Март 1879 г.

Looking at the cross of the Lord, always vividly remember His endless love for people, His creatures, and try with all your soul to love Him and His people, for whom He suffered and died, especially if you are a shepherd of souls, and do not prefer anything to His love and the love of your neighbors. I sinned before God and my neighbors by calling the poor parasites in anger at them, because many of them come to me from morning to evening (there were already forty people before nine o’clock in the morning). Why am I timid and faint-hearted when I need to read prayers and praises to the Lord, the Mother of God and the saints, which are often repeated in divine services, as if they completely lose value from frequent repetition, although they always constitute the priceless treasure of our spirit, consoling and elevating every faithful soul? This is the flattery of 17 Belial, who does not tolerate prayer and praise. I experience this especially in prayers for the dead. But let me always repeat, by the grace of God, with great, redoubled effort, prayers and praises, often repeated. Saturday. I thank the Lord, who has now had mercy on me, who has sent me His light and His truth, so that I might know my sin and the error of my heart. Laying down in bed after a walk (at five o’clock in the morning), I remembered yesterday’s meeting with the rector’s daughter, who was walking with Baroness Gauvin and walking 18 with a feeling of special dignity along the entire Gospodskaya Street, stopping at the store of Sampson Ilyich Denisov. I was filled with annoyance and anger at her pride and vanity (what do I care about them, it would seem? Let her amuse herself), and my heart became tight and painful and burning, I recognized my sin and turned to repentance. I realized that I often look at people incorrectly through my glasses of pride, envy, greed, gluttony, love of money, pride, ill will, jealousy, voluptuousness, wickedness and I think I often see in a person what is not in him, of course, bad, not good, and I condemned myself, leaving God Himself to judge and have mercy on everyone as the Creator and impartial Judge of all. After that the Lord gave me peace. I thank the Lord, who had mercy on me for my repentance twice last night: once when I met the abbot’s daughter in her proud grandeur and self-satisfaction and was indignant at her, and then condemned myself for my evil view of her; another, when I met her father in church and felt hostility towards him in my heart, but then came to my senses, condemned myself, repented of falling away from love and of crafty, evil suspicion. Glory to the grace of God, correcting the evil tendencies of my heart. From how many troubles the grace of God has delivered and is delivering me, awakening me through the tightness and sorrow of my heart to immediate repentance and killing the evil in me at the very beginning, not allowing it to grow, intensify, spread and cause harm to me and others. I thank the Lord who has mercy on me incessantly. I don’t have a measured and quiet disposition, but our rector, Father Pavel, does - only he doesn’t have brotherly love, he’s different from us in everything. But this is because of me, a sinner; I will pray for myself and for him, that he may be brotherly loving and poor-loving, giving to mercy. He does not have firm and constant rules: he orders the service (Matins) on Saturdays of Great Lent to begin at different times: sometimes at five, sometimes at six o’clock; in the second week the bell broke the bell at six and a quarter, and in the third at five o’clock and ten minutes. This is not okay. People don't know when to come to church. The Grechukhins have a lot of kindness and cordiality in their hospitality, but there is no clean air in the rooms, especially in the dining room; I read on March 2 at the hour of the holy prophet Jeremiah and clogged my entire throat with room dust, and perhaps also with a pie with rice and mushrooms, and lingonberry jam (I ate an extra piece and clogged my stomach). I need to beware of mealy foods and jam. My sister-in-law and pet Anna Konstantinovna Tsvetkova has a bad, perky character; under the pretext of sometimes telling the truth, she expresses self-will, extreme pride, the same pride and anger, self-confidence, ingratitude for her upbringing and her children, contempt for simplicity and piety. Also, boasting of her honesty and chastity, she is often very ready for dishonest acts for money and brings into my house, bringing from St. Petersburg, very seductive illustrations that corrupt the heart and morality, and she loves to read novels, and especially novels with love affairs. Here are her characteristics! Correct us all, Lord! Grant us a pure heart and a right spirit in our bellies [Ps.50:12]! I noticed that when I give to the poor from the surplus of brotherly income, which I earn through my labors, the Lord sends me ten times more for my labors to the brethren. Blessed be God! It is said: God will be all things in all [1 Cor. 15:28], that is, in the next century. But in the Most Blessed Mother of God, the Lord became everything to Her from the very incarnation of Her, and from then until now He is everything in Her: the abyss of goodness and mercy for people, and Her endless holiness, and truth, reason and wisdom, infinite knowledge, or omniscience and Her all-goodness in everything, Her goodness, quick obedience, deliverance of us, all of Her perfection, Her honorability is supreme. Cherubim and Seraphim, her eternal steadfastness in holiness and in all perfections, her perfect simplicity, excluding any possibility of sin or wickedness. Out of my greed, in the evening I ate one and a half plates of fresh fish soup without fish, and on the night of the Sunday of the Week of the Worship of the Cross, the surge of lustful passion did not give me peace, but I curbed myself with the cross. Oh, I don’t eat fish anymore. But how long will I idolize the womb? How long will I anger the Lord and inflict mortal blows on myself? For the soul perishes from gluttony and gluttony. What did the forefathers Adam and Eve lose through intemperance? What did Esau lose? What did fasters gain through abstinence? How did you become enlightened, purified and strengthened against enemies and passions through fasting? What contemplations and gifts of the Holy Spirit have you been granted? What fragrant incorruptibility? What kind of glory have you received in heaven and on earth, eternal and unfading? What kind of life have you inherited that has no end? Do we deprive ourselves of all this through intemperance? Oh, madness! Oh, crazy! In a dream I saw that Polyglotov (the deceased sexton) was serving as a deacon in the cathedral. What is this? And I saw it so clearly, as if in reality. I call daily in prayer on the Heavenly King, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter - why don’t I obey the commands of the Holy Spirit, don’t fast during the days of fasting, eat fish, wine, sweets, destroying the life of my soul, sweeping away the truth of God, strengthening my passions? Holy Soul and Maker 19, have mercy on me and build me up according to Your mercy and teach me through Your justification. The Holy Spirit descended to earth and dwelled in us, lives, teaches and acts in us: Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? [ 1 Corinthians 3:16 ]. God works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure [Phil.2:13]. How do Christians value such a treasure? How precious am I, damned one? Oh, how little I value! How others do not know Him at all and live only according to the flesh! Oh, come, Holy Soul, as the Creator and Giver of life, and dwell in us, and live in us according to Divine right, cleansing us from all filth, and save, O Blessed One, according to the goodness of Your soul. Resurrection. Week of the Cross. I was terribly distressed today at matins and early mass due to overeating on fresh fish soup in the evening (I ate a plate and a half without fish with black bread). When I began to serve Matins, my voice was rattling, unclean, phlegm overcame me, I was constantly coughing and spitting, my insides seemed to be bandaged with thorns; the enemy played dirty tricks on me, confusing, darkening, raping and oppressing me. This continued until the reading of the Gospel, which I read clearly, loudly, separately after the previous temptation. The Canon was read, by God's grace, with feeling, loudly, clearly; he pronounced the dismissal without mentioning all the saints who needed to be remembered: the holy apostles Andrew the First-Called, Peter and Paul, St. Alexander Nevsky; Christ, the true Light has gone astray at the end; small vacation collected 20. At the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great at the Great Entrance, I was completely confused about the royal name because of my own new damask 21 blue sacristan, which I regretted, damn it, that it would become sooty - why regret it? For our lifetime there will be plenty of it. Oh, addiction, destructive for the priest, doubling his heart, cooling him, removing him from Christ, the true eternal life, the true, imperishable robe of our souls, the luminous, priceless, life-giving robe! Oh, addiction that kills the soul! Even at the funeral service, this same addiction tore me in two and killed me, confused me, darkened my soul, weakened me, and shamed it. It completely killed my prayer: what a sin, what a disaster, addiction to earthly things! And rightly so! Should a priest, who bears the angelic, heavenly dignity, cling together with other people to earthly vanity? Shouldn’t he always have his heart and all his thoughts in heaven, so that he can set an example for others in this? Yes, the enemy cruelly caught me in his net and laughed at me - moreover, at public prayer, at everyone for whom I should have fervently prayed and did not pray due to the cunning of the enemy and due to my worldly addictions: my prayer seemed to have been scattered over the earth and did not ascend to God, for my heart was unclean, being bound, as if by snares, by worldly lusts and pleasures. But I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace of peace after communion and especially after the final consumption of the Holy Mysteries! At the prayer behind the pulpit, due to the crowdedness of the enemy and embarrassment, I did not read some words, namely: You glorify those with Your Divine power and do not abandon us who trust in You, and in the end: from You, the Father of lights, and to You glory and thanksgiving and worship... It should be noted that the ear strengthens the stomach and makes tightness in the sides... Ten o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who delivered me through the prayer of repentance from the fornication of my heart (when saying goodbye to the girl Elisaveta Balykina); this inner fornication cut into my soul and into my passionate, voluptuous flesh, like a sweet poison, it bound and weakened me, alienated me from the holiness and truth of God and from God Himself - and I felt bitter and cramped, and my soul became blind, and began to yearn and hunger for the truth of God, which was given to it again from the Lord by grace and His generosity and love for mankind, and I immediately felt the removal prodigal poison, peace and freedom of spirit. Glory to the Lord! Glory to the Most Pure Mother of God! Ten and a half o'clock in the evening. Now the much-merciful and long-suffering Lord has delivered me from the great troubles and misfortunes of my soul that befell me for the sins of impatience, irritation and anger and my lack of mercy towards the poor who asked me for money (many asked again), which I did not have with me. I was in cramped conditions, in the fire of hell, when I became angry, firstly, with the servants, who allowed the water in the samovar to boil over, and secondly, with my wife, who opened all the doors in the rooms leading to my office and bedroom, which I do not tolerate due to the thickening of the air, and rudely contradicted me and called me an abusive word. But I immediately knelt before the Lord and began to sincerely condemn, accuse myself of all sins by name and plunged into the abyss of His mercy, deliverance, healing, cleansing, renewal, salvation, into the abyss of His good obedience, kindness, benevolence - and soon, as I deeply repented, I received forgiveness, peace, freedom, boldness, love for those who were angry, for I recognized myself as the most sinful of all. I thank the Lord, who renewed His mercies on me, His good obedience, quick obedience, kindness, His kindness, His great salvation. Great are your works, O Lord, and wonderful are your works, and not a single word will suffice for the singing of your wonders 22, which are revealed in the salvation of us, who sin many times against you every hour. What did I hear today from Mrs. Kozlyaninova about the students of my classical gymnasium and especially about the students of the Technical School! Your hair will stand on end! Take a good look at the students at the gymnasium, and tell Father Pyotr Petrovich Preobrazhensky about the techniques. Eleven o'clock in the morning. I thank the Lord, who has shown His mercy and power on me both now during Matins in the church of God and after Matins at home. My hope, Lord, glory to You! Ten o'clock in the evening. Glory to Thee, my dearest Savior, that You, the gracious and gracious One, have deigned to have mercy on me many times, who have sinned greatly against Thee with my tongue and my evil disposition regarding the poor; when I sincerely repented before You, walking through the streets and coming home, that is, several times after repeated sins, You stretched out or extended Your life-giving hand and revived me, dead in sins, destroying my inner death each time. How joyful, how sweet is Your deliverance, Lord Jesus Christ, the ruler of my life and my most righteous judge, my deliverer, my renewer, my sanctifier, my pacifier! But how hard, how painful it is to fall away from You through sin! Glory, Lord, to Thy cross, Thy wounds, Thy death, who endured for us and delivered us from sin, curse and death, and who continually delivers when we sincerely repent of our daily sins! Glory to You, the treasure of our salvation, our hope, our life, peace, our joy! How beautiful, how true, how expedient, wise, how graciously our eternal salvation was accomplished by the terrible sacred act of the Son of God, His incarnation, humiliation, His teaching, life, deeds, His suffering on the cross, death and resurrection! So I, the accursed one, am truly saved daily and many times over by invoking the glorious and all-saving name of the Son of God, by His cross and blood! And how truly and quickly, how true! From what depths of sin and destruction! From what cramped conditions and sorrows! From what terrible, mortal captivity into which the devil takes me! From what corruption! From what darkness! What abomination! From what evil, from what countless evils! Glory to Thee, who descended to us and suffered for our sake, the Only Begotten Son of God, hypostatic in the goodness, wisdom and power of God the Father! I condemn myself in wickedness, in evil suspicion of the rector, Father Paul: today he did not come to serve in church as usual, as usual, and I thought: here he is basking at home, does not want to serve, sending Father Alexander for himself - and evil took over him, and the enemy, the slanderer of our brethren, managed to do evil in me. Oh, my wickedness! Oh, envy, oh ill will, oh malice, oh jealousy and evil zeal! Stung by the evil one and my passions, I repented deeply, condemned myself, my evil heart, my suspicion, my [hatred], my envy, my ill will, I suffered for a long time from my sins - and finally, for my repentance, I was pardoned by the Lord. Glory to Your long-suffering, glory to Your deliverance, O Lord, most merciful! The Canon read (to Saint Theophylact and the Holy Cross with zeal), loudly, with the greatest peace and heartfelt pleasure. How should I have treated Father Paul in a Christian, brotherly way? Not to suspect him of indolence, of laziness, of neglect of service, of hatred and contempt for me, but simply had to look at his actions, that due to illness or lack of time he did not come to church, it was necessary to sincerely condescend to his senile infirmities, to his commanding will and independent self-determination in actions, to sincerely pity him and wish him all the best from the depths of a lover, not a hater, an envier. and a despising heart. For I myself may be subject to weaknesses, and I will also wish for leniency and sympathy for myself, and with what measure you measure, it will be measured to you [Matthew 7:2]. Five o'clock in the evening. I sinned grievously today at about three o'clock in the evening, hitting one beggar on the head, although slightly, for frequently asking me for alms, and strongly pushing one townsman guy for importunity, idleness and laziness. After that, I now came to the feeling and consciousness of all the greatness and severity of my sin, or, better yet, many sins: malice, envy, pride, carnality, gluttony, gluttony and drunkenness, internal, in thoughts, feelings (and movements of the heart and flesh) fornication, severity, obstinacy, hard-heartedness, love of money, insolence, seditiousness 23 - and I plunged into repentance and self-condemnation into the abyss of God’s mercy, for truly the abyss of God’s mercy was needed to forgive and cleanse the abyss of such and so many of my sins. Hope did not put me to shame: the Lord forgave me my sins, as a true abyss of mercy, the hope of the hopeless and the salvation of the most desperate. Glory to the mercy and long-suffering of God, which is shown to me all the days. What anger I fell into against Archpriest Paul this morning due to the work of the devil and my own evil spirit, and what languor and torment I was subjected to for a long time during Matins and afterwards! I thought that he was avoiding service out of laziness and bliss, but it turned out that he had gone to St. Petersburg to bury his godfather Naumov, the court archpriest. I was ashamed. Eleven o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who an hour before this delivered me from the crampedness and sorrow and burning of sin that befell me for being upset with the poor because they were following me everywhere, when I should have had pity on them. I sincerely repented to the Lord about my hardness of heart and about what is evil, and did not just look at their actions with me, for bitter need forces them to watch over me. I thank the Lord, who delivered me from the cramped conditions and confusion that befell me for the outburst of anger towards one woman while performing confession in church. I repented to the Lord with all my heart, asked for forgiveness and received it. Glory to His goodness and humility, kindness and goodness! Wisdom, forgive me. The light of Christ enlightens everyone 24 . The wisdom of Christ God is the hypostatic wisdom of God. I'm sorry - sincerely. The Light of Christ (at the Holy Mysteries) enlightens everyone. To explain this candle with a censer, you need to remember that this candle stood near the Holy Gifts. Here the Lord Himself overshadows. By cleansing others with the grace of Christ in the Sacrament of Repentance, we ourselves are cleansed, praying and crying with them about their and our own sins, and we never feel better, lighter and healthier, even in body, as when we make confession to many people. Glory to the Lord, who cleanses, admonishes, comforts and strengthens us! And the dream after confession is sweet, sweet! Get away from me, Lord! because I am a sinful man [Luke 5:8]! So I sometimes secretly say to the Lord, seeing Him in my sinful home reclining in the most pure Mysteries (reserve Gifts), and I take them to the holy church to the throne. There is His resting place with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and in the souls of the righteous. Holy is our God and you rest in the saints 25. We ourselves, the priests, are overcome with weakness, great weakness during the confession of parishioners, at least I more than anyone else: I felt coldness during confession, a petrified insensibility, and, being the most sinful and weakest of all, I myself prayed to the Lord for help and warmth from above from the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ also begged the Most Pure Mother of God for this. But how long will the enemy deceive me when I turn to the west during public prayer? How long will this chimera, dream 26, dirty trick? Lord, strengthen me against the enemies who fight me mercilessly. How terribly my heart misleads regarding people and leads me into destruction, itself becoming an instrument of the spirit of malice and lies! Recently Father Superior Pavel went to St. Petersburg for the next week to bury the court Archpriest Naumov, and I thought and accepted it as true that he was sitting at home out of bliss and laziness and sent Father Alexander to serve for him, and what vexation, anger took me, and hence sorrow, cramped conditions, fire! I barely got rid of trouble through repentance. So there is often a misconception about many people, for example, the mayor, the chief of police, the head of the city town council and others, regarding the brethren, regarding rich merchants. The heart misleads, it misleads, being an instrument of the adversary! I thank the Lord, who delivered me yesterday from numerous machinations of the enemy, very fierce and difficult, especially during the litany and removal of the deceased Romashov, and earlier during matins and early mass from the severe cooling of all members of the body, not without the influence of the former enemy. I thank the Lord for teaching His life-giving Mysteries to seven hundred faithful people. I thank the Lord for the victory of His grace over my carnality and gluttony during the all-night vigil and for the tearful tenderness given to me by His grace, and goodwill in service, for heavenly thoughts and feelings. I thank the Lord for the victory over the machinations of the enemy during the funeral service in Karpov’s house and for the dismissal, which was said with boldness and without stumbling. But completely crush in me, O Lord, the machinations of the enemy. When sin seduces you with the beauty of a human face and arouses in you carnal lust and voluptuousness, immediately reject this temptation from your heart and from your flesh, for it tends to humiliation and corruption, desecration of our God-like nature and to abuse of it from invisible enemies who inflame our heart and our flesh with lust. I made the greatest mistake, the greatest sin today (Sunday of the fifth Sunday of Great Lent), having eaten twice after mass and all fish food: at a party a piece of pie with fish and vizig, 27 fried fish and potatoes and a little sweet pie, an orange and an apple, and above all a glass of coffee, and at home a magnificent fish soup with fresh sturgeon without bread. As a result of this, I burdened myself: my heart and insides became hardened from this animal food, my stomach became hardened, and I was completely embarrassed. Oh, what an idolater I am, who worships the womb! Oh, what an opponent I am of Christ, my God, my endless life, my most merciful Savior! I sinned without number! You have great mercy without number, Lord, have mercy and save me. I thank the Lord, who gave me, a sinner, the grace to perform the Sunday Liturgy of St. Basil the Great and say quite a big word about the need to work out my salvation without delay. The temptations from enemies were strong, my weakness was greatest due to yesterday and earlier gluttony. Yesterday at the wake there was a fish table [...] and a very rich one. Oh, peace, peace! Oh, serving the world as an idol! They are led as slaves by a dumb idol [1 Cor. 12:2]. I myself am to blame for my headache and the languor that came from my incontinence and a clogged stomach, and yet, cursed and ill-tempered, ungrateful, I grumble in secret against the Lord, who is patient with me beyond words, and attribute the pain to the poor quality and excess of the wine used for the Holy Mysteries at the Liturgy! Have mercy, have mercy on me, merciful God! Grant me not to eat fish by Your grace, Lord! Monday. I thank the Lord with all my heart for healing my aching head and my stomach, clogged with yesterday’s food, through movement in the fresh air from five to six in the morning; I was healed, feeling the complete disappearance of headache and nausea; He served Matins with great zeal, sweetness, peace, and without stumbling. Glory to the Lord, the Physician of our souls and bodies! God! Grant me the grace to sincerely, with heartfelt conviction and love, with peace and firmness, read Your word and pronounce all prayers, praises, thanksgivings and exclamations. Forgive me for the omissions I have made out of fear and fear of the devil and out of my lack of faith and cowardice, for I am a good and philanthropic person and the Conqueror of hell and the destroyer of all sins. Amen. Oh, my unfaithfulness to the Lord and to people, especially to the souls of our deceased forefathers, fathers, sisters, mothers and brothers (at memorial services, ceremonies and funeral services). O behold! Oh, selfishness! Oh, love of fame! Oh, false shame! I thank the Lord, who yesterday graciously granted me His help in serving Him in the church and in worldly homes (at the funeral service), so that I calmly, sincerely, without stumbling, completed all the services with His grace and help. Forgive my sins, Lord, and today also grant me the same grace and mercy. Wake up! I thank the Lord for defeating temptations during Matins: although I was somewhat defeated (through my own fault) by invisible enemies at the Great Litany, further grace strengthened me to perform the service without stumbling, with great zeal. Forgive, Lord, my sin that I was seduced by the splendor of the cross and do not always think about Your burdens, lifted and endured on the cross for us, about Your blood, shed graciously and patiently for our salvation, about Your immeasurable condescension and exhaustion for us, that you may reconcile us to Your Parent, and about the crucifixion of Your many-passionate and multilust flesh. Forgive me, Lord, my vanity, that I cleave with my heart to what is corruptible and corrupts my soul and moves me away from You, the source of life, light, peace, joy, glory. I thank the Lord for the kindly removal of the deceased and for the litany for him. He sinned, he condemned the rector's father before Father Timofey Razdobirov and before others of hard-heartedness, stinginess and love of money, and the former keymaster Father Matthew. I thank the Lord, who saved me with a wondrous salvation just before Compline and at the beginning of Compline in the church, when I fell in repentance at the throne of grace, having sinned by being harsh towards the poor and stingy and reluctantly giving a prayer to the mother in labor - the wife of my sexton Zrelov just before Compline. There was great tightness and impoverishment of grace in me, and after diligent repentance, grace was returned to me. Then, at the end of Compline, I was tempted by the confession of one retired old man who came to confession at the wrong time (not on Friday), I was saddened by him and lost peace and spaciousness of heart, but after repentance I immediately received forgiveness and peace again. Finally, I seriously sinned against the beggars at eight o’clock in the evening, grumbling and cursing and reproaching them, and having thus suffered the death of sin, I repented with tears to God at home, in the hall before the image of the Savior, and soon received forgiveness and peace. God bless! Ten and a half o'clock in the evening. Behold, again I have been pardoned by the Lord for my repentance for my hardness of heart towards the poor man, to whom I hardly gave two kopecks for support, out of distrust of his honesty. I was in sorrow and distress. And so, for the sake of the wounds of the cross and for the sake of the most pure Blood shed for the world and for me, for the sake of my faith in them, I was pardoned, I was healed and comforted by the mercy of my Master. How strong is the faith of Christ! She destroys all sorrows, cleanses all sins, destroys all the machinations of the enemy! Yesterday I was somewhat embarrassed because my spiritual son Kulakov called not me, but Father Peter Klepachevsky, to pray and baptize his newborn, but I soon calmed down, remembering the immaterial life of the saints and the immaterial life of the Angels of God and that love hinders the love of God, for because of the scarf we strive to baptize in rich houses. Ten and a half o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who accepted my tears of repentance in the morning, at about eight o’clock in the morning, and who delivered me from the great distress and sorrow that befell me for my hard-heartedness and anger against the poor and against Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina. I prayed tearfully and was not ashamed. I thank the Lord for His benefit to me during the service of the liturgy, for defeating the enemy’s treachery, for reading the prayer behind the pulpit. Today I walked past the Vladimir Church and saw on the altar wall outside the image of the Mother of God, holding in her arms the Never-Slumbering Eye - the Lord Jesus Christ, and I thought, crossing myself and taking off my hat: The Lady sees everyone passing and not passing by Her [house] and the whole world as one spirit with Her Son, Who is the All-Seeing Eye, and I thought: how should we always be pure and holy, having such All-Tsarina and Mother by grace! And we are sinners, unclean. The holy creativity of the human race by the people themselves, that is, by the sexes, or the creation of children, what did Satan turn into, how did he pervert it? Into bestial passion, indiscriminately in persons, time and place, without any blessing from the Creator and contrary to His will. After Compline. I thank the Lord, who solemnly and quickly delivered me from sorrow and distress through the prayer of repentance in the gymnasium, right in front of the door leading to the apartment of teacher Titkov, where I drank coffee. I thank the Lord, who delivered me from the new oppression and sorrow that befell me for my stingy and careless giving of alms to the poor before Compline and not willingly; and also for getting rid of embarrassment, grief and cramped conditions regarding the walk of sexton Zrelov’s child through the church. I should have looked at him simply, with kindness and tenderness, but I looked with anger and indignation: why do they let him walk around the church during services? I, the accursed one, live for myself and my passions, and not for the Lord my benefactor. Today I was in great temptation from ethereal enemies for my yesterday's intemperance in drinking tea with a Moscow roll, which I ate quite a lot out of hunger (from the pious widow Eulapmia), and for my carelessness due to a cold, since in the morning I put on two cold cassocks that were not completely dry after washing: one after the other (and not both together), and the cold penetrated strongly into my body; Because of this and from the machinations of the enemy (and perhaps from the glass of beer I drank at Tsvetkov’s), I could not speak during the Matins litanies (at Midnight Office and Matins), although I spoke with extreme difficulty; There was something stuck in my throat, and my body felt like I was tied up. And now I feel a cold in my body. But how the dirty trickster of the flesh takes advantage of my weaknesses for his evil purpose! Terrible! But by the grace of God and the zeal given to me by the Lord, I myself annoyed and blistered the sides of the enemies: I wiped them out like dust, and they fled far away and, like dust, were carried away without a trace. Glory to the Lord! But - oh! my intemperance! I sinned - I ate fish on Friday of the fifth week of Lent and therefore lost the grace of God for intemperance; The enemy made great obstacles to me during confession, especially at the funeral service at the customs, and what a stench there was in my stomach from the fish?! How can the Holy Spirit have a presence in such a stinking house?.. I was powerless in the fight against the enemies who brought fear, confusion and dumbness into me!.. Lord! Help me! We must take courage and strengthen ourselves and not pay attention to the enemies of embarrassment. Otherwise it will only stab me in the heart, I have already given in and become embarrassed! Evening. I thank the Lord, who has given me the grace and strength and mercy to perform an akathist in church during Matins, which occurs on Saturday of the fifth week of Lent and early mass, to receive life-giving communion of the Holy Mysteries and to give communion to about four hundred people (Father Peter about two hundred). Remember the wise, although simple rule: friendship is friendship, and service is service; where you stand in the role of an official person (for example, a priest during a divine service or religious service), do your work there precisely, strictly, with dignity, regardless of the persons in whose sight you are performing the official work - whether they be friends, or relatives, or bosses, or other authoritative people: scientists, rich, noble. In the service, be a new person, sedate and important, and not petty and servile. What a great and immeasurable task has been entrusted to the priest on earth! He is entrusted with the upbringing and guidance of human souls redeemed by the blood of the Son of God, and for this what love is needed, what selflessness, what patience, what life, what a good example! He is entrusted with the performance of the Sacraments of God: Baptism, Confirmation, the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of God and the communion of the faithful with them, Marriage, Blessing of Anointing! How heavenly he must be on earth! How holy! How simple! I rarely gave alms with full willingness, with zeal and humility, but for the most part with pride, arrogance, coercion, reluctance, and often with rage; He performed services very often unprepared, with carelessness, coldness, internally bound, passionate, and often ate and drank with greed. I sinned gravely before God and before people and before myself: late last night, after reading the akathists, I ate fish soup with smelt, having previously eaten a bun with tea, an hour before; burdened himself; dreams are nasty and provocative, hated by the action of the devil (with Gurnov [...] to collect for the St. Petersburg fire victims). The prodigal rabies of cattle due to the devil's delusion, preceded by violent sailors. I thank the Lord, who, through my walk in the fresh air at the first hour of the night, drove away the inducements of the enemy in the flesh to demonic dreams in a dream at night and healed me. I thank the Lord, who delivered me through the prayer of repentance, when I was going to Matins to the Duma Church from the cathedral (before which I met with Deacon Vladimir Poletaev and laughed at his displeasure and grief for yesterday’s non-appearance of the rector), from grief and a poisonous burning sensation and at the beginning of the all-night vigil, who saved me from the deadly thorns of sin that prevented me from serving. I thank the Lord for reviving me with the Holy Mysteries. I thank the Lord for the memorial service, which I kindly performed to the end at the customs office in front of the public at G. Ivanov’s (Evgeniy’s wife). I thank the Lord, who yesterday gave me the grace at the funeral service at the customs office to calmly and with boldness, with a feeling of contrition and tenderness, to speak exclamations and say the dismissal of the funeral service, and thereby strongly hurt the invisible demons who had previously strongly wounded me. To publish in the “Kronstadt” and “Church Bulletin” about the propaganda of schismatics among the Orthodox and their blasphemy against the Holy Church, about their harm to the Church and society: our baptism is called desecration, our ears are completely plugged from church singing, demons are dancing near our baptismal font, who is in our altar? - Satan, they say; They promise financial assistance to those seduced. I fell away from love twice this morning and fell into rage and anger, once against Praskovya Ivanovna Kovrigina, an old woman, because she did not wait for me at the gate of the house, in which it was necessary to give communion to the sick Anna (a former harlot) in Tsepov’s house; another - against my wife because she didn’t want to fix her fox fur coat a little along the hem; but I thank the Lord, who accepted my repentance and had mercy on me and transformed my heart from evil to good, from troubled to peaceful, from oppressed to spacious. Glory to the bounty of my Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, who revives me, dead in soul, every day—may the Lord revive me every day, deadened by sins. Great, O Lord, are Thy works here and wonderful to all, and not a single word will be sufficient for the singing of Thy wonders 29 . Teach me, Lord, never to fall away from love. Eleven o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord, who this very moment surprised me with His salvation for my repentance of severity and cruelty towards a beggar, whose hair I severely tore out for repeatedly extorting a significant allowance and for his denial of his frequent begging (if I am not mistaken and if he, and not the other, seemed to me to be guilty of this), and in angry indignation at the director of the gymnasium, who gave me a severe reprimand for being late to class for the funeral of a widow. customs official Ivanov. By virtue of His most pure blood shed for the world and for me, the Lord had mercy on me; My heart placed its trust in her and was not ashamed. Wonderful is the power of the atoning blood of the Lord! It is strong, as I have experienced, to cleanse my soul and body from all sin, when with undoubted faith in whole-hearted repentance I turn to the Lord as the Lamb who has taken away and continually takes away the sins of the world and mine. During the hours of the Presanctified Liturgy, the Lord also surprised me with His great mercy, delivering me from cramped conditions and cowardice and the demonic fear that had overcome me even at the lity in the customs building before the removal of the deceased Evgenia Ivanova, when, due to demonic fear, I did not utter the entire exclamation and dismissal in the hearing of everyone; I served for hours in the power of God’s salvation with great boldness and majesty. Then the enemy stopped me extremely and embarrassed and oppressed me after the funeral service before being taken out of the church, when I again stole the exclamation and dismissal, in a hurry when being exposed, and again during the journey when escorting the body to the gate; I was saved by the prayer of repentance and the hope of the most pure, all-redeeming blood. Glory to Your most pure blood. But when will I say shouts and dismissals freely? What violence from enemies who trouble me! How long will this continue? Before people who are learned or semi-educated, people of various so-called specialties, ranks and ranks (who consider their specialty or branch to be everything), the noble and the rich, one must especially boldly and loudly pronounce prayers, truths and rules of faith, because they are proud, often disparage the faith and the Church, its worship, rituals, dogmas and rules of faith, the ignorant in it and they must be especially strongly awakened, as if immersed in a deep, dangerous dream. Speak boldly all prayers, litanies, exclamations before the indicated persons, as well as before everyone, without a doubt, with conviction, with strength, without being embarrassed by any sins inflicted by the ethereal enemy that you have ever committed in life, for this is [the end of] the enemy - to confuse a pious priest by reminding him of any mistakes he made in his youth or in recent times, in order to deprive him boldness, to confuse, to wound, to split his heart and deprive him of the words of prayer and praise: To you alone have I sinned, say, O Lord, and I have done evil before You [Ps. 50:6], but not to you, my enemy, the author and teacher of all sin, and I repented of the sin I have committed and now I do not do it, and if I sin in anything else, then I also repent always to the Lord and try to atone for my sins. And in any case, I don’t want to add sin to sin, that is, to be double in heart and mind during public prayer or private, at home, to be embarrassed by the memory of sin, to lose heart and confuse others: this is the gravest sin. I must know that through a firm and loud confession of the name of God, His glory, His benefits to us, His actions in us, through public prayer, my sins are blotted out and expelled through heartfelt repentance, for who is without sin? And if you see iniquity, Lord, Lord, who will stand? for you have purification [Ps. 129:3]. So, in every possible way, let our troublemaker the devil be put to shame, who seeks to disgrace us, to hinder us in the midst of the holy work of prayer and praise of God, and may the power, truth, holiness, goodness and mercy and long-suffering of God be magnified in us sinners. Who is without sin? But You, Lord, are the Lamb, who takes away the sins of all [John 1:29]. So, let us all be bold in repentance, let us not lose heart, let us not be oppressed, but let us trust in Your endless mercy! Amen. Indeed, as often happened in public prayer, when you overcome the enemy who has fooled and embarrassed you with various sins by the grace of God and your own courage and sanity (coming, of course, from God’s light), then what boldness you receive, what peace! Hence it is clear that any confusion and hesitation in public prayer, which comes from the spirit of the tempter, is a grave sin and the priest must always have unshakable courage and boldness, which constitute an important virtue in him that makes up for many of his errors. Even though you are a sinner, do not be timid, do not be discouraged, for you have an all-merciful Savior. Fear not, but believe, says He Himself [Mark 5:36]. But what can I say about the deadly cooling of the enemy of my heart towards some high and sacred persons and even towards divine persons, such as: Saint Alexander Nevsky, Joseph the Songwriter, the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called and the First-Called Peter and Paul, often mentioned in prayers and dismissals, and from earthly ones to the Empress, the heir with his wife, to the Right Reverend Metropolitan, whom I can't forget the cold shoulder? This is his deceit, intrigues, envy, malice, and they must be overcome by the grace of God. These are his chimeras, mischief, dirty tricks. I was honored to witness three greatest miracles of God’s mercy and power in myself today: the first, upon arriving at the gymnasium, when the Lord revived me, killed by my sins: hard-heartedness, pugnacity (I twice tore out one young townsman by the hair for begging, although afterward I gave him what he needed and asked him for forgiveness), stinginess, love of money, carnality, gluttony - and gave me peace and freedom after confusion and great oppression; second, when I walked from the gymnasium to Arkhip Vasiliev and despised the beggar’s request, I repented of it and decided to give and gave him the required amount (thirty kopecks), given by Arkhip’s wife: here, after sorrow and hardship, I was again given peace, life, freedom; and the third, when at eight o’clock in the evening I went to Brown and again fell into hardness of heart and anger at the beggars and for this I was killed, wounded in my soul, but the Lord gave me peace for sincere repentance, and I came to Brown renewed, with a cheerful face, a spacious heart, whereas before that I was cruelly wounded, killed by sin. Yes, I saw and see how in me, a sinful, multi-passionate person, the foundations of death crumbled and are crumbling solely by the mercy and power of the Lord and life, peace, truth, freedom, self-satisfaction, space, lightness reigned again, when in heartfelt repentance I called on the Lord to come and save me from my sinful death. I was and still am filled with wonder at His obedience, mercy, truth, and omnipotence! March 21. Wednesday. I sinned gravely last night when I ate sardines at [Mr.] Brown’s, drank a lot of sweet tea, and ate a bun with currant jam: I became satiated, I couldn’t sleep, I walked around the room; When I lay down and fell asleep, an unclean dream happened to me at night, after which I got up and prayed with tears to the Lord for mercy. Have mercy, Lord, cleanse, Lord! God save me and them! There will be a prayer service today at eleven o'clock on Galkina Street. Eleven o'clock in the evening. Today at ten o'clock in the evening I got angry with the old lady Paraskova Ivanovna Kovrigina, in my heart I sent her to hell and thus fell away from the love of God and neighbor and ruined at once the entire law of God with my anger and impatience; By this I cruelly wounded my conscience and heart, subjecting myself to hellish fire, cramped conditions and a burning conscience. After this, I turned to the Lord with sincere and long-lasting repentance, and the much-merciful and benevolent Master accepted my repentance and had mercy on me, delivering me from fire and oppression and from spiritual death and giving me peace, space, coolness, health of soul and body, since the body itself suffered greatly from anger and rage. I thank the Lord for His ineffable mercy and greatest gift. I thank the Lord, who saved me in the gymnasium in the fourth grade from being upset with the teacher Udaltsov for his arrogance and failure to fulfill simple decency when meeting me - a greeting that I always tried to do to him in advance, but he almost never did; For this grief, sorrow and distress befell me, and I deeply realized and repented to the Lord secretly that I had fallen from love because of such an empty thing, while I should never, under any circumstances, fall away from it, even if I was scolded, despised, beaten, tormented. For such consciousness, conviction, feeling, the Lord immediately had mercy on me, giving me peace. Oh, how sweet it was for me to be with the Lord after that, with His grace, which I had lost! Love never falls away, says the Apostle [1 Cor. 13:8]. May it always be so with me, Lord! Help me. Thursday. Six o'clock in the evening. I sinned before the Lord and before people in that I gave sparingly to the poor, although there were many of them, that I ran away from them, crossing to the other side of the street, that I pushed one boy on the shoulder several times with anger, contempt, and annoyance. I repent with all my heart, with all my thoughts, with all my will. And the reason for this hardness of heart is gluttony, carnality, greed, lack of faith, and lack of trust in God’s providence. I repent to the Lord for hardness of heart, stinginess, rage, malice, envy, lack of faith, severity and obstinacy towards the poor; I realize that these sins and similar ones occur in me as fruits from evil seeds: from pride, lust, gluttony, satiety, drunkenness, love of money, from which may the Lord deliver me. I thank the Lord, who graciously had mercy on me at this hour for my whole-hearted repentance of my sins and transgressions, which I mentioned above. Behold, I feel within me His life-giving hand, which delivered me from the sinful death in which I was kept, and gave me peace, space, and boldness. Glory to His invincible mercy, but I am ashamed of my face for the incessantly repeated iniquities: pride, self-reliance, lust, gluttony, satiety, drunkenness, love of money, addiction to things, vanity, laziness, idleness; pride, malice, envy, anger, rage, zeal, severity, obstinacy, rudeness, partiality, contemplation, cowardice, timidity and timidity, confusion, word theft (when reading and singing in church), false shame, for evil suspicion, deceit; for lustful thoughts, contempt in relation to those in authority (proud or hard-hearted, selfish, stingy, although I myself am the same); [for] disobedience, resistance, beating hands towards the poor, reproach, negligence in service, injustice, lies, deception, and so on and so forth. But grant me complete correction, O Lord, and the rest of my life I live not for myself, but for You. I thank the Lord, who miraculously healed through the communion of the Holy Mysteries the wife of Pavel Ivanovich Smirnov, whom I gave communion on Tuesday during Maslenitsa (cheese week); She was sick for a whole month, and on the third day after communion with a prayer service she got out of bed healthy. Glory to the miracles of Your Holy Mysteries! Tuesday of Cheese Week was February 6, I heard about the healing on March 22, Thursday evening, when I met with Smirnov. God! To the opener who speaks, open my imprisoned ear by Thy mercy, open it, despising my sins. You, all-powerful Mother of the Creator, who opens rumors, open my ears by Your mercy and ineffable compassion, so that I may glorify the goodness of my Lord and Yours and His omnipotence and Your all-obedience. Wake up! Amen. Eleven o'clock in the evening. The Lord performed two great miracles of salvation in me today. Once in the gymnasium, before arriving at which I repented to the Lord as I continued my journey for being hard-hearted towards the poor who came across me on the road, and another - during a walk at eleven o’clock in the evening near our house, when I also strongly and fervently repented to the Lord for falling away from love and for ruining the entire law of God, for I was angry with the poor for frequent [petition]. I repented that I had done this and had grieved the humane womb of the Savior and grieved the Holy Spirit. It is necessary by some means to evoke the good qualities and powers dormant in a person, as for example in martyrs the beautiful qualities of their souls were caused by the persecution and torment of their tormentors; in our time, these good forces must be called upon with advice, requests, and encouragement. I sinned gravely before God and people by laughing (or smiling) madly during the confession, albeit inept, of retired lieutenant colonel Ivan Vasilyevich Semenov. Some kind of hysterical laughter came over me, from which I could not restrain myself for a long time; the enemy presented it to me in a funny way, but by this he and I both humiliated and scolded the greatest work of confession and the Teacher Himself of this Sacrament, invisibly inherent in us. Saturday. Five o'clock in the evening. I thank the Lord for His wonderful providence for the poor. I thought: where can I get money for so many beggars for Easter? The previous donors went bankrupt, one lost 120 thousand, the other 45 thousand rubles in the Kronstadt bank: now they won’t give seventy-five rubles for the poor, but today I received a hundred rubles for the poor, from where I was not expecting at all. Glory to You, Lord: repay those who gave a hundredfold, both in this age and in the future. Yesterday, during the all-night vigil in the Assumption Church, I felt extremely weak in soul: the disembodied enemy made me completely powerless to speak the words and exclamations that he had stolen from me before, at the all-night vigil; he laughed at me as he wanted, and God’s grace left me for my sins and because of the long period of non-communion of the Holy Mysteries from Tuesday to Sunday. All week I worshiped idols, accursed, pleasing the belly, extremely regaling and satiated; Due to delicacy and satiety, defilement occurred at night in a dream. I had to leave the food, which delights the larynx, and the drinks, but I, as it were, deliberately enjoyed the food, even though it was lean. I should know and love one true, eternal, incorruptible sweetness - the Lord Jesus Christ and all who are in the Lord, and live with my mind and heart in heaven, but I cleave to corruptible, fleeting, coarse sweets that scald and defile the soul and remove us from God. I should be all heavenly, performing such super-heavenly Sacraments as Baptism, Confirmation and especially the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord, but I grovel entirely on earth, in earthly passions, interests, pleasures. Oh Lord! Bring my soul out of prison, to confess to Your name [Ps. 141:8]! I thank the Lord, who gloriously restored my strength through a night’s sleep. I thank the Lord, who healed my soul and cleansed it through yesterday’s grave temptations and violence from the devil and through enduring shame from him and his greatest bitterness. Yes, yesterday’s greed for food and its excessive pleasure and satiety served as a heavy but worthy punishment for me: my heart was rough, icy, stony, dead, inaccessible to the fire of grace, and I served the All-Night Vigil poorly, my voice was unclean, trembling, intermittent, there was no fervor in the service, although I prayed to the Lord for this, for there was a lack of a heavenly gift, being myself all an earthling, dolereten 30, real. Eating animal food - fish - was especially harmful for me, introducing a rough, animal element into the body and spreading my spirit, the spirit of animality, in it. Yesterday during the all-night vigil, when I was depressed by my sins and evil demons, I was still not abandoned by the mercy of God, which, through my prayer to the Lord, took away from me excess rudeness and stoutness, gave me some peace, some strength of heart, although very small. I forgot to mention that even I smoked tobacco in the evening during other stomach rages and sniffed tobacco in the gymnasium, thus becoming covered in dust, groveling all in the dust. How we, inattentive, unreasonable, are captivated by the enemy, who has enslaved us to his own power! With all our senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, we work against sin, and this is a common thing for us and is not considered a sin by many. Theatres, sumptuous dinners with flattering speeches, loud mouths (hurray!), magnificent parades, insane, incessant smoking of tobacco, luxurious decoration of homes - these are the most common phenomena and affairs among us! Where are the works of God, the fulfillment of God’s commandments? Where is the unceasing looking to God? Where are the highest ideals, the highest goal of life? Where are the Christian virtues - humility, meekness, kindness, mercy and almsgiving, abstinence, purity and chastity, fidelity, constancy in word and deed? Devotion to your faith and Church, devotion to God? Alas! We have become extremely shallow and degraded in our aspirations and needs, habits, and passions. We have become dust and abomination. When we light a lamp in a lamp shortly after it has gone out, it lights up immediately, suddenly, from a small fire, and when we light it after it has long gone out and cooled down, then it takes much more time for it to light up: first it must heat up, displace the incoming cold and then light up. This is what happens with the soul. He who always burns in spirit before God and is only briefly extinguished by worldly things and worries, can soon rekindle in himself the fire of love for God, for prayer, for virtue, but whoever has allowed his heart to fade away for a long time through neglect of himself, needs a lot of work and feat in order to ignite his frozen heart. I thank the Lord, who has now delivered me, through the prayer of repentance for my hardness of heart and stinginess towards the beggar, from sorrow and distress and who has given me peace and boldness with space and ease. Glory to Your mercy and good obedience, Lord! All saints, starting with the Mother of God, are the smell (stench) of Christ’s fragrance; censer means the smell of Christ's fragrance, the grace of the Holy Spirit, with which the Holy Church desires and prays to God to be fragrant to all and to be holy. Our spiritual feet are constantly tied and confused by our adversary because of everyday addictions to persons and things, especially food, drink, clothing, and money, and we allow him to entangle ourselves and help him in this. How can a priest love God if he is addicted to the pleasures of the flesh, to money, to food and drink, or to the distinctions and honors of this world, to various noble, rich, and learned people? It can't. He should consider as nothing before God and he himself should not value learned, noble and rich people above other mortals, who for the most part are arrogant with their earthly wisdom, their fruitless knowledge or their ranks, their birth, their wealth and look down on everyone else, on the masses of the people, retreat from God and from the Church, neglect church teaching and worship, the word of God, living and effective [ Heb.4:12 ], and shamelessly work after various lusts! And a simple layman cannot love God if he is partial to the passionate flesh, to the world and its blessings: You cannot work to God and mammon [Matthew 6:24], God and mammon are like heaven from earth, like incorruptibility from corruption, like good from evil, they have an infinite distance. Great Monday. I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace of victory over the hostility that arose in my heart due to the action of the spirit of malice towards the wife of Philip Stepanov, Ekaterina Grigorievna Stepanova, when I burned incense throughout the church; I thank the Lord, who gave me peace and boldness when reading the Gospel: only a prophecy: a stone that... I didn’t read, but hushed up due to the action of the spirit of malice; I thank the Lord for strengthening my spirit by reading the prayer to Christ, the True Light and saying leave. After the Presanctified Mass. I thank the Lord for the great victory of His grace in me over the nasty seditious forces during the hours and liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, especially during the reading of the prayer behind the pulpit and dismissal. I thank the Lord for the complete cleansing of my sins by His most pure Blood, for heavenly peace, for contentment, spaciousness of heart, satiation of the heart (blessed is he who hungers and thirsts for righteousness: for they shall be satisfied [Matthew 5:6]), for the triumph of the spirit over ethereal enemies, over passions, over the snares of the enemy. Where is My image in you? - the Lord cries out to the soul of the sinner, which means to me, - where is My image in you? You distorted it with passions, disfigured it, perverted it. Give Me My talent, which I entrusted to you for increase, this wonderful, priceless silver of Mine [Matthew 25:13–30]. I am shameless, an insensitive and [ungrateful] villain, why do I insult my most merciful and long-suffering Master every day with gluttony and gluttony, and even after communion of His most pure Mysteries, His most pure Body and Blood? Last night I ate too much mushroom soup and buckwheat porridge with butter, so it became difficult and at night the food burst into my sides and did not allow me to sleep. With all my soul I still repent to the Lord and would like to please Him with extreme abstinence, but how can I strictly abstain, living in a family and among abundance, among hospitable people? Teach, O Lord, my Lord! And do not judge me yet because of my evil deeds. Oh, my soul, bitterly, bitterly you will repent once, although too late, for the fact that you boldly and madly rejected all the means of the Holy Church of God for your salvation, for your correction and perfection: genuflection, fasting, divine services, repentance, vigil, alms, and you loved the unfruitful works of darkness: carnality, gluttony, satiety, drunkenness, voluptuousness, self-interest, feasting, dancing, card-loving, spectacles, just secular reading with disdain for spiritual, soul-saving reading. Not a single father, not a single mother cares so ardently, with such tenderness, with such constancy, with such wisdom about the eternal salvation of his children, as the mother given to us by God, the Holy Church of Christ, cares. How many material mercies have I received from the Lord, not counting the spiritual ones, of which there is no number, how much light of the heart, which abundantly illuminated all my steps, all my deeds, crushing all my charm? How many different sweet and wholesome fruits have I destroyed for my cursed body, how many fish, birds, different animals? How much wood is there to warm my sinful body and cook food and boil water? What wide, clean, bright, comfortable chambers I, an unworthy servant of my God, had! How many people have I had at my service, to treat me, to please me with every good thing! - and for all this I thank You, my all-good and all-generous Lord. Remember not my iniquities, but according to Thy mercy remember me, for the sake of Thy goodness, O Lord [Ps.25:6-7]! I spent the whole night in great anxiety because I ate with appetite and a lot of mushroom soup and buckwheat porridge with Provençal butter; excess made itself felt strongly in the sides and throughout the body; there was almost an outpouring of semen from the prodigal touch in a dream; got up at night and prayed, lay down again: the same prodigal tension. Oh, I'm overwhelmed! Yes, I will stop eating at night, especially with such greed! Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me; five and a half o'clock in the morning on March 27. And I allowed myself this overeating after communion of the Holy Mysteries! O God, long-suffering! How have I not yet exhausted Your long-suffering! How great is the evil of intemperance and how great is the good of abstinence! Intemperance destroys all the gifts of grace, but through abstinence with humility and prayer all grace from God is acquired! I thank my Lord for quickly listening to me during Matins, when I, first, at the midnight office at the litany, did not finish the last exclamations (Let us please the Orthodox bishops and ktitors of this holy church. Our parents, and all the fathers who have departed before, and our brethren, who lie here, and are Orthodox everywhere) and I felt cramped and powerless, and secondly, the sexton I got a little angry and the enemy bit me; Finally, at the dismissal, I did not remember all the saints for fear of demons, and the sting of the enemy was again in me; All these times I cried out to God and was quickly and wonderfully pardoned and revived. Today I confessed to Father Porfiry. I thank the Lord for the inscrutable, greatest gift of His mercy and generosity. At home, my wife was in trouble - she did not fix part of the hem of the cassock, which I gave to her for repair. The rector is not without sin and all priests are not without sin, but how unfailingly, calmly, and evenly they serve. Why are you shy? Ten and a half o'clock in the evening. God! I thank You, for You, O Innumerable Grace, have shown me Your salvation a thousand times today during the hours of worship, Vespers and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts; but what peace, what freedom, what boldness, what joy You filled me with through the use of Your Holy Gifts, Your most pure Body and Blood - even language cannot express this! – I was blissful, like a celestial being. Glory to Thee, invincible mercy! Then You, Lord Jesus, before Compline and during Compline and after it, especially at the funeral service for the maiden Pelagia of Prussia, had mercy on me many times, delivering me from the violence of ethereal enemies and healing the wounds of my heart inflicted by ethereal villains; Yes, and now, deep in the evening, You delivered me from the hellish wounding of invisible spirits, when I said an obscene word to a red-haired beggar. God! I am sick with clinging to the beauty of 30 of Your creatures and the falling away of my heart from You, the infinitely beautiful beauty, the author and creator of all beauty and beauty in creatures. But give me the grace to cleave with all my heart to You, the uncreated, endless Beauty, and not to the beauty of creatures, the corruptible and decaying soul and body, when we attach our hearts to it (the beauty of women and young maidens at a Prussian funeral service). Last night the Lord rewarded me with a good sleep for my abstinence, and I refreshed myself very well. I thank the Lord. Grant me, Lord, constant abstinence. Prayers, chants, litanies, exclamations for us, praying and praising, are purification, healing, enlightenment, sanctification, strength and life. You just need to speak, read and sing more heartily and wisely. Knowing the power and effect of sacred prayers and chants on the hearts of believers, ethereal enemies try in every possible way to damage the prayer of the clergyman by bringing him into confusion and passion. Knowing this, they, the clergy, must keep their ears open so that the enemy does not somehow vomit his poison into their hearts. Send Semyon Prokop. [M...| ducentum quintum rubell [two hundred and five rubles]. God! Bless my, and especially Yours, this gift and bless what they will buy with this money. Eleven and a half o'clock in the evening. After a walk, during which he read evening prayers and a canon with prayers for communion. While walking, by the way, I was thinking about how to come to the cathedral on time tomorrow, right after Matins, and find the rich confessors of the officers, and I did not notice how I was learning the love of money, like Judas, and was separated from the love of the Lord, and united with the evil one; but it’s good that my Guardian Angel illuminated my mind, and I caught myself in time, recognizing the charm of the enemy and my delusion. This often happens during confession and the service of the liturgy. I thank the Lord for the well-performed memorial service for Marya Arsenyevna, I did not stumble once, but this was after the confession of 241 people, after the incessant, six-hour obstacles of ethereal enemies that were like a wedge on my heart. After mass. I thank the Lord for His great mercy shown to me, a penitent, during late mass, during the Liturgy of the Catechumens and the Faithful, before the Great Entrance, which I fulfilled in speaking without stumbling, before the celebration of the Sacrament and after communion of the Holy Mysteries and during the breaking of the Holy Gifts, when I read to You the Clothes 31 (the enemy put in doubt that all creation I had compassion on the Creator, and I was about to kill my soul). With difficulty I fought the blasphemous and all-insolent, all-living enemy and barely prevailed; I surrendered myself entirely to God, and He delivered me. I thank the Lord, who solemnly delivered me during the memorial service for Marya Arsenyevna (the enemy killed my soul because I began to calculate my income from Golubev for the parting words of three, which was given entirely to the sexton (for exchange and taking my share - forty kopecks)). I said the last exclamation and dismissed as a winner. I thank the Lord for the victory over the enemy and deliverance from the cramped conditions in the apartment of the widow Olga Afanasyevna and for the firm service of the memorial service. I thank the Lord, for my countless and grave sins have not yet overcome the mercy and long-suffering of God, but God’s mercy has overcome all my sins, all my infidelities, and delivered me and cleansed me from them. Don't leave us ahead, Lord! Holy Saturday. I thank the most merciful and benevolent Lord for deliverance from grave violence and the wiles of the devil during Matins, while reading the sequence of the 12 Gospels, when one peasant dropped his handkerchief on the floor in front of my eyes and the enemy turned this insignificant incident into an excuse for hostility towards him (love covers everything, excuses); then, when, out of demonic fear, I did not say enough about my release and therefore became embarrassed and wounded by Belial, and after repentance and falling before the holy throne, I was delivered from the heart ulcer. At Vespers, before and after the removal of the shroud, the most merciful Lord delivered me from fear, cowardice, embarrassment and oppression at the sight of the leaders Philip Stepanov, Pavel Neustroev and Averky Shebunin standing in the altar and granted me to fear Him alone, my Lord, giving me peace, sincerity of heart, tenderness; Then, when again, out of stupid fear, I did not say the dismissal of the Passion at the end of Vespers and, embarrassed and wounded by this, began to repent and earnestly pray to the Lord to take away slavish fear and cowardice from me and give me boldness, by the grace of God I overcame this demonic fear brought upon me, and at Compline I said the entire dismissal with forgiveness for my sins, as well as almost the entire litany. During confession in the cathedral, when Belial pressed me, and I prayed to the Lord for deliverance from the crowd, I was saved again and received peace with sincerity in my heart during confession. Finally, during the funeral service for Marya Arsenyevna in the presence of a drunken deacon, in the absence of a sexton due to drunkenness and in the confusion, fear and tightness of my heart from grief at the beggars, I did not utter two exclamations of the funeral litany, having lost them and crushed them, but then I broke free from the networks of despair and fear, resorted to repentance and was immediately pardoned, the rest was pacified the exclamation and dismissal were pronounced with peace, with firmness, with sincerity. Out of sincere faith and heartfelt conviction, did you resolve everyone’s sins in confession? No, not everyone, and only some. Give us, Lord, always sincere faith, firm conviction of the heart when resolving people from sins. When I conquered demonic fear and cowardice yesterday at Compline in the Duma Church, how much joy, contentment, tranquility, triumph of the spirit was in my soul! Oh, grant, God, to always triumph over the machinations of invisible enemies and not be afraid of people, but of You alone. How important and necessary fasting is for success in spiritual life! Yesterday I ate once in the evening at nine o’clock after work, I ate mushroom soup without butter, sweet jelly, drank tea - and how light my heart was! What a good, sweet night's sleep! May I love constant fasting! May the Lord my God help me. I thank the Lord for the great victory granted by His goodness over the bodiless enemies at the first hour of Matins in the Assumption Church, for saying the prayer to Christ, the True Light and for the dismissal with forgiveness, said in full, and for the last litany. Then the Lord delivered me from the fear of the enemy and the oppression of the reprimand of dismissal when carrying out the body of Marya Arsenyevna, and when I was traveling out of town to serve mass for the said deceased, then there was extreme distress and death in my heart, which befell me because I became embittered with the widow Anna Gerasimovna for her frequent and extreme expressions of her spiritual love and reverence for me as for the Lord whom she loved. He sees me in the simplicity of his heart. And I, from an unclean heart and from my impatience and pride, abhorred her immoderate respect, thinking that through this I would be reprimanded by people for allowing a woman to rub herself near me. When I fervently repented of my sin, going to the cemetery, the Lord took away my death with the omnipotent power of His power and gave me life, peace, space, boldness, coolness, joy, strength. Praise the Lord. And during mass in a country church, the Lord saved me many times, as well as during the funeral service, litia at the grave and in the apartment [almshouse]. Flattery (church glory) – deception, lies, deceit; temptation, seduction. Lorn - look through a lorgnette. Zizhdiay (Church Glorious) – Creator, Creator (from “zizhdyasya” - to be built, to be created). Borzil (Old Russian) – hurried (from “greyhound” – fast). Shtof, damask - heavy woolen or silk fabric used for upholstery, for curtains, drapes. From the follow-up to the Great Blessing of Water. Sedition is a state of indignation, rebellion, unrest. The exclamation of the priest at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. The priest's exclamation in polyeleos. Dream, daydream (Church Glav.) – ghost, empty appearance, seduction. Viziga is a product made from the dorsal string (chord) of sturgeon fish. Shoes are old, worn-out boots with the tops cut off at the ankles. That is, jealous only of earthly, earthly things. Troparion, tone 5 from the service of Great Vespers on Good Friday.