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Poverty of spirit is the salt of all spiritual sacrifices and burnt offerings. If they are not seasoned with this salt, God rejects them. 1.518 By faith, the saints plunged into the depths of humility: they saw with the pure eye of faith that human sacrifices to God are gifts of God in man, man’s debts, unnecessary to God, but necessary, saving for man, when man tries to bring, aggravate, and pay them. 1.175 The prophet called the earth the place of his coming (Ps. 110:54), and himself a stranger and wanderer on it. “I am a stranger with you,” he said in his prayer to God, “and a stranger, like all my fathers (Ps. 38:13). An obvious, tangible truth! A truth that people forget, despite its obviousness! I am a stranger on earth: I entered by birth, I will leave by death. I am a sojourner on earth: I was transferred to it from paradise, where I desecrated and disfigured myself with sin. I will also move from the earth, from this urgent exile of mine, into which I was placed by my God, so that I come to my senses, cleanse myself of sinfulness, and again become capable of living in paradise. For my stubborn, final incorrigibility, I must be thrown into the prison of hell forever. I am a wanderer on earth, my wandering begins from the cradle, ends with the coffin, I wander through ages from childhood to old age, I wander through various earthly circumstances and situations. I am a stranger and a wanderer, like all my fathers. My fathers were strangers and pilgrims on earth: having entered it by birth, they departed from its face by death. There were no exceptions: none of the people remained on earth forever. I'll leave too. I am already beginning to depart, my strength diminishing, submitting to old age. I will leave, I will leave here according to the immutable law and powerful establishment of my Creator and God. Let us make sure that we are strangers on earth. Only from this conviction can we make calculations and orders that are unmistakable for our earthly life; Only from this conviction can we give it the right direction, use it to acquire a blissful eternity, not for empty and vain things, not for the destruction of ourselves. Our fall has and continues to blind us! And we are forced for a long time to convince ourselves of the clearest truths, which, due to their clarity, do not need convincing. A wanderer, when he stops at a strange house along the way, does not pay special attention to this house. Why attention when he is sheltered in the house for the shortest possible time? He is content with only what is necessary; tries not to spend the money that he needs to continue his journey and to maintain himself in the great city to which he is marching; he endures disadvantages and inconveniences generously, knowing that they are an accident to which all travelers are exposed, and that undisturbed tranquility awaits him in the place where he strives. He does not become attached with his heart to any object in the hotel, no matter how attractive the object may seem. He does not waste time on extraneous activities - he needs it to complete a difficult journey. He was constantly deep in thought about the magnificent royal capital to which he was heading, about the significant obstacles that must be overcome, about the means that could make the journey easier, about the robber ambushes that plague the path, about the unfortunate fate of those who did not manage to complete this journey safely, about the happiest situation of those who completed it with the desired success. Having spent the required time in the hotel, he thanks the owner for the hospitality shown to him and, having left, forgets about the hotel or remembers it superficially, because his heart was cold towards it. Let us also acquire such a relationship with the earth. Let us not madly waste the abilities of soul and body; Let us not sacrifice them to vanity and corruption. Let us protect ourselves from attachment to the temporal and material, so that it does not prevent us from acquiring the eternal, the heavenly. Let us protect ourselves from satisfying our unsatisfiable and insatiable whims, from the satisfaction of which our downfall develops and reaches terrible proportions. Let us protect ourselves from excesses, contenting ourselves only with what is essential. Let us direct all our attention to the afterlife awaiting us, which no longer has an end. Let us know God, who commanded us to know Him and who bestows this knowledge by His word and His grace. Let us become assimilated to God during our earthly life. He provided us with the closest connection with Himself and gave us a period of time to complete this greatest work - earthly life. There is no other time, except the time determined by earthly life, in which a miraculous assimilation could take place: if it does not happen at this time, it will never happen. We gain the friendship of the inhabitants of heaven, holy angels and departed holy men, so that they will accept us into eternal shelters (Luke 16:9). Let us acquire knowledge of the fallen spirits, these fierce and insidious enemies of the human race, in order to avoid their snares and cohabitation with them in the flames of hell. Let the Word of God be a lamp on our life’s path. Let us glorify and thank God for the abundant blessings with which our temporary shelter, the earth, is filled to satisfy our needs. With purity of mind let us penetrate into the meaning of these goods; they are weak images of eternal goods. Eternal blessings are depicted by them as weakly and insufficiently as the objects from which it falls are depicted as a shadow. Granting us earthly blessings, God mysteriously announces: “People! Your temporary shelter is equipped with a variety of countless benefits that captivate, delight both your eyes and your heart, satisfying your needs to the utmost; Conclude from this the benefits with which your eternal home is provided. Understand the infinite, incomprehensible goodness of God towards you and, having honored earthly blessings with pious understanding and contemplation of them, do not act foolishly: do not enslave yourself to them, do not destroy yourself with them. Using them as much as you need and should, strive with all your might to acquire heavenly blessings.” 1. 91–93 The path of earthly life is flattering and deceptive: for beginners it seems like an endless field, full of reality; for those who have accomplished it - through the shortest path, surrounded by empty dreams. And fame, and wealth, and all other perishable acquisitions and advantages, for the acquisition of which a blinded sinner uses his entire earthly life, all the strength of soul and body, he must leave in those minutes in which his clothes - his body - are forcibly removed from the soul, when the soul is led by inexorable Angels to the judgment of the righteous God, unknown to it, neglected by it. People work and hurry to enrich themselves with knowledge, but only with unimportant knowledge, suitable only for time, helping to satisfy the needs, conveniences and whims of earthly life. We completely despise knowledge and deeds that are essentially necessary, for which earthly life is the only thing given to us - knowledge of God and reconciliation with Him through the Redeemer. 1.96 In order to acquire love for spiritual and heavenly objects, one must renounce love for earthly objects; in order to love the fatherland, it is necessary to abandon the painful love for the country of exile. 1.511 We are all such short-term guests on earth! Every now and then someone sets off on a further journey. George the Recluse very well compares our life with the stay of prisoners in prison, of which one or the other is required for trial and the final verdict. We will prepare for this trial so that the verdict will be favorable for us. The righteous will present their righteousness as a fat sacrifice before the throne of the Judge; and we, sinners, will bring there at least repentance and tears! 6. 170 Life on earth is a journey that never stops for an hour. Let's go, let's go: suddenly the gates of eternity open, and we are lost in its unimaginable space. As Saint David beautifully says: I am a stranger on earth: do not hide Your commandments from Me! Exactly: the law of Christ is the thread along which we get out of the dark labyrinth of earthly life into blissful eternity. 6.343 Dark country - earth! It is a country of exile for criminals who desecrated paradise with sin, those guilty of disobedience to God, those who despised communion with Him, and exchanged this communion for communion with the devil. On earth, everything is hostile to man, and he himself is in a constant struggle with himself. The earth is the vale of exile, the vale of initial suffering with which eternal suffering begins - a just punishment for insulting the Infinitely Good. The earth is our exile, that’s why the Redeemer came here: He redeemed an immeasurable sin at an immeasurable price - His Blood. The earth is our exile, and that is why the Redeemer raises those who accepted His redemption from earth to heaven. Heaven is the true fatherland of man: the procession there must be made within oneself. You need to see the rulers of the world in yourself; it is necessary to settle accounts with them by returning to them what belongs to them, which a person borrowed from them. We borrowed from them the poison of sin, sin in all its petty forms, in all its varied forms. Having separated from ourselves everything that is alien to our nature, we will remain with ourselves, with our own immaculate nature. This cleansing is carried out in us by the Word of God, which reveals to us both the properties of the new Adam and the ulcers of the old. The all-good Holy Spirit, seeing our whiteness, will descend into us, overshadow us with His peace and light, change, seal, place us in the blessed tribe of the chosen, in the descendants of the second man, who is “the Lord from heaven.” Sealed by the Spirit, we will no longer be afraid of the dark and evil rulers of the world, we will pass through their dark and dense hordes to the light of truth, we will find in its bosom a foretaste of future bliss. Whoever has completed this journey on earth in the inner man, who has freed himself from the captivity of sin and received the betrothal of the Spirit, his soul, after its separation from the body, will pass through the ordeal of the aerial torturers without hindrance and without harm. 6.414–415 Our life is a chain of sorrows ending in death, this greatest sorrow for people, especially for those who forget their true purpose in eternity. This chain must be passed through with patience, link by link, in order to end with good hope. 6.583 Anyone who wants to understand the Truth - to be purified, liberated by It - must study the Gospel Commandments with mind and action, even if this is associated with the violence of the heart, which through the Fall acquired God-destroying inclinations and attractions. There is Truth in the commandments; in the commandments - humility; in the commandments - love; in the commandments is the Holy Spirit. All this is attested to in Scripture. “All Your commandments are Truth,” sang the God-inspired David. “If you have My commandments,” said the Lord, “and keep them, you will love” Me (John 14:21). “Be in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love” (John 15:9-10). “The verbs that I have spoken to you are the spirit and the life” (John 6:63). To one who has been corrected, purified by the Truth, the Holy Spirit comes, as the Spirit of Truth, unexpectedly, incomprehensibly penetrates the mind, soul and body, renews, revives a person into spiritual life. “I was attracted by the Spirit because I desired Your commandments” (Ps. 119:131). Let the Gospel Commandments be the subject of your teaching, reflection, and activity throughout your life. “Whoever is in Me, and I in him, through observing the Gospel Commandments,” said the Lord, “he will create “much fruit.” On the contrary, without Me you cannot do anything, i.e. no spiritual virtue. The virtues characteristic of all fallen human nature, as if nothing, have no value before God, are subject to the fire of Gehenna. “If anyone does not abide in Me, by observing the Gospel Commandments, he will be cast out like a rod and dry up: and they gather it up and put it into fire, and it is burned” (John 15:5-6), despite any virtues of the fallen nature. 6.266 If you lead a sinful life, satisfy your passions and at the same time think that you love the Lord Jesus Christ, then His close disciple, who reclined on His chest during the Last Supper, convicts you of self-delusion. He says: He says that he knew Him, but does not keep His commandments; there is a lie, and in this there is no truth. And if anyone truly keeps His word, in this the love of God is perfect (John 2:4). If you fulfill your sinful will and thereby violate the Gospel Commandments, then the Lord Jesus Christ counts you among those who do not love Him. “If you do not love Me,” He says, “you will not keep My words” (John 14:24). 1.103 It is not enough: just to read with pleasure the commandments of the Gospel and marvel at the high morality that they contain. Unfortunately, many are satisfied with this. When you begin to fulfill the commands of the Gospel, then the rulers of your heart will stubbornly oppose this fulfillment. These rulers are: your own carnal state, in which you are subject to flesh and blood, and the fallen spirits, to whom the country is subject - the carnal state of man. Carnal wisdom, its truth and the truth of fallen spirits will demand from you that you not lose your honor and other perishable advantages, and protect them. But you must withstand the invisible struggle with courage, led by the Gospel, led by the Lord Himself. Sacrifice everything to fulfill the Gospel Commandments. Without such a donation you will not be able to fulfill them. The Lord said to His disciples: If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself (Matthew 16:24). 1. 123 The ascetic will no sooner begin to fulfill them than he will see that he is fulfilling them very insufficiently, uncleanly, that he is hourly carried away by his passions, i.e. damaged will, to activities prohibited by the commandments. Then he will clearly see that the fallen nature is hostile to the Gospel. Intensified activity according to the Gospel reveals to him more and more clearly the insufficiency of his good deeds, his many deviations and defeats, the unhappy state of fallen nature, alienated from God, which has acquired a hostile mood towards God. Looking at his past life, he sees that it is an unbroken chain of sins, falls, actions that anger God, and from the sincerity of his heart he recognizes himself as the greatest sinner, worthy of temporary and eternal executions, completely in need of a Redeemer, having in Him the natural hope of salvation. He imperceptibly forms such an opinion about himself from doing the commandments. It can be said with certainty that he who is guided in his life by the Gospel will not stop to bring full proof that he does not know a single good deed behind him. 1. 306–307 Suffering and death for the Gospel Commandments is also a matter of living faith in Christ, also martyrdom. 1.503 Fulfillment of the commandments, or, more correctly, the effort to fulfill the commandments, necessarily exposes the sin living within us and arouses a cruel internal struggle, in which the spirits of evil take a strong part. 2. 369–370 The return from a state belonging to a fallen nature to a state belonging to a renewed nature is accomplished through a decisive and complete rejection of the activity according to the mind and will of the fallen nature, through a decisive and complete perception of the activity according to the teaching and testament of the God-man. At the same time, an internal struggle opens up in a person, because the life that preceded repentance, by its own will and reason, deprived a person of spiritual freedom and delivered him into captivity to sin and the devil. The repentant strives to act according to the Gospel Commandments, and sin and the devil, having received the power arbitrarily given to them by their previous residence, try to keep the captive in captivity, in chains, in prison! Experienced knowledge of captivity through the sensations of captivity and violence, experienced knowledge of spiritual death through the sensation of death intensify and strengthen the cry of the repentant. “This struggle,” says St. Mark the Ascetic, “is internecine. It is not from outside, and it is not with our brethren that we must fight. It is inside us, and no one can help us in it. We have one helper - Christ, mysteriously hidden in us through the Baptism, invincible and cannot be suppressed (destroyed). He will strengthen us if we fulfill His commandments to the best of our ability.” 2.397 Having set the fulfillment of God's will as the goal of his life, he tries to learn in detail and accurately this all-holy will through the most careful study of the Holy Scriptures, especially the New Testament, through reading the Scriptures of the Fathers, through fulfilling the Gospel Commandments and outward behavior, both mind and heart. “The law of freedom,” said the Monk Mark the Ascetic, “is read with true understanding, by doing the commandments, of course, and is fulfilled by the bounties of Christ.” When a Christian begins to live according to the will of God, pleasing and perfect (Rom. 12:2), or according to the commandments of the New Testament, then the fall and weakness of human nature are suddenly revealed to him. Weakness does not allow him to fulfill God’s commandments purely and holy, as God demands, and his fall resists, often with the greatest bitterness, the fulfillment of God’s commandments. It wants and demands that the fallen will and the fallen mind of man be fulfilled. The aspirations of this will and the ideas of this mind are clothed in all types of the most sublime truth and virtue. Knowledge of the internal struggle, exposure and discovery of the sin living inside, knowledge of its violent power over good manifestations and aspirations provide the Christian with the correct concept of himself and of humanity. He sees the fall of humanity in himself, he sees from his own experiences the impossibility of emerging from this fall through his own efforts alone; he acquires true humility, begins to bring to God the warmest prayer for help and intercession from a contrite heart, to which God always listens. Teach me to do Your will! (Ps. 143:10) Teach me Your justification! (Ps. 119:12) Hide not Your commandments from Me! (Ps. 119:19) Confirm me in Your words! (Ps. 119:28) Leave the path of unrighteousness from Me, and have mercy on me with Your Law! (Ps. 119:29). Having learned from experience that God’s commandments are fulfilled only with the abundant assistance of God’s grace, and constantly asking for this assistance through prayer, a Christian cannot help but attribute all his good deeds to God’s grace. At the same time, he cannot help but recognize himself as a sinner. On the one hand, he learned through experience his own falls and inability to fulfill the will of God by his own strength alone; on the other hand, even in the very fulfillment of God’s commandments with the help of grace, he sees constant errors introduced by weakness and human fall. This can be seen with all clarity from the reviews of the Holy Apostle Paul about himself. In one of his letters he says: “I have labored more than all (the apostles): not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10); and in another: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first” (1 Tim. 1:13). Such is God-loving righteousness! It is produced in a person by the Divine grace that has overshadowed him and pleases God with the deeds of God-given truth. A godly righteous man does not cease to recognize himself as a sinner not only because of his obvious sins, but also because of his natural truth, which is in a sad fall, mixed with evil, defiled by sinful admixture. Blessed is he who is righteous by the righteousness of God; his hope is centered in Christ, the source of his righteousness. Unhappy is the one who is satisfied with his own human righteousness: he does not need Christ, who announced Himself: He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matthew 9:13). The Monk Pimen the Great said: “For me, a person who sins and repents is more pleasant than someone who does not sin and does not repent: the first, recognizing himself as a sinner, has a good thought, and the second, recognizing himself as righteous, has a false thought.” An internalized false thought makes all living based on it obscene. This was proven by experience: obvious sinners, publicans and harlots believed in Christ, but the Pharisees rejected Him. Conceit and pride essentially consist of rejecting God and worshiping oneself. They are subtle, difficult to understand and difficult to reject idolatry. The Pharisees, in appearance, were the closest and most subtle servants and zealots of true worship of God, but in essence they were completely alienated from God, becoming His enemies, the children of Satan (John 8:44). 4. 23–25 From our neglect to preserve the precious Gift given to us by Baptism, from activity according to the lawless law of fallen nature, the power of sin creeps into us unnoticed, unnoticed we lose spiritual freedom. The most difficult captivity remains invisible to many and is recognized as the most satisfactory freedom. Our state of captivity and slavery is revealed to us only when we begin to fulfill the Gospel Commandments: then our mind rebels with bitterness against the mind of Christ, and our heart looks wildly and hostilely at the fulfillment of the will of Christ, as if at its own death and murder; then we will experience the sad loss of freedom, our terrible fall; then we see the full depth of this fall, descending to the abysses of hell. One should not become despondent and relaxed from such a sight: one should, with courage and determination, surrender to repentance, as an omnipotent doctor, having the command and authority from God to heal and heal all sins, no matter how great and numerous these sins may be, no matter how old and strengthened the habit of sins may be. Christ gave Himself to us and entered into us through holy Baptism, then He hid Himself in us when we did not present our will for Him to dwell in us and rule over us; Christ will certainly reveal Himself in us if we, through true repentance, prove our decisive will for Him to dwell in us. 2. 400–401 (See Silence, Monasticism). You might be interested in: