Words LII-LXIV
Слова LII-LXIV
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Greek texts of the works of St. Macarius the Great has come down to us in the form of 4 collections (types). “Words LII-LXIV” are 13 Words included in the collection of “Spiritual Words and Messages”, which belong to the most extensive first type, represented entirely by manuscripts of the 13th century.
The main topic of the conversations is the spiritual life of a Christian:
2) the need to fulfill not only physical, but also spiritual commandments;
4) the saving effect of sorrows and temptations on a person’s soul;
5) the Incarnation as the economy of our salvation;
6) acquiring the grace of the Holy Spirit;
7) the need for patience, etc.
Contents Word 52 Word 53 Word 54 Word 55 Word 56 Word 57 Word 58 Word 59 Word 60 Word 61 Word 62. On silence (or general restraint) Word 63 Word 64
The entire visible Economy (organization) of the Church of God was established for the sake of the living, rational being of the soul, endowed with reason and created in the image of God, which itself is the living and true Church of God. And therefore, with identical names belonging to the rational and the living and the heavenly, the dumb and the inanimate and the carnal were honored, so that, having passed through the shadows (types), the infant soul reached the truth: because the Church of Christ and the church of God, and the altar, and the true and living sacrifice is the man of God, for whose sake even the carnal shrines received as their inheritance the names of the heavenly. For just as the ministry of the law and the Old Testament regulations were a shadow (type) of the Church of Christ, so the present visible Church is a shadow (type) of the inner man, rational and true.
Because, behold, the entire visible structure and ministry of the sacraments of the Church comes to an end, but the rational and spiritual being of man remains, and for its sake has to be fulfilled, in the power of the Holy Spirit, all the dispensation and ministry of the heavenly sacraments of the Church of God, so that, by the power of the living action of the Spirit, restored into the truly holy church of God and the Church of Christ, it becomes the heir of eternal life.
Because of this understanding of things by us, many of those who are new to the knowledge of the truth oppose us, allegedly maliciously deviating from their own scriptures due to the identity of names, justifications and ministries; these people, entirely based on a short-term Economy and relying only on carnal justifications, and at the same time ignoring the rational examination of the inner man and the renewal of the spirit, and not knowing the meaning of the new creation, out of ignorance they slander us; the soul that loves the truth examines the very root of things and, considering that Christianity is not something superficial, and not dwelling on external images of justifications and services, with faith expects to receive, by the power of the Holy Spirit, complete confidence (in its salvation) according to the inner man; and this is true Christianity.
Because for this reason God gave His Holy Spirit to the holy and catholic Church and arranged for Him to be present in the holy altar and in the water of holy baptism; and in order to Himself be present at every divine service of God’s holy Church and take part in it, the Savior, through the Apostles, gave the Church the Spirit of the Comforter, according to His promise: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), - so that on the basis of baptism and the altar and the Bread of the Eucharist and every sacramental service performed in the Church, faithful hearts would be influenced (moved) by the Holy Spirit in all the power and virtues of heavenly fruits and, thus renewed and recreated by the power of grace, would find that they live a true life according to the heavenly wisdom (way of thinking), having been distracted, by the power of the Spirit, by the material and earthly way of thinking.
Because if the Spirit overshadowed the Old Testament ark, or better yet, was inherent in it, then how much more is this the case in relation to the altar and the Church and the entire sacrament of holy baptism; but just as then, when the Israelites sinned, the Spirit did not perform an action, although it was inherent in the ark of God, and sometimes even at times, for the sins of the people, the ark itself was transferred to the pagans, unworthy of it, without contributing in any way due to the multitude of their sins, although the Spirit showed its action and sign, showing through Divine signs in the face of the pagans that He is present with the ark of God - so now The Spirit, present in God's holy Church and at the holy altar and in the entire House of the Church, reveals His action in various gifts to the worthy and faithful, and He is far from the unworthy.
Because God seeks for the living action of the Holy Spirit to take place in living hearts; because everything visible and the entire Dispensation (of the earthly Church) passes away, but the heart living in the Spirit abides (eternally); for this reason the Savior came, for this reason - the whole form of the image of the Church, so that the intelligent beings of the souls of the faithful could, through the action of grace, be restored and renewed and, having changed, inherit eternal life.
And the fact that visible things represent the image and shadow of hidden things, and the visible church is the image and shadow of the church of the heart, and the priest represents the image and shadow of the true priest of Christ's grace (i.e., the holy soul) and all other successions of the visible structure (earthly Church) are the image and outline of spiritual things, relating to the inner man, and hidden, we will cite public worship as an example, done by grace for the sake of the soul.
So, just as in the visible Church, if first there are no readings (from the Holy Scriptures), and psalmody, and a meeting of the people, and all the following of the church rite, then the very Divine Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ is not performed by the priest and there is no sacramental communion of the faithful; and, understand, if the entire church canon ends, then after this the priest no longer offers the mystical Eucharistic prosphora and there is no communion of the Body of Christ: the sacrament was not completed and the church rite remained unfulfilled, but remains unfinished on the part of the priest who did not complete the service of the Divine Sacrament on the altar; just as, in turn, so simply and in itself, the Sacrament of the Offering (Eucharistic Sacrifice) is not offered if it was not preceded in the form of preparation for the Sacrament by the entire church canon - but it, too, is incomplete and unfulfilled without the celebration of the Sacrament, even if it is not performed without it being preceded in the form of preparation.
And just as there is a certain order and glory of the Sacrament, so the situation is in relation to a Christian: if he performs fasting, vigil, psalmody, every feat and every virtue, and, however, the mysterious action of the Spirit, produced by grace on the altar of the heart, is not accomplished in all the feeling of it and spiritual peace, then this means that the whole pursuit of ascetic feat is not sufficient and, perhaps, fruitless, not having in itself the essence of everything, which is reflected in the spiritual rejoicing that grace mysteriously produces in the heart; just as, again, the love of the Spirit does not perform the heavenly sacrament at all - intoxicating the soul in the exultation of grace - for the dissolute and unbridled, for people who do not have faith, reverence and a strict way of life and deed in their hearts: because this is the peace and rest of the action of the Spirit.
Because as much as the soul is in strict asceticism and great humility and meekness and a virtuous lifestyle, so much the grace of the Spirit rests in it in all its power and action; if indeed the soul, having a good lifestyle, does not yet feel within itself with complete certainty the action of the Spirit, then this means that it lacks the sanctification of the heart; therefore, let her seek, weep, weep to the Lord, so that with a virtuous lifestyle she may acquire in the appropriate order the sanctification of the spirit (or: Spirit), as well as the action of grace, manifesting itself in ineffable contemplations in the mind, so that she may acquire in herself the perfect mystery of Christianity, according to the above comparison with the Church.
But just as in the Church those who sin physically are excommunicated by the priest from Communion, and then, when they repent, are rewarded with it; and those who do not sin and are blameless advance and go into the sacred order and move from some external place to the altar in order to become servants of God and fellow altars, so - in continuation of the present theme - Christians, moved by grace and rested by the consolation of the Spirit, pass into the heavenly joy of the sacramental communion (or: communion) of the Spirit, about which the Apostle said: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit” and so on. (2 Cor. 13:13). Think about what has been said, and you will find that the Holy and Worshiped Trinity dwells in a person, purified by help from above through his own virtuous lifestyle; I say “dwells” not with His being - because no creature can contain the being of God - but according to the ability of a person who pleases God to contain and accept in himself the degree of His grace.
But if the desire deviates somewhat from the disposition to live according to conscience, succumbing to some passions that invisibly harm the soul, and thereby grieves the Spirit, then the mind is rejected and separated from spiritual joy, since grace and love and every beneficial and good action retreats from it and it surrenders in sadness and temptation to evil spirits until, having turned, it again follows the right path to please the Spirit in all humility and repentant confession, and then again he is rewarded with the protecting grace of the Spirit and perceives heavenly joy to an even greater extent.
If, however, grace does not offend and does not grieve the Spirit by bad behavior and the general way of one’s life, but follows all the commandments of the Lord in a godly manner, and by free will in all holiness and perfect feat resists evil thoughts, and with all its desire always clings to the Lord and rests grace within itself, then such a soul rightly, as a consequence of this, is rewarded with success and miracles, and heavenly gifts, and movement (to the highest spiritual sphere), and spiritual dignity: she is awarded the transition from Divine mysteries to heavenly mysteries, and from glory to glory, and from peace to even deeper and more perfect repose, so that she may be minded in great measure and with much boldness and glorious riches of grace; and, thus, as a result of personal achievement and help from above, having reached the perfect levels of Christianity, she will be numbered among the perfect workers and among the blameless servants of Christ and co-thrones in the Kingdom - for the sake of the conscientious and great zeal that she showed in relation to Good, inheriting the Lord forever and ever. Amen.
The Heavenly Fire of the Divine, which now, in this century, Christians take inside themselves, in the heart, is the same one that serves (illuminates) the inside of their heart, then, when the body decays, it becomes external and finally, on the day of the resurrection of the dead, it unites the members of the body one to another and resurrects the decayed body. But just as in Jerusalem the fire that served on the altar was buried in a well during the Babylonian captivity and then, with the advent of peace and the return of the captives, it seemed to be renewed and continued to serve in the usual way, so now the coarse flesh, which after death turns into rot, the heavenly Fire will also process and renew and resurrect the decayed bodies; because now the internal fire that dwells in the heart will then be outside and bring about the resurrection of bodies.
And just as during the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the fire that burned in the furnace was not divine, but material, but the three youths, being in material fire for their righteousness, had in their hearts the Divine and heavenly Fire, serving and acting within their souls, and this same Fire appeared outside of them: because it appeared among them and kept the material fire from burning the righteous or causing them harm. Let us remember another story connected with fire: when Israel had in their minds and hearts the intention of departing from the Living God and deviating into idolatry, and when Aaron was forced by the people to tell them to bring to him vessels, gold and jewelry, then this gold and these vessels, which he cast into the fire, then became an idol - look what an amazing thing: to what extent the fire followed their intention: because after - in effect the innermost intention of their hearts - they wanted to worship idols, then accordingly, the fire, the vessels thrown into it, poured into the idol, and after this they became obvious idolaters.
So, just as the three youths, having righteousness in their hearts, accepted the Divine Fire into themselves and worshiped God in truth, so now faithful souls secretly accept in this age this Divine and heavenly Fire, and it produces a heavenly image in human nature.
And just as then (in the time of Aaron) fire, having melted vessels and golden things, formed them into an idol, so the Lord - as if in response to the desire of faithful and good souls - according to their will, depicts a new image in their soul and on the day of the resurrection of the dead will appear outside of them and glorify their bodies from the outside and from the inside. But just as the bodies of the departed at the present time remain decayed and dead and decayed, so our thoughts, through the action of Satan, have decayed and are deprived of life and separated from it, or better yet, buried in rot and in the ground: because the soul perished; and just as the Israelites then threw golden vessels into the fire and they became an idol, so now a person betrays golden vessels - pure and beautiful thoughts - to evil and they become buried in the rot of sin, and the soul, being in the darkness of sin, as if in some kind of church, is offered as a gift (to demons).
But how can a person find them (probably spiritual idols, passions), condemn them and throw them out of his home? – Here the soul already needs Divine light and the Holy Spirit, putting the darkened house in order; needs the luminous Sun of Truth, enlightening and illuminating the heart; she needs a Winner. So, this (evangelical) widow, who had lost her drachma, first lit a lamp, then cleaned the house, and thus, after she had cleaned the house and lit the lamp, she found her drachma in rubbish and uncleanness and covered with earth - so now the soul, by its own forces, cannot find its thoughts and find them, but when the Divine lamp is taken, it lights it in a house enveloped in darkness and then sees its thoughts: to such an extent they covered with uncleanness and the rottenness of sin; when the Sun rises, then she sees her death and begins to correct her thoughts, mixed with rubbish and filth, because the soul, having transgressed the commandment of God, has destroyed its image.
For example, if there were a certain king, and possessed property, and had servants under him who obeyed him, and it would happen to him to be captured by enemies and taken captive; when he was captured and expelled, it necessarily follows that his servants and subordinates follow him into exile. So Adam was created by God pure to serve Him, and all creation was given to him for his service, because he was made lord and king over all creation. But after the evil word (the devil's advice) approached him and spoke to him, and he himself first perceived it through external hearing, then it entered his heart and captured his entire personality, and thus, when he was already captured, then the creature serving and obeying him was captured along with him. Thus, through him, death “reigned” over every soul - that is, over every creature living on earth (Rom.
5:14); as a result of his crime, she “erased” the entire image of Adam, so that people deviated from God and began to worship demons; because, behold, the fruits of the earth, beautifully created by God - bread, wine and oil and animals - they offered to demons on their altars; and not only that, but they also sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons. Now He Himself, who created body and soul, Himself comes and destroys every seat of the evil one and all his deeds done in thoughts (in the heart of man), and renews and recreates the heavenly image in man and creates a new soul, so that Adam will again be king over death and lord over creation. Because just as in Old Testament times Moses was called the “savior of Israel” and led him out of Egypt, so now the true Redeemer, Christ, enters into the very recesses of the soul and leads it out of dark Egypt, freeing it from the gravest yoke and bitter slavery.
And He instructs us to withdraw from the world and be poor in regard to all visible things and not have earthly cares, but to watch day and night at the door (of our hearts) and wait for the Lord, having opened the closed hearts, to pour out the gift of the Spirit into us. He tells us to renounce gold, silver and family ties, sell our property and give it to the poor and treasure it in heaven; “For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be” (Matthew 6:21). The Lord sees that Satan, acting through wealth, forces a person’s thoughts to droop and worry about material and earthly things. Therefore, God, caring for your soul, tells you to renounce this, so that you at least involuntarily seek heaven and have a heart with God; so if you wanted to return to your property again, then (having already distributed it to the poor) you would no longer find anything and, like it or not, you would be forced to look to where you recovered the treasure and sent it, that is, to heaven, “because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Now, in the Law (in the Old Testament) God commanded Moses to make a brass serpent and lift it up and attach it to the top of a pole, and those who were bitten by snakes, looking at the brass serpent, received healing; and this was then arranged for a special purpose: because, obsessed with earthly interests, and idolatry, and satanic pleasures, and all kinds of wickedness, looking at the copper serpent raised on top of the pole, they thus at least partly somehow threw their heads up and, raising their lowered heads, looked at the object raised up, and from it again they turned their gaze to something higher (namely, to sky); and thus, looking at the more sublime, we gradually moved towards an even more sublime consciousness, namely: that there is God, Who is above all creation. So He commands you to become a beggar and, having sold everything, distribute it to the poor, so that even if you wanted to creep below on earth, you could no longer. Having examined your heart, begin to converse with your thoughts: “We have nothing on earth; So let’s go to heaven: where our treasure is, there is our care and thought.”
In this way, your mind will begin to raise its head upward and seek higher things and succeed in it.
What does it mean that “a dead serpent nailed to the top of the tree heals the wounded”? – The dead snake defeated living snakes, because it is a prototype of the Body of the Lord: because the body that He received from the Mother of God Mary, He lifted up on the cross and nailed and hung on the Tree, and the dead Body defeated and killed the snake that was in the human heart, living and reptile. Here is a great miracle: how did a dead snake kill a living snake? - But just as Moses made a copper serpent, although from the beginning of the world there was no copper snake, but Moses himself made a new work like a living snake, so the Lord made a new Body from the Ever-Virgin and the Mother of God and clothed himself in it, but did not bring the body from heaven - the Spirit was heavenly - but, entering Adam’s nature, He created a new man, and combined him with the Divine, and clothed himself in human flesh, and was formed in the Mother's womb.
So, just as before Moses God did not command that a copper serpent should exist in the world, so before the Lord there was no new and sinless Body in the world, because after the primordial Adam transgressed the commandment, “death reigned” over all his children. But the dead Body defeated the living serpent.
And this miracle is “a temptation to the Jews, and madness to the Greeks.” What does the Apostle say? – “We preach this Jesus Christ crucified: for the Jews it is a stumbling block, and for the Greeks it is madness; But for us who are being saved, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23, 24). From there comes life; thanks to this - Light; on this basis - victory; thus - redemption. The Lord comes to death and speaks to her, and orders her to cast out souls from hell and from the power of death and return them to Him; She, confused by this, comes to her servants, and gathers all her strength, and presents to the Lord an ancient manuscript (the debt obligation of people towards her), and says: “Look, on the basis of which they obeyed my word. This is the reason why people bowed to me.” - God, being a righteous Judge, recognizes her rightness in this and says to her: “Yes, Adam obeyed you, and you captured his whole heart. Humanity obeyed you. But what relation do you have to My Body?
It is sinless; the body of the primordial Adam is indebted to you, and you rightly possess a promissory note giving you the right to it. Everyone testifies to me that I have not sinned; I owe you nothing, and everyone testifies that I am the Son of God. For from above, from heaven, a Voice testified about Me, coming to earth and declaring: “This is My beloved Son, in Him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). John the Baptist testifies of Me: “Behold, the Lamb of God, take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). And then the Scripture testifies about Me: “If you do not commit sin, deceit (unrighteousness) will not be found in His mouth” (Isa. 53:9; 1 Pet. 2:22); and again: “The prince of this world is coming, and in Me he will have nothing” (John 14:30). And you yourself, O Satan, testify to Me, saying: “I know You, who You are, the Son of God” (Mark 1:24; Matt. 8:29); and again: “What do we and You, Jesus of Nazareth? You came before the time to torment us” (Matthew 8:29). I have three witnesses: those who are in heaven, those who are on earth, and you. So, to Mine With a sinless Body I redeem the body that became subject to you because of Adam.
I invalidate all their debt obligations towards you: because I paid Adam’s debt by being crucified and descending into hell. So, I command you: give up the imprisoned souls (that is, the Adamic race). And then the evil forces gave up the imprisoned Adam with trepidation. But when you hear that at that time the Lord freed souls from hell and darkness and descended into hell and performed a glorious deed, do not consider that these things are far from your soul and have no direct relation to you. No, this is not so: because both hell and man have in common the fact that both hell and man are considered able to contain and have the devil dwelling within them, and death rules over the souls of (the entire) Adamic race, that is, the thoughts of the soul are imprisoned in darkness. And when you hear about the grave, do not understand it in a material concept, because your heart is both the coffin and the grave: for when the prince of evil and his angels settle in it and when they build paths and roads there, then satanic forces take possession of your mind and your thoughts; and after this, are you not hell, and not the grave, and not dead to God?
Because Satan laid his evil hand on this, sowed evil seeds into the soul, leavened it with old leaven, and created sources of rot there. And so the Lord comes to the souls seeking Him, descends into the depths of the hell of the heart and there commands death, saying to it: “Give back the imprisoned souls that are seeking Me, which you forcibly hold.” So, He scatters the heavy stones heaped on the soul, opens the grave, resurrects the truly dead, and leads the imprisoned soul out of the dark prison.
And, for example, just as there would be a certain person bound hand and foot with shackles, and then someone came, untied his bonds and gave him the opportunity to walk freely and comfortably, so the Lord frees the soul bound by the shackles of death from the bonds and releases it and frees the mind so that it tirelessly and in peace marches into the Divine spheres. Or, for example, a certain person, captured by a flood, would fall into the water and drown, already carried into deep waters, and his body would lie among terrible animals; and if another person, inexperienced in swimming, wanted to save someone who had fallen into the water, then he himself would have died and drowned along with him; This means that an experienced and skillful diver is already needed here, so that, having entered the depths of the watery abyss, he would be strong to dive and retrieve the drowned and suffocated and found among terrible animals; and the water itself, when it senses an experienced and knowledgeable swimmer, helps him and supports him on the surface; so the soul, drowned in the abyss of darkness and in the depths of the abyss of death, suffocated and lies dead, not having God in itself, and it is surrounded by terrible beasts.
And who is strong enough to descend into these repositories and depths of hell, except the Artist Himself, who created the body? – He comes to two limits: to the depths of hell and, on the other hand, to the deepest abyss of the human heart, where the soul, together with its thoughts, is in the hands of death; and brings the dead Adam out of the dark depths; and death itself, because of its exposure, comes to help a person, just as water helps a swimmer. For is it really difficult for God to descend to death and again descend into the abyssal depths of the human heart and there call upon the dead Adam?
So, in the visible age there are buildings and houses in which people live, and there are caves where animals live - lions, or dragons, or other poisonous animals; and if the sun, being a creature, penetrates everywhere, entering through the windows of people's houses and penetrating into lions' dens and the holes of reptiles, and then leaves and is harmed in no way, then how much more does God - the Lord of all - enter into the lairs and into the rooms where death dwells, descends to souls and, having freed Adam from there, suffers no harm from death and, like rain descending from heaven, reaches "the lowest reaches of the earth" and waters the withered roots there and renews and awakens them from sleep to life and makes them a new vegetation.
He who strives and suffers oppression and wages war with Satan has a contrite soul, because he is full of care and weeping and tears. If he stands firmly in his feat, then the Lord stands with him in the battle, and protects him, and carefully takes care of him, and knocks on the door of his heart, waiting for it to be opened to Him. And if your brother seems to you to be kind, benevolent and brotherly, then this person is protected and rested by grace. He who does not have reason does not have such a fear of God, and his heart is not contrite, and he does not remain in fear, and his heart and other members are not strengthened to live without disorder. His soul is very relaxed, because he has not yet been tempered by feat. So one thing is a person who exists in heroic deeds and in hardship, and the other is a person who does not even know what battle (war) is. Likewise, when the grains are sown in the ground, they endure a difficult time during frost, winter, during cold fogs, and then at the right time the vegetation comes to life.
It happens that Satan says to you in your heart: “Look how much evil you have done: behold, your whole soul is full of all kinds of iniquities and you are overburdened with sins.” He inspires this in you in order to bring you into despair, as if you can no longer be saved and your repentance will not be accepted; and this comes for the reason that since evil entered the world as a result of crime (the commandments of God in paradise), he already talks hourly with the soul, as if man to man. But you also tell him this: “I have a written testimony from the Lord, saying: “I do not want the death of a sinner, as I want his repentance, so that he will turn from his evil path and live” (Ezek. 33:11). Because for this purpose He came down from heaven to save sinners, raise the dead, revive the dead, and enlighten those in darkness. For He who came truly called us into sonship (to be sons of God by grace) into the peaceable Holy City, into life never subject to death, into imperishable glory.
Only we will give our undertaking a good end; Let us remain in poverty, in wandering, in enduring adversity, in prayer to God - persistently knocking on the door; because just as the body is close to the soul, so the Lord is even closer to coming and opening the closed doors of the heart and giving us heavenly wealth: because He is good and a lover of mankind, and His promises are not false, if only we ourselves continue to seek Him to the end. Glory to His bounties and His inexhaustible mercy. Amen.
What should we say to our beloved brothers or what should we remind you who have prepared yourself to follow Christ? Should I tell you that anyone who wants to please God must withdraw and renounce this world? - But you’ve already done this beforehand. Or should I tell you that whoever wants to follow the word of the Lord must become a stranger and alienated from his fatherland and family, and relatives and friends for the sake of love for the Lord and a yearning desire to keep all His commandments? “But each of you willingly fulfilled this and for God’s sake became a stranger to his fatherland.” May I remind you of the obligation to steadfastly adhere to prayers and fasts, according to the commandment of the Lord and according to the apostolic exhortation; because the Lord says: “It is proper to always pray and not be cold”; and the Apostle exhorts: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17)? - But now, by the grace of Christ, we see you in this matter leading your life and persevering.
Shall I tell you that you should be versed in the God-inspired Scriptures and feed yourself with them, so as not to forget the life-giving words of the Lord and His commandments and Divine instructions? “But, by the grace of the Lord, you practice this and this is your constant concern.” Should I tell you about mutual love for each other, and brotherly love, and submission to each other, and showing respect to each other? But each of you is trying to strive in this and instill in yourself a good disposition.
So, well, children, and in a pure (proper) manner you have begun to serve and please your Master Christ. This is your undertaking that is wonderful and pleasing in the eyes of God: because those who come to the Lord in a pure manner and with complete will, He designates them as the elect and for eternal life. Therefore, those who come and approach Him in a pure way, that is, with all their hearts, must do the following: keep the body clean from corruption (impure passion), fornication, theft and lies, from fruitless and empty words, from gluttony and all greed and from other sins committed by the body - and keep the soul clean from empty, unclean and lewd thoughts and not indulge in sin. Because just as the body becomes corrupted and dirty when it has unclean communication with another body, so the soul is destroyed when it has communication, being at one with the annoying forces of evil; as the Apostle says: “If anyone corrupts the church of God, God will corrupt him” (“If anyone destroys the church of God, that is, the body, God will punish him” - 1 Cor. 3:17).
Thus, one who ruins his soul and mind with impure passions by submitting to them and accepting them into himself is guilty of punishment for invisible sins. So, just as it is necessary to keep the body clean from open and visible sins, because it is the church of God, so it is necessary to keep the soul clean from bad and unclean thoughts, in order not to voluntarily destroy the heart and not to pollute the mind - as it is said nowhere: “Guard your heart with all guarding - from these things the life comes from, and it is also said: “An obstinate thought separates you from God.” Since the soul is the bride of the Great King Christ, the Apostle says: “I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you to Christ as a pure virgin” (2 Cor. 11:2).
Because God so pleased and thus commanded in order to dwell in those who come to Him and seek Him and to act in them; therefore, one must keep the soul pure, not submit and not be in alliance with evil in one’s thoughts; and the body must be kept clean from visible fornication; for God does not deign to dwell in fornicators and lewd, dirty and dissolute, and does not deign to dwell in souls who, of their own free will, corrupt the mind in invisible passions that arise from the action of evil that dwells in a bad and old man.
Moreover, let everyone, judging his thoughts on the basis of the Divine Scriptures, demand an account from his soul and let him examine himself: is he strong? and observes: is his heart in tune with the laws of God? And if he sees that it is not, let everyone try and strive with all the strength of soul and body, so as to preserve the body from fornication and corruption both externally, because, according to the word of the Apostle, it is the church of God, and so to preserve the soul and thoughts internally from corruption by evil spirits, so as not to become involved in their thoughts and not to defile the soul as the true bride of Christ. Because just as a body, having communication with another body, corrupts and commits fornication, so the soul, secretly communicating with evil forces in its thoughts, corrupts and commits sins: unbelief, lies, vanity, anger, envy, jealousy, rivalry; because in this the soul communicates with evil spirits, and in this way it serves them. For the Apostle speaks of such people as “men corrupt in their minds” (1 Tim. 6:5); and again: “Defile their minds and conscience” (Titus 1:15); and again: “I’m afraid...
lest, as the serpent deceive Eve with his wickedness, lest your minds be corrupted, straying from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3). Thus, since there is fornication and corruption that secretly occur in the soul as a result of sinful thoughts - and this is mysteriously revealed in relation to the soul, the Holy Spirit separated the clean four-legged animals and birds from the unclean, and the clean produce clean fruits - then the soul must, through reasoning and with great zeal and effort, separate the pure thoughts inherent in it by nature from the unclean thoughts created in it annoying sin - so that the soul can generate pure thoughts that are inherent in its nature as pure and, out of ignorance, would not generate - as if characteristic of it by nature (but in fact - unusual) - unclean thoughts, submitting to the evil that coexists with it and communicating with it. Animals that have a cloven hoof and chew the cud, says (Holy Scripture), are pure, that is, every person needs to see a split in himself, and contradict and disagree with the evil of passions living in him.
So, the soul must first of all make a division in its thoughts and, through reasoning, separate itself from communication with sin. Because then truly, by the power of the Spirit, she will be able to dissociate herself from evil spirits, which are the source of unclean thoughts. Because just as a farmer who takes good care of the land first prepares and clears the soil from thorns and thorns and thus sows the seed so that it produces useful and perfect fruits, so for one who desires to please the Lord and expects to receive the seed of grace, it is necessary first to cleanse and cultivate and prepare, to the best of his ability, the soil of his heart, so that the seed of the Spirit, falling on the good soil of the heart, will produce numerous and perfect fruits. fruits. Likewise, when a master properly processes the skin of animals to make so-called parchment, if he does not first cleanse it of entrails, fats, blood stains, and other impurities and properly make it clean and bright, then the laws of God are not written on it.
When a skilled craftsman, having properly removed and cleaned everything unnecessary, makes the parchment light, then the laws of God are written on it and letters are depicted. In the same way, those who wish and hope to imprint the laws of the Spirit in their thoughts and soul and hope to put on the heavenly image of Christ’s life, let them, following the example of skilled craftsmen, process their hearts with all zeal and with all care and cleanse it from all material and existing coarseness, thickness, inflexibility and blood from this age - that is, from earthly cares and bonds; let them prepare their heart to be above this, and also let them cleanse it from carnal, material troubles (and these are “blood stains”), so that when the mind and heart are thus prepared and pre-purified, God, according to His promise, wrote here His laws of the Spirit. Because He says: “I have given My laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be Me as a people” (Jer. 31:33); and the Apostle adds to this: “O you who have the promises, O beloved, cleanse yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit” (2 Cor. 7:1).
Then man will be able to truly know God and live eternal life; if the laws of the Spirit are not imprinted in the soul, then he is still flesh and blood and has not yet made his heart such as God requires, and has not yet acquired eternal life. The example of the farmer and the craftsman can be presented in another light, namely: just as the land does not interfere with the farmer and he cultivates it as he wants and takes care of it at his own discretion; and just as the skin, being dead, does not resist the master, and he processes it as he wants and as he knows according to his skill, and cleanses it, and makes it suitable, having prepared it properly, so everyone must completely, with all his desire and with all his will, surrender and give himself to the word and grace of the Lord, renouncing his own will and mortifying himself, and no longer following his own will, just as the Apostle says: “We no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15 paraphrase); and again: “you are not your own” (1 Cor.
6:19), - so that the wise Artist and Farmer, the Word Himself, as He knows and can, by grace perfect and cleanse the land of our heart, freeing our soul from the bonds of matter and the delusion of this age and dishonorable passions, in order, as the Apostle says, “to present it to Himself as an immaculate Church” (Eph. 5:27); and this immaculate Church is the soul, in which from the beginning no evil thought had any place. And, thus making it in tune with grace, Christ imprints in this soul the laws of freedom, perfection and peace of life, and then, joining the Lord, it becomes one spirit with Him and inherits eternal life.
So, with all zeal and with all the feat, and labor, and consciousness, and great effort, let us try to achieve this, diligently cultivating our hearts and always carefully watching out for the tricks and atrocities and snares of the evil spirit of sin. Because just as the Holy Spirit could say in the words of the Apostle Paul: “I have become all things to all, that I may win all” (1 Cor. 9:20, 22 paraphrase), so evil, imitating everything, tries to be all things in order to destroy everyone: with those who pray, the devil pretends to be praying, so that on the basis of prayer he can deceive someone with erroneousness (direction of prayer) and self-conceit; with those who are fasting, he pretends to be fasting in order to seduce a person into pride on the grounds that he is fasting; for experts in the Scriptures, he pretends to be an expert in exactly the same way, so that through pride, as a result of learning, he seduces them and catches them in his trap; For those worthy to be in the revelation of light, he pretends, showing himself to them as if in a similar light, “for Satan also disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor.
11:14), in order to deceive them with the semblance of light; In the same way, he pretends with others, so that through similar things and plausible reasons he will destroy the soul of a person. Because he approaches everyone insidiously and menacingly, imitating everything beautiful, so that he can, by leading to confusion, kidnap a person to his will. But we, as the Apostle says, “cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:4, 5). This is what he dares and dares to do, wanting to snatch away even those who already have God in the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4). Therefore, “guard your heart with all care” (Prov. 4:23) and ask God for great prudence, so that He will let you know the traps and tricks of evil, so that the evil one does not gain us for himself with his tricks. So, it is appropriate for each of us to work and always strive with all prudence and sobriety and purify our minds and thoughts, because there is no greater, or more important, or more worthy thing than to work on our soul and control our desires according to the will of God.
This is the only great and honorable thing in the eyes of God; as the Lord says: “Do not do... not what is worthless, which perishes,” that is, evil morals, “but what is worthless remains in eternal life” (John 6:27); and again: “confession,” it is said, “and splendor is His work” (Ps. 110:3). Because when a person makes his heart like this, God from above will give him heavenly wealth in his soul, the eternal wealth of the life of the Divine Spirit.
So, wonderfully, O children, and having appropriately abandoned everything short-lived, you have approached God and instead of an earthly fatherland you are seeking the Heavenly Father, and instead of a mortal mother you have as your mother the good Spirit of God and heavenly Jerusalem; instead of the brothers whom you left - the Lord Himself, who deigned to call Himself the Brother of the faithful and worthy of Him; instead of loved ones and friends whom you left, you find holy Angels and the faces of the holy heavenly powers; instead of the slipping land that you left, you will inherit the land of life and the eternal Kingdom: “I am well pleased with the Lord in the land of the living,” it says (Ps. 115:9); and the Lord says: “Blessed are the meek: for these will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5); instead of the corruptible fellowship which you have hated, you have the fellowship of the Holy Spirit; and instead of all these earthly acquisitions that you have left behind, you perceive acquisitions that belong to eternal and ineffable life, remaining indestructibly forever.
Because material property and earthly blessings are outside a person, and these eternal acquisitions and blessings, existing from heaven, given from now on to the faithful, are given from God to those worthy of them inside, into their soul and heart: this is the eternal consolation of the Holy Spirit in the incorruptible communion of grace. Because certain values that exist under the power of darkness and death do not remain in the soul, but the treasures of the light of life are placed inside the worthy.
So, you acted beautifully and expediently, rejecting earthly revered blessings and approaching God in order to acquire eternal and lasting blessings. A God-loving soul, which approaches Christ with a right consciousness and a true understanding of things, does not at all take credit for any good or recognize itself as having done something, worked hard, or known something; even if she gave away all her earthly property to the poor, even if she crucified herself, looking only to Christ day and night and leaving all the centuries of this care and bonds and troubles, even if she exhausted herself in intense fasts and gave herself up to prayers and vigils, even if she possessed great knowledge and prudence, she considers herself to be nothing before God and people, but attributes everything to God, as having received all her good skills from Him - according to the example of Abraham, who called himself “dust and ashes” before the face of God (Gen. 18:27) - and does not recognize the swap of deeds as something great and does not imagine himself to be something, since these virtuous morals, like earthly property, were given to Adam from the beginning of the universe.
Therefore, the God-loving soul attributes everything to God as Himself who directs everything and Himself who accomplishes everything; and then God, listening to the sound reasoning and correct understanding of things of this soul, again Himself truly rewards everything to it and to it, as well as to the one who has labored and who has worked most, He rewards.
Because if God wanted to judge and demand an account, then there would be nothing in a person that would be personal to him: for property and all the blessings in the world, thanks to which everyone prospers, belong to God. Who created the earth and everything on it? Who created the human body? and who created the soul? And if He wills, the earth will grow, but if He does not will, it will not grow; and if he wishes, you are healthy, and if he does not wish, you are unwell; So what does a person have as his own, so that he can justify himself from himself and be proud of himself or consider himself to be something special? Because everything is in the power of God and everything that a person has, he received from Him and received everything by His grace. And the very fact of his existence he has by His grace.
And despite this, God experiences the greatest joy shown to Him by man, and finds great consolation in the fact that the soul, having known with true awareness of the mind and an accurate knowledge of faith and having well studied the state of things, everything that it does good and works on for the sake of God, and everything that it notices and knows, imputes all this to Him and attributes it to Him and considers that it has never done anything good, but also attributes itself and everything of its own to Him. And when God sees such a prudent soul, imputing everything to Him and realizing that everything she has, she has by His grace, then He gives her everything that truly belongs to her, the very thing that he gave her from the beginning, and not only this, but in addition to this He gives Himself and everything that belongs to Him and says to her: “Behold, the earth is yours, and what is on the earth is yours, and the gold and silver are yours, and My body is yours, My soul and knowledge and My mind are yours, and all of Me and all of Mine are yours; if you do not possess anything by nature, then I give you Myself and all of Mine.”
Because if God becomes her property, then it is clear that all of Him and the hidden treasures of His wisdom become hers, as the Apostle says: “All things are yours: whether it is the world, whether it is life, whether it is death,” whether it is Angels, whether it is Archangels, “whether this is present, or whether it is to come” (1 Cor. 3:21, 22).
For example, if there were a certain beautiful woman and a certain rich man would take her as his wife, so that she would live with him and share his life, then she would bring him everything that she possesses, and he would give her everything that was his, and they would have one house, one nature, one personality; and she not only rules over all his property, but is also honored with his body; because his body belongs to her, according to the Apostle: “The husband does not own his own body, but the wife” (1 Cor. 7:4). So in relation to God there is a true and ineffable communion of the soul with the Lord; Communicating with Christ, she becomes one spirit with Him and then, necessarily, becomes mistress over all His ineffable treasures, because she is the bride of the Great King, Christ. For the Lord deigned that His faithful should be, according to the expression of Scripture, “partakers of the Divine nature,” because it is said: “that you... might become partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).
Let this same example be heard in a slightly modified presentation. For example, if a certain king, very rich and famous, were to show favor to a certain very poor woman, who had nothing except her body, and loved her and wished to take her as his bride and co-inhabitant, and she, on her part, would show all discretion in the palace of her husband and would try to carry out her service in such a way that it would please him, and would properly maintain due love for him, then here she is, poor and the needy one becomes mistress of all her husband's property, because she exclusively adheres to her chastity and service due to him, and to her whole and perfect love for him.
If she does something contrary to what is proper and proper, and behaves unhelpfully and inappropriately in her husband’s house, and does not show all due love to her husband, then she is expelled with dishonor and reproach, having both hands laid on her head, as the Law of Moses says regarding a wife who is disobedient and does not please her husband; then she is overcome with sadness and great lamentation at the thought of what great wealth she has lost and what great glory she has lost, having dishonored herself as a result of her recklessness. Likewise, the soul, when the Heavenly Bridegroom Christ betroths it to Himself for a mysterious and Divine union with Himself, in order for it to be worthy of the communion of His Spirit and initiation into heavenly riches from the state of poverty of its impoverishment, then it must please its Bridegroom Christ in all prudence and great zeal of knowledge and fulfill the service of its Husband, which was entrusted to it, pleasing God in everything, but the Spirit in nothing. not to upset, and not to leave anything unattended (i.e.
in everything to follow the ascetic principles that bring the soul to perfection), and to maintain good chastity and love for Him, and with the help of the grace given to her to behave in the house of the Heavenly King with all prudence, impeccably and conscientiously, as it should be. And such a soul becomes the mistress of all God’s blessings and ineffable treasures, and the most glorious Body of His Divinity becomes hers; if she does something contrary to what she should, and shows negligence in the spiritual service of pleasing God, and does not do what is pleasing to Him, and does not follow His will, and does not act together with the grace of the Spirit that dwells in her, then with unbearable shame she is expelled and recognized as unworthy of life as indecent and reckless and unfit for union with the Heavenly King. And then this soul becomes the cause of grief and great sadness and crying for all saints and intelligent spirits: Angels, Powers, Apostles, Prophets weep bitterly for it. Because there is joy in heaven, as the Lord says, “for one sinner who repents” (Lk.
15:7), so there is great sadness and great mourning and lamentation in heaven for one soul deprived of eternal life. And just as in this life, when a rich man dies, along with the singing there is funeral sobbing and beating of one’s chest on the part of brothers and relatives and friends, so all the saints weep for this soul with great weeping.
Thus, when Israel thanked God and pleased God - although they did not yet give due thanks - and also when they were seen to have sound faith regarding Him, then, behold: a pillar of cloud covering them, and a pillar of fire shining for them, the sea that parted before them, manna like rain that fell on them from heaven, water that flowed out of the rock for their sake; They were also protected from the evil intentions of their enemies, and there were also countless other miracles with which God benefited them. When their mind and will deviated from God and from loyalty to Him, then they were betrayed to the snakes and given to their enemies, taken into captivity and doomed to bitter slavery. Whenever Israel sinned, they were delivered into the hands of their enemies.
In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, speaking as if about Jerusalem, the Spirit proclaims about such a soul: “I found you naked in the desert, and washed you from the blood of your uncleanness, and clothed you with My clothing, and put a necklace on your hands, and a necklace on your neck, and earrings on your ears, and a crown on your head, and you became famous among all nations; you ate bread made from the best wheat flour and honey and butter; but then you forgot My good deeds and followed the trail of your lovers, and sinned in your strength” (Ezek. 16:9–15 paraphrase).
This Spirit speaks mysteriously of the soul, which, through grace, will first know and cleanse itself from many impurities, and will be decked out in the garments of the Holy Spirit, and will be clothed with the necklace of heavenly power, and will taste Divine and heavenly food, but then will not remain prudent in the great knowledge of Divine knowledge, and will not behave properly in relation to the service of pleasing God and keeping His commandments, and will not properly preserve the due Devotion, love and chastity to the Heavenly Husband Christ, and then as a result of this she will be rejected and deprived of the life of which she has become a participant: because Satan can overcome even those who have reached such a high level and exalt himself above them. Because it is said: “Let us cast down thoughts and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:4, 5). You see that he is able to rebel against those who know God in grace and power; this is the extent to which evil rises and fights to overthrow man.
Therefore, it is necessary to strive and guard your heart with all guarding of your mind and always, as it is written, “working out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12); This especially applies to you who have become partakers of Christ, so that you do not lack in anything, neither great nor small, and do not offend the grace of the Spirit, so as not to thereby lose the life of which you have already become partakers.
Let's imagine the same thing in another, similar example. - Just as if a slave enters the palace to serve the king, he accepts uniforms from the royal treasury, but he himself enters without having anything of his own, and so serves the king, dressed in a uniform belonging to the king; and so he needs great intelligence and knowledge and wisdom, so as not to do something improper or inappropriate, or instead of one dish not to present another for the royal meal, but to know in order to serve him, as it should, first the first dishes, and finally the final ones; if he makes a mistake in his service, whether as a result of great ignorance or unreason or lack of prudence, and does not serve the king food in the proper order, then he will expose himself to danger and may lose his life, and in any case he will be kicked out with dishonor and excommunicated from serving the royal meal. A person of spiritual life must always be careful, remembering the words of the Apostle Paul: “Let it not be that while I preach to others, I myself will be blind” (1 Cor.
9:27); Do you see what fear and what concern this man of God had in himself? – Likewise, for a soul that will serve Christ in grace and Spirit, great prudence and prudence and knowledge are necessary so that, while serving Him in Divine robes, that is, in His Spirit, it does not sin in any way in the service of grace if it happens that its disposition does not correspond to grace. Because there is a certain mysterious service of the Spirit, secretly, performed by the inner man to God: for in His clothes (that is, in His Spirit) the soul serves God; Without having the garments of the grace of the Spirit, it is impossible for anyone to serve God. And when a person is worthy of grace, then he needs great prudence, knowledge and prudence - which God will also give to a person when he seeks this from God - in order to serve Him well in the Spirit, which he will be worthy to receive from God, and not to sin in anything due to the impulse of evil, and not to make a mistake out of ignorance, and not to do anything contrary to the will of the Master, as a result of which such a soul brings upon himself punishment, death and mourning.
So, with full faith, let us pray to God that the ministry of the Spirit will be perfect for us according to His will, you who have been awarded God’s grace, so that you may not live and behave in a haphazard manner, but having lived your life pleasingly to Him and performed spiritual service impeccably according to His will, you will forever inherit with Him eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Anyone who wants to please God and, by faith, become a joint heir of Christ, while trying to be an imitator of the Lord, so that he himself can be called the son of God, born of the Spirit, must first of all, inspired by long-suffering and steadfastness, valiantly endure all kinds of different sorrows, hardships and needs, be it bodily illnesses and hardships, be it reproach and insults from people, as well as various invisible sorrows, sent to the soul by evil spirits acting for the purpose of preventing a person from entering the Kingdom and leading the soul into relaxation, indifference and impatience, which occurs according to the providence of the Lord, who allows each soul to be tested in various sorrows, so that souls who love God with all their hearts reveal themselves, valiantly enduring everything sent to them by the evil one, and not retreating from hope in the Lord, but always waiting in faith and great patience when the grace of God, by the power of which they will be able to escape all temptation, will free them; and thus, having attained the promise of the Spirit, they become worthy of the Kingdom.
So, the soul that follows the word of the Lord must - according to what is written - joyfully take upon itself the cross of the Lord, being ready for the sake of the Lord to endure every temptation that comes, both hidden and obvious, and always place hope in the Lord, believing that it is in His power to both allow our soul to experience sorrow and to free it from every temptation and sorrow. If it courageously and valiantly does not endure any sorrow, but loses heart and becomes inert, and becomes dejected, and languishes, and loses the will to fight, and comes to despair, as if it would never get rid of these sorrows (which is also a trick of evil to bring the soul into a state of inertia and powerlessness for the struggle), and will not always wait for the mercy of the Lord with firm hope and unshakable faith, then such a soul will not will give birth to the fruit of life, since she did not become a follower of all the saints and did not follow in the footsteps of the Lord.
Know and see that from the beginning the fathers, patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs walked the narrow path of sorrows and temptations and thus were able to please God, valiantly enduring every temptation and sorrow, and, strengthened by the hope of the expected reward, rejoiced while in adversity and disaster, as the Scripture says: “My son! if you begin to serve the Lord God, then prepare your soul for temptation: guide your heart and be strong” (Sir. 2:1, 2); and the Apostle says: “If you remain without punishment, which is common to all, then you are illegitimate children, and not sons” (Heb. 12:8); and in another place it says: “Accept everything that happens to you (sorrowful), for good, because without God nothing happens” (Didache 3:10); and the Lord says: “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and slander you in every way unrighteously for My sake. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:11, 12); and: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 11:10): they are persecuted either openly, by people, or secretly, by the spirits of wickedness.
They fight with the soul seeking God and strike it with various sorrows in order to hinder it on its path to eternal life; this also happens in order for her to show herself: does she truly love God by patiently enduring every sorrow and remaining firm in hope to the end, awaiting liberation in unshakable faith - or, on the contrary, by not enduring sorrows, but retreating before them and sinking and becoming inert, or careless and weakening in hope, by this she will show that she untruly loves God; because various afflictions reveal which souls are worthy and which are unworthy, who has faith and hope and patience, and who does not, so that worthy souls, who have shown themselves to be tried and true in everything, who have endured to the end and are firm in hope, and for this have received liberation by the power of grace, will rightly become heirs of the Kingdom. So, every soul that wants to please God must first of all have perseverance and hope, and then it will be able to go through every hostile action of the evil one and every sorrow without harm to itself.
Because God does not allow the souls who hope in Him and look forward to Him to be so exposed to temptations and sorrows that it would be beyond their strength, as the Apostle says: “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation will also make it easy for you, so that you can endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). And not so much as the devil wants to tempt, so much he tempts the soul and exposes it to sorrows, but - as much as he is allowed to do this by God; just let the soul courageously hold on to hope and with faith expect help from Him and deliverance. And she must remain adamant, because as much as she, armed with faith and hope, fights, resorting to God and expecting help from Him, the sooner the Lord will free her from all the sorrow that has befallen her.
For He Himself knows how much the soul must be tested and educated in temptations, and He allows it to the extent; only let her herself be firm to the end in patience and hope, and she will not be ashamed, as it is written: “from tribulation comes patience, from patience experience, from experience hope, and hope does not put you to shame” (Rom. 5:3-5); and again: “as servants of God, in great patience, in adversity, in need, in difficult circumstances” and so on. (2 Cor. 6:4); and the Lord says: “he who endures... to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22, 24:13); and: “Through your patience save your souls” (Luke 21:19); and in another place it says: “Who believed the Lord and was ashamed? or who was in fear of Him and was forsaken? Or who called Him, and God despised him?” (Sir. 2:10).
Because if people of little education and intelligence know how to test and judge what kind of weight and load each of the beasts of burden, like a mule or a donkey or a camel, can carry, and load it according to the animal’s strength; and the potter, having molded the vessels, if he does not put them in the oven so that, exposed to the heat, they become stronger, then he will not make them suitable for human needs; but he knows how long they need to be kept in the oven so that, having burst, they do not disappear, and at the same time does not leave them raw, so that they do not happen to remain unfinished and unusable; So, if people acquire such knowledge and ability to discern in relation to material things, then how much more does God, who has incomprehensible and indescribable knowledge and intelligence and all wisdom, know how much souls who desire to please Him and hope to receive eternal life need trials, tribulations and temptations; and thus, enduring every tribulation valiantly and faithfully and with hope to the end, they then become tested and fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.
And just as hemp is not suitable for making the finest threads from it, unless it is first subjected to long milking, and as this process continues, it becomes purer and more suitable, so a God-loving soul, subjected to many trials, temptations and sorrows and valiantly enduring them, becomes purer and more suitable for fine spiritual work and is ultimately worthy to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
Because just as a newly made vessel, if it is not cast into the fire, remains unsuitable for human needs and just as a newborn child is incapable of worldly Affairs - because he does not build a city and cannot plant, nor sow or do anything else from worldly affairs, because he is still a child - so souls, even if they have partaken of Divine grace, are pleased by the kindness of the Lord with the sweetness and peace of the Spirit, for their sake infancy, however, having not been subjected to trials and temptations and various sorrows by evil spirits, in which they must show their face, they are only infants and - let me say so - are not yet fit for the Kingdom, since they have not yet practiced (in patiently enduring sorrows), as it is said: “If you remain without the punishment, which is common to all, then you are illegitimate children, and not sons” (Heb. 12:8).
This is how much sorrow and temptation serve people’s benefit and make the soul experienced and strong, if it valiantly and generously, with confidence and hope in God, endures sorrowful circumstances, with undoubted faith expecting liberation and His mercy from the Lord. And it is impossible for her not to receive the promise of the Spirit and liberation from evil passions, because to the end, with great patience, she kept her tried and true hope in the Lord.
Because, as holy martyrs, they clearly endured many trials, even going to death, out of hope in the Lord, and remained in good confession; and thus having shown themselves to be tested, they were worthy to receive the crown of righteousness; those who endured more numerous and more severe trials acquired greater glory and greater boldness towards God; those who retreated before sorrows and, fearing suffering, did not remain in good confession to the end, revealing themselves to be afraid and ashamed both here and on the Day of Judgment - so are the souls, for the testing of them, given over to sorrows and tormented in invisible and various ways by evil spirits, or secretly - by the internal burdens of sorrows or bad thoughts, or openly - through carnal diseases - enduring valiantly and those who remain in firm hope and with faith expect reward from the Lord will be awarded His crown of righteousness, experiencing here (in this life) liberation from their sorrows, and on the Day of Judgment they will find the same boldness towards God that the martyrs have.
Because they endured the same martyrdom of sorrows, and what they suffered from people, they suffered from the same spirits of evil; and to the extent that they endure more numerous sorrows and attacks of the evil one and hold on to hope to the end, so much more glory do they acquire in relation to God and here (even in this life) they receive liberation from sorrows, in response to the foreknowledge of their hope, they are rewarded with the consolation of the Spirit, and there (in eternal life) they will become heirs of the eternal blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven. But those souls who, out of cowardice and fear, retreat, not enduring grief, but fall into inertia or impatience or hopelessness, and stray from the path of righteousness, and will not wait until the end for the mercy of the Lord, such souls as those found not having passed the test, how will they be able to receive the eternal Kingdom? - Because every soul must, until death, for the sake of God, for the sake of us who suffered, generously endure to the end and be firm in hope in Him and thus be worthy of the eternal Kingdom.
For those who ultimately want to get rid of the future Gehenna and receive the Kingdom, let them endure the present sorrows that come from temptations raised by the evil one, as it should be endured, and if they steadfastly endure them to the end with hope in God, with faith expecting the mercy of the Lord, then - by the action of grace - they are freed from temptations and from sorrows, and here (even in this life) they are rewarded with the communion of the Holy Spirit, and thus they will thereby escape eternal Gehenna and inherit the eternal Kingdom of Christ; because the Lord has established such a path that leads to life, a strait and narrow path, as it is written; For this reason, few pass it. With such hope and such promises proclaimed by the true God, let us, for the sake of the hope prepared for us in heaven, valiantly endure every misfortune and sorrow sent to us by the evil one.
Because whatever sorrows we endure for the sake of the Lord, can anything be compared with the future and promised eternal life, or in comparison with the consolation that comes from the Holy Spirit at the present time for patient souls, or in comparison with liberation from the darkness of evil passions, or in comparison with our debt for the multitude of our sins? The Apostle says: “Being judged, we are punished by the Lord, so as not to be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:32); and again: “The sufferings of this present time are not worth anything in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).
Therefore, let us be valiant warriors, ready to die for our King. Why, when we remained in the world, we did not suffer from this and did not have such sorrows, and now, when we began to please the Lord, such misfortunes, temptations and sorrows from the evil one arise against us? “You see that we suffer from this for the sake of the Lord, because the enemy envies us and tempts us in order to seduce us from the path of life or lead us into relaxation or carelessness, with the goal that we, having pleased God, will not be saved. So, since the evil one rises up against us, if we remain in patience and courage, ready to endure even to death, out of hope in the Lord, then we will destroy all his machinations against us. Because we have our Defender and Champion - Jesus, who will give us patience, who are constrained by circumstances and rely on Him, and who will not put us to shame when we receive victorious rewards for our labors - that is, the Kingdom of the Lord.
We will be like anvils, struck and not succumbing to blows, and not yielding to blows that weaken or lead to inertia and powerlessness as a result of them, and, beaten, with our patience we will defeat the enemy. Because our Lord God Himself in this century passed the same way: scourged, insulted, persecuted, mocked, spat upon, and finally was executed by the lawless by the dishonorable death of crucifixion; and He endured everything for the sake of our salvation, “leaving us an example” of life (1 Pet. 2:21), so that those who truly believe in Him and want to become “joint heirs” with Him would follow the same path of temptation and sorrow and death that He passed, so that like He, through many sufferings, and finally, dying on the cross, He would overcome and, having been crucified, crucified and, having died, put to death, having condemned sin in the flesh and destroying the opposing forces, as it is proclaimed: “Having taken away the principalities and powers” on the cross, He “put them to shame, having triumphed over them in Himself” (Col.
2:15), - so if we endure, even to the point of death, every attack and sorrow from the evil one, then we will defeat the adversary by the power of faith and patience, as well as hope in the Lord; and thus found by the tried, we shall be worthy of deliverance from adversity, and shall be filled with the sanctification of the Spirit, and shall inherit eternal life, which may we all receive in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion forever. Amen.
Because victory over the enemy comes as a result of spiritual struggle, through suffering and death: by patiently suffering and being killed for the sake of the Lord, we defeat the adversary. Consequently, if we wish not to imagine every sorrow and temptation as heavy and painful, but to easily endure every attack of the evil one, we will always before our eyes have a joyful readiness to die for the Lord, and as the Lord says - taking up the cross daily, that is, death - we will follow Him, and thus we will easily endure every sorrow, both hidden and obvious; because if we readily expect to die for the Lord and always have this desire before our eyes, then all the more will we with joy, calmly and easily, endure any grave sorrows. Because for this reason, in our impatience, we accept sorrows as painful and difficult and unbearable, because we do not have death for the Lord’s sake before our eyes and He is not always in our thoughts.
Because whoever wants to inherit the Lord, let him want to follow His Passion: since those who love Christ are revealed by this, that they valiantly and cheerfully endure all the sorrows that come upon them, out of hope in Him.
Let us therefore beseech God to give us the understanding to know His will and to gladly do it with all the patience, generosity and joy that He Himself gives us, having equipped us to do everything pleasing to Him, so that, having been found proven and worthy of Him, we may receive eternal salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion and strength forever. Amen.
Anyone who wants to come to the Lord and be worthy of eternal life and become the dwelling place of Christ and be filled with the Holy Spirit, in order to be able to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit purely and immaculately according to all the commandments of the Lord, must thus make a beginning: first, behold, firmly believe in the Lord and devote all of oneself to the fulfillment of His commandments and renounce the world in everything, so that the mind is not at all occupied with any of the visible things, and it must always be consistent in prayer, always expecting with faith the visitation and help of the Lord and having this as the constant subject of my mind.
Then he must always force himself to every good and to every commandment of the Lord, even if his heart persists because of the sin that coexists with him; So, let him force himself to be humble before all people and let him consider himself the least and worst (of all people), not seeking honor, praise, or glory from anyone, as this is prescribed in the Gospel, but let him always have before his eyes only the Lord and His commandments, wanting to please Him alone; let him also force himself to be meek, even if his heart persists, as the Lord calls us to do this: “learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29); also, as far as he is able, let him accustom himself, even if under compulsion, to be merciful, good, generous, kind, as the Lord says: “Be good and generous, like your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:48); and again: “Be... merciful, just as your Father who is in heaven is merciful” (Luke 6:36); and He also says: “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (Jn.
14:15), and also: “Force yourself, because those who use force take away the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 11:12), and also: “Strive to enter through the strait gate” (Luke 13:24). Let him always have before the eyes of the Lord humility, His life and its image, so that he can keep this as an example in constant memory and force himself to imitate it to the best of his ability; let him persevere in prayer, praying unceasingly and remaining in faith, so that the Lord, having come, may dwell in him and strengthen and equip him to fulfill all His commandments, so that the Lord Himself becomes the dweller of his soul.
And thus, seeing that those things that I have now brought, this person does with effort and with compulsion of the heart and accustoms himself in everything to goodness and always remembers the Lord and waits for Him with great love, and seeing his such willfulness and good zeal - namely: that he always forces himself to remember the Lord and to goodness, and to humility, and to meekness, and to love, and as much as he has the strength with by effort he inclines and educates a rebellious heart - the Lord shows him mercy and frees him from his enemies and from the sin that abounds in him, filling him with the Holy Spirit; and thus a person already fulfills, truly, all the commandments of the Lord, without effort and hard work; It’s better to say: the Lord Himself keeps (or: fulfills) His commandments in it, and then it bears fruit in a pure (perfect) way the fruits of the Spirit.
So, the one who has approached the Lord must first force himself to do good in this way - even if his heart is not inclined to this - always expecting His mercy with undoubted faith; one should force oneself to humility; it is necessary to persuade oneself to love if there is no love in the soul; one must convince oneself to be meek if the soul does not possess this quality; one must force oneself to kindness and to make one’s heart merciful; you need to accustom yourself to self-contempt and patience and, being despised and humiliated, not to be angry, as it is said: “Do not avenge yourself, beloved” (Rom. 12:19); one should force oneself to pray if a person has not yet acquired the spirit of prayer. Because when God sees that a person struggles in this way and, contrary to his heart’s desire, forces himself, He gives him the true prayer of Christ, gives him a compassionate heart, true kindness and, to put it in one word: fills him with the fruits of the Spirit.
If someone, not having a prayerful spirit in himself, forces himself only to pray, setting himself the goal of mastering grace-filled prayer, but at the same time does not force himself to meekness, or humility, or love, or the other commandments of the Lord, and does not even have the care, effort, or goal, as far as it is in the power of will and free will, to acquire these spiritual qualities, then it happens, as he asks, from The Spirit is given grace-filled prayer for the sake of his peace and joy, but in his soul this person remains the same as he was before: he does not possess meekness, because he did not seek it with effort and did not prepare himself to be such; he does not have humility in himself, because he did not ask for it and did not force himself to it; he does not have love for everyone, since he did not care about acquiring it and did not try, nor even prayed for its acquisition and manifestation; in him there is neither faith in God nor trust in Him, since he did not know and did not test himself in this regard and did not work, in sorrow, seeking from God strong faith in Him and true hope.
So, just as everyone needs to make an effort and force himself to pray, even against the desire of his heart, so it is necessary to force himself to trust in God and to humility and to love and to meekness and to chastity and to simplicity (orig.: simplicity), then - “to all patience and generosity,” according to what is written (Col. 1:11); it is also necessary to force yourself to despise yourself and consider yourself worthless and the lowest of all people; also, to not talk about unhelpful things, but to always think and speak with your lips and heart about the things of the Lord; You should also force yourself not to get angry and not to shout, according to what is written: “Let all bitterness... and anger and crying... be put away from you along with all malice” (Eph.
4:31); it is necessary to force yourself to every way of life according to the Lord, to every cultivation of virtue and good and noble behavior, to every good deed, to complete meek humility and not to be arrogant and not to think highly of yourself, not to be proud and not to speak ill of anyone; - everyone who wants to please Christ and be loved by Him must force himself to all this, so that the Lord, seeing the will and zeal of a person, forcefully forcing himself to any undemandingness, to kindness, to humility, to love and prayer, would grant him all of Himself, creating all this in him truly perfectly, without labor and without coercion, what before and with labor he was powerless to observe, as a result of the sin that dwells in him, and thus the whole habit of virtue becomes for him, as it were, his nature, because from now on the Lord, having come and abiding in him as he himself abides in the Lord, Himself fulfills His commandments in him without tension, filling him with the fruits of the Spirit.
But what if someone only in relation to prayer, as was said, forces himself until he receives to a certain extent a gift from God, but at the same time in relation to these things - that is, in relation to humility and other virtues - he does not force, does not train and does not constrain himself? Is it really impossible to do this truly purely and flawlessly (that is, to force oneself only to prayer and to nothing else), but there is also a need to prepare oneself, as far as possible, to receive the benefit (that is, the gift of prayer)? – It happens that God’s mercy is shown to such a person (who forces himself only to prayer and nothing else) in response to his petitions and prayers - because God is good and merciful and gives to those who ask Him according to their petitions - but only a person who has not accustomed and prepared himself in relation to the foretold virtues either destroys the gift of grace, or, having accepted it, immediately loses it, conceiving of himself, or does not succeed and does not grows in the grace given to him - because he did not give himself, of his own free will, to the commandments of the Lord.
Because the dwelling and resting place of the Spirit are humility, love, meekness and other commandments of the Lord.
So, whoever wants to truly please God and receive from Him the heavenly grace of the Spirit and grow and improve in the Holy Spirit in fulfilling every commandment of the Lord must first force himself and, if the heart persists, subdue it, according to what is written: “I understood from Your commandments: for this reason I hated every way of unrighteousness” (Ps. 119:104). Therefore, just as someone forces himself to be persistent in prayer and makes an effort in this regard until he masters it, so the situation should be in relation to any cultivation of virtue in himself, if someone truly wants to force himself, force and accustom himself to a good habit. And thus, he who asks and always prays to the Lord, having received what he asked and tasted it, becoming a participant in God and the Holy Spirit, grows and brings to flower in himself the gift of the Spirit given to him, resting in his humility, which he sought, and in love and meekness. The Spirit Himself gives him and teaches him true humility, true love, true meekness, to which he forced himself before, what he sought and what he cared about, and what was given to him.
And thus, having grown and perfected in God, he becomes the heir of the Kingdom, because the humble never falls: for how could he who is the lowest of all fall? Arrogance is a great baseness; humility is a great height and dignity.
So, we too will accustom ourselves and lead ourselves to humility - even if the heart persists - and to meekness and love, asking and beseeching God in faith and hope and love; continually waiting for Him, let us be vigilant so that He sends His Spirit into our hearts, so that we grow and worship in the Spirit (or: in spirit) the Father.
And the Spirit Himself grows in us, so that the Spirit Himself teaches us true prayer - which now and when forcing ourselves we do not have, true humility, meekness and love - which now, and forcing ourselves, we are not able to cultivate in ourselves, a compassionate heart and kindness - and teaches us to fulfill all the commandments of the Lord without labor and without forcing ourselves, so that the Spirit Himself knows (knows) to fill us with His fruits, and so that in this way, subject to our observance of the commandments of the Lord by the action of His Spirit, the only leader of the will of Christ, the Spirit perfected us in relation to Himself and, being perfect in relation to us and cleansing us from all filth and vice that occurred in us as a result of sin, was able to present to Christ our souls as beautiful brides, pure and blameless, when we rest in God in His Kingdom, and Christ rests in us for endless ages.
Glory to His bounty and His mercy and His love, that He has bestowed such great honor and glory on the human race, deigning people to be “sons of the Heavenly Father” and calling them His “brothers.” Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
True friends of God and those who love Him in the proper order come to Him and serve Him not for the sake of obtaining the beauty of the Kingdom (paradise), as if for the sake of profit in trade, and not out of fear of the torment set forth for sinners in Gehenna, but they love HIM IN HIMSELF, the Creator and Provider, realizing that He is the Lord and Creator, and in a righteous manner and with love they carry out their service to Him and valiantly endure all sorrow that comes from evil spirits, pursued by them for the purpose of forcing them not to come to the Lord and not to cling to Him, as blessed David says: “He who drives me out is many and he who is cold with me: I have not turned away from Your testimonies” (Ps. 119:157). Because to the extent that they endure sorrow and persecution from these spirits, which confuse the thoughts of their souls or impose other burdens, the more strongly they cling to the Lord, forcing themselves to seek Him.
Because in the world there are many obstacles to pleasing God: poverty and need are an obstacle and danger (or: struggle) for eternal life; and wealth is equally an obstacle, dishonor and insult are also an obstacle, human glory and honor are also obstacles, equally lead to temptation, illness and suffering - all this can be an obstacle for a person; also in less noticeable things - sorrows and evil temptations hinder the soul and contribute to preventing it from coming to God and clinging to Him, but they tend to lead it into a state of weakening and decline (when a person, as they say, “gives up”), as the prophet says: “Sorrows and needs have taken hold of me: Your commandments are my teaching” (Ps. 119:143).
Thus, sorrows are a touchstone (means of testing) for the soul to test how it will behave when in a state of sorrow; in equal measure, well-being and peace and spiritual consolation are a touchstone for testing an unreasonable and insensitive soul; For a rational and faithful soul, this test serves for eternal life: because God tests souls with both in order to know that a given person loves Him not for selfish purposes, but only as the Lord Himself, Creator and God, as worthy of great love and reverence.
If, neither as a result of struggle, care and labor and the practice of virtues, nor as a result of the peace and consolation of grace produced by the Spirit in the soul, nor as a result of heavy sorrows excited by sin and oppressive, a person who truly desires to please God does not relax, does not sink, does not become indifferent (to the matter of saving the soul), he, AS WORTHY AND TRULY LOVING GOD WITH ALL HEART AND ALL SOUL, justly and worthily becomes the heir of the Kingdom and is worthy to be a child of God, born of the Spirit: because neither through many sorrows did he sink or weaken, nor being in a state of peace and consolation of the grace with which he was awarded, he did not become careless; and he did not fall backward, exhausted from tension and zeal in an incessant and continuous struggle (with the evil and temptations surrounding him); such a person is truly worthy of God and becomes a son of the Kingdom.
So, as has been shown, for someone who is paralyzed and of little faith and has the mentality of a baby (that is, a person who is frivolous and does not think about the state of things), everything in the world is an obstacle to eternal life; This should also include: oppressive and painful circumstances, or illness, or poverty, or an insulting attitude, or dishonor, or a hidden hostile attitude; also - honors, wealth, glory, praise and pleasure; For a person of an infantile mind, all this can be an obstacle to eternal life. On the other hand, you will find that all this, when it happens to a faithful, reasonable and courageous person, is, as it were, a collaborator for him in the acquisition of the Kingdom, if he truly loves God and wants to keep His commandments; because, having torn, trampled and stepped over everything that is considered in the world as an obstacle (for eternal life), he loved only God and clung to Him alone, as the prophet says: “The sinner has committed himself to me, and has not forgotten Your law” (Ps. 119:61); and the Apostle says: “All things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).
So, we too, with a right way of thinking and a right way of thinking, devoting ourselves to the Lord and following Him as our Lord and Creator, will demonstrate - through the fulfillment of His commandments - our love for Him, flowing from free will, so that, thanks to such deeds and a right way of thinking, having been rewarded with spiritual promises and on the basis of this, sanctified in heart by grace and united with the Spirit, we become heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
The blessed Apostle Paul, the builder of the Church, always having the Truth in mind and not wanting those who listen to the word (apostolic preaching) to stumble because of ignorance, revealed more clearly and clearly the essence of the Truth and presented the perfect mystery of Christianity, contained in every believing soul, so that by the power of Divine action Christians would know by experience what it is - the illumination of the Spirit with heavenly light that occurs to holy souls in revelation and in power, so that anyone, having thought that the illumination of the Spirit comes only as a result of knowledge, would not, due to ignorance or misunderstanding of the subject, lose the more perfect mystery of grace, but (on the contrary) would know much more firmly that the illumination of the soul, which occurs for those worthy of this, occurs as an immediate spiritual revelation and an outpouring of heavenly light; for this purpose, taking as an example the glory of the Spirit, the Apostle, turning prudently and with love for the Truth to those admonished, referred to it for the sake of an unshakable affirmation of understanding and an accurate definition of the subject. He says the following: “Also...
the ministry of death was written, formed in stone, to be in glory, as the son of Israel was not able to look upon the face of Moses, the glory of his face ceases: how will the ministry of the Gospel not be multiplied in glory? If the ministry of condemnation is glory, much more abundant is the ministry of righteousness in glory. For what was glorified in this part was not glorified for the glory that surpasses it. For if that which ceases remains in glory, much more does it remain in glory” (2 Cor. 3:7–11). He called that “transitory” (or “perishing”), as a result of which the body of Moses was clothed with the radiance of light, and adds: “Having... such is the hope, we act with much boldness” (2 Cor. 3:12).
And a little further he presented that immortal glory of the Spirit, which in revelation now on the immortal face of the inner man reveals itself to be worthy eternally and immortally and imperishably; he says the following: “We all, that is, born in perfect faith of the Spirit, behold with revealed face the glory of the Lord, and are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as we are from the Lord’s Spirit”; “open face” - that is, the face of the soul; and: “Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (the veil is removed from the face). “But the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18, 16, 17). From this it is clear that he showed and presented the existence of a “veil” of the darkness of evil, which, having penetrated into human nature as a result of Adam’s crime, covered the soul of man, and now with the power of heavenly light coming from the illumination of the Spirit is “removed” from believers and worthy souls; this is why the coming of the Lord (to earth) took place, so that true believers would achieve such a high degree of holiness.
The illumination of grace is not only a revelation of thoughts and knowledge, but also a truly eternal illumination of the hypostatic Light in souls, as it is written: “God made the river shine out of darkness into the light that shines in our hearts, to enlighten the mind of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). And also: “enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep into death” (Ps. 12:4), that is, so that when my soul leaves the body, it does not happen to become covered with the evil veil of death. And it is also written: “Open my eyes, and I will understand the wonders of Your law” (Ps. 119:18). And: “Send Thy light and Thy truth: she taught me, and led me to Thy holy mountain and to Thy villages” (Ps. 43:3). And: “The light of Your countenance is upon us, O Lord. You have given me joy in my heart” (Ps. 4:7, 8); with this he showed the very consequences of the subject.
And the “light” of the Spirit that “shone” on the blessed Apostle Paul, who was on the way (to Damascus), which was brighter than the heavenly sun, by the power of which he was awarded grace, was not the enlightenment of thoughts and knowledge, but the Divine illumination of the soul by the power of Spiritual light and the Divine revelation of heavenly secrets, so that his carnal eyes, unable to withstand the excess of illumination, were blinded by the light, and the fullness of knowledge and God were revealed to him truly known to the soul. Because “as one is of earth, such are also rings: and as is one who is in heaven, and likewise are those in heaven” (1 Cor. 15:48), that is, those who are born again of the Spirit and themselves, because of their great progress in grace, are worthy to become spirit, as it is said: that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6); and again: “who was not born of blood, nor of carnal lust, nor of manly lust, but was born of God” (John 1:13). Because the heavenly image of the Spirit, combined with a worthy and faithful soul, imprints in it His heavenly and spiritual grace, corresponding to His holiness, for: “For as we have put on the image of the ring, let us also be clothed in the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor.
15:49); “the image of heavenly things” is Christ, carried in holy souls; The Apostle says this: “Put on our Lord Jesus Christ, and do not please the flesh through lust” (Rom. 13:14). Because every soul, which - thanks to faith and zeal in every virtue - has been worthy to be clothed in strength and fullness here (in this still earthly life) in a perfect manner in Christ and has been united with the heavenly light of the incorruptible Image, is always worthy to perceive the very fullness of the knowledge of heavenly mysteries, and on the day of the resurrection (from the dead), in the same image of glory, and the body will be glorified together with the soul and will be taken up by the Spirit to heaven, according to written: “to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess. 4:17), and, having been worthy to become “according to the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:21), it will, together with the soul, reign forever with Christ.
Because worthy souls who love the truth, from now on enlightened and illuminated forever and everlastingly by the heavenly light of the Spirit, and here having been rewarded with the fact that the evil veil of darkness is removed from them by the Spirit, will then receive complete liberation from evil passions, and, having been rewarded with pure and impeccable fulfillment of all the commandments, they, as was said before, receive knowledge of the heavenly mysteries by experience itself, “Whose eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2:9), because, according to the word of the Apostle, “God has revealed this to us by His Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:10). And thus those souls who in this world, thanks to the enlightenment of the Spirit, have been honored to become perfect and pure and immaculate, on that day of the resurrection of the dead have to be glorified along with their bodies by the action (already) from now on of the heavenly and spiritual light illuminating them; because, according to the words of the Apostle: “He who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to our dead body through His living Spirit in us” (Rom. 8:11).
Thus, to the extent that someone, thanks to faith and zeal and asceticism, has become in this century a partaker of the Holy Spirit and the glory of heaven and has adorned his soul with good deeds, so much on that day will he be worthy to be glorified with his body: because what a person treasures within himself, that same thing will then be revealed clearly. And just as the fruit that trees conceal within themselves in winter, they bring it out in spring or summer, so do souls: those fruits for which they struggled to acquire, they will then clearly find in their bodies; and the divine and heavenly image of the Spirit, which from now on has been depicted in holy souls, will then clearly make their bodies divine and radiant and heavenly. The souls of unworthy and sinful people were covered by a dark veil of the spirit of this world and, due to the action of passions and bad deeds, making them ugly and dark at the present time, on that day their bodies will also be revealed gloomy and monstrous and filled with vileness.
Because, as in the case of the transgression of the commandment of God, when Adam heard from God the sentence: “If you take away a day from it, you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), first this happened in relation to the soul, when its spiritual and immortal abilities dried up, deprived of heavenly and spiritual pleasure, became dead and covered with darkness, and then, after 930 years, death came to the body ( Gen. 5:5), - so, now, after Christ was reconciled with humanity and became incarnate and endured the cross and death for the sake of our salvation and proclamation, He restores the truly believing soul, still in the body, to the enjoyment (or: tasting) of ineffable mysteries and heavenly lights and, by the communication of the Spirit, frees it from the dark veil of passions and, glorifying it with grace, restores it with power. Divine light of her spiritual abilities; and after this, at the resurrection of the dead, it will restore the body to immortal and incorruptible glory, and then, clothed in the radiance of heavenly light, it, together with the soul, will enjoy eternal blessings.
But only each of us now needs to strive and work and try during this short time and through pure faith and fulfillment of the commandments here (in our earthly life) to acquire this heavenly treasure, so that thanks to this, as was said, we will be honored to completely get rid of bad passions, and to fulfill all the commandments of the Lord perfectly and easily and be able to remove the dark veil from our souls and thus, on the future day of resurrection, when our bodies will be worthy to be glorified together with the soul, which has been pre-glorified by the illumination of the Spirit from now on, and will be clothed in heavenly attire; we will reign together with Christ in eternal and ineffable peace forever. Amen.
Those who have renounced the world and sincerely obeyed the words of God and live a pious lifestyle, but still exist under the veil of passions, which everyone acquired as a consequence of Adam’s disobedience - that is, (having eaten) a carnal way of thinking, expressed in sinful thoughts, which the Apostle called death, saying: “Wiseness... carnal death is” (Rom. 8:6), - They are likened to people walking at night: because despite the fact that the stars - that is, the outlines of the holy commandments - shine for them, they, nevertheless, are in the night and stumble in the impenetrable darkness of passions and, due to this darkness, are not able to clearly distinguish everything.
Therefore, those who, with difficulty and great faith, lead a virtuous lifestyle, need to pray to the Heavenly Lord so that the Sun of Truth illuminates the day in their hearts and they are able to clearly see the evil and varied harm that comes from spiritual beasts, and at the same time - the ineffable variety (wealth) of good pleasures (that is, the righteous who are in paradise) in the imperishable world and the beauty that amazes it, namely, that spiritual and perfect men, whose hearts have been effectively illuminated by spiritual light, know to truly discern both the virtues of the stronger and the terrible state of the worst, according to the different actions of each, as the blessed Apostle Paul says: “those who are perfect... eat solid food, those who have senses are trained by long teaching in the judgment of good and evil” (Heb. 5:14); and the blessed Apostle Peter says: “And the Imams ... the prophetic word: Hearing him as a shining light in a dark place, do good, until the day will shine, and the morning star will shine in your hearts” (2 Pet.
1:19); and in another place it is said: “And the Sun of Righteousness will shine upon you who fear My name, and healing in His wings” (Mal. 4:2). Those who have mixed themselves with the world are like people walking in the night, dark and full of clouds and fog, which is not illuminated even by the small brilliance of the twinkling stars - that is, the word of God illuminating the soul - so that they look like the blind. Such are those who are completely entangled in the networks of material interests and have neither the fear of God, nor fulfill His commandments and (in general) do not do any good, but are completely deceived in evil deeds by worldly vanity; those who, although living a worldly life, are at the same time illuminated by the commandments of God, as if by stars, in their behavior, guided by faith and the fear of God, do not entirely remain in a gloomy and dark night; therefore they can have hope of salvation.
Because just as on the basis of various professions and various crafts people in this world accumulate wealth, and on the basis of various government positions the salaries of employees flow, and on the basis of various land holdings or livestock or other things, gold is collected for the owner of the property, so on the basis of various spiritual gifts - as it is said: “Having ... gifts according to the grace (of God) given to us in various ways” (Rom. 12:6) - and various ascetic exploits and on the basis of righteous deeds and virtues performed for the sake of God, everyone collects heavenly gold - that is, the heavenly wealth of the spirit for eternal life - in accordance with good skill, diligence and faith; it does not follow from this that everyone has the right to judge, blame or despise their neighbor; but let everyone run forward with faith for God's sake and strive and gain spiritual profit.
In addition, among the gold diggers, they find themselves seeking the most golden veins, that is, running incessantly and tirelessly towards the most extreme goal of achievement: because they complete their work with great patience and endurance, little by little and in parts they become rich - and, moreover, lazy and eating what has fallen (from the table of the masters), and not wanting to always work patiently and to the point of exhaustion and remain without anything and poor.
So those who always, with hope and zeal, generously and patiently work to accomplish virtuous deeds and with faith expect the fulfillment of heavenly hope and have before their eyes the reward of grace, those truly accumulate the wealth of the spirit for their patience and endurance and work and prayer, which is why they will be found glorious before God in this age; those who are impatient, ready only to accept mercy (or grace), but who do not want to take on the labor and exhaustion and please God in everything with all long-suffering, are deprived of the grace that they were previously awarded; because always a weak and lazy intention, as not in tune with grace, not involved in good deeds and poor in relation to virtues, will be revealed as worthless and despicable before God in this (future) century.
Because whoever truly desires to please the Lord and truly with great determination to resist the hostile evil army has to wage war in two fields and, so to speak, on two fronts: firstly, in relation to the visible things of the world against distracting earthly things and against attachment to carnal bonds and, secondly, against the spirits of evil hiding in these things, about which the Apostle says: “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the beginnings and to authority [and] to the ruler of the darkness of this world, to the spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12).
So in two ways, with two chains, man found himself bound: 1) having been expelled from paradise after he had transgressed the commandment of God, being in this world and in worldly affairs, he became attached to the world and fell in love with carnal joys and gravitates towards wealth, fame and property, became attached to his wife, to children and relatives, to the fatherland, to the place of residence and, to say in one word: he loved everything from which the word of God voluntarily convinces to untie oneself - since in relation to all visible things it usually depends on the person himself whether to bind oneself to them or not - meanwhile, having untied and freed oneself from all this, a person acquires the power to be perfect in the commandments of God; 2) but, alas, even inside a person is not free: the soul finds itself surrounded by bars, fenced in and surrounded by prison walls and bound by the chains of darkness, and it is not able to love the Lord as it would like, and it is not able to believe as it would like, and it does not have the strength to pray as it would like to; because as a result of the crime of the first man, a terrible contradiction entered our entire world, both external and internal.
So, as soon as someone, having heard the word of God, begins to strive and renounces worldly things and renounces all carnal joys, untethering himself from them, then, holding firmly to the Lord and devoting himself entirely to Him, he will be able to recognize that inside the heart there is a different struggle and a different contradiction and a different battle of thoughts and evil spirits, and a different, inner character, feat lies ahead. And then, steadfastly struggling and calling on the Lord with strong faith and great patience and receiving help from Him, he is able to free himself from internal shackles, prison walls and fences and the darkness of the spirits of evil, that is, from the gloomy action (atmosphere) of hidden passions. But this battle can be overcome by the grace and power of God, because with his own strength a person is powerless to free himself from contradiction, seductive thoughts and hidden passions; he can only contradict them, resist and disagree with them.
If someone is in the power of the things of this world and has bound himself with all kinds of earthly ties and is carried away by evil passions, then he does not even know that there is another battle, another struggle and internal warfare. Oh, let it be that when someone, having labored, renounced himself and freed himself from all visible bonds of worldly and material interests and carnal pleasures and began to diligently cling to the Lord, abolishing himself from this world, then he would be able to see the inner battle of passions pouring out, and the internal struggle and internal bonds! Because if a person, as we have already said, having taken upon himself the feat, would not renounce the world and with all his heart would not free himself from earthly desires and would not fully, in all its completeness, wish to hold on to the Lord, then he will not recognize (will not see) hidden warfare from the spirits of evil and secret bad passions, but is an enemy to himself, because, having secret wounds and passions, he neither sees nor knows about them, since he gave himself up to earthly interests and of his own free will became entangled in worldly things.
Because to the one who has truly renounced the world and taken upon himself the feat and thrown off the burden of earthly and empty worries, and desires, and carnal pleasures, and glory and leadership, and human honors - who has renounced himself and rejected all this with all his heart - the Lord secretly helps to carry out the feat, to the extent of his desire to renounce the world, and, having established himself in the service of the Lord and devotion to Him entirely (I want say: both body and soul), he discovers this internal contradiction and hidden passions, and invisible bonds, and invisible warfare, and hidden struggle, and competition - and then, having prayed to the Lord with faith and receiving from heaven the weapon of the Spirit, which the blessed Apostle counts, namely: “the armor of righteousness” and the “helmet of salvation” and the “shield of faith” and the “sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:14-17), - being armed, he will be able to “stand against the hidden wiles of the devil” (Eph.
6:11), when the fierce days come; equipped with this weapon, with the help of intense prayer, perseverance and supplication, and above all faith, he will be strong to enter into the struggle against the principalities and powers and rulers of the world and, thus defeating the opposing forces through the action of the Holy Spirit and thanks to his own zeal in every virtue, he will be worthy of eternal life for ever and ever. Amen.
Those who wish to truly surrender themselves to the Lord for the sake of the promised future inheritance of the Kingdom must first of all arm themselves with strong faith and firm hope in the fight against the devil, who fights with every soul in every way and in every possible way, so that with the help of this he will be able to extinguish the kindled arrows of the evil one. Fighting with the soul in every possible way, the enemy uses countless methods, wanting to weaken a person’s intention and deprive him of hope and love for the Lord; either, acting through evil spirits, he brings painful melancholy to a person, or puts disgusting, empty and shameful thoughts into the soul and reminds him of his previous sins - all this with the goal that a person, considering that it is impossible for him to be saved, moves away from his intention (to serve the Lord) and sank; or, instilling in a person that all this indecency of bad and vain thoughts was the creation of his soul, and in no way a suggestion from the enemy of God, the spirit of lies in the world, thereby leading him to complete despair and hopelessness.
And if the evil one were to undertake to fight the soul in all these ways, let the soul in no way lose hope in God, but, on the contrary, let him hold even more firmly to Him as the only good and merciful One who can heal its spiritual infirmities, always loving Him and thinking to myself: “If I depart from God and from the foundation of the ascetic life, then there is no other way before me except death and hell - and with this I put myself in the hands of to my attacker."
Thus, if it happened that the enemy daily threw at each of our brothers countless numbers of kindled arrows of evil passions and inappropriate and bad thoughts with the goal of weakening us and seducing us from the righteous path and leading to despair, then let everyone resort to God even more and place hope in Him, because the Lord wants to test the souls that resort to Him in this way, in order to find out whether people, having hated everything, really loved the one God and, having endured a lot of evil from grief sent to them by the devil with the goal that they, despondent, would not resort to God and do His will, they acquired even greater love for Him, despising countless deaths and loving His only one and desiring to be His heirs, and they considered all their zeal and all their work and feat as something small, recognizing themselves as incapable of doing anything worthy of the promised good
Because if you compare the thousand years of this age with the eternal and incorruptible world, it is as if someone took a small grain of sand from all the sand in the sea: this is the case with regard to the endless and limitless age of the righteous in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus, souls who strive with such a consciousness and endure in such hope and steadfastly endure, through hope in the Lord, all kinds of sorrows, will not be ashamed: they are found having been tested in temptations, according to what was said: “Who will separate us from the love of God, whether sorrow, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or trouble, or the sword?” and so on. (Rom. 8:35); and again: “tribulation makes patience, and patience is a skill, and a skill is hope” (Rom. 5:3, 4). And the Lord says: “In your patience you will win your souls” (Luke 21:19). And again: “having endured... to the end, he will be saved” (Matthew 10:22). Thus, the sorrows endured by people from the enemy, if they endure them valiantly with hope in God and generosity, serve as their support and confirmation and make them even more tested.
Just think: if you were made the only king of the whole earth, and you alone were brought the treasures of the entire universe, and if you alone reigned and dominated the universe from the time the human race was created until the end of the century, but for this you would have to exchange the Kingdom of Heaven, that is, a kingdom that has neither end nor limit, for an untrue, non-eternal and not endless life. There is no doubt that if you discuss the matter correctly, you will say: “Let me not exchange the incorruptible and never-ending kingdom for a perishable kingdom.” Just as the Lord said: “What good is it for a man, if he finds the whole world, but loses his soul? or what will a man give for his soul? (Matt.
16:26.) And thus one soul is more precious and more glorious than the whole world and kingdom and its money and glory, not only for the reason that the Kingdom of Heaven is more valuable (all this), but also due to the fact that God did not deign with any of His creations, by the action of the Spirit, to unite His nature and exhaust it (that is, to descend to the level of creation): neither with the sky, nor with the sun, nor with the moon, nor with the stars, nor with the sea, nor with the earth, nor with any other visible creature - except with man, who loves Him above all. So, if we don’t take the great things of this world, like wealth and the whole kingdom itself, with sound judgment, in exchange for the eternal and Heavenly Kingdom, then why do many of us exchange it for things that are hard to come by and (at the same time) worthless, such as, for example, the desire for something in the world, or for empty glory, or for dishonest gain?! Because what a person loves in this life, and that worldly and perishable thing to which he somehow becomes attached, this is what the Kingdom of Heaven is exchanged for: for what a person loves becomes his god, as it is said: “to whom...
If anyone is overcome, he will also have work to do” (2 Pet. 2:19). Therefore, a person who truly strives for eternal life and wants to receive the Kingdom of Heaven must be above everything and above everything that is in this world, and cross all the boundaries of worldly things and all earthly glory, and free himself from all material bonds, and love only the heavenly glory of Christ, and not mix anything else into this love, and not love anything that belongs to this life. Therefore, those who have true love for God, like a two-edged sword, cut off from themselves all other love and cut off all earthly bonds, and nothing of the visible things of this world can hold this soul in its power, no pleasure, no glory, no wealth, no carnal bonds, and not at all any of the material things, but the soul that loves only God, along with Him, loves nothing else that belongs to this age.
So, the great promises of eternal life require heroism and great labors, because a person needs to give himself entirely to God, as it is written: “with all his heart... and with all his strength and with all his strength” (Mark 12:33), and with all his will and mind to sacrifice himself and crucify himself, with soul and body remaining in consistent and unceasing fulfillment of all the holy commandments, in order to thus be deemed worthy to receive the life promised those who love God, and be worthy of the eternal Kingdom; because if in the earthly and corruptible and transitory kingdom people undertake great labors and feats, working with great sweat and exhaustion of themselves, with the goal of achieving what they strive for and entering into the honor and glory of the fleeting leadership (or: reign), then how much more appropriate is it with all their soul to work with joy and exhaust themselves for the sake of achieving an eternal and enduring reign, for the inheritance of such great and immortal glory.
So, does it seem fair to you that earthly things and transitory and mortal glory should be associated with such great labors and hardships, and that in order to acquire unshakable and eternal blessings and reign with Christ not to devote even the shortest time to labor and feat? I think that even for a person of small intelligence it seems justified to strive and fight during this short time in order to achieve victory for centuries; just as it is also true that if a person is not courageous and noble, but dissolves and turns to earthly pleasures, he will bring upon himself trouble and shame forever.
Because if a person devotes himself to good works and to the study of the subjects declared in the scriptures, he will notice that all the words and scriptures and even the writings of external (Hellenic) philosophers “cry” about such a person, praise and exalt him, and all languages are called to testify about him as a person who actually puts into practice what was declared in the scriptures: because he is truly wise before God who always confronts his own bad lusts; and the one who boasts only of secular knowledge, but does not suppress his lusts, such a person was considered unwise and insane for the reason that he combined his life with reckless passions.
So, it is fitting for a man of God not to talk too much, but to pay heed to the works of truth and to give and devote himself to the way of life proclaimed by the Holy Scriptures, because all the words of the Divine Scriptures and worldly sages, and the decrees of the laws had as their theme good deeds and at the same time established punishments for bad deeds; so if you succeed in good deeds and lead a good and noble lifestyle, then behold, everyone talks about you, and praises you, and mentions you.
So, let us always strive to remain in the commandments of the Lord as those who hope to inherit such great blessings and we will always be in anticipation of the communion of the Spirit, so that, having been sanctified in soul and body, hence, by fulfilling on our part with the assistance of the Spirit all the commandments, we may be worthy of Christ and, having become sons and “heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17), according to the word of the Apostle, we will be able to enjoy eternal blessings together with Christ forever and ever. Amen.
What was the purpose of Christ's coming to earth? The first and greatest: the restoration of pure nature in man and the gift: because He restored the nature of the primordial Adam in people and bestowed the heavenly inheritance of the Holy Spirit. Yes, God imparted great and wonderful grace to the human race, freeing people from a dark prison and showing the path of life and the gates, upon which we will knock, we will enter the Kingdom, freed from the bonds of the devil. Because Christ said: “Ask, and it will be given to you... press, and it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7). So, anyone who wants to escape from darkness, by entering through this door, will be able to receive liberation: because there he finds the freedom of the soul and perceives spiritual abilities and acquires the heavenly Kingdom of Christ, and the soul will receive Him as the Bridegroom, who abides with it in the communion of His Spirit. So, look at the love of the Master and His grace (mercy) towards His children: to man created in His image. Now, citing an example, it is time for me to tell His greatest Economy, and, starting my task, I will present to you more clearly what has been said.
Imagine for a clear example: a great and royal city, and it was besieged by foreigners, or a tyrant, or an illegal king, who, having conquered a kingdom and city that did not belong to him and entering it, enslaved its citizens by violence, built for himself there fortress towers and strong and invincible walls to fight the legitimate King and Lord, and erected buildings, and erected his images, and established his laws, contrary to the laws of the first Tsar, he established his own rules and minted his money in it, and brought his troops into the city to keep the citizens in their hands and guard the city, so that any of the citizens would not run away and thereby escape his tyranny, but, on the contrary, to keep them in slaves and subject to him, forced by force of inevitability to do his work.
Then, after a long time and a long possession of the rapists who firmly held the city in their hands, and a long-term slavery of its citizens, the King comes, the Lord of the captives, who previously showed a clear sign of His return and found out whether there were those who loved His coming and needed His protection, and, having learned their desire, defeats the illegal invader of the city; so, having come, He destroyed the high walls and strongholds on which it relied, and blotted out its images and abolished its laws, and, to put it in one word, changed all the orders imposed on the city by the enemy, and, having bound it, destroyed it; and then for the second time he built this city again and erected towers and walls as high as the sky, so that the enemy would no longer be able to enter and take possession of it, and established peaceful laws in it, and placed royal images, and minted tested silver (money) in it, and made decisions that were peaceful and full of peace, and, having arranged everything in every possible way, he lived in it, pleasing and being pleased from the outside. doing His good will. The same thing happened with humans.
Because God created him with His own hands as a being endowed with glory, intelligent; but then, through deception and seduction, the terrible serpent and enemy of the true King, taking advantage of the fact that man had transgressed the commandment of God, attacked the City of God and took the soul captive and subjugated the entire order of her thinking to himself, and introduced evil thoughts into her, and created in her a stronghold of evil, about which the Apostle says: “I am a damned man: who will deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24); and he raised exalted thoughts “against the knowledge” of the Heavenly King, and built towers of unrighteous plans, “speaking to the Heights,” and built his lawless dwellings, full of unbelief, untruth, vanity, lust, evil, envy, malice, fornication; These are the houses of the wicked. Such “houses” were built by foreigners in the soul of man, according to the words of the psalmist: “the darkening of the land was filled with houses of iniquity” (Ps.
73:20); and the enemy established a covenant against the King: the law of sin, and placed in the soul gloomy images, full of various sufferings, and minted silver (that is, values), worthless and nasty, into it, and taught it bad morals, and introduced into it hordes of its guards and crafty spirits to keep it and the whole circle of its thinking in its hands, and bind it with unsolvable bonds, and imprison it with iron bars and copper gates, and force her to do his work and act according to his bad will.
He ruined her, and dishonored her integrity, and blindfolded her so that she could not see her Master; and he imprisoned the Truth itself in a dark mill, plundering it for worldly worries and carnal, material and earthly thoughts, and brought out in it a source oozing the dirt of lawlessness and shameful lusts and harmful fumes; he dispersed and enslaved her servants, that is, the guardians of her thoughts, and took from her the robe of glory, and clothed her in the clothes of dishonor and uncleanness; filled her with bile and bitterness; and as a result of long habit and long imprisonment, she no longer remembered her Tsar, nor her former freedom, but thought that from the very beginning she was like that (unhappy and pitiful).
Therefore, the Heavenly King, Christ, first sent through the holy prophets to remind man of his noble origin and told him about his dignity, and taught him how he should behave while in this heavy and bitter slavery, and announced to him the good news that He Himself would come and redeem his soul from the captors who held it in their power, and the whole city of evil and the fortress and exaltation of evil thoughts directed against knowledge of God, will crush and level it to the ground, and change its laws, and destroy the enemies of God that exist in it, and blot out the images of darkness that exist in it, and destroy the source of dirt and unclean thoughts, and destroy all captors; He promised to restore it according to His will, and give it a peaceful and divine law, and completely change the evil morals in it - but only on the condition that the soul, remembering who it is, and remembering its Master, will resort to Him and give Him all its will, and give Him all its will, and will believe in what has been announced to it, and with a cry will cry out to Him day and night, begging Him to free her from this evil and shameful slavery and terrible captivity.
When the goodness of our Savior Jesus Christ was revealed and the time of the promise was fulfilled, King Christ came to free and redeem His man, who had been held captive for a long time and enslaved by violence by evil captors, and the one who believed Him and ran to Him received freedom; and every soul that believes in Him, and prays to Him, and recognizes the bitterness of its captivity, if it admits its powerlessness - because on its own it is impossible for it to free itself and avoid slavery to the devil - and, praying with a contrite heart, awaits the coming of the King Christ, Who will avenge it and destroy the strongholds and weapons of the evil prince - will also receive liberation.
And, simply to say: Christ devastates and destroys the entire city of evil, built by a tyrant, and in this place creates for Himself the City of God, and erects towers and eminences against the knowledge of the enemy, and creates in it unshakable and invincible strongholds and divine buildings of love, joy and hope, and in the soul itself imprints a worldview and way of thinking pleasing to God, and establishes in it the laws of the Holy Spirit, and gives it silver, tested seven times by fire, and restores in it the heavenly image of the Divine Light, and produces in it a source of pure and living water and “flowing into eternal life” (John 4:14), exuding peace and goodness and joy, and introduces into it the armies of the holy Powers so that they guard it, according to what was said: “The Angel of the Lord will encamp around those who fear Him and will deliver them” (Ps.
33:8), and clothes her in heavenly garments, and gives her freedom to have her own way of thinking, so that by this she may serve her Master, and betroths her to be his beloved bride, and makes her a fellowship of Divine communion; devoting to her from the essence of His goodness, He fills her with the Holy Spirit and gives her every fragrance and consolation for those times during which she suffered humiliation and imprisonment from the king of darkness, and reigns over her in the kingdom of peace. From now on, the merciful God has granted such mercies, opening to us the path and the gates, by walking through which we gain His many and greatest blessings. Because double gifts await the human soul: firstly, this is the joy that Adam had before disobedience, the joy that the soul will experience along with all its abilities; and, secondly, this joy is that the soul will have the Heavenly King as its Bridegroom dwelling in it. Such was the double inheritance that Joseph received from his father, and the double inheritance that Jacob called “the plot of land that I took,” he says, “with my sword and bow” (Gen. 48:22).
This concept of a double inheritance can apply to both our Lord Jesus Christ and to us humans. In relation to the Lord, this is understood to mean that He acquired as an inheritance the Angels and all the holy heavenly Powers; having come to earth and becoming Man, He fought with the opposing force and “condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3), and accepted people into His inheritance, acquiring them “with sword and bow”; and now He Himself, being in us, fights evil for us and accepts us for Himself as an inheritance pleasing to Him. In relation to man, we think that this double heritage should be understood in this way: man perceives the state of the primordial man with all his spiritual abilities, with which he serves God, and then accepts into the true and ineffable inheritance of Christ Himself, who lives in us, and illuminates us, and guides us, as His Divine Spirit knows, sighing for us, according to the words of the Apostle: “for this... let us pray, as we should, not we know, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered" (Rom.
8:26); because previously the soul was held in terrible captivity by a terrible spirit, the prince of darkness.
Thus, the Scripture mysteriously says: “a voice was quickly heard in Rama, weeping and great mourning: Rachel wept for her children, and did not want to be comforted, for they were not” (Matthew 2:18). This prophecy became clear under the Lord when Herod killed children; and in a mysterious way it is understood this way: “a voice in Rama”, on a height - that is, in heaven - “heard, weeping and great sobbing”; Rachel - the true Mother, heavenly Grace, the Holy Spirit - mourns the capture of people who sadly fell under the power of the evil prince and chained in darkness; He mourns them for the reason that they do not abide in the life of the Spirit, in the light good. When the Lord deigned, in His great goodness, to pour out His Spirit on the believers and gave birth to them from His Spirit, then there was joy and joy and rejoicing in the heights of heaven among the Angels of God, according to what is written: “there will be joy in heaven for one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:7). human, which she did not have before, according to what is written: “But Jerusalem which is above is freedom, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26).
If anyone has not been born of the Heavenly Mother, but still bears within himself the image of the old man and is under the dark veil of sin and in captivity and bitter slavery and is still bound by the bonds of sin, then he is the culprit of the weeping and great lamentation of Mother Rachel, the heavenly City of Saints: because she laments, seeing people cast into eternal death and bound by insoluble bonds, and then now, when the time has come liberation. Because she, the compassionate Mother, called all people and wished to be their Parent and make them heavenly; therefore she sent heralds, calling everyone and urging them to be born of Her; and he who believed and had hope and loved the light more than the darkness received the promised and divine regeneration. Glory to the Compassionate Mother, the heavenly City of Saints. Amen.
Word 62. About silence (or general restraint)
Accustom yourself to silence in words, restraint in deeds, and restraint in laughter and gait. Avoid any excess. Because in this way the mind - not allowing itself to go beyond the limits of restraint - will remain strong and will not weaken or succumb to gluttony; the mind will weaken as a result of burning passion; He will also weaken due to other passions, giving himself over to their plunder. So, it is appropriate for the mind to control the passions, sitting exalted on the throne of silence and looking to God. But do not be inert in action, sluggish in words and full of slowness in gait; so that good proportionality dominates all your behavior and your entire appearance would be honorable and, as it were, spiritual.
Beware of signs of arrogance: a proud appearance and a raised head and a pretentious and proud gait; May you have friendly words and affectionate treatment towards everyone; in dealing with women, be shy and, when speaking to them, have your eyes lowered and looking at the ground; say everything carefully and with a strength of voice commensurate with the benefit and need of those listening, so that you are heard and so that it does not happen that if you speak too quietly, those present will not hear you, but do not shout; Beware of ever talking about anything that you have not studied and thought through before, and do not listen to everything at random, and when citing the words of another person, do not substitute your own; one must listen as one takes and discuss oneself as one takes, proportioning both speech and silence with time; learn with pleasure from others and willingly teach yourself; never, out of a feeling of ill will (or envy), hide wisdom from others and do not deviate from being taught; hold tightly to the elders, honoring them as saints of God, as fathers; in those who are younger than you, lay the foundation for wisdom and virtue; and do not argue with your friends, and do not make fun of them or mock them; resolutely reject lies, deceit and rudeness; but you yourself generously endure both arrogance and rudeness towards you, enduring it calmly and patiently; let all your deeds and words have God in mind, and all that is yours, attribute it to Christ; and every minute turn your soul to God and devote your thought entirely to the power of Christ, as if calming down from all speaking and deeds in the refuge of the divine light of the Savior; and during the day, behold, share your thoughts with people, but also be in communication with God often during the day, and especially at night, so that a long sleep does not take over your prayers to God and sacred chants; because prolonged sleep is like death.
Spend every day doing or saying something kind to people; Be always a partaker of Christ, illuminating (you) from heaven with divine radiance; may Christ be your unceasing joy and peace; and do not weaken the tension of the soul with plentiful refreshments and respite from work, retreating from the pleasures inherent in the soul, which cannot be satiated. Give your body what it needs and don't start eating before it's time for dinner.
Let your supper be bread, and let it be accompanied by the fruits of the earth and the ripened fruits of the trees; treat food lightly and do not go wild, revealing gluttony; do not eat meat and do not be a drinker of wine, unless it serves you to strengthen your strength during illness; but in place of the pleasures that lie in these things, stimulate yourself to the joys that are in divine words and sacred songs, and to the wisdom given to you by God; let the thought of heaven lead you to heaven; and cast aside numerous worries about the body, strengthened by hope in God, believing that He will sufficiently give you everything you need: food for life, clothing for the body, and a roof over your head from the winter cold; because after all, the whole earth and everything that vegetates from the earth, all this belongs to your King, and it is His business to take utmost care of His saints as His shrines and churches.
Therefore, do not be too afraid of illness, nor of the expected onset of old age; because if it pleases your King, and is also for the good of your soul, your illness will stop; and He will cover your old age, like with wings, with His Divine power. In view of this, and in relation to severe mental pain, being undaunted - like some worthy fighter in a competition endures labor unshakably and valiantly - do not be tormented in your soul by grief. Even if the illness lasts, do not languish; and if anything else happens to you, do not complain; but show the valor of your soul, giving thanks to God, even while in a difficult situation; and this is more wise than for someone who thinks in a universal human way, and is impossible and not easy to find among people; have compassion for the suffering and in front of people ask God for help; because He will show mercy to His praying friend and give help to those who suffer, wanting to make His power known to people, so that on the basis of knowledge they will turn to God and taste eternal bliss when the Son of God comes, determining (giving) blessings to the righteous.
It is good to always be afraid and not trust yourself in anything, so that someone does not accidentally “drown”; because a person may think that he is doing well, but in reality this may not be so; it is better to always let a person call on God, so that He Himself becomes his Guide, and Path, and Mind, and Determination, and Interpreter; Until a person has found Christ in himself, let him not trust himself in any way. Just as the one who risked drowning, out of fear of the sea, had no concern for anything else but to be saved, so a Christian should, meaning God, always be afraid and not be frivolous.
He who wants to be saved should strive to do what God wants, because what He wants is His will; let him who loves God force himself to love his neighbor; let him be humble before God and people, always on guard with all his heart and resisting evil thoughts; and when someone is attentive, he should always be in fear and full of love and humility and be concerned about pleasing the Lord and overcoming the old man within himself; those who are frivolous and have a slack heart remain in “decrepitness” and do not even begin to strive and do not know how to fight. So, it is good to always be in fear and seek instruction and help from the Lord, so that you may be able to save someone with the help of the Lord, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
The word of truth, proclaimed by the spiritual heralds of truth, is proclaimed and spoken to the children of the Kingdom, as the Lord says: “to you it has been given to know the secrets of the Kingdom... and to others in parables” (Luke 8:10); and somewhere else it is said: “My secret is for me and for the sons of my house.” Therefore, while listening to the word of the Kingdom, and weeping and weeping, let us not dwell on our tears and sobs and on the very fact of hearing, as having actually perceived the truth and heard and known the will of God, because there are other ears, and other eyes, and other sobs, and another mind, and another soul, that is, the Divine and Heavenly Spirit Himself, listening, and crying, and praying, and conscious and truly doing the will of God. Thus, promising the apostles a great gift, the Lord said: “I am going and will send you the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, to be with you forever; He will hear and teach you everything and guide you into all truth. I still have a lot to tell you: but now you cannot contain it. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will teach you all things, and will bring to your remembrance everything that I have said to you, and will guide you into all truth” (Jn.
16:5, 15:26, 16:12, 13, 14:26). So, He - the Holy Spirit - will pray; He will weep because (according to the words of the Apostle): “The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be expressed” (Rom. 8:26); for only the Spirit Himself knows the will of God, since “no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11). Therefore, the Lord says: “If I do not go, the Comforter will not come to you; It is better for you that I go” (John 16:7); and again: “I am leaving you and will come to you... but... I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 14:28, 16:22). The Lord says this to the apostles, because they, seeing His flesh and even before the power of the Spirit came to them, thought then that by the fact that the Lord was leaving them, He was leaving them.
Having ascended into heaven and sat down in the flesh at the right hand (throne) of the majesty of God, and worshiped by all the heavenly Powers and Angels, and Principalities and Authorities, then, according to His promise, He sent the Spirit of the Comforter on the day of Pentecost, and thus the power of the Spirit of the Comforter, having come, rested in their hearts, and then the eyes of their hearts were opened, and they were completely taken away the veil of evil, and the passions died, and then, wise by the Spirit and becoming perfect, they knew the will of God, and were able, with the help of the Spirit, to truly follow it, and they themselves became teachers and guides of people, guiding them by the Spirit into all truth, which ruled and reigned in their souls.
Therefore, when we hear the word of God and weep, we will pray to the Lord and with undoubted faith expect the coming of the Spirit into us, truly listening and praying according to the will of God, because when the good qualities and fruits inherent in our souls, such as prayer and crying, and love, and obedience, and faith, and other skills in virtues, are mixed and become involved in the communion of the Spirit - like incense (incense), which, when thrown into the fire, emits a rich fragrance - then truly we will live according to the will of God and will do everything with holiness, because without the Holy Spirit no one can know the will of God.
Because just like in the world, a woman who is betrothed to her husband, before she marries him, has her own way of life, her own skills and work, and leads life according to her own will; when she gets married and joins her husband, then she is already under the will of her husband and his dominion and, even if she had her own way of life and her own will, she submits this to her husband and no longer acts according to her own will. So the soul has its own will and its own laws (customs) and its own deeds; when he is worthy to join the Heavenly Spouse - Christ, then he submits himself to the law of the Husband, acting not according to his own will, but according to the will of his Bridegroom Christ; if she does not obey and contradicts and does not obey the law of her Husband, having nothing in common with Him and not pleasing Him, and not acting according to the will of the Spirit, and not being in harmony (living accordingly) with His grace, then as a result of this happens to her what Moses prescribed to do in the form of an image: “If a woman,” he says, “does not obey her husband, and contradicts and does not obey him, he, placing both hands on her face, drives her out of his house."
Likewise, a soul that is disobedient to the Spirit, as obscene and worthless, is expelled from the heavenly Father’s house.
But just as in this life, at the wedding of the bride with her groom, there are choirs and timbrels, and joy, and festivities, and treasures are stored in their house, so when the soul is worthy of communion with the Heavenly King Christ, all spiritual and heavenly blessings are stored inside in the house of its flesh: because the body is the home of the Heavenly Bridegroom and the bride-soul; On the basis of this, the laws of the heavenly Spirit exist, where the mysterious and ineffable communication of the Spirit takes place within; there festivities are held and there are choirs of the heavenly powers, and there the hidden treasures of wisdom are preserved; there are the robes of the light of the Divine; there will be the fulfillment of the manifold and precious crowns of the Divine Spirit; and to summarize everything - all their wealth and inner abundance in the house of the flesh of the Bridegroom-Christ and the bride-soul will be recreated here.
But when you hear about communion (marriage) and about parties and spiritual celebrations, do not imagine something material and earthly, relating it to the carnal understanding of words: because we took this only as some kind of shadows and in the form of examples, since otherwise it is impossible to give an image of spiritual mysteries; because everything spiritual and heavenly is ineffable and inexpressible and invisible to carnal eyes; for the holy and faithful soul that comes into possession of this, the communion of the Holy Spirit, and vestments, and heavenly treasures, and laws, and faces, and the festivities of the holy Angels are known and understandable; they are known only to those who know them through experience and are worthy to receive them; for the uninitiated, it is impossible to imagine or comprehend them, but one should only reverently accept them on faith, because this is beyond the human mind: for the spiritual and heavenly above-mentioned benefits of the mysteries of the Spirit do not belong to this age (that is, they are heavenly and eternal).
Therefore, listen with reverence to God’s and spiritual mysteries, accepting them on faith, until, by believing, you yourself are worthy to receive them, and then with the eyes of your soul you will see through experience; what benefits and what sacraments are awarded to the souls of Christians from now on (still in earthly life); at the resurrection of the dead, the body itself will be worthy to receive them, seeing and possessing them, when it too becomes a spirit. Thus, on the basis of clear comparisons and illustrative examples, we depict these spiritual mysteries for the sake of the motivation and zeal of souls who accept the word (of Divine teaching) with faith and reverence, so that, having heard about the promised spiritual benefits, which the souls of saints are now rewarded with, they make efforts and believe that they will be participants in these mysteries.
Teaching His disciples and revealing the truth, the Lord said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for of them is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.
5:3); speaking of the poor, He immediately pointed to the Kingdom, because the soul itself is worthy to become the bride of Christ and it inherits the Kingdom, that is, the Lord Himself; having become poor in spirit, the soul, poor in spirit, becomes beautiful, and noble, and pleasing, and betrothed to the Bridegroom-Christ; if she is not poor in spirit, she does not become engaged to Him: because in this case she is neither beautiful nor noble, but she is not suitable for Him and is ugly; for the like always gravitates towards the like: the beautiful - towards the beautiful and the vicious - towards the vicious; a harlot cannot live with a chaste woman, because she is not like her; and a dissolute and worthless man cannot dwell with a pious and God-fearing man, because they are not suited to each other; but everyone adheres to what is similar to himself: the obscene - the obscene and the noble - the noble; a harlot spends her life with a harlot, and a chaste woman with a chaste woman; so the soul, poor in spirit, becomes beautiful and pleasing to Christ and becomes engaged to Him for a spiritual life together; because this is a sign of her nobility and dignity to be His bride: if she is poor in spirit.
What kind of soul is this that is poor in spirit? - This is the one who recognized her ulcers, and saw the darkness of passions and her slavery that enveloped her, and felt her bonds, and always seeks to be freed by the Lord from such a state; This is the soul that endures labors and always calls and prays to Him to heal it and does not find satisfaction or joy in any earthly good - neither in the royal treasure, nor in wealth, nor in pleasure, but all its desire is to find the Good Doctor, and it expects healing and healing from Him and hopes to find peace in Him.
But how does a wounded and sick soul become beautiful and splendid and noble and betrothed to live together with Christ? – The fact is that, despite being bound by sin and the ulcers of passions, and scars, and corruption, and abuse by evil spirits, as a result of which the soul has become ugly and pitiful, it still has within itself the pristine beauty and nobility inherent in it; and when she correctly realizes what terrible poverty she has fallen into and to what extent she has wounded herself with passions, and, realizing this, seeks and calls on the Doctor who can heal her, then she becomes (again) noble and beautiful.
Because those wounds and ulcers of passions that she bears involuntarily, and does not rejoice in them and does not contribute to them, the Lord does not blame her, for, having come, He heals and heals her and restores her healthy beauty, if only she herself did not take part of her free will in these passions acting in her and would not be at one with them, but with all her might she cried out to the Lord, praying to Him that He would honor her - by the action of His Spirit - to free her from all evil. So, blessed is the soul, weary and not finding peace in anything, but always seeking the good and only Doctor - Christ, so that as a result of the labor of its search, the Lord, having come, will soon heal it.
Woe to the soul that is not even aware of its ulcers that have befallen it as a result of the wounds inflicted on it by passions, but thinks, as if in ignorance, that everything is in order with it and it is healthy and prosperous; meanwhile, both in terms of the level of her knowledge and in the way of her thoughts, she is poor and blind and wounded; and due to the fact that she does not consider herself sick, but in health, the Doctor does not examine her and does not heal her. Because just as doctors on earth, when they visit some place, always visit the sick and inquire about the sick, leaving aside the healthy, from whom they receive no benefit, while the sick and wounded always diligently turn to the doctor, so Christ came to the sick, aware of their ulcers caused by evil passions, and who seek this Physician and need Him, as He Himself said: “they do not require the health of a doctor, but those who are sick” (Mk. 2:17).
But doctors on earth charge a monetary reward for their treatment of bodies, and our Good and Beautiful and Only Physician Jesus Christ, in the form of a reward, accepts the health and healing of our souls, and not only accepts, but together with healing, nourishes with spiritual food and waters the soul, clothes it with the Holy Spirit and the garments of heavenly light, and betroths it to Himself, and accepts - like a beautiful bride - into the ineffable communion of the Spirit (all souls that accept such knowledge and faith and right will). Oh, the boundless philanthropy of our Good Doctor! Because the Lord began His activity with visible human needs, healing the infirm and sick in the desert; and when the apostles wanted to send people away hungry, He did not allow this, but healed and fed them freely.
So now, in His love for mankind, the Lord, along with the healing of our soul from terrible ulcers and wounds - for people incurable, that is, from the hidden passions of the soul - also feeds and waters it from His Spirit, and clothes its nakedness in the heavenly garments of Divine light, and betroths it to Himself as a bride into the communion of the Holy Spirit. Glory to the One Wonderful Doctor, Healer of our souls!
When approaching a soul suffering from illness and poor in spirit, the Beautiful and Only Physician Lord, when he sees it to such a degree mutilated and wounded and wounded by passions, then says to the enemy who wounded and destroyed it: “Oh, most shameless one! May it not be good for you! May you have no mercy! Because you have taken possession of and destroyed and desecrated My rational and beautiful image to such a degree, and to such a shameful degree, with the help of passions, you have abused My beautiful and wonderful and spiritual creation, created by My hands and animated by My Spirit”; then the enemy who abused her and kidnapped her is put to death. And the Lord, approaching this sick and wounded soul, heals her from all her ailments and wounds and gives her full health; and not only this, but also decorates her with the clothes of His Divinity, and nourishes her with heavenly food, and surrounds her with spiritual splendor, and crowns her with the flowers of spiritual virtues, and thus restores her to a beautiful and noble bride for Himself.
So, blessed are those beloved by Christ; It’s better to say - blessed are those who love Him; because, behold, the whole race of Adam was loved by God, because Christ died for all; but only those who truly love Him are those who gain life for their souls and, as the fruit of their love for God, receive an eternal inheritance; and the Lord greatly grieves over the soul that does not love Him: because He sent and invited everyone to the wedding - as it is narrated in the Gospel - and was very sad about those who did not come. This marriage is heavenly and spiritual: the Groom is the Spirit; bride – spirit (soul); the friend of the Bridegroom, and the servants, and the cupbearers are spirits; wedding garments - perfume; bridal chamber and bed - spirit; and therefore, he who has not put on the Holy Spirit for this heavenly marriage will not recline with others at this spiritual supper and will not remain in their midst; because someone, found not having on himself a robe worthy of this heavenly marriage, was cast out into utter darkness.
Also, the water that the Lord (at the wedding in Cana of Galilee) transformed into wine, it seems to me, signifies a certain mystery, meaning that souls who sincerely believe and are born of the Spirit are transformed into spirit, as the Lord said: “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). For if then the Lord transformed water into wine, how much more will the Spirit transform the souls of those who believe and truly wait for the Lord and transform them into spirit; and if in the desert the Lord, having taken several loaves of bread, blessed them and they began to overflow and satisfy a great multitude of people, then how much more - this soul, which is now oppressed and greatly oppressed and unable to help itself because it is oppressed by evil thoughts - He, having blessed it, will expand and spread with the Holy Spirit the oppressed wings of its virtues, so that it will not only be satisfied, but also others saturate with spiritual teachings.
And if during the time of the prophet Elijah “a small cloud, the size of a man’s hand,” immediately covered the sky according to the will of God (1 Kings 18:44), then how much more now will He send the dew of the Holy Spirit and, having multiplied it, fill with it the whole soul that gives itself to the Lord, and make it spirit. And if this evangelical paralytic, who approached the Lord with faith, was immediately healed of his relaxation (paralysis), then how much more so will the soul to which Christ comes, approaching the bright and heavenly beauty of the light of His face, be healed and recovered from the terrible relaxation (paralysis) that happened to it due to dishonorable passions, enlightened and illuminated by His ineffable beauty. And if the bleeding wife touched the hem of His robe, and the flow of the blood of her impurity immediately stopped, how much more will a true believing soul, who has touched - through pure faith - the hem of the robe of the Divinity of Christ, recover and retain in itself the flow of impurity of unclean and bad thoughts.
And if this blind man, having cried out and cried out to the Lord, received healing and received his sight, how much more - when the soul cries out in faith and calls on Him, He will come and open its spiritual eyes so that it can look “at the glory of the Lord with open face” (2 Cor. 3:18).
So, let the bride-soul approach her Bridegroom-Christ, fragrant with her beautiful and good deeds; but just as this incense (incense), as we said, if it is not thrown into the fire and is not combined with it, it will not emit a rich fragrance, and when combined with fire, it comes into action and emits the sweetest and most abundant fragrance and reveals itself to be genuine incense, so all the good deeds of the soul, such as prayer, crying, fasting, vigil and other virtuous deeds, if they are not touched and not the fire of the Heavenly Spirit will consume them, they will not produce the sweetest fragrance and spiritual aroma of perfect virtues; for the Apostle says: “We are the aroma of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15); So, the soul - the bride of Christ - becomes fragrant with its good deeds when the Heavenly Fire ignites it and leads to spiritual fragrance. Therefore, we will also pray that the Heavenly Fire of the Spirit will come and kindle and ignite forever our souls to the highest desire and unceasing love for Christ.
So, this Physician and Bridegroom came, calling and saying to souls who desire to receive eternal life: “Get eyes that see My glory; win ears that hear My conversations; take from Me living water, which will be for you a fountain flowing into eternal life; accept from Me the Heavenly Bread, of which, having eaten, you will not die; drink from My spiritual wine and rejoice in heavenly joy, and become intoxicated with intoxication that does not come from earthly wine, so that, just as for those who are physically intoxicated, wine leads to speaking, so you, being spiritually intoxicated, may speak through the Spirit of the revelation of heavenly mysteries, according to what is written: “Your cup makes me drunken, as it is mighty” (Ps. 22:5); take the oil of gladness, refreshing and calming you; take from Me eternal light, so that, remaining in darkness, you do not perish; Receive from Me from heaven the holy and spiritual Fire, constantly kindling and igniting to love for Me; receive from Me ineffable garments of light to cover and cover you, so that you will not suffer the shame of being naked.”
– It is within each of us that the Lord calls and speaks through spiritual heralds, our Physician, the Bridegroom of our souls, who came and gave life to the world, so that, having made our souls holy and pure, and immaculate, and placing them impeccable near Him, we would be worthy to enjoy eternal life with Him. Glory to His mercy and His unspeakable Love forever and ever. Amen.
A soul that has completely devoted itself to the Lord and has desired to be the heir of the Kingdom of Heaven, contemplating with the eyes of its soul the indescribable and unimaginable beauty of eternal blessings, and stung by fiery love for Him, no longer needs the memory of people to such an extent, because with firm faith and unshakable hope it looks not at the visible, but at the invisible, and, stung by spiritual love for this and having an all-encompassing concern, which consists in a great desire to acquire this heavenly gift, she consigns to oblivion every thought about the carnal and earthly, daily prompted by spiritual love for her Desired Heavenly Bridegroom. Therefore, in the mood of such a soul, reckless, dishonest passions have no place for their manifestation; The evil one cannot sow the deadly seed of evil in her for the reason that her whole purpose is to please God; and, not preferring anything to the commandments of the Master, she readily renounces her own will in order to completely and sensibly follow the will of God.
Therefore, as a result of her disposition towards God, she easily drives away worldly sorrows; rejoicing in the Lord, she subdues anger, irritation and bitterness to meekness, benevolence and kindness; she humbles and mortifies pride, sinful lust, arrogance and empty arrogance with great humility and submission of herself to everyone; because she imitates the Lord, worshiped by the Angels and glorified by the heavenly Powers, Who brought Himself into such slavery to His servants that He might be strangled by them, scourged and insulted, and also not resist, being crucified by the lawless, but endure everything for the sake of our salvation, leaving those who wish to follow Him an example of holiness, so that in this way they could inherit eternal life.
Souls that are lusty and love pleasures and the flesh, accustomed to following their own will and their desires, not involved in the Gospel commandments, as if wearing a mask of piety and in their conceit only deceiving themselves, think that they represent something, being in fact nothing; observing imaginary righteousness, they prefer to take on the hard work of mortification and strict abstinence, which is not yet a demonstration of virtue, but occurs as a result of ignorance and misunderstanding of the spirit of asceticism; because, without examining the hidden passions of the soul, they left the inner man unattended, absorbed only in the observance of external righteousness.
Because souls who have such a disposition, caused by ignorance, do not struggle to overcome anger within themselves; It’s better to say that they don’t even restrain him; they are angry and display vigorous activity caused by a feeling of unworthy jealousy and rivalry; they have acquired vices hiding inside: hypocrisy and deceit; they are sick to such an extent with pride, arrogance and vanity that, suffering and oppressed by this passion, they do not even know about their incurable illness; and because of their arrogant pride there is no joy of the Lord in them. Since the task of the inner man is to remove (conquer within himself) the above-mentioned passions and, with the help of the grace of Christ, to fully implement the virtues performed in meekness, kindness, great humility, in subordinating oneself to everyone and in “not repaying evil for evil to anyone” (Rom. 12:17), but also to ardently desire to be the last and humblest of all, for “whoever humbles himself is will be exalted" (Matthew 23:12).
Because just as the soul, demonstrating bodily feat and work, does this with great labor and struggle, so spiritual work, that is, cleansing according to the inner man, must be done with great zeal, so that, according to the word of the Lord, the inside and outside of the cup are clean (Matthew 23:25), so as not to become like the imaginary righteousness of the Pharisees, washing only the external, while having the internal complete uncleanness; and this applies to those who, out of ignorance, are blind in mind and present themselves as zealots of God, although in reality they do not know Him.
But you, who in the grace of Christ have heard the gospel and perfect word of truth and have acquired the mind of Christ, having tasted the fulfillment of grace in your heart by very experience, must no longer linger on small virtues and not dwell on the brief consolation that was given to you from God, but you must add aspiration to striving, and to feat - feat, and to zeal - zeal, and to desire - desire, and to fasting - fasting, and to prayer - prayer, and to vigil - vigil and, to say in one word: to the virtues of virtue, so that, day after day, feeling success, we achieve the fulfillment "into a perfect man, according to the measure of spiritual stature" (Eph. 4:13), and achieve purity of heart, be worthy to enter into the perfect holiness of soul and body in the fullness of grace, and, thus truly becoming worthy of Christ, we inherit eternal life.
So, let each of you demonstrate your progress in Christ by revealing great humility, meekness and kindness, so that we may become slaves to all and trampled under foot, so that Christ may exalt us; being insulted and driven out and enduring ridicule and reproach, let us bear it with joy, so that we may acquire a perfect heavenly reward and receive the entire “unfading crown of glory” (1 Pet. 5:4), so that it does not happen that, being angry for a small reason, and jealous, and malice, and being filled with arrogant pride, we (would) be deprived of the life that is set before us. Let the world and everything that is of the world die for us, and let us remain steadfast only in pleasing God, wholly absorbed and striving to keep His commandments, so that, having fulfilled the will of the Lord perfectly and in all completeness, we may be able to perfectly receive eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom to the Father be glory, honor, dominion with the Most Holy and Good and Life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.