Л

Vanity and its children - false spiritual pleasures, acting in a soul not imbued with repentance, create the ghost of humility. This ghost replaces true humility for the soul. The ghost of truth, having occupied the church of the soul, blocks all entrances to the spiritual church for Truth itself. The opinion of humility is the most terrible kind of pride. Pride is driven out with difficulty when a person recognizes it as pride; but how can he cast her out when she seems to him his humility? 1. 535–536 Humility does not see oneself as humble. On the contrary, it sees a lot of pride in itself. It takes care to find all its branches; looking for them, he sees that there is a lot more to look for. False humility sees itself as humble; funny and pitifully consoled by this deceptive, soul-destroying spectacle. 1. 534–535 (See Humility, Mortal Memory, The Path of Asceticism, The Correct Attitude Towards Passions). Hypocrisy is that type of sinfulness that especially opposes the knowledge of Christ and Christianity. The beginning of turning to Christ lies in the knowledge of one’s sinfulness, one’s fall: from such a view of oneself, a person recognizes the need for a Redeemer and approaches Christ through humility, faith and repentance. But a hypocrite, suffering from passions that are unnoticeable to people - vanity, pride, love of money, envy, deceit, malice, covering them with hypocrisy and pretense, is incapable, just as Satan is incapable, of recognizing himself as a sinner. Both virtues and passions become, as it were, natural from skill, and hypocrisy from skill to it becomes, as it were, a natural quality. Those who possess it no longer see hypocrisy as a soul-destroying vice - they perform deeds of hypocrisy as if they were deeds of truth. The soul of the hypocrite is struck by blindness: why did the Lord call the Pharisees mad and blind (Matthew 23). A hypocrite is that unfortunate, in his opinion, righteous person who is rejected by God: “I did not come,” said the Savior, “to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). Here the Pharisees are called righteous not because they were exactly righteous, but because they themselves recognized themselves as such, fulfilling with petty precision the ritual decrees of the law of God and trampling on its essence, which lies in the direction of the mind, heart - the entire human being - according to the will of God. The Lord gave people, in order to reconcile them with God, the virtue of repentance; How could those who were completely satisfied with themselves and expected in the promised Messiah, primarily, a conqueror who was supposed to crown their carnal, absurd righteousness, filled with pride and malice, with abundant carnal rewards, to accept this spiritual gift? In their darkness and bitterness, the Pharisees even boasted of their inability to know and accept the Redeemer: “Whoever is of the prince of faith in Him, or of the Pharisees,” they said (John 7:48). The Lord also pointed out this inability of them to truly know God: “Amen, I say to you,” He said to them, “you are preparing publicans and fornicators in the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 21:31). An obvious sinner, a sinner who has fallen into mortal sins, a sinner who has attracted the contempt and disgust of people, is more capable of repentance than that imaginary righteous person who, in outward behavior, is blameless, but in the secret of his soul is satisfied with himself. Pharisaism is a terrible illness of the human spirit, similar to the illness that afflicts a fallen angel, with which this angel keeps for himself, as if a treasure, his fall. “Take heed to yourselves,” the Lord commanded his disciples, “from the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1). Hypocrisy is called leaven because it, having crept into the soul, penetrates into all thoughts, into all feelings, into all the deeds of a person, becoming his character, as if his soul. Anyone who wants to protect himself from hypocrisy must, firstly, according to the will of the Lord, do all good deeds in secret (Matthew 6); then he must renounce judging his neighbor. Condemning one's neighbor is a sign of hypocrisy, according to the all-holy instructions of the Gospel (Matthew 7:5). In order not to condemn one's neighbor, one must renounce judgment about one's neighbor; That is why in the Gospel commandment, which prohibits judging one’s neighbor, judgment about him is first prohibited. Judge not, and you will not be judged: and condemn not, lest you be condemned (Luke 6:37). At first, people allow themselves to judge the affairs of their neighbor, and then they involuntarily fall into condemnation. If we do not sow seed, neither will the tares grow; let us forbid ourselves unnecessary judgment about our neighbors - and there will be no condemnation. They will ask here: what is the connection between judging your neighbor and hypocrisy? This connection is obvious. He who condemns and humiliates his neighbor unwittingly exposes himself as righteous, perhaps without saying it in words and without even understanding it. We are all sinners; Any presentation of oneself as a righteous person, both direct and indirect, is hypocrisy. When we get together for a friendly conversation, often, if not always, most of the conversation consists of gossip about our neighbor, ridicule of him, slander, humiliation, and denigration of him. Sharp words flow like a river; laughter and laughter are heard as signs of approval; In this unfortunate time of self-forgetfulness and self-delusion, our souls become familiar with demonic properties and are imbued with the poison of hypocrisy. 4. 280–283 (See Pharisaism, Rites, Path). A lie can only have momentary triumphs; nothing can be taken firmly by a lie, because it does not strengthen, but weakens and undermines the cause it serves. This is a great truth of the greatest importance! It must be inscribed in letters of gold! It is necessary to know it, and to know it for anyone who wants to govern themselves correctly, especially who wants to correctly manage people and public affairs. 6.602 (See Slander, Prelest). And now one can see that the Pharisees resort to all sorts of twists so that their deeds, which have the appearance of being good, shine as brightly as possible before the eyes of people, and their atrocities are excused by political necessity, the guise of justice and wise forethought, the desire to prevent a greater evil by allowing a lesser evil, and other justifications that flow so abundantly from a heart filled with wickedness. 1.418 (See Justifications, Jesus Prayer, Benefits). We know about love for our neighbor from the teachings of the fathers that it comes in two kinds: natural and evangelical, or about Christ. The natural one was implanted in us at our creation and therefore certainly exists in every person. It is damaged, like other good properties, by the fall, or by ancestral sin; and therefore in every person it is subject to greater or lesser, short or long-term changes. Christ, who heals all our ailments in a wondrous way, also heals damaged love: He commands Himself - the Lord - to love in people. This elevates love to the highest degree of fervor, bestows upon it purity, spirituality, sanctity - and the discordant, smoky flame of carnal love - mixed, composed of dreamy, non-existent pleasure and cruel, murderous torment - is extinguished by the flame of love for Christ. The feeling of spiritual love guided the pen of St. John Climacus, when he said: “Love for God extinguishes love for parents and other loved ones in the flesh; He who says that he has both loves deceives himself.” He also said: “Fire is extinguished by fire, i.e. carnal love with divine love.” When we look at ourselves with attention, we will see with God’s help (such a vision requires God’s help! Such a vision is a gift from God!) that we most have natural love, but we must still acquire the gospel. 6. 153 Give respect to your neighbor as the image of God - respect in your soul, invisible to others, obvious only to your conscience. Let your activity be mysteriously in accordance with your spiritual mood. Give respect to your neighbor, without distinguishing between age, gender, class, and gradually holy love will begin to appear in your heart. The reason for this holy love is not flesh and blood, not the attraction of feelings, but God. Those deprived of the glory of Christianity are not deprived of another glory received at creation: they are the image of God. If the image of God is cast into the terrible flames of hell, and there I must honor it. What do I care about the flames, about hell! The image of God was cast there according to the judgment of God; My job is to maintain respect for the image of God and thereby save myself from hell. Show respect to the blind, and the leper, and the mentally damaged, and the infant, and the criminal, and the pagan, as the image of God. What do you care about their weaknesses and shortcomings! Watch yourself so that you do not lack love. As a Christian, give respect to Christ, who said for our instruction and will also say when deciding our eternal fate: “Whatever you did to the least of these my brothers, you did to me” (Matthew 25:40). In your dealings with your neighbors, keep this saying of the Gospel in mind, and you will become a confidant of love for your neighbor. The confidant of love for one's neighbor enters into love for God. But if you think that you love God, but in your heart there is an unpleasant disposition towards at least one person, then you are in woeful self-delusion. “If anyone says,” says Saint John the Theologian, “that I love God, but hates his brother, it is a lie... This commandment of the imams is from Him, that he who loves God also loves his brother” (1 John 4:20-21). 1. 125–126 The humiliation of one's neighbor is followed by the drying up of love. And the drying up of love is a sign of accepting demonic thoughts, just as a sign of accepting the seeds of grace is an increase in love for one’s neighbor. 6.225 The Venerable Abba Dorotheos, speaking about love for one's neighbor, likens the ascetics of Christ to lines running from the circumference of a circle to its center... The closer the lines come to the center, the closer they become to one another. And the ascetics of Christ, the closer they come to God, the closer they become to each other through true love. 6. 429–430 The Gospel commands love for enemies: the Holy Fathers praise love that is equal to everyone. Should love for one's neighbor really be alien to all differences? This is what I’m thinking about talking to you about now. I would like to tell you about this subject not my word, but God’s: may the merciful God grant me this word. I understand only that love that acts according to the sacred commands of the Gospel, in its light, which itself is light. I don’t understand any other love, I don’t recognize it. Love, extolled by the world, recognized by people as their property, sealed by the fall, is not worthy to be called love: it is a distortion of love. That is why it is so hostile to holy, true love. True, holy love for God and neighbor is clearly depicted in the Gospel Commandments; its correct, immaculate action is in the fulfillment of the Gospel Commandments. “Whoever loves Me,” said the Lord, “keeps My commandments.” In such love there can be neither daydreaming nor carnal fervor, because the fulfillment of Christ’s commandments is carried out by beginners with violence against themselves, with such violence that it is called crucifixion, and by those who have succeeded and felt the blessed overshadowing - with an abundant feeling of the peace of Christ. The peace of Christ is a certain subtle spiritual coolness; when it overflows in the soul, it remains in sublime silence, in sacred deadness. “I have not come,” says the Lawgiver of holy and true love, says Love Itself – God, “I have not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword.” For I came to separate a man from his father, and a daughter from his mother, and a bride from her mother-in-law: and strike the man against his household” (Matthew 10:34-36). And all our actions towards our neighbor, both good and evil, the Lord will judge, as if they were done in relation to Himself (Matthew 25). The Lord concentrated the entire law in two commandments: love for God and love for neighbor. Love is a union of perfection, said the apostle. If so, then what is the sword for, what is the enmity and separation for? Because God rejects carnal love, the love that Adam recognized after the fall, accepts only one spiritual love, which the New Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, showed to the world. We must love as He loves; the love of the fallen old Adam is a fruit forbidden in the paradise of the New Testament. She is filled with an impulse of dreaminess, changeable, partial, loves a creature outside of God. God is completely removed from the relationship of this love; sin and Satan are called to participate in it. Spiritual love is constant, impartial, all in God, embraces all neighbors, loves everyone equally, but also with great differences. “Love your enemies,” says the Gospel, “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who attack you and drive you out” (Matthew 5:44). Here it is clearly and definitely depicted what love for enemies should consist of: in forgiveness of the insults they have caused, in prayer for them, in blessing them, i.e. in good words about them and in thanking God for the misfortunes they cause, in doing good to them according to their strength and spiritual success, in doing good, which can extend to tasting bodily death to save the enemy. The Savior showed an example of such love for enemies. But the same Gospel commands us to be careful with our enemies, not to trust ourselves to them. “Behold, I am sending you,” the Lord said to his disciples, “like sheep in the midst of wolves: therefore, be wise as a serpent, and your targets like doves. Hear also from men: for you will be betrayed to the hosts, and in their assemblies they will beat you... You will be hated by everyone for My name’s sake” (Matthew 10:16-17,22). So, the Gospel itself prescribes caution in dealing with enemies and, if possible, treating them wisely. The spirit of peace produces enmity; often it takes the place of carnal love. But even the most carnal love is very similar to enmity. One descendant of the old Adam is capable of carnal love and enmity; The more alive the decay is in him, the stronger the effects of the ailments with which the fall struck love: enmity, envy, jealousy, carnal love. A servant of Christ cannot be anyone's enemy. You see - the Gospel prescribes for us love for our enemies, not blind, not reckless, but sanctified by spiritual reasoning. Love is light, blind love is not love. The same should be said about love for friends. The Gospel commands that this love be about Christ, that Christ be loved in the neighbor, and the neighbor be loved as God’s creation. Because of this love in God and for God's sake, the holy saints of God had equal love for everyone, and especially loved those who led a pious life, as Saint David said: I have been much more honest with Thy friends, O Lord. Those being mentored felt more favored by those mentors in whom they saw a special abundance of spiritual intelligence and other spiritual gifts. The mentors loved more those of their spiritual children in whom they saw special care for virtue and a special effect of God's favor. Such love, which gives due value to people according to the degree of their piety, is at the same time equal to everyone, because it is in Christ and loves Christ in everything. Some vessels contain more of this spiritual treasure, others less. Treasure - one! 6.449–453 A Christian’s love for God is love for Christ (1 John 2:1), and love for one’s neighbor is love for Christ in one’s neighbor: having loved one’s neighbor, having loved him in the Lord, i.e. According to the commandments of the Lord, we acquire love for Christ, and love for Christ is love for God. The union of love for God with love for neighbor is excellently outlined in the epistles of the holy Apostle Evangelist John the Theologian. It is impossible to love God, according to the teaching of the Theologian, without first loving your brother. Love for a brother consists in fulfilling the commandments of the Lord regarding him (2 John 1:6). The same teaching is also proclaimed by the holy teachers of monasticism. St. Anthony the Great said: “Both life and death (of the soul) depend on one’s neighbor. By acquiring a brother, we gain God; By tempting a brother, we sin against Christ.” The Monk John Kolov, one of the greatest fathers of the Egyptian Skete, said: “It is not possible to build a house starting from the top, but you must start building from the foundation and build to the top.” He was asked: “What does foundation mean?” He answered: “The foundation is our neighbor: we must acquire it and begin with him. All the commandments of Christ are based on it.” Venerable Mark the Ascetic: “It is impossible to be saved otherwise than through your neighbor.” According to this, all the holy fathers reason and teach; This is the general Christian teaching, the teaching of the Church, the teaching of Christ. Pay all your attention to acquiring love for your neighbor, as the basis of your life... Love your neighbor according to the instructions of the Gospel Commandments - not at all according to the inclination of your heart. The love planted by God in our nature is damaged by the fall and cannot function correctly. Don't let her act! Her actions are devoid of integrity, abominable before God, like a desecrated sacrifice; the fruits of actions are soul-destroying, murderous. Love your neighbor in the following way: do not be angry and do not bear any resentment against him; do not allow yourself to say any reproachful, abusive, mocking, cutting words to your neighbor; keep peace with him as much as possible; humble yourself before him; do not take revenge on him either directly or indirectly; in everything in which you can yield to him, yield; unlearn bickering and argument, reject them as a sign of pride and self-love; speak well of those who speak evil of you; repay good for evil; pray for those who arrange for you various insults, insults, misfortunes, persecutions (Matthew 5:21-48). In no way, under any pretext, do not condemn anyone, do not even judge anyone, whether he is good or bad, having before your eyes that one bad person for whom you must answer before God - yourself. Act towards your neighbors as you would like them to do towards you (Matthew 7:1-12). Let go and forgive from the depths of your heart to people their sins against you, so that the Heavenly Father will forgive you your countless sins, your terrible sinful debt, which can overthrow you and imprison you forever in hellish prisons (Matthew 18:23-35). Do not acquire partiality, especially fornication, towards your neighbor; By the name of neighbor we mean not only the male, but also the female gender. If, having been shot by an enemy’s arrow, you somehow unexpectedly become infected with them, then do not be discouraged, knowing that we ourselves carry within ourselves the ability to become infected with all sorts of passions, that this has happened to great saints; make every effort to heal yourself. Finally: do not harm your brother by verbosity, idle talk, close acquaintance and free treatment of him. By behaving this way towards your neighbor, you will show and acquire for him the love commanded by God and pleasing to God; with it you will open for yourself the entrance to the love of God. 5. 87–89 (See Neighbor, Providence). We must give all people to God. The Church teaches us this too; she says: “Let us give ourselves, each other and our whole life to Christ our God.” He who surrenders himself and everyone to God can remain dead to everyone; Without this deadness, spiritual revival cannot shine in the soul. If you remain faithful to God and maintain mortification towards people, then in due time an incorruptible spiritual treasure will appear in your soul, you will see the resurrection of your soul through the action of the Spirit. 6.330 He maintains holy love for his neighbor who has fellowship with him for the sake of God; This holy love is also preserved by those who, for the sake of God, withdraw from such communication. Our nature is damaged by the fall, and our natural love is damaged by it. Therefore, in order to fulfill the conditions of holy love, one must be guided not by heartfelt feelings and desires, but by the dictates of the Gospel, the all-holy commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ. One of these commandments says: “If your right hand causes you to stumble, turn away from you” (Matthew 5:30), i.e. If some person, so necessary and close to you as your right hand, brings you spiritual harm, break off communication with him. This is what the Lawgiver’s commandment of perfect love tells us to do. And the dreams and feelings of our fallen heart can easily drag us into the abyss! 6.331 Our natural love is damaged by the fall; it must be put to death - Christ commands this - and holy love for one’s neighbor, love in Christ, must be drawn from the Gospel. Love from the movement of blood and carnal feelings has no price before the Gospel. And what value can it have when, when the blood is heated, he takes an oath to lay down his soul for the Lord, and a few hours later, when the blood cools, he takes an oath that he does not know Him? (Matthew 26, 33, 35, 74). The Gospel rejects love that depends on the movement of blood, on the feelings of the carnal heart. The Fall subjected the heart to the dominion of the blood and, through the blood, to the dominion of the ruler of the world. The Gospel frees the heart from this captivity, from this violence, and brings it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us to love our neighbor holy. Love kindled and nourished by the Holy Spirit is fire. This fire extinguishes the fire of natural, carnal love, damaged by the Fall. “Whoever says that you can have one and the other love deceives himself,” said St. John Climacus. How fallen is our nature! Anyone who is by nature capable of loving his neighbor with ardor must make himself an extraordinary force in order to love him as the Gospel commands him to love. The most ardent natural love easily turns into disgust, into irreconcilable hatred. In what ulcers is our natural love! What a serious ulcer on her - addiction! A heart possessed of partiality is capable of all injustice, all lawlessness, just to satisfy its painful love. Natural love delivers to its beloved only earthly things; it does not think about heavenly things. She is at enmity against Heaven and the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit demands the crucifixion of the flesh. She is at enmity against Heaven and the Holy Spirit, because she is under the control of the evil spirit, the spirit of the unclean and lost. 1. 121–122 Look at the objects of your love: do you really like them? Is your heart very attached to them? Renounce them. The Lord, the Lawgiver of love, requires this renunciation from you, not in order to deprive you of love and loved ones, but so that you, having rejected carnal love, defiled by an admixture of sin, become capable of accepting spiritual, pure, holy love, which is the supreme bliss. He who has felt spiritual love will look with disgust at carnal love, as an ugly distortion of love. How to renounce objects of love that seem to have grown to the very heart? – Tell God about them: “They, Lord, are Yours; and who am I? A feeble creature of no importance." “Today I am still wandering on earth, I can be useful to my loved ones in some way; Tomorrow, perhaps, I will disappear from her face, and I am nothing to them!” “Whether I want it or not, death comes, other circumstances come, they forcibly tear me away from those whom I considered mine, and they are no longer mine. They were not, by the very thing, mine; there was some relation between me and them; deceived by this attitude, I called them and recognized them as mine. If they were definitely mine, they would forever belong to me.” “Creatures belong to one Creator: He is their God and Master. Yours, my Lord, I give to You: I appropriated them to myself incorrectly and in vain.” For them it is more correct to be God's. God is eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, immeasurably good. To the one who is His, He is the most faithful, most reliable Helper and Patron. God gives his own to man: and men become man’s own, for a time according to the flesh, forever according to the spirit, when God is pleased to give this gift to man. True love for one's neighbor is based on faith in God: it is in God. “They will all be one,” the Savior of the world said to His Father, “as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us” (John 17:21). Humility and devotion to God kill carnal love. This means she lives with conceit and unbelief. Do what you can that is useful and that the law allows, to your loved ones; but always entrust them to God, and your blind, carnal, unconscious love will little by little turn into spiritual, rational, holy. If your love is an unlawful passion, then reject it as an abomination. When the heart is not free, it is a sign of addiction. When your heart is in captivity, this is a sign of insane, sinful passion. Holy love is pure, free, all in God. It is the action of the Holy Spirit acting in the heart as it is cleansed. Having rejected enmity, rejected addictions, renounced carnal love, acquire spiritual love; “Turn away from evil and do good” (Ps. 33:15). 1. 124–125 True love is strict and, appearing in deeds, does not need a guise - affection and flattery, with which pride certainly covers itself in order to deceive its neighbors. 6.687 (See Kinship, Predilections, People-pleasing). Love God the way He commanded to love Him, and not the way self-deprecating dreamers think of loving Him. Do not invent delights for yourself, do not set your nerves in motion, do not inflame yourself with material flames, with the flame of your blood. A sacrifice acceptable to God is humility of heart, contrition of spirit. With anger, God turns away from a sacrifice made with arrogance, with a proud opinion of himself, even if this sacrifice were a burnt offering. Pride sets the nerves in motion, warms the blood, excites daydreaming, enlivens the life of fall; humility calms the nerves, tames the movement of the blood, destroys daydreaming, mortifies the life of falling, revives the life of Christ Jesus. Do you want to learn the love of God? Avoid every deed, word, thought, feeling prohibited by the Gospel. By your enmity towards sin, which is so hateful to the all-holy God, show and prove your love for God. Sins that you happen to fall into due to weakness, heal immediately with repentance. But it is better to try to prevent these sins from happening to you by being strictly vigilant over yourself. Do you want to learn the love of God? Carefully study the commandments of the Lord in the Gospel and try to fulfill them with your very deeds, try to turn the Gospel virtues into skills, into your qualities. It is characteristic of a lover to carry out the will of his beloved with precision. The perfection of love lies in union with God; success in love is associated with inexplicable spiritual consolation, pleasure and enlightenment. But at the beginning of the feat, the student of love must endure a fierce struggle with himself, with his deeply damaged nature: the evil that was innate in nature through the Fall has become a law for him, fighting and rebelling against the Law of God, against the law of holy love. Love for God is based on love for neighbor. When the memory of malice is erased from you, then you are close to love. When your heart is overshadowed by holy, gracious peace for all humanity, then you are at the very door of love. But these doors are opened only by the Holy Spirit. Love for God is a gift of God in a person who has prepared himself to receive this gift with purity of heart, mind and body. According to the degree of preparation there is also the degree of gift, because God is just in His mercy. Hearing from Scripture that our God is fire, that love is fire, and feeling within yourself the fire of natural love, do not think that this fire is the same. No! These fires are hostile to each other and are extinguished by one another. Natural love, fallen love, warms a person’s blood, sets his nerves in motion, arouses daydreaming; Holy love cools the blood, calms both soul and body, draws the inner man to prayerful silence, immerses him in the rapture of humility and spiritual sweetness. Many ascetics, mistaking natural love for Divine love, heated up their blood and inflamed their dreaminess. The state of excitement very easily turns into a state of frenzy. Those who were in heat and frenzy were considered by many to be filled with grace and holiness, and they were the unfortunate victims of self-delusion. Know firmly that love for God is the highest gift of the Holy Spirit, and a person can only prepare himself with purity and humility to accept this great gift, which changes the mind, heart, and body. Labor is in vain, it is fruitless and harmful when we seek to prematurely reveal high spiritual gifts in ourselves: the merciful God gives them in due time to constant, patient, humble performers of the Gospel Commandments. 1. 127–130 Some, having read in the Holy Scriptures that love is the most sublime of the virtues, that it is God, immediately begin and intensify to develop a feeling of love in their hearts, to dissolve their prayers, thoughts of God, and all their actions. God turns away from this unclean sacrifice. He demands love from a person, but true, spiritual, holy love, and not dreamy, carnal, defiled by pride and voluptuousness. It is impossible to love God otherwise than with a heart purified and sanctified by Divine grace. Love for God is a gift of God; it is poured into the souls of true servants of God through the action of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, that love, which belongs to the number of our natural properties, is found in sinful damage, which embraces the entire human race, the entire being of each person, all the properties of each person. Let us strive in vain to serve God, to unite with God through this love! He is holy and rests among the saints alone. He is independent; Man’s efforts to accept God into himself are fruitless when there is still no good will from God to dwell in man, although man is a God-created church, created for the purpose that God might dwell in him. This church is in sad desolation; before consecration it needs renovation. The premature desire to develop in oneself a feeling of love for God is already self-delusion. It immediately removes one from correct service to God, immediately leads into various errors, and ends in damage and death of the soul. 2. 52–53 We see the degree of our love for God with particular clarity during prayer, which serves as an expression of this love and is very correctly called in the patristic writings the mirror of spiritual prosperity. When, during prayer, we are constantly distracted, this serves as a sign that our heart is in captivity to earthly passions and cares, which do not allow it to strive entirely towards God and abide with Him. Attentive prayer serves as a sign that the heart has broken the threads of addictions and therefore is freely directed towards God, cleaves to Him, and is assimilated to Him. The transition from distracted prayer to attentive prayer, or from the love of the world to the love of God, requires a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of help. We need help from fasting, we need help from chastity and purity, we need help from non-covetousness, we need help from faith, we need help from humility, we need help from mercy, we need help from Divine grace. With the combined effect of these benefits, the heart is rejected from love for the world; a person, freed from the invisible chains of fall and sinfulness, rushes with his whole being towards God. Having known the height and bliss of this state, he tries to be in it more often. The love of God proves to him experimentally its presence in him, and he proves his love for God by attentive, constant prayer, not squandered by thoughts about the objects and affairs of the transitory world. 4. 260–261 A heart infected with malice and incapable of the love for enemies commanded by the Gospel must be healed by the means indicated by the Lord: one must pray for enemies, not at all condemn them, not subject them to slander, speak kindly about them, and do good to them according to one’s strength. These actions extinguish hatred when it flares up in the heart, keep it constantly curbed, and significantly weaken it. But the complete eradication of evil is accomplished by the action of Divine grace. 1.510 By faith the saints entered into love for their enemies; the eye of the mind, enlightened by faith, unswervingly looks at God in His Providence and attributes all external guidance to this Divine Providence. The soul accepts temptations as a cure for its ailments, and thanks the Doctor - God. With such a consideration of temptation, people and other instruments of temptation remain aside as instruments. There is no anger towards them, no enmity! The soul, glorifying the Creator, thanking the Heavenly Physician, in the rapture of unspeakable feelings, begins to bless the instruments of its healing. 1.176 Do not hate your slanderer, scolder, robber, or murderer: they crucify you at the right hand of the Lord, according to the incomprehensible arrangement of God’s destinies, so that you, from your heartfelt consciousness and conviction, can say in your prayer to the Lord: “I accept what is worthy of deeds, remember me, Lord, in Your Kingdom.” Understand from the sorrows allowed to you your unspeakable well-being, your election by God, and pray the warmest prayer for those of your benefactors, through whom well-being is brought to you, with whose hands you are torn away from the world and killed for it, with whose hands you ascend to God. Feel mercy for them in the likeness of the mercy that God feels for the unfortunate man drowning in sins, Who gave His Son as an atoning Sacrifice for a creature hostile to the Creator, knowing that this creature, for the most part, will laugh at this Sacrifice and will neglect It. Such mercy, extending to love for enemies, poured out in tearful prayers for them, leads to an experienced knowledge of the Truth. 2.223 Saint Macarius the Great says: “Grace acts in such a way and pacifies all the strength and heart that the soul, from great joy (mercy), is likened to a gentle baby, and a person no longer condemns either a Greek, or a Jew, or a sinner, or a layman, but the inner man looks at everyone with pure eyes, and rejoices about the whole world, and in every possible way wants to honor and love both the Greeks and the Greeks. Jews." “Purity of heart,” said Isaac of Syria, “sees God; it shines and blooms in the soul not as a result of human teaching, but from not seeing human evil.” Then a person does not see malice in his neighbors when all his relationships with his neighbors will be swallowed up by mercy towards them. 2.408–409 (See Prayer for enemies, Love for neighbor). (See Love of Covetousness, Possessions, Wealth). You might be interested in: