsider your entire life, with strict and impartial judgment. To do this, put, on the one hand, the law of God, and on the other, your own life, and see in what ways they are similar and in what ways they are dissimilar. Take your business and bring it under the law to see if it is legal; or take the law and see if it is implemented in your life. In order not to omit anything in this important matter, maintain some order in it. Sit down and remember all your responsibilities in relation to God, your neighbor and yourself, and then review your life in all these relations. Or - analyze the commandments of the ten words and the commandments of the beatitudes, one after another, with all their applications, and see if this is your life. Or - read the chapters of the Holy Gospel of Matthew, where the Savior expounds the Christian law itself, also the epistle of the holy Apostle James, the last chapters of the epistles of the holy Apostle Paul, which briefly set out the things obligatory for a Christian, for example: with Romans 12, with Eph.4, and so on. The latter are especially important because they explain the spirit of Christian life. This spirit is clearly and powerfully expressed in the First Epistle of St. John the Theologian. Read all this and check your life to see if it is like this. Or, finally, take the rite of confession and use it to discuss your behavior. Consider your life and deeds not only as the deeds of a person, but as the deeds of a Christian man, and, moreover, in a certain rank and condition. As a result of such a review of one’s life, a countless number of deeds, words, thoughts, feelings, desires will be revealed that are lawless, which should not have been, but they were allowed - many that should have been done, but they were not done, and a considerable number of those done according to the law will turn out to be defiled, due to impurity of motives. A countless number of all this will gather, and perhaps the whole life will turn out to be made up of nothing but bad deeds. The main thing that must be kept in mind at this first stage of knowledge of one’s sinfulness is the exact certainty of deeds. Just as a service record is written with numerical certainty, so everyone must imagine the list of their deeds in their minds with the same certainty - with all the circumstances of time, place, persons, obstacles and other things. If our self-examination remains fruitless, it is because we make only general reviews. With all this, however, we should not stop at these details, but we must go further along the path of sin, or enter deeper into the sinful heart. Beneath deeds, words, private thoughts, wishes and feelings lie permanent dispositions of the heart that constitute our characteristic features. Some of our deeds broke through by accident, others came from the heart, and with such force that there was no strength to stop them, while others were done incessantly, turned, as it were, into law. Such an examination will let us know what deeds the producers hide in the heart and give rise to a constant urge to do them that arises from there. This is the essence of sinful inclinations. By revealing them, we will expose the structure of our heart, the number and mutual combination of its inclinations. When this is done, the main passion that controls everything cannot hide. It is known that the root of all sins is self-love. From self-love come pride, selfishness, voluptuousness, and from these come all other passions, among which eight are considered the main ones, and the rest, derivatives, are innumerable. Every sinner has all the passions - some in practice, others in embryo - because everyone who sins is driven by self-love, the seed of all passions or sinful inclinations. But not everyone has them all to the same extent: in one, pride predominates, in another, voluptuousness, in a third, self-interest. And the proud is not a stranger to sensual pleasures - but it’s okay if he doesn’t have to have them. And the selfish person thinks highly of himself - but it’s okay if sometimes he has to act low to get the benefits. And the sensualist is inquisitive - but it’s no harm if he buys pleasures. So everyone has one main passion. All others stand in the shadow, subordinate to it, and are controlled by it, not daring to act imperiously in defiance of the main passion. All inclinations and vicious habits, already discovered by a person in himself, are shaded by one passion and are inspired by it. She is what best embodies and embodies in his face the root of all evil - self-love. The awareness of one’s sinfulness must be completed by knowing it. So you will finally recognize the root of your sinfulness, and its immediate products - inclinations, and further, numerous deeds - you will imagine the whole history of your sinfulness and write it, as in a picture. Having recognized your sinfulness, do not be a cold spectator, but try to arouse the corresponding saving feelings of heartfelt repentance. It would seem that these feelings will be born in you as soon as you recognize sin, but in reality this does not always happen. The heart is hardened by sin. Just as a laborer becomes coarse from his work, so does a sinner man become coarse, selling himself into the menial work of sin: digging faces and eating them. Therefore, here too you need to work on yourself in order to irritate feelings of repentance. These feelings are approached through a feeling of guilt in sins and irresponsibility in them. The feeling of guilt stands in the middle between the knowledge of sins and repentant feelings and is itself mediated by self-reproach. Begin to expose yourself first - and expose yourself. Eliminate everything from your attention and leave yourself alone with your conscience before the face of God, the all-seeing Judge. Reveal that you knew that you shouldn’t, and yet you wanted to; You could have wanted to lag behind and did not use your autocracy for your own good: both reason and conscience were against it, and there were obstacles from outside, but all these admonitions were despised by you. Do this in relation to every sin. You will see that every sin is committed willingly, with the consciousness of its sinfulness and also with effort in overcoming obstacles - and your conscience will force you to unquestioningly admit your guilt. The deceit of a sinful heart may begin to invent excuses - either in the weakness of nature, or in the strength of temperament, or in a combination of circumstances, or in the pressure of everyday relationships - do not listen. All this could increase the attraction to sin, but no one can ever force consent to sin - it is always a matter of will. I would say: “I don’t want to,” and all temptations would end! Contrary to these “reminders of guilt about sins” (Ps. 140:4), reveal more fully your personal relationships: who you are, where, when and how you sinned, in order to discover how much sin is yours, in your person and in your circumstances - and in everything you will see not reasons for apologies, but moments that increase your guilt. The limit to which the matter of self-accusation should be brought is a feeling of unrequited guilt - a state in which it will be felt in the heart: “I have nothing to justify it - I’m guilty.” In this action of conviction by conscience, a person will confirm one sin after another, and will say: “I am guilty of this, and of another, and of a third, of everything, of everything,” - he will clothe himself with his sins and begin to feel that they lie on him with all their weight. In the knowledge of sins, one can still imagine them as existing outside; in reproof, they look inside us and burden us, and they burden us all the more because we are unrequited in them. Having reached this point, what remains to be said to the sinner except: “I am damned! And this is not good, and this is bad, it’s my own fault that this is not good and that it is in me.” As soon as a person says in his heart: “I am damned,” painful feelings of repentance for sins will immediately begin to be revived in him, one after another. He is ashamed that he indulged in such base deeds, and annoyed that he indulged himself and succumbed to his evil tyranny, and painful that he brought himself to such a moral disorder, and terrible that he offended God and put himself in such a dangerous position both in time and in eternity. These feelings give way to one another, and a person burns in them as if on fire. He sees himself hanging over the abyss and in feeling descends to the state of the outcast. Joyless languor gives way to a feeling of hopelessness. And this is the point at which the demon of despair sometimes seizes a sinner, instilling in him: “Your greater guilt will remain with you” (Gen. 4:13). Every sinner experiences these feelings to a greater or lesser extent. There is no point in regretting that they exist, but we should wish that they existed, and were stronger. The more a person burns in them and the stronger the burning, the more life-saving. The power of this combustion is the basis of future serviceability. Here the heart learns how sweet the fruit of sin is, and in this it gains strength to turn away from its charms. Feelings of remorse obviously have a corrupting effect. A certain word penetrates to the division of soul and spirit, members and brains, and judges the thoughts and thoughts of the heart. But the purpose for which this is done in man by the grace of God is not just to destroy, but to create something new through the destruction of the old. This new thing is seeded with a breath of hope for the possibility of making things right. It is possible to fix what is faulty and return what was lost, just get down to business. It would seem that from feelings of repentance there is a direct transition to a vow: “So, I reject sin and make a promise to work for one God in fulfilling His commandments.” But the one making such a vow must be sure that, on the one hand, his previous fault can be forgiven, and on the other, that he can receive strength to help him persevere in the vow. That is why the position of the vow to work for the Lord is mediated by trustworthiness for mercy and for receiving help from above; and this trustworthiness is produced by faith in the Lord the Savior, by whom on the cross the handwriting of our sins was torn and, upon the Ascension, all “Divine powers were given to us, including life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3). Without this faith and the good faith it generates, one, tormented by crushing feelings of repentance, follows the path of Judaism. That’s when the Cross of the Savior really is an anchor for a person! Hovering as if over an abyss, in painful contrition for sins, he sees him as the only savior, for him he clings with all the strength of faith and hope, and from him he draws the strength of inspiration for the position of vow. Just as a drowning person firmly grasps a tree, so a repentant person firmly grasps the Cross of Christ, and feels that he will no longer perish. Usually we know the power of the Lord’s death on the cross, and those who have gone through this painful repentance of sins feel it, because it becomes an element of his life. So, tormented by feelings of repentance and already shaken by hopelessness, moving toward the desired vow: First, hasten to resurrect living faith in the power of Christ the Savior’s death on the cross. All the sins of all people are nailed to the cross, and therefore yours too. Revive this confidence, and your heart will breathe with joy, and it will arise to trust as soon as it is warmed by this faith. Add to this strong confidence that you will be given the strength to fulfill your vow as soon as you begin the Sacraments. No one is denied them. Then they were acquired by the Lord in order to distribute them. This confidence will stretch your own strength and give rise to a willingness to work hard with such help. Will a vow be born without the certainty of help from above? But, on the other hand, will this confidence come if one does not think about the vow? There is interaction here. And when this combination of confidence and readiness occurs inside you, make a vow - and so on, to work for the one God all the days of your life. This heartfelt vow, by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, sincerely pronounced, will dispel all the darkness that envelops the soul, and will illuminate all the threads of your inner and all the orders of your outer life. Here is the covenant of the heart with God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, in this action, the former determination takes on a truly Christian character. 7. Endowment with power from above for the work of pleasing God in the sacraments of repentance and communion The rising to the vow completes the movement of the repentant sinner to the Lord. Now he will take only a few steps towards accepting the coming to meet his Lord. The father greeted the prodigal son by falling on his neck and kissing him as a sign of forgiveness, then he dressed him properly and set up a meal for him. a) God speaks of forgiveness to the repentant in the Sacrament of Repentance; b) invests him with power and offers him supper - in the Sacrament of Communion. A. Forgiveness is spoken to the repentant in the Sacrament of Repentance After a sinner has reached the vow to work only for God, he must rush to the Sacrament of repentance. The need for this is so great that everything done hitherto, without it, will not only remain incomplete, but must also be lost without value. It receives all its weight, all its meaning and strength only in this Sacrament. That is why, where there is no Sacrament of repentance, there are no people living truly as Christians. The first thing that makes this Sacrament necessary is a certain instability of internal activity in general, some of its uncertainty and precariousness. Our thoughts, while they are still in our heads, are changeable in their course, disorganized in order, and not established in their movement - and this is not only when the subject is not yet clear, but also when we have discussed it well. But as soon as we put them on paper, they are not only established in order, but also finally understood and approved. In exactly the same way, a change in life, only conceived within, can be indecisive and not firm, and the forms of life destined for this time are shaky and uncertain. They receive a solid establishment in the Sacrament of Repentance, when a sinner in the church reveals his faults and confirms his vow to be correct. Melted wax spills out indefinitely; but when it is poured into a mold or sealed, something comes out of it. And we must put our stamp on our inner man so that he takes on a certain image. This is done to him in the Sacrament of Repentance: here the Divine grace of the Spirit seals him. Man receives spiritual life from the Spirit of God. The grace of the Spirit dissolves with us, begins to live and act in us and produce life according to the spirit. In the hitherto penitent, she acted from the outside: she aroused him from the outside, from the outside she observed all the corrective movements within and contributed to them; but has not yet penetrated inside, has not taken over. This is accomplished by her in the Sacrament of Repentance (and for those who turn to the Lord for the first time - in baptism). Just as someone who is thirsty from drinking cool water feels cool and refreshed, so someone who is burning in the fire of repentance receives in the Sacrament of Repentance a power that finally sweetens his sorrows and at the same time strengthens him. What especially makes the Sacrament of Repentance necessary is, on the one hand, the property of sin, and on the other, the property of our conscience. When we sin, we think that not only outside of us, but also within ourselves there are no traces of sin. Meanwhile, he leaves deep traces both in us and outside of us on everything that surrounds us, and especially in heaven, in the definitions of Divine justice. At the hour of sin, it is decided there what the sinner has become: in the book of the belly he is included in the list of those condemned - and he has become bound in heaven. Divine grace will not descend into him until he is erased from the list of those condemned in heaven, until he receives permission there. But God was pleased to make heavenly permission - to make heavenly erasing from the list of the condemned dependent on the permission of those bound by sins on earth. So, accept the Sacrament of Repentance in order to be granted comprehensive permission and open the entrance to the spirit of grace. Conscience, now cleared, returning tenderness and instinct to moral order, will not give peace until we are decisively convinced of forgiveness. This is how it is in the ordinary course of our lives: it does not allow us to even show ourselves to the one who was insulted until we are sure that he has forgiven us. In relation to God, she is even more selective. Although at the time when a person rises to a decisive vow, some assurance descends on him that he is no longer disgusted with God; but this confidence is personal and cannot be strong, it will soon be shaken by doubt: “Is it so, but is this not self-delusion,” and doubt will bring anxiety inside, and from anxiety - relaxation. In this case, life will have neither firmness nor harmony. So, a person needs to hear all-forgiveness from the face of God, so that, having finally calmed down with confidence in God’s mercy, he can then act more decisively and firmly in this confidence. Go and confess - and you will receive an announcement of forgiveness from God. One must properly prepare for a saving confession. Anyone who has gone through everything that has been said so far is ready. Approach with reverent faith! Having firmly convinced of the necessity of this Sacrament, go to it - not as some appendage to a change in your life or a simple custom, but with full faith that for you, as a sinner, this is the only possible path of salvation; that, bypassing it, you will remain among the condemned and, therefore, beyond all mercy; that if you do not enter this clinic, you will not return health to your spirit and will remain as you were, sick and upset; that you will not see the Kingdom unless you enter it through the door of repentance. With such convictions, revive in yourself the desire for this Sacrament. Approach it not as a place of slaughter, but as a source of benefits. Whoever vividly imagines the fruit that is born in us from confession cannot help but strive for it. A man goes there covered in wounds, from head to toe there is no integrity, and from there he returns healthy in all parts, alive, strong, with a feeling of safety from future infections. He goes there under a heavy burden - the entire sum of his past sins is on him, it torments him and takes away all peace from him, and from there he returns relieved, overjoyed, in a joyful mood that he has received a charter of forgiveness. Shame and fear will strike - let them! This Sacrament should be desired because it brings shame and fear; and the more shame and fear there is, the more salutary it will be. If you desire this Sacrament, desire greater shame and greater trepidation. Whoever decides to undergo treatment does not know that the treatment is painful? He knows, but, deciding on treatment, he at the same time determines himself and the suffering associated with it in the hope of recovery. And you, when you were languishing in the feelings of repentance that came over you and were trying to get closer to God, didn’t you say: “I’m ready to endure everything, just have mercy and forgive me!” So it happened according to your wishes. Do not be embarrassed by those who find shame and fear - they are associated with this Sacrament for your good. Having burned out in them, you will become stronger morally. You have already burned more than once in the fire of repentance - burn again. Then you burned alone before God and conscience, and now burn with a witness appointed by God, as evidence of the sincerity of that solitary burning, and perhaps to make up for its incompleteness. There will be a trial and there will be shame and desperate fear. Shame and fear in confession atone for the shame and fear of that time. If you don't want those, go over these. Moreover, it always happens that as the anxiety that the confessor goes through, the consolations of confession also become abundant in him. This is where the Savior truly reveals Himself as the Comforter of the weary and burdened! He who has sincerely repented and confessed through experience knows this truth with his heart, and does not accept it by faith alone. Then, remembering again all the sins you have committed and renewing the vow that has already matured in you not to repeat them again, restore living faith that you are standing before the Lord Himself, who accepts your confession, and tell everything, without hiding anything that weighs on your conscience. If you set out with the desire to shame yourself, then you will not hide yourself, but will depict, as fully as possible, your shame in succumbing to sins. This will serve to satisfy your broken heart. One must be sure that every spoken sin is expelled from the heart, but every hidden sin remains in it, all the more condemned because with this wound the sinner was close to the all-healing Physician. Having hidden the sin, he covered the wound, not regretting that it tormented and upset his soul. The story about blessed Theodora, who went through ordeal, says that her evil accusers did not find the sins she confessed written down in their charters. The angels then explained to her that confession blots out sin from all places where it is indicated. Neither in the book of conscience, nor in the book of the animal, nor among these evil destroyers is he already listed as that person - confession has erased these records. Without concealment, throw away everything that weighs you down. The limit to which you must bring the revelation of your sins is so that your spiritual father has an accurate understanding of you, so that he imagines you as you are, and, when resolving, he allows you, and not someone else, so that when he says: “Forgive and forgive the penitent for the same sins he committed,” there is nothing left in you that does not fit these words. Those who do well are those who, preparing for confession for the first time after a long stay in sins, find the opportunity to first talk with their spiritual father and tell him the whole story of their sinful life. There is no danger of forgetting or missing anything in the confusion during confession. You should take care in every possible way to fully reveal your sins. The Lord gave the power to permit not unconditionally, but under the condition of repentance and confession. If this is not done, then it may happen that when the spiritual father says: “I forgive and permit,” the Lord will say: “But I condemn.” Now the confession is over. The spiritual father raises the stole, covers it with the head of the penitent and, holding his hand on it, pronounces permission for all sins, sealing it with the sign of the cross along the head. What is happening at this moment in the soul is known to everyone who has sincerely repented. Streams of grace from the head spill into the heart and fill it with joy. This is not from people - neither from the repentant, nor from the one who resolves: this is the secret of the Lord, the Healer and Soother of souls... It happens that in others some Divine word is clearly heard in their hearts to strengthen and inspire them for future work. This is, as it were, a spiritual weapon handed over from Christ the Savior to a person who is now joining the ranks of those at war under His sign. Whoever has been honored to hear such a word, let him keep it later as soothing and inspiring; soothing, because it is clear that confession was accepted when the Lord was pleased to enter into a conversation, as it were, with the repentant, inspiring, because in the hour of temptation one only has to remember it, and where will the strength come from!.. How do warriors in battle inspire themselves? – That word from the commander’s speech that had a stronger effect. So it is here. Thus everything ends... All that remains is to fall to God in feelings of gratitude for His ineffable mercies and kiss the cross and the Gospel as a sign of the vow - to walk steadily along the path indicated in the Gospel, with self-crucifixion, to follow Christ the Savior, as described in the Gospel, under His good yoke, now only taken upon oneself. Having done this, go in peace with the intention of certainly acting as you promised, remembering that from now on the judgment against you will be from your words. You made a vow - keep it; sealed it with the Sacrament - all the more be faithful to it, so as not to fall again into the category of those who trample on grace. Your spiritual father will impose penance on you, accept it with joy. And if the spiritual father did not impose it, then ask him to impose it. This will not only be a parting word for you on the good path that you are embarking on, but also protection and cover from third-party hostile actions against you in the new order of your life. Here is what His Holiness the Patriarch of Constantinople writes about this 23 in his “Response to the Lutherans”: “We accompany the remission of sins with penances for many good reasons. Firstly, in order for the sinner, through voluntary suffering here, to be freed from grave involuntary punishment there, in another life, for the Lord is not appeased by anything so much as suffering, and especially voluntary suffering. That is why Saint Gregory says that tears are rewarded with philanthropy. Secondly, in order to destroy in the sinner those passionate lusts of the flesh that give rise to sin, for we know that the opposite is cured by the opposite. Thirdly, so that penance serves as a kind of bond or bridle for the soul and does not allow it to again take up the same vicious deeds from which it is only just being cleansed. Fourthly, in order to accustom one to work and patience, for virtue is a matter of work. Fifthly, in order for us to see and know whether the penitent has completely hated sin” 24. Whoever goes through this entire course of spiritual healing, as he should, and, most importantly, confesses his sins without concealment, returns from the house of God, just as the guilty return from the place of justice, who, instead of being sentenced to death, heard there an announcement of pardon and oblivion of their crimes, return with the deepest feeling of gratitude to the Savior of our souls, with a firm determination to devote the rest of their lives to Him and the fulfillment of His commandments, with extreme disgust from all previous sins and an uncontrollable desire to erase all traces of the previous bad life. The one who receives permission feels within himself that he is not idle, that he has been visited by some special force. Divine grace, which until now had only acted on him from the outside to help him in victory over himself, now with the words: “I forgive and permit,” entered inside, dissolved with his spirit and filled him with fiery and swiftness, with which he now goes to work and to do his work until the evening of his life. B. The penitent begins the Sacrament of Holy Communion In the parable of the prodigal son, the father, having received his son returning to him with repentance, after falling on his neck and kissing him as a sign of forgiveness, ordered him to be clothed and to prepare a bright and joyful supper. The parent’s heart was not satisfied with forgiveness; it more decisively wants to assure the son of its reconciliation with him and more strongly express the joy of meeting with him after such a sad parting. Fatherly love gives what filial hope did not expect. What sinner could expect anything more after receiving forgiveness? And so, however, he is also invited to the Lord’s Supper, where the Lord Himself gives him His Flesh to eat and His Blood to drink. This is the crown of generosity towards the converted sinner and, however, not an excess, but an essential necessity for reunification with the Lord. Christian life is life in the Lord Jesus Christ. He who believes puts on Christ and lives by Him. The fallen after baptism loses this grace; rising from the fall and returning to the Lord, he again needs to be vouchsafed it - and he is vouchsafed in holy communion. “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him,” says the Lord (John 6:56). Here in the repentant is the beginning of life in Christ Jesus. The Lord said that He is the vine, and those who believe in Him are the branches (see: John 15:5). A branch does not live unless it is on the vine; so believers do not live if not in the Lord. There is no true life anywhere except in this vine. What's not on it is dead. Therefore, whoever wants to live truly must be grafted into it, receive life juices from it and live, feeding on them. Grafting is accomplished in holy communion: here the Christian becomes one with the Lord. When the Lord led only a sinner to complete repentance, he only pushed at the door of the heart; when they open with contrition and repentance, He enters inside and sups with the communicant. Now man is born again. His life begins in a completely new way. Life cannot continue without food, and, moreover, food that is akin to oneself. And this kind of food is the Body and Blood of the Lord. He Himself said: “For My Flesh is truly meat, and My Blood is truly beer” (John 6:55). Those who have begun a new life should nourish this life with them. Moreover, it is necessary to taste this food at first, during the first, so to speak, movements of your new life. They say that the first food has an influence on the nature of bodily life and then constitutes a constant need for the body. What should be the character of life for a repentant person? Life about Christ Jesus our Lord. What should constitute his constant need? The need to communicate with the Lord. Let him hasten in the first movements of this life to taste the Body and Blood of Christ in order to lay, so to speak, the foundation of a life consistent with Christ, and to generate a living need for constant communion with Him through this tasting. The one who eats, having felt the sweetness of this heavenly manna, can no longer help but hunger and thirst for more and more of this tasting. So, having received pardon and forgiveness in repentance, proceed to holy communion, for the complete revival of your inner man. There is no need to prescribe special rules for preparing for this. The one who has repented already has everything he needs, and he naturally moves on to communion. He who has mourned his sins and confessed is ready to begin this great Sacrament. And the Apostle prescribes nothing more; he only says: “Let him tempt... himself, and let him eat of the bread, and let him drink of the cup” (1 Cor. 11:28). You can say: have what you have, or don’t lose what you have, and that’s enough. According to our established order, not much time passes after confession until communion: for the most part only evening, morning and Liturgy. At these moments, care must be taken to preserve the good mood brought from church after confession and apply it to communion with the Lord in holy communion. Keep your attention undistracted and your heart serene. Beware of distraction and confused worries and, detaching yourself from everything, enter into yourself and remain with one thought about the Lord, who is about to come to you. Eliminate all movement of thought and, contemplating the one Lord, pray to Him with undistracted heartfelt prayer. If the thought cannot remain in this one thing, give it something to do with thinking about communion itself, and so that it does not wander too much, bind it with the words of the Lord and the holy Apostles about this Sacrament. Reflecting on any saying of the Lord or the holy Apostles, extract edification from them and dispose yourself to contrite prayer. When prayer comes, fall before the Lord and do not give up on prayer as long as there is prayer. Spend the evening in these activities until sleep closes your eyes. The morning will come. As soon as you come to your senses, waking up, first of all, revive the consciousness of the greatness of the day that has come for you. But don’t fuss, don’t have a lot of fun, paying attention only to what has to be with you and in you. Watch out! The enemy will tempt you in every possible way to put the soul in an unkind state, trying to either dispel thoughts, or create concern about something, or dissatisfaction with something, or arouse displeasure against someone. Pay attention to yourself, praying to the Lord, and you will avoid these stumbling blocks. Having entered the church, feel as if you were in the upper room of Zion, where the Lord gave communion to the holy Apostles, and listen more than ever to what you sing and read, directing everything to the thought that it is the Lord Himself who is preparing a saving supper for you. At the same time, kindle faith in the real presence of the Lord and Savior Himself in the Holy Mysteries. Proceeding from this faith and contemplating the Lord Himself, already as if coming to you, cry out in self-abasement: “... I am not worthy, so that you may come under my roof” (Matthew 8:8). Move from self-abasement to filial fear, which does not revoke, but brings reverent sobriety. since the Lord Himself both invites and commands you to approach, be ready to approach confidently, with desire and thirst, like “trees for springs of water” (Ps. 41:2), and tea with confidence to accept the Lord Himself, and with Him all the treasures of life hidden in Him. From this aspiration, which will not put you to shame, turning again to yourself, in readiness to meet the Lord, warm up your heartfelt contrition more strongly and repeat the promise to turn away from sin, even if you have to die for it. Try to stand through the entire Liturgy, moving from one of these feelings to another, and in this good mood, finally approach the Cup of the Lord, having seen it, give worship to the Lord coming to you and, opening your lips and heart, accept Him, humbly and reverently crying out with the Apostle Thomas: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20, 28). Glory to You, God! Glory to You, God! Glory to You, God! Having approached the Chalice of the Lord with such a disposition and departing from it, you will feel in your heart: “truly the word... Participating in Divine graces, I am not one, but with You, my Christ, the Trisunar Light, enlightening the world.” From now on you begin to carry Christ within you. Try diligently to calm Him down in every possible way and keep Him within yourself. If Christ is in you, who can be against?.. And you can do everything else through the Lord who strengthens you. This completes the formation of spiritual life in a Christian man, who, after the Fall, again turns to pleasing God. Here's the whole procedure! It is presented here in the form of a long story in order to see more clearly all the turns that the convert should desire in the interaction of freedom and grace. Everything that has been said happens to everyone who applies, but how and to what extent depends on the personalities and circumstances of each person. For others, the whole conversion is completed in a few minutes, and yet he is excited, repents and rises to determination. Spiritual phenomena are instantaneous. However, examples of this kind of conversion are very rare; For the most part, the entire conversion occurs not suddenly, but gradually. Although the most internal changes are instantaneous, they are not always achieved suddenly, but sometimes after quite a long time of working on oneself. For others, therefore, complete conversion continues for years. The main points at which stagnation occurs are those where self-love should suffer, when overcoming, for example, obstacles or causative agents of sin, during confession, etc. The last state to which one must reach is complete renunciation from everything and surrender of oneself to the Lord. From this moment a complete, truly Christian life begins, because then a person is at his goal - hidden in God. It all depends on the zeal with which one takes on oneself, and the conviction that whatever is necessary must be done - now, later, but it is necessary: ​​it’s better now - and it begins to work, and is soon established. And to be established is the main point of conversion. Blessed; June 15 – Ed. Murina; August 28 – Ed. Ermopolsky; September 6 – Ed. The most beautiful examples of this kind are found in St. Tikhon. He seems to have understood more deeply than anyone else that the best use of the gift of writing and speaking is to use it to admonish and awaken sinners from sleep. This is what almost every article of his leads to. Every church sermon and every conversation should be the same. With all this, it is in no way superfluous to have soul-saving books at hand, in which all the subjects about which one should reason with oneself would be clearly and powerfully revealed. In this regard, the articles on sin, on blindness, on forgiveness for the unrepentant, and cell letters are invaluable in the writings of St. Tikhon. As a guide to this very reasoning with oneself, a collection of patristic writings is being published, under the title: “Rise up to sleep...” chasing, pursuing - Ed. hesitates, hesitates - Ed. Christian reading. 1842. Part 1. P.244. You might be interested in: