Апрель 1877 г.

April 1st. Friday of Holy Week. I fell into many sins, damned: firstly, into gluttony and satiety at Mar.Dm.Uvarova, having eaten a lot of fatty cheesecakes with a lot of cottage cheese and sour cream, which upset my stomach, and as a result of an upset stomach, I became irritable, angry, and suspicious this morning; I rudely disobeyed the archpriest, who invited me through the minister to take precedence in the procession of the cross; I reproached him in absentia through the guard: I did not go to the procession, but was at the funeral service and carried out. God! I thank You that You heard me in the Fedorovs’ apartment, where the deceased Maria was, and for a small tenderness and repentance of my anger, bestowed great forgiveness, reconciliation, and consolation. I was angry with Archpriest Trachevsky for his laziness and evasiveness from the religious procession near Gostiny Dvor. I sinned against the Lord and before my brother John in the morning during Matins and now during lunch, hating him with unrighteous hatred for the sake of unseemly and ugly crookedness, for which he is not guilty and which do not constitute sin and cannot serve as a real reason for hatred, but should serve as a reason for pity and compassion. He sinned by hating his brother, whom he should love as himself, whom he should honor and love as a rational creation of God, as a fellow member and member of Christ, as the temple of the Holy Spirit, as the image of God, as a joint heir of Christ. And why did I loathe and despise and hate him? For the sake of the flesh - corruptible, insignificant, multi-passionate, deceitful, charming, deceptive, for the sake of what will soon be pus and worms. So look at the faces, painted with whiteness and blush, the symmetry and regularity of parts, the pleasantness of the gaze and smile. For this reason, you will turn away from every ugly face, pockmarked, disfigured by nature or disease. And for the sake of face, you will destroy the entire law of God, which consists of loving each person as if you were loving yourself, and you will lose God’s favor, to which may the Lord God not allow any of us with His grace, goodness and love for mankind. Let us acquire love for everyone, and let us completely hate ourselves, our old man, for he constantly thinks, feels, desires, and does things contrary to God and his neighbor. Sin seeks to devour me, to kill me incessantly: whether I sit, whether I stand, whether I lie, whether I speak, whether I do - it is always irreconcilable towards me, it always stands with its mouth open at me. Woe is me! I am careless, I am not clothed in all the armor of God: in faith, hope, love, fasting, prayer, alms, meekness, kindness, patience, abstinence, purity, in the peace of God. That's why it often consumes me. And then I, like Jonah from the belly of the whale, cry out to the Lord in repentance from the underworld, may the Lord deliver me, and He mercifully saves me. Glory to the Lord for this. “Confess to the Lord, for His mercy endures forever” [Ps. 135:1]. Remove from me, Lord, the vain fear of demons when saying prayers and exclamations of liturgical services and give me the grace to be a pillar and support of the truth as a representative of Your Church, which is a pillar and support [1 Timothy 3:15]. God! Deliver the demons that fight me. April 2. A spirit of malice attacked me today, inciting me to hate my nephew Ivan Vasilyevich for his ugliness and crookedness, that is, for his wretchedness. Oh, senseless anger! Is this a vice, that is, ugliness and crookedness? Isn't anger a disgusting vice? Isn't it pride and contempt? Is it not fornication? Is it not gluttony and drunkenness? Isn't it partiality? Isn't it deceit and hypocrisy? Is it not willfulness and stubbornness? Isn't it disobedience and resistance to superiors? And my nephew is a meek and gentle, quiet sheep. Oh, how the serpent stings me! I accuse myself, I condemn myself, I deny Satan and all his works and all his ministry and all his pride. I am united with Christ. Join with Christ. Whom Christ God made His son and heir, a member, an abode, do I despise and hate him? Am I the only one who will love the beautiful? Only healthy ones? What about the sick, the ugly, the poor, the old, the crippled, the wretched? Will I love for my own voluptuousness and pride? Is it not for God and not according to God’s right, is it not according to God’s truth and holiness? God! Renew my heart with grace. April 2. Saturday of Holy Week. I thank the Lord, who took away the great, unbearable burden of the enemy before mass through my prayer. I glorify Your goodness, O Lord, Your kindness and kindness towards me, a sinner. Grant me to be obedient to You and to the rulers of the earth. I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace to read aloud the prayer of forgiveness to His deceased servant Ignatius Philippi. I thank the Lord, who accepted my ardent plea of ​​repentance when my heart was yearning and languishing on the occasion of my quarrel with my father, the archpriest, who did not allow my father, the deacon, to accompany the deceased Ignatius to the gate. I reckoned with him, I didn’t want to go without the deacon to accompany the deceased to the gate, [he] gave in, and I went, but all the way my heart was yearning, compressed, deadening. In such trouble, I came to the cathedral and began to strenuously, fervently pray to the Lord for mercy for the sake of His suffering on the cross, kissing His most pure feet on the shroud at that time, repenting of disobedience, malice and asking Him for love, respect and respect for the abbot and obedience in necessary cases. And now the Lord heard my humble prayer and had mercy on me. I felt peaceful, easy, free. I thank the Lord, who has taken away from my heart the hostility toward sexton Zrelov for his unwillingness to be with me at the litany for the soul of Ignatius Filippov. This hostility was mixed, it seems to me, with envy of his increasing prosperity. April 3. Resurrection of Fomino. I thank the Lord for His great and rich mercy shown to my poverty during the early liturgy in stopping the deadly and aggravating violence of sin, firstly, during the proskomedia, secondly, after its unfinished (in words) end, thirdly, after the great entrance, when the enemy again did violence to my soul, fourthly, after the requiem service and after the use of the Saints Darov and finally at Fort Konstantin, where I baptized a baby from the driver (before the baptism, when I prayed to the Lord). What am I saying? “It is impossible to count all those cases of salvation in which the Lord showed His mercy to me every day. I had a complaint against Klepachevsky’s father, Peter, for his laziness regarding the need for correction; There was bitterness in his heart and he spoke derogatory words about him. Forgive me, Lord! April 4. It’s amazing how many ghosts Satan presents to my poor soul, ghosts with which he outrages, overthrows, and kills it due to inexperience and worldly addictions! Yesterday, while serving a prayer service with Comrade Fyodor, Evf. Taratin repeatedly confused and paralyzed my heart, so that I could not speak many words due to unclean ghosts and fear. This morning, just before I woke up, I presented to my soul the ghost of a fire in Kronstadt and thereby frightened me, my heart froze with fear. God! Deliver me from his many different dirty tricks. God! Give me the power to tread on the serpent and the scorpion and all the power of the enemy. God! Give me the grace not to be afraid of his ghosts. The devil will present the face of another person in an unpleasant, repulsive, disgusting form and instill in him dislike in vain; he will present another face in an attractive carnal form and instill carnal, voluptuous feelings, making a person an object of pleasure, like some kind of thing; present another person in a terrible form and instill in him an insane fear, although there is nothing terrible in a person; sometimes a meeting of the people will be presented in some distorted form and for some reason inspiring fear, and the very peaceful meeting of pious people instills fear in you. How many dirty tricks, insurance for our sins from Belial. God! Plant your divine fear into our hearts all the days and hours of our life. Wake up! Amen. April 5. I thank the Lord for yesterday’s early liturgy, for help and victory over invisible enemies who fought me fiercely, especially with indignation and hostility towards Father Peter Klepachevsky for his omission of the demands; this indignation was unjust, the hostility even more so: it turned out that for good reasons my comrade could not be at the service, and meanwhile I had sinned gravely by dislike and enmity. He destroyed the law of the Gospel; the foundation of all law is love. I thank the Lord, who accepted repentance and gave me the restoration of salvation, service in some world and life-giving communion. But I, the accursed one, did not preserve the greatest gift of God: when I was at the Assumption elder Neustroev, at a snack after the solemn thanksgiving prayer for the Tsar, in which I did not take part for fear of demons, I greedily ate and drank wine, among other things, I ate Chester cheese, suckling pig, veal, pie, and the cheese turned out to be extremely indigestible; from indigestion and wine (although I walked back and forth out of town to the cemetery) my head ached badly, and at night I felt sick with nausea, and then soon the pain went away and I slept well. I thank the Lord for the good outcome of the disease. But forgive me, Lord, my greed and grant me constant abstinence and a radical change in my entire peaceful life. April 6. I thank the Lord with all my heart for the early parental liturgy, performed by His grace without stumbling, with warmth, tenderness and tears. At the great entrance he said all the names, the Holy Synod and Metropolitan Isidore fully remembered, he read everything loudly behind the pulpit, dismissed everyone at the liturgy and litany, took communion into the world and space. Burachok served a prayer service for goodness, for the help of God. Praise the Lord. I did not do well that I ate meat at night: at night there was lust, sweetness in the members. It is necessary to kill the ouds. (This was recorded before Matins.) Now I am writing after Vespers, at eight and a half o’clock in the evening. Before Matins, I became embittered with the beggars who demanded alms early, which is why I felt tightness and sorrow, melancholy, and spiritual death. In repentance I resorted to God’s mercy, I prayed for a long time, oppressed by mortal anguish, and the Lord had mercy on me, I cheerfully read the canon. He performed the Proskomedia in grief, rather sluggishly and coldly. Burachek took out particles from the prosphora. I felt awkward throughout the mass, cold, deadened internally due to yesterday's satiety with meat and tea with cream. So I was damned, poor, poor, blind, naked. Woe to me, a sinner! How long will I remain uncorrected? How long is gluttony, this idolatry? How long will covetousness last? Having noticed at the proskomedia that the prosphoras were very small, I was upset with the prosphora for its benefits and wished for larger ones. I envied her (sinned against the Lord), and again my soul was overcome by sorrow, distress, and death; again in repentance I fell to the throne of God, and again the mercy of God [met] me. At the great entrance, I felt relaxation in my heart from the fear of the devil, did not say what was needed, stole the Holy Synod and Metropolitan Isidore, uttered the entire exclamation slowly, although the devil instilled strong vain fear; I didn’t say all of the leave: yesterday’s food brought on cramped conditions and weakness. April 9th. I thank the Lord for the early Divine Liturgy (from Vladimir D. Nikitin and Ivan Egorovich Telmyakov). I was in a difficult struggle with opposing forces, fiercely tormenting and depressing me for yesterday’s gluttony and satiety with my comrade Father Pyotr Klepachevsky; I could hardly speak because of their opposition. But communion of the Holy Mysteries consoled me: I spoke the Sunday troparia after communion very loudly, resisting the demons. This morning, I sinned before the Lord and people internally in my heart by despising my nephew for his crookedness and disgrace, for which he was not at all to blame and which constituted his misfortune and stemmed from illness, therefore, should arouse compassion. I sinned by being carried away by unseemly and specious appearances. This is my misfortune, my sin, that I am carried away by appearances, I am seduced by appearances, despite the inner dignity of a person, everyone is equal, as in the image and likeness of God, that is why beautiful appearance seduces me, such as: faces, clothes, tinsel, gold, silver, gait, techniques, manners, and I am sometimes frightened, which should not be frightened, then I am seduced and fall in love, what to be seduced by and what one should not fall in love with, then I hate and disgust the one whom or what should not be disgusted. What an unclean, corrupt heart, a corrupt heart! God! “Create in me a pure heart... and renew a right spirit in my womb” [Ps. 50:12]. This would be higher for me, more valuable than any treasure, any honor, any sweetness.