Слово 45. О порядке тонкой рассудительности

Always be attentive to yourself, beloved; and among your incessant affairs, consider the sorrows that you encounter, and the desolation of your abode, and the subtlety of your mind, along with the coarseness of your knowledge, and the long duration of your silence, along with many healings, that is, temptations brought by the true Doctor to the health of your inner man, and at other times by demons, sometimes by illnesses and bodily labors, and sometimes by the fearful thoughts of your soul, terrible memories of what will happen in the end 266, sometimes the instillation and obligation of grace of heartfelt warmth and sweet tears, and spiritual joy, and everything else, I will say this without multiplying words. Do you completely notice in all this that your ulcer has begun to heal and close, that is, have your passions begun to exhaust you? Make a sign, and constantly enter into yourself, and see: what passions, according to your observation, have become exhausted before you, which of them have disappeared and completely retreated from you, and which of them have begun to fall silent as a result of your mental health, and not as a result of the removal of what troubled you, and which ones have you learned to overcome with your mind, and not by depriving yourself of what serves as a reason for them? Pay attention also to whether you really see that in the midst of the festering of your ulcer, living flesh, that is, spiritual peace, began to grow. Which passions gradually and which rapidly compel and at what intervals? Are these passions physical, or mental, or complex and mixed? And do they stir up darkness in the memory, like the weak, or do they rise up with strength against the soul? And, moreover, in a sovereign or Tat 267 way? And how does the king of the senses, the mind, pay attention to them? And when they strain their strength and enter into battle, does he fight with them and render them powerless with his strength, or does he not even look at them and treat them as nothing? And which ones were erased from the former 268, and which ones were formed again? Passions are aroused either by some images, or by a feeling without images and memory without passionate movements and thoughts, and then they produce irritations. From all this one can also determine the degree of structure of the soul. The first 269 did not come into dispensation, because the soul still has to strive, although it reveals its strength against them, and the second reached the dispensation about which Scripture spoke, saying: “David sat in his house,” and God gave him rest “from all his enemies around” (2 Samuel 7:1). Understand this not about passion alone, but together with the natural passions, desire and irritability, and about the passion of love of glory, which depicts and mentally imagines faces and excites to lust and desire, and also about the passion of love of money, when the soul enters into communication with it secretly, and although it does not agree to enter into the act itself, it imagines in the mind images of objects to which the love of money is directed when collecting wealth, and makes the soul think about them and produce there is a desire in her to possess them, along with everything else. Not all passions fight by attacking thoughts. For there are passions that show only sorrow to the soul: negligence, despondency, sadness do not attack with the attack of thoughts and pleasure, but only impose heaviness on the soul. The strength of the soul is tested in victory over passions that wage war by attacking thoughts. And a person must have a subtle understanding of all this and know the signs, so that, with every step he takes, he is aware of where his soul has reached and in what country it has begun to walk; whether in the land of Canaan or beyond the Jordan. But pay attention to this too. Is the knowledge of the spiritual light sufficient to discern this, or does it discern this in darkness, or is it completely devoid of such an ability? Do you really find that the rational part of the soul has begun to purify itself? Does the floating of thoughts in the mind occur during the hour of prayer? What passion troubles the mind as it approaches prayer? Do you feel within yourself that the power of silence has enveloped your soul with meekness, silence and peace, which is born in an unusual way in the mind? Does the mind constantly admire, without the participation of the will, the concepts of the incorporeal, the explanation of which is not allowed to enter into the senses? Does joy suddenly flare up in you, with its incomparable pleasure making your tongue fall silent? Does a certain sweetness constantly flow from the heart and attract the mind completely? Does at times imperceptibly enter into the whole body a certain delight and joy, which the carnal language cannot express until everything earthly is considered dust and vanity with this remembrance? For this first pleasure flowing from the heart, sometimes at the hour of prayer, sometimes during reading, and sometimes also as a result of incessant teaching and prolonged meditation, warms the mind; and this last thing most often happens without all this, and many times during the sharing, and also often at night, when you are between sleep and awakening, as if sleeping and not sleeping, awake and not awake. But when a person finds this delight, beating throughout his whole body, then he thinks at that hour that the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing other than this. See also, has the soul acquired the power that consumes sensory recollections with the power of hope that takes possession of the heart and strengthens inner feelings with an inexplicable conviction of certainty? And the heart, without care that it is not captivated by earthly things, is it awakened by unceasing conversation 270 and continuous heartfelt work performed with our Savior? Try to gain understanding in the difference between His voice and conversation when you hear. The opportunity to quickly taste this brings continuous silence to the soul through its incessant and constant activity. For, due to the negligence of those who receive, even after acquiring it 271 it is lost again, and for a long time it is not acquired again. And will anyone, relying on the testimony of his conscience, dare to say about this the same thing as blessed Paul said: “I am aware that neither death, nor life, nor the present, nor the future, nor anything else will be able to separate me from the love” of Christ (Rom. 8:38-39), that is, neither physical nor spiritual sorrows, nor hunger, nor persecution, nor nakedness, nor loneliness, not seclusion, not misfortune, not the sword, not the angels and forces of Satan with their evil tricks, not the glory that is abolished by one’s attack on man, not slander, not reproaches, not suppression, inflicted without reason and in vain? If you have not begun to see in your soul, brother, that all this is in some way abundant or impoverished, then your labors, and sorrows, and all your silence are a useless burden on yourself. And if miracles are performed by your hands, and they raise the dead, this cannot be compared with this, and immediately move your soul, and with tears beg the One who saves everyone to remove the veil from the door of your heart and destroy the darkness of the storm of passions on the inner firmament, so that you will be worthy to see the ray of that day, 273 so that you will not be like a dead man, eternally remaining in darkness. Constant vigil along with reading and frequent bows, performed successively by someone, will not slow down the diligent in giving these blessings. And whoever found them, found them precisely by these means. Those who want to find them again have the need to remain in silence, and at the same time in doing what we have said, and, moreover, not to become attached to anything other than their soul, not even to a single person, with their thoughts, but to practice the internal practice of virtue. But also regarding the deeds themselves - only in some of them do we find a partly true feeling close to us, which confirms us in relation to other things. He who remains in silence and has experienced the goodness of God by experience does not need much assurance; on the contrary, his soul does not suffer at all from unbelief, like those who waver in the truth; because the evidence of his mind is enough for him to reassure himself more than countless words that are not justified by experience. To our God be glory and glory forever! Amen. That is, from the radiance of the unsetting Sun - Christ. You might be interested in: