Слово 2. О благодарности Богу, с присовокуплением краткого изложения первоначальных учений

The gratitude of the receiver encourages the giver to give greater gifts than before. He who is ungrateful for little is also deceitful and unrighteous for more. He who is sick and knows his illness must seek treatment. He who is aware of his illness is close to his healing and will easily find it. The cruelty of the heart multiplies its illnesses; and if the patient resists the doctor, his torment increases. There is no unforgivable sin except unrepentant sin. And the gift does not remain without aggravation, unless there is gratitude for it. The part of the meaningless is small in his eyes. Always keep in mind those who surpass you in virtue, so that you can constantly see in yourself a deficiency against their measure; always keep in your mind the gravest sorrows of the grieving and embittered, so that you yourself can give due thanks for the small and insignificant sorrows that happen to you, and be able to endure them with joy. During your defeat, relaxation and laziness, bound and kept by the enemy in painful languor and in the grave work of sin, imagine in your heart the previous time of your diligence, how you cared about everything even to the smallest extent, which the feat showed. How you jealously resisted those who wanted to hinder your progress. Above all, think about the sighs with which you suffered over the small shortcomings that appeared in you from your negligence, and about how in all these cases you received a victorious crown. For with all such memories, your soul is awakened, as it were, from the depths, clothed in the flame of jealousy, as if rising from the dead from its drowning, elevated, and by ardent confrontation with the devil and sin returns to its primitive order. Remember the fall of the mighty and humble yourself in your virtues. Remember the grave falls of those who fell in ancient times and repented, as well as the height and honor that they were awarded after this, and you will take courage in your repentance. Pursue yourself, and your enemy will be driven away by your approach. Make peace with yourself, and heaven and earth will make peace with you. Strive to enter your inner cage and you will see the heavenly cage; because both are one and the same, and when you enter one, you see both. The ladder of this kingdom is inside you, hidden in your soul. Immerse yourself in yourself from sin and you will find there ascents along which you will be able to climb. Scripture has not explained to us what the things of the age to come are. But it simply taught us how we can get a feeling of enjoying them here, before natural change and departure from this world 61 . Although the Scripture, in order to arouse us to desire future blessings, depicted them under the names of things desired and glorious, pleasant and precious, when it says: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard” (1 Cor. 2:9) and so on, but by this it announced to us that future blessings are incomprehensible and have no resemblance to the blessings here. Spiritual pleasure is not the use of things that independently exist outside the soul of the recipient. Otherwise, what was said: “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) and: “Your kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10) will already mean that we have accepted the substance of something sensual within ourselves, as a guarantee of the pleasure contained in this. For it is necessary that the acquisition itself be like a pledge, and the whole like its parts. And what is said: as in a mirror (1 Cor. 13:12), although it does not indicate what exists independently, nevertheless means the acquisition of likeness. And if the testimony of those who interpreted the Scriptures is true that this very sensation is the mental action of the Holy Spirit, then it is already a part of that whole. Not the lover of virtue who strives to do good, but the one who joyfully accepts the misfortunes that follow. It is not a great thing for a person to endure sorrow for his virtue, just as it is not to waver in his mind in choosing his good will when the senses are seductively tickled. Any repentance, after the deprivation of freedom 62, is such that it neither exudes joy nor gives the right to a reward to those who have acquired it. Cover the sinner, if there is no harm to you from this: you will give him courage, and the mercy of your Master will support you. Strengthen the weak and sorrowful in heart with words and with everything that your hand can, and the Almighty Right Hand will strengthen you. With sorrowful hearts, be in communion with prayerful work and heartfelt condolences - and a source of mercy will be opened to your petitions. Constantly bother yourself with prayers before God in your heart, bearing a pure thought, filled with tenderness, and God will preserve your mind from unclean and nasty thoughts, so that God’s path does not reproach you. Constantly exercise yourself in meditation, reading the Divine Scriptures, with an accurate understanding of them, so that, with the idleness of your mind, your vision is not desecrated by other people's defilements of lewdness 63. Do not dare to tempt your mind with obscene thoughts or the sight of persons leading you into temptation, even when you think that you will not be overcome by this, because even the wise were darkened in this way and fell into foolishness. Do not hide the flame in your bosom, without strong sorrows of your flesh 64. Without training, it is difficult for youth to submit to the yoke of the holy. The beginning of darkening of the mind (when a sign of it begins to reveal itself in the soul) is first of all seen in laziness towards God’s service and prayer. For, if the soul does not first fall away from this, there is no other way to spiritual deception; when it is deprived of God's help, it conveniently falls into the hands of its opponents. And also, as soon as the soul becomes careless about deeds of virtue, it will certainly be carried away into the opposite. For the transition from any side is already the beginning of the opposite side. Doing good is caring for the spiritual, and not for the vain. Continually reveal your weakness before God, and you will not be tempted by strangers, as soon as you are left alone without your Intercessor. The activity of the godmother is twofold; According to the duality of nature, it is divided into two parts. One, consisting in enduring carnal sorrows 66 produced by the action of the irritable part of the soul, is what is called activity. And the other consists in the subtle work of the mind and in Divine meditation, as well as in staying in prayer, and so on; it is accomplished by the concupiscible part of the soul and is called contemplation. And one, i.e. activity, purifies, by the power of jealousy, the passionate part of the soul, and the second - the effectiveness of spiritual love, i.e. natural lust, which enlightens the intellectual part of the soul. Every person who, before perfect training in the first part, moves on to this, the second, attracted by its sweetness, not to mention its laziness, suffers wrath 67 because he did not first put to death his “bits” “even on the earth” (Col. 3:5), that is, he did not heal the weakness of his thoughts by patient exercise in making the reproach of the cross, but dared in his mind to dream about glory to the godmother. This is what was said by the ancient saints, that if the mind intends to ascend to the cross before its feelings, having been healed of weakness, become silent, then God’s wrath will befall it. This ascent to the cross, which brings wrath, does not happen in the first part of the suffering of sorrows, that is, the crucifixion of the flesh, but when a person enters into contemplation; and this is the second part, following the healing of the soul. Whose mind is defiled by shameful passions and who hastens to fill his mind with dreamy thoughts, his lips are blocked with punishment 68 because, without first purifying his mind with sorrows and without subduing carnal lusts, but relying on what the ear heard and what was written in ink, he rushed straight forward, to walk a path full of darkness, when he himself was blind in his eyes. For even those whose eyesight is sound, being filled with light and having acquired leaders of grace, are in danger day and night, while their eyes are full of tears, and they continue their service in prayer and weeping all day long, even night, because of the horrors that await them on the way and the terrible rapids and images of truth they encounter, which turn out to be mixed with the deceptive ghosts of it. They say: “What comes from God comes by itself, but you won’t even feel it.” This is true, but only if the place is clean and not defiled. If the apple of your soul’s eye is unclean, then do not dare to fix your gaze on the solar globe, lest you lose even this small ray, that is, simple faith, and humility, and heartfelt confession, and small deeds within your power, and not be cast out into the single region of spiritual beings, which is total darkness, that which is outside of God and is a semblance of hell, just as the one who was not I was ashamed to come to the wedding in unclean clothes. Through labor and self-preservation, purity of thoughts exudes, and purity of thoughts exudes the light of thinking. From here, by grace, the mind is guided to that over which the senses have no power, which they neither teach nor learn. Imagine that virtue is the body, contemplation is the soul, and both are one perfect person, united by a spirit of two parts, the sensual and the rational. And how impossible it is for the soul to come into being and be born without the perfect formation of the body with its members; Thus, it is impossible for the soul to come to the second contemplation, that is, to the spirit of revelation - to contemplation formed in falsehoods that receive the substance of the spiritual seed without committing acts of virtue; and this 69 is the abode of reasoning, which receives revelation. Contemplation is the feeling of the Divine mysteries hidden in things and in their causes. When you hear about moving away from the world, about leaving the world, about purity from everything in the world, then you must first understand and find out, but not with a common people’s concept, but with a purely rational one, what the name itself means: the world, from what differences this name is made up, and you will be able to find out about your soul, how far it is from the world and what is mixed with it from the world. The word “world” is a collective name that embraces the so-called passions. If a person did not know before what the world is, then he will not achieve knowledge by what members he is far from the world and by what means he is connected with it. There are many who have renounced the world in two or three members, and have refused to communicate with the world, and have thought of themselves that they have become alien to the world in their lives; because they did not understand and did not consider wisely that with only two members they died to the world, but their other members in the body live in the world. However, they were not able to recognize their passions in themselves; and since they did not recognize them, they did not care about their healing. According to speculative research, the composition of the collective name, which embraces individual passions, is also called the world. When we want to name passions at all, we call them peace; and when we want to distinguish them by the difference in their names, we call them passions. Passions are parts of the continuity of the world; and where passions cease, there the world began in its continuity. And the passions are the following: commitment to wealth, to collecting things; bodily pleasure, from which comes the passion of carnal lust; the desire for honor from which envy flows; desire to be in charge; arrogance at the splendor of power; desire to dress up and be liked; the search for human glory, which is the cause of rancor; fear for the body. Where these passions stop flowing, there the world died; and to the extent that some of these parts are missing there, to that extent the world remains outside, not acting with those parts of its composition, just as someone said about the saints that while they were still alive, they became dead, because, while living in the flesh, they did not live according to the flesh. And look at which of these parts you live; then you will know in what parts you live and in what parts you died to the world. When you know what the world is, then from the difference of all this you will understand both how you are connected with the world and how you have renounced it. And I will say briefly: the world is carnal living and the wisdom of the flesh. By the very fact that a person has extricated himself from this, it is known that he has come out of the world. And alienation from the world is recognized by these two signs: by the most excellent life and by the difference in the concepts of the mind itself. From this, finally, concepts about things arise in your thought, in which your thought wanders with its concepts. From them you will understand the measure of your life: whether your nature desires anything without violence, whether there are any indestructible vegetations in you or some that are produced only by chance; whether the mind has come to the consciousness of completely incorporeal concepts or whether it moves entirely in the material, and this material is passionate. For the seals of materialization of deeds, under which the mind involuntarily appears in everything it does, are virtues. In them, without weakness, he borrows for himself the reason for ardor and concentration of thoughts with a good goal to work physically, to exercise this ardor, if only this is done non-passionately. And see if the mind does not faint when it encounters these seals of secret thoughts, due to a better ardor for God, which usually cuts off vain remembrances 70 . These few signs shown in this chapter, instead of many books, will be enough to enlighten a person if he is silent and lives in seclusion. Fear for the body can be so strong in people that as a result they often remain unable to accomplish anything honorable and honorable. But when fear for the body is overshadowed by fear for the soul, then bodily fear faints before spiritual fear, like wax from the power of the fire that burns it. Glory to our God forever and ever! Amen. According to the Syriac text, the thought is different: “But it simply taught us that here, without changing our nature and changing place, we cannot receive feelings of bliss from them.” Of course, it is probably old age, when many types of temptations are inaccessible or lose their seductiveness, and, therefore, it is not necessary to overcome oneself and exercise free will in order to resist them. According to the ancient Slavic translation: “With alien obscene thoughts.” Proverbs 6:27: “Can a man take fire into his bosom, lest his robe be burned?” Bodily deprivation, inevitable in the fight against passions. He is held back by punishment. In the Syriac text, this entire passage (after the words “moves in the material”) reads like this: “This material direction of it is a passionate state, or an imprint of external activity. For the mind involuntarily also imagines those things through which it performs virtues, and by them is to a large extent stimulated to worry and to collect thoughts. For, even if the goal is directed towards good, the mind can still, due to lack of exercise, be active in the direction of the body, although not in a passionate way and until the secret influence of mental images prepares for it sorrow due to a stronger flame thanks to God, which usually cuts off vain memories. You might be interested in: