24. Новогодние пожелания. Необходимость обновления и самоочищения. Это делает в нас ревность духовная

I congratulated you on the New Year in passing, and then it occurred to me to especially congratulate you on it and wish you something special. What exactly? So that you become the new girl. How's new? Just like any new dress: everything is in its place, no stains, no wrinkles, and it emanates freshness. This is what I wish for your soul. Your body, as they say about the dress, is fresh from the brand, completely new. But our soul comes into the world with the old, and if this old stuff is not taken away from it, it will remain old, without tasting the new. The old in the soul is vanity and passion. Throw away all that stuff and you'll be brand new. I’ll tell you one legend, and it will be clearer to you what’s going on here. Someone lived somewhere far away in the desert. His insides began to hurt: his lungs, or his heart, or his liver, or all together. Pain at least die. With nowhere to expect human help, I resorted to God with omnipotent prayer. The Lord heard. One night, falling asleep, he sees the following vision: two Angels came with knives, cut him open, took out the diseased parts, cleaned them, washed them and lubricated them with something. Then they put everything in its place, sprinkled it with something - and everything grew together, as if there were no cuts. Having woken up, the old man stood up completely healthy, as if he had never been sick, brand new, like a young man in the prime of his life. Do you see what I wish for you? So that everything in your soul is cleansed, the sick and old are thrown away, everything that is healthy and renewed is put in its place and sprinkled with living water. And you will become new, fresh, full of bright, joyful life. I told this story to one of those working on myself. After listening to her, he calmly cried out: “Oh, if only the Angels would come and do with my soul what they did with the body of that old man!” In this appeal one could hear both prayer and the desire to blame on others what should be done with one’s own labors. For even such wickedness is not alien to our hearts, that we are not averse to being good, but to work for it, we give up. Angels will not come to cleanse and heal your soul. There are also their instructions and admonitions, but you have to do everything yourself. All means, or tools, and healing instruments are given. Take it yourself and cut yourself where necessary, without any self-pity. No one else can do this. God Himself does not enter the sanctuary of the soul with His power, but graciously asks for entry. I’m not asking you how you decide: to clean yourself up or to blame everything on others. You haven't tackled this properly yet. But when you do, I prophesy to you that more than once a desire will come to you, and not just a fleeting desire: “Oh, if only the Angels would come and clean everything up!” And yet the Angels will not undertake this, even though they will be right there with you. The work of purification will have to be carried out by ourselves, without self-pity. Its producer in us is that life-giving jealousy that I wrote about last time. She is both a cutter and a knife, which works very well when sharpened by grace and guided by her own suggestions. She can be merciless when she enters the heart and cuts without listening to the cries of the one being cut. But with her, things move quickly and soon come to an end, because not everything is cutting. When everything is cut off, then jealousy is no longer a knife, but a guard and turns all its ferocity on the enemies of salvation, from whose pestering no one is free and whose shamelessness never leaves anyone dead. You can see for yourself that I started this speech in order to irritate your desire to more accurately determine whether you have such jealousy. For without it your spiritual work will not progress. Yes, when it is not there, it means that the spirit is sleeping, and when it is sleeping, there is nothing to talk about the spiritual. You might be interested in: