Часть 2. В неделю блудного сына

On the week of the Prodigal Son (the Church wants to lead us to inspired determination, leaving sin, to follow the right path to the Heavenly Father) Last Sunday, the Holy Church taught us the humble feelings of repentance, by which the mercy of God is attracted; Now she wants to lead us to inspired determination, leaving sin, to follow the right path to the Heavenly Father. For this reason, in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), on the one hand, it depicts the sorrowful state of the sinner in falling away from God, on the other, the joy and peace into which the repentant is accepted by the Heavenly Father. Let us follow this sinner through his fall and rebellion. Few of us who are present here will not find our own history in it, in any way - light or dark. Return your thoughts to the time last year when we fasted, confessed and partook of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. What a blissful state our soul was in then! How brightly everything seemed to her: both in herself, and around her, and above herself, and in the distance of the past, and in the depths of the future! What silence reigned in the region of the heart! What order has come in life, what sedateness in plans and strength in the execution of good intentions! What a readiness to seek the One God and walk steadily along the path of God’s commandments! It seemed to us that there was no one more blessed than us, and we said to ourselves: “We will never change the good life we ​​have now begun, so as never to lose this joy and always belong to the Heavenly Father, the touch of whose protective right hand our heart felt so strongly at that time.” How truly blessed are those who have in fact maintained, although not fully, these good dispositions and conscientious promises! But are they all like that? Haven't most of us repeated the story of the prodigal? Remember!.. The intelligible and calming fast has passed and the bright holidays have arrived; behind them came the blooming and smiling season. We allowed ourselves a small privilege, like some kind of right of rest, after maintaining the feat of the strict life that we had led until then. It never even occurred to us to completely indulge in pleasures. The first time we only wanted to take a walk once, without thinking about the future. But this first entertainment left a noticeable mark on the soul and rather shook the pious order that had been established. The zeal for a strict life weakened and the thought often ran back to the innocent pleasure tasted. Other of the prescribed pious activities are omitted, although not without note, but also without due contrition. Now the opportunity has presented itself, and we have fun and joy again. Here we consoled ourselves more boldly; and if good thoughts came to calm us down, we rejected them with impudence as timeless. The fruit of this was darkness and confusion. We felt how difficult and shy the rule of pious life that we had accepted was; and we often thought about whether to quit; The favorable time will come, we will begin to work for God again, but now we can ease up. And relaxation after relaxation began! Meanwhile, the usual passion raised its head and began its conversations with the heart. Like acquaintances, we soon got along again! There was no longer any resistance to passionate thoughts. Indulgence was indulged in both objects and deeds of passion. Congratulations shook the will. Frequent repetitions of this within gave rise to a tendency to return to the former; there was a contraction with sin - and the inner fall took place! An opportunity presented itself - and the fall was already accomplished. Then fall after fall - and everything, inside and outside, returned to its former sinful mood. The moral breakdown was complete; and we became like the prodigal son, when he, having squandered everything away from his father, tended pigs and ate their food. You who have been subjected to this misfortune, compare what is now in you with what was, grieve and cry! How everything was bright, but now there is darkness all around: all the pure concepts and saving truths of God seem to have been stolen and do not come to mind, but when they do come, they seem very indistinct. How joyful it was for us to be present in church, but now everything that is churchy emanates coldness; Then we didn’t want to go because of the sacred rites, but now we are running away from them. Our external state has not changed, perhaps; but inside, melancholy and tightness sharpen the heart. And no amount of joy and pleasure can satisfy this joyless languor within! The fallen one knows and experiences all this, and perhaps knows and experiences more than what the descriptive word of an outside observer can say. But, poor soul! Will you really surrender yourself irrevocably into the hands of your fall? And, having been jealous of the fall of the prodigal, are you not jealous of imitating him in the uprising? Come to your senses! Look at the desolation there, the lack of everything and the disorder! Is this the beauty with which you are adorned in creation and with which the Lord, your Redeemer, has already adorned you? Do you, who bears the image of God, grovel like that and wallow in sewage? Resurrect your dignity in thought and strive to restore it! Don’t look at the fact that your external relationships are correct. It is not this that is dear, but your eternal relationship with God and His saints. What are they like?! The thought of God strikes with fear, but not with the fear of a son, but with the fear of a criminal. Is this how it should be with us, children of God?! Place yourself in the host of Angels and Saints. Can you stand among them? Of course not. But is this how it should be for you and me, called to be fellow saints and close to God? What then? Will you stay like that and not be jealous of putting these broken relationships in order?! Hurry up or you will die! Now and tomorrow is death. With the closing of our eyes, the doors of God's mercy will close for us, if we do not take care to enter them first. And then what? ABOUT! There’s not even a word to express that misfortune! Don't put it off! The favorable time of holy fasting is approaching. From now on, set the intention to use it for salvation and prepare for it. Move yourself in every possible way and irritate the dormant zeal for salvation in all the ways that are left to your freedom by the all-arranging grace of God. And the Lord is “near” (Ps. 119:151)! He is only waiting for you to say: “I have risen, I am coming!” (Luke 15:18). And before you approach Him, He will meet you and embrace you in the Fatherly embrace of His love. Look how many His servants already live in His house, serving Him! And among them there are so many who fell in a fall similar to yours! Look: here is Magdalene, here is Zacchaeus, here is Mary of Egypt, here is Pelageya and others, of whom there is no number. Don’t despair, but don’t delay either. The Lord will not remember your iniquities, and for the joy of your return, which will rejoice all of Heaven, He will return to you everything that you have lost. You know all this yourself. I have already experienced the sweetness of the uprising, its conveniences and comforting fruits. You have the misfortune of falling again; hasten to make yourself happy with a new uprising. No matter how much someone falls, the Lord will lovingly accept him when he rises. But if he abandons himself and happily dooms himself to wallow in the mire of sin, the Lord will also abandon him; and who knows, will he remember when?! Arouse this memory of God about you by your concern for the uprising, and He will come and Himself will raise you up; He will give you His all-powerful hand and draw you out of the depths in which you are mired. Do not put off taking advantage of the measure of God’s patience that still remains for you and use everything to inspire yourself to the work of rebellion. Gather around your heart all the stimulating truths - both from heaven and from earth, both from the present and from the future - so that you can finally rise to the decision to say: “I have risen, I am coming!” And then get up and go! Go to the Heavenly Father, Who is waiting for you, and not only waiting, but also seeking, and taking all measures to ensure your conversion, expressing readiness to be your benefactor in this difficult and decisive matter for you. Let us now wish this mutually to each other, whether we are in a great or a small fall, we will wish and compel each other, so that not individually, but all together, we may return to the Father and become one with Him, and His whole House, and the whole Kingdom of those who are saved, blessed and having to be blessed forever. Amen. On the week of the Prodigal Son (which means awakening from the sleep of sin) The parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), which you have now heard in the Gospel, is, perhaps, a living story of more than one of us present here. Remember the last post! How we settled down, how we began to fast, how we repented, received permission and partook of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. For the sake of our repentance and promise to live properly, the Heavenly Father gave us the part of our grace-filled inheritance awarded by His goodness. It was good for us in the quiet and bright house of the Father! But then spring came, and entertainment and amusements began. Attention was scattered, and the jealousy of the spirit faded and faded. Then came the fall, perhaps sudden at first; followed by the second, third and so on. The soul hardened; concepts have become darkened; feelings and desires have become coarser. And by now, how many of them are there who are completely like the prodigal son, impoverished and perishing from hunger? But if we imitated the prodigal son in the fall, we will be zealous to imitate him in the uprising. We, like him, squandered our blessed wealth; Let us now hasten, like him, to return again to the arms of the Heavenly Father, always stretched out to receive us. A suitable post has been appointed for this purpose. The parable of the prodigal is read now in order to remind us in advance of the matter of fasting and to predispose us to construct in our minds the entire path of ascension to the Lord, from Whom we have departed. Let us learn this from the prodigal son. How did the return procession of the prodigal to his father begin? Because he came to his senses. This is the first step for everyone in moving from sin to God; one might say, not yet a step, but only the beginning of the procession, the point of departure. Sin plunges the soul into a sleep of self-forgetfulness, insensibility and carelessness. And the sinner sleeps deeply! But just as a sleeping person must be awakened so that he gets up and goes, so a sinner must be awakened from the sleep of sin, so that, having awakened, he sees the danger of his situation and rises to the resolve to get up and go to the Lord. For this purpose, exciting voices are heard from everywhere around us. And conscience, and the word of God, and the word of the fathers, and the order of the Holy Church, and the order of God’s creation, and happy circumstances, and unhappy circumstances - everything awakens, everything says to the sinner who has been put to sleep: “Rise up, sleep!” Arise...and Christ will sanctify you” (Eph. 5:14). What will fasting tell us, that Lenten singing and reading, that the very gospel of that time, if not the same word: “Arise, sleep, and rise from the dead” (Eph. 5:14). It is the Spirit of God itself that excites, penetrating into the human spirit. But we also need to disturb and force ourselves, for without us the Spirit of God will not produce anything in us. Pray and ask the Lord for excitement, but don’t sit with your head down and your hands folded; irritate within yourself the spirit of concern for your salvation and the glory of God. Do the opposite of what sin has done to you. Just as a thick fog, having settled, hides all objects from our eyes, so sin puts a veil over the eyes of our mind and hides from it all the objects that it must constantly see and walk in vision of them. Our spirit was created for God and the Divine order of things, in the contemplation of which it must abide and in it, as in an atmosphere, walk and act. God, who is worshiped in the Trinity, who created the world and provides for it, saves us in the Lord Jesus Christ, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, in His Holy Church, for the sake of faith and life by faith, cleansing us in this life, so that for the small work here in another life he may calm us with eternal peace. This is Divine order! Our spirit must always remain attentive to this Divine order in order to live and act in accordance with it. But sin, having arrived, pulls everything out of attention and carries it away into a completely opposite order of things, in which God is forgotten, the grace-filled Economy is forgotten, death, the Future Life and righteous reward are forgotten. All that is seen is the blessings that lie ahead and a sensual life that does not expect an end to itself. It is into this fog that a ray of God’s grace descends to awaken the sinner, shake off the blindness from his eyes and, as if taking him by the hand, bring him to the light of the consciousness of God’s order. But you, who lead this order, take action yourself right away. Gather your attention and go through this order - all of it, from beginning to end. Remember how God, having created everything with a word, distinguished you from all creatures and honored you with His image; how you fell and angered God and how you were punished by expulsion from paradise; how God, taking pity on you, promised to send the Savior; how the Lord and Savior came and saved you by His death on the cross; how he bestowed the grace of the Holy Spirit and so on; how you trampled all this with your careless, lawless life; how death awaits you from day to day, and after death judgment and reward for your evil deeds. Go through this entire order with your mind, or go through it more than once, but just do what you go through, as much strength and time as you have. When you do this with zeal, perhaps fear for yourself will seed in your heart, and then concern for your salvation. This same feeling, once born, will bring into tension your spiritual powers, weakened by negligence, and will give birth not only to thoughts, but also to the desire to finally stop wallowing in sin and turn to the Lord. This is what it means to come to one’s senses, or to awaken from a sinful sleep: to enter with attention, consciousness and feeling into the Divine order and through this to feel the danger of being in sin, to take care to get out of it. What did the depraved young man say when he came to his senses? “As long as my father’s hired servants are starving for bread, I am perishing with hunger!” (Luke 15:17). This is the same as: “How good it is for my father and how bad it is for me, who ran away from my father! How bright, comforting and blessed is the Divine order and life in it, determined for me; and how bad it is for me, living in sin, having voluntarily left that order and become alienated from it! What need do I have to slander and destroy myself? Rising, am I going? I’ll give up sin and start living according to God!” “Rising, I go” (Luke 15:18) is the second step in the procession from sin to God! In the first, the sinner comes only to the thought and desire to leave sin, but here he decides to leave it by deed. There he just woke up from a sinful sleep, but here he gets up and wants to go. Whoever is awakened can fall asleep again without getting up. Someone will be woken up, and he will immediately fall asleep again; they will wake him up again, and he will fall asleep again. Someone wakes up and knows that he needs to get up, but he lies there - he doesn’t sleep and doesn’t get up. All this is repeated in different forms in spiritual life. The sinner wakes up and again indulges in the sleep of carelessness, wakes up again and falls asleep again. Others feel the compulsion to leave sin, but still remain in sin, as if not having the courage to break away from it. That is why, even after seeing and feeling the need to improve and change your life, you should not think that everything has already been done. No! It is also necessary to arouse in oneself an intense determination to immediately part with sin and the entire order of sinful life and begin to live according to all the conscious conditions of a godly life. And this is the main thing in turning to God, or this is the turning itself. Here a turning point in the will occurs, after which it no longer wants sin, abhors it, turns away from it and, on the contrary, strains to love and do only good, pleasing to God. It is difficult to determine how this turning point occurs. It takes place in the sanctuary of our spirit, hidden and secret, as all the germs of life are hidden. And here, as in the first step, everything is accomplished by grace, but again not without us. How and what does grace do? Who will explore her wise dispensations? And what we need to do, we will define in short words. The thought of salvation came, you felt the danger of remaining in sin, you had the intention of correcting yourself - be careful, do not let these movements of your soul pass without attention! This is a gift of grace - do not despise or reject it. Whatever you are told to do, do not put it off until tomorrow. Now enter into yourself and begin to carefully calculate and consider everything that you must therefore do with yourself and for yourself. Then begin to walk in that order in which victorious grace is introduced and warmed up: keep fast, go to church, do alms, stop everyday affairs and worries for a while, retire, read if you can, and reflect, and most importantly, pray - pray with your mind and heart and fall before the Lord, painfully calling for help to overcome yourself. If you do this with all sincerity, conscientiousness and patience, the Lord will finally look upon your quest, overshadow you with His grace, soften your heart and give you the strength to break the stubbornness of your will. There are many bonds that prevent the soul from rising and going to the Lord. In addition to vicious passions and inclinations, the order of external life, formed under the influence of sin, habits, mutual relationships, fear for life and well-being constitute a strong-walled prison in which the sinful soul languishes! But all this melts away from the fire of God’s grace. At this moment, a person sacrifices everything to God and is ready for anything - to the point of his stomach, if only God would forgive and accept him to Himself, even if it were the last of all those working in His House. What the prodigal said, everyone who turns to God with determination says: “Rising up, I go... and say to my Father: Father! Those who have sinned in Heaven and before You, and are no longer worthy to be called Your Son, make me as one of Your hired servants!” (Luke 15:18–19). The moment of determination is the main moment of conversion. What follows after that is already the fulfillment of what a person intends to do during it. If the young man had not reached this determination, he would not have gone to his father, and having not gone, he would have grieved only about his poverty and starvation and, perhaps, having reconciled himself with his bitter situation, he would have remained in it forever. But the Lord helped him: he got up and went to his father, told him what he had planned to say, and was mercifully greeted, forgiven, clothed, shod, fed, and accepted again into sonship. And there was great joy throughout the whole house! This is the end of the prodigal's determination to return to his father. In the conversion of a sinner, everything signified by this is fulfilled when he, having decided to correct himself, confesses his sins and, having received permission from his spiritual father and forgiveness from the Lord, partakes of the Holy, Most Pure and Life-giving Mysteries of Christ, for the remission of sins and into Eternal Life. And this is a consequence of the sinner’s determination to go to the Lord, but it is not an appendage to the work of conversion, but is its necessary completion, is the imprinting of what was formed in the heart in moments of determination. I remind you of this so that no one would think of limiting himself to one internal appeal to God, withdrawing from the Divine Mysteries. Such an approach will be unreliable and will not lead to anything good. If a blacksmith, after making a knife, does not properly harden it, this knife remains soft and is good for nothing. In the same way, a person who has decided to leave sin and begin to work for the Lord, if he does not accept Confession and Holy Communion, does not have the strength and courage for any good: he is lethargic, misses opportunities for good, and always almost gives in to obstacles. And this means almost the same as remaining in the same position as before, or stopping halfway. He who made up his mind stood up. But just as, having risen, they dress and prepare themselves for their work, so the one who has decided must put on and arm himself with the grace of Confession and Holy Communion, so that with strength, in the proper armor, he can go out to the works of pleasing God and salvation. When the night passes and the day comes, “a man goes out to his work and to his work until the evening” (Ps. 103:23), so when the night of sin passes and the day of grace in Christ Jesus dawns in the soul, he who is blessed goes out to his work and works until the evening of his life for the Lord, hastening and confirming his good undertakings with My favor and blessing. This, brethren, is the path of turning from sin to God and pleasing God! “Rise up,” you who are “asleep,” and “rise from the dead, and Christ will sanctify you” (Eph. 5:14)! If you find it difficult now, at least prepare for fasting, when the Apostle addresses you with the word: “Behold, now is the time favorable! Behold, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Cor. 6:2). Amen. On the week of the prodigal son (about the attempts and tricks of the enemy seeking to devour every zealot of goodness and purity) Paying attention to the beginning of the story of the prodigal (Luke 15:11-32), you see with amazement how little the descent of the young, inexperienced son began and into what a ditch of destruction it was brought down. The first desire is framed with such plausibility that nothing bad and harmful, it seems, could be expected from it. And the father seemed not to see the trouble; It’s true, and the son didn’t expect to end the way it did. It is good that at last the grace of God sought the lost one. Otherwise, having lived here in a bitter lot, he would have passed on to the next world not to joy, but to suffer righteous reward for a life spent badly and not corrected by repentance. This is how every fall into sin occurs and every person falls from a good state into a bad, confused, passionate state. It always begins with smallness, and plausible smallness: the enemy knows that sin in its present form is disgusting, and therefore does not directly lead into it, but begins from afar, always almost covering up his first attacks (attacks) with the appearance of good. Then, little by little, it infuses impurity of thoughts and heat of desires, shaking the strength of the will that resists it and weakening its supports, until it forms a hidden inclination to sin in the heart, after which only chance - and the sin is ready. And there is sin after sin and a repetition of the bitter fate of the prodigal in the fall! Keeping this in mind, of course, each of us will automatically impose upon ourselves the obligation to strictly fulfill the commandment of the Apostle: “Be sober and watchful” (1 Pet. 5:8)! Look within yourself and around you and notice the detours and attempts of the enemy, who seeks to devour every zealot of goodness and purity. The first trick of the enemy is the indignation of thoughts. Usually, at first he instills only one thought, so, however, that it touches the heart and settles in it. As soon as he succeeds in this, immediately around this insignificant, as if not always bad, thought he collects a whole cloud of side thoughts and thus clouds the hitherto pure and bright atmosphere of the soul. By this the enemy prepares for himself a place and space for action and soon begins to act in this fog, wounding the soul with passionate attacks that leave wound after wound in the soul. These wounds then envelop the soul on all sides and finally merge into one painful scab of a passionate, sinful mood. Here the same thing happens, as if someone in the darkness received wounds on the body with a thin needle tip, one, two, three, and so on throughout the body. Each wound causes pain and leaves an ulcer, from which suppuration and a scab are formed, and there, scab by scab, the whole body becomes like one ulcer and one scab. So, notice: in a good state, thoughts are not troubled, and here the enemy cannot act, then his first job is to disturb thoughts. He outrages them through one, whom he chooses as a horse breeder, judging by the character and occupation of the person. As soon as he manages to plant such a thought in his heart, a storm of thoughts immediately arises, inner peace and silence disappear. This is where the enemy comes close to the heart and begins to little by little arouse passionate movements in it. This is already the second step! Look! If you notice this, stop, don’t go further, because anything further is already very bad. You may not have time to notice the confusion of thoughts, because we are unwittingly busy with many things; but the movement of passion is impossible not to notice, especially when the intention is still intact not to succumb to it. If this is difficult for anyone, I will indicate a more tangible sign. Note: as soon as, as a result of being carried away by one thought, and then confused by many, a cooling of the heart occurs, know that wounds and scabs have already appeared in the heart, although they are not yet completely noticeable. Cooling of the heart to please God is more than half the way to a fall, while others say that it is a sure fall. After this, you see for yourself what the matter is on our part: do not allow the first captivating thought to reach your heart and do not combine with it. If you reject your first thought, you will destroy all the machinations of the enemy and cut off any opportunity for him to act on you and tempt you. Hence this is the law of salvation: a tempting thought has come - drive it away; he came again - drive him away again; another and a third came - and drive them away. So, drive away and reject every tempting thought with anger and annoyance at it. And you will be completely free from falls. The enemy will keep tempting you, he will be angry with you, but if you don’t stop acting like this, he won’t do anything to you. On the contrary, if you give in to his first attraction, he will be able to twist your head. Our foremother, if she had immediately driven away the tempting serpent, would not have fallen. Otherwise, she started talking to him... further and further... she got entangled in the enemy’s net and fell. So is every fall! They tell about one great ascetic from the ancients. He lived in the desert, alone, and reached such perfection that an Angel brought him one piece of white bread every evening for food. The enemy gave him the idea that he was already so perfect that he had nothing to fear from falling and therefore had to watch himself too strictly. The elder was not careful and allowed his heart to be combined with this thought. But as soon as he was united, his thoughts began to worry, various memories of faces, things and human deeds began to creep into his head; on the first day, not so much, because he was still driving them away - enough, however, to darken his soul. That’s why, when he stood up for prayer in the evening, he did it no longer with such peace and not with such aspiration of his heart towards God as before. Although for this reason he found the bread at his meal no longer white, but black and stale, and was amazed by this, he ate it, however, without searching for the reason, and went to bed at the usual time. It was then that the enemy fell upon him with the full weight of his darkness. The noise from the thoughts in his head was like the noise from mill wheels, and there were movements in his body that he did not even remember when they happened. And I got up, and walked, and sat - nothing helped. I spent the whole night like that. The next day the soul feels like it’s broken; the prayer rule was completed reluctantly and without zeal; there was no disposition towards God-thinking; Heaven and the Celestial were closed in consciousness; worldly thoughts were persistently crowded in the head and caused various movements and sympathies of the heart. The elder himself did not understand what was happening to him, and remained in the same position until the evening. But in the evening he found on the table no longer bread, but dried out pieces of black bread. He was horrified, sighed, but went to bed just as embarrassed. This night was even gloomier than the first and the day after was even more confused and upset. The prayer rule was carried out haphazardly, without any attention; thoughts were not at all occupied with what the language was reading. At the meal he found only crumbs mixed with rubbish and dust. Then the night is even more terrible and confused than the first. It ended with the elder leaving the desert and rushing into the world. You see how little it began and how far it has come! The Lord did not allow this old man to fall completely and arranged for him to admonish himself, repent and return to his former place, just like the return of the prodigal son to his father. But none of those who fall should reassure themselves with this, but just look at how their falls began, and this began to be prevented. The Lord returned them, like many others, to the good path again, but perhaps He will deliver you into the hands of your fall, not out of anger, but out of impossibility of helping you, because you will be badly broken. But this is alas and grief, which God forbid anyone should experience. I am leading all this to impress upon you that with sinful thoughts that can lead to sin, no matter how insignificant they may be at first, it is better not to have any agreement, but to immediately reflect them and drive them away; and if they have already managed to entangle more or less, hasten to break the alliance with them without regret. Where should we go into this sea? The foremother was pure, but the enemy immediately led her astray; and what a perfect old man he was, but the enemy completely defeated him in three days. Why is this? Because they weren’t careful at the first step. Had they driven away the enemy in his first attack, nothing of what they experienced would have happened. It always has been and always will be. This happens between us too. Don’t get carried away by appearances and don’t listen to the enemy. Do you know the commandments? Hold on to them and measure your steps with them, but drive everything else away, and you will be safe from falling. Whoever “respects” the commandments “will not be ashamed” (Ps. 119:6). And the “youngest” corrects “his path” when he keeps them (Ps. 118:9). Whoever hides the “words” of the commandments “in his heart” will not sin (Ps. 119:11). Even if the “princes” of darkness plot his destruction, he is not afraid, for he is immersed in the “testimonies” (commandments) and “justifications” of God (Ps. 118:23–24). He who seeks the commandments walks “in breadth” (Ps. 119:45): you will not confuse him. Let temptations strike, but he will remember the “testimonies” and return his feet to the right “path” (Ps. 118:59). He is ready to meet them and is not embarrassed, for he is skilled at keeping the commandments (Ps. 119:60). He easily breaks the “bonds” of sinful thoughts, because he never forgets the Law of God (Ps. 118:61). The attacks of “proud” enemies are multiplying, but he “with all his heart” lies only in the commandments of God (Ps. 118:69). Sometimes his heart is “dampened” like “milk,” but he sobers it up with teaching in the Law of the Lord (Ps. 118:70). Enemies are waiting to destroy him, but he “commands” manages to outwit them (Ps. 119, 95, 98). Let there be many who “press” him, but since he “hated iniquity... but the law... loved”, then “many peace” overshadows him and there is no “temptation” for him (Ps. 118, 157, 163, 165). So, at the beginning I offered you the word of the Apostle: “Be sober and watchful” (1 Pet. 5:8). Now, at the end, if anyone asks: “What can you do when the enemy confuses you?”, I will add: “a lamp to your feet... and a light to your paths” (Ps. 119:105) let the Law of God be, and no confusion will harm you. Amen. You might be interested in: