Июль 1881 г.

After mass. With the Lord is mercy, and with Him is much deliverance [Ps. 129:6]. I don’t know how worthily and fruitfully I can praise and thank the Lord for His many wonderful deliverances from the excuses of my passions and the excuses of demons during Matins, during the prayer service for the Blessing of Water for Lukin Onuphry, Kozma Nazarov and Leonty Neustroev, then regarding the call from Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina to the sick Ivan in the hospital Kovrigin (how I was angry with her, although then I went reluctantly; how I walked, repenting; how I read prayers with extreme inner struggle, abhorring the hospital air; how I knelt down and repented secretly; how I walked the road back and repented, struggling with the delicacy of my flesh and disgust, and how the Lord had mercy), then during mass, especially after the great entrance. I thank the Lord for the uncondemned acceptance of the Holy Mysteries, for overcoming the opposing forces that fiercely rose up against me before the prayer behind the pulpit and after the dismissal; Finally, before consuming the Holy Gifts, he emerged from the struggle by the power of God, victorious over the countless machinations of the enemy. Glory to the Lord! (The rector, Father Pavel, whispered in his ear about the salary taken in advance from the Duma for the next six months - four hundred rubles.) After Vespers. The bad consequences of my intemperance, which occurred after mass (oh, inattention! oh, carnality! oh, ingratitude before God!), in drinking grape wine, eating all kinds of sweet dishes both in people and at home, eating with greed fried halibut, milk (on Wednesday), creamy blancmange, drinking lemonade before evening - turned out to be that during the service of vespers my heart turned out to be paralyzed mine (I could not pronounce the litanies), and I had to struggle a lot with my weaknesses and opposing forces, begging the Lord for mercy, which I received after intense repentance. When will I start strict abstinence? When will I avoid feasting? If this world is of a temporary nature and must pass away, end, and we must forever and ever part with everything that is material, corruptible in it, and see another world, an imperishable, spiritual, infinite age, incomparably better than the present, then why do we cling to the passion, to the point of exclusivity, to the things of the present age and to this corruptible, rough, passionate body of ours, which will ultimately become food for worms, decay and dust? Where is our reason, where is our foresight, where is our logic, where is our guidance (analogy of things)? Vanity of vanities - all is vanity [Eccl. 1:2] - this is the conclusion that the wisest of kings came to, having experienced the vanity of all things and earthly pleasures, all honors, all wealth. Gluttony, greed, ambition, envy, ill will, anger and hostility kill the soul, deprive the grace of God and communication with God. Despise, hate, man, these passions. Be temperate, non-covetous, loving, benevolent with sincerity. With what zeal yesterday the devil during Vespers tried to tear from the heart and lips the prayer for the Holy Synod, the Metropolitan, the honorable presbytery, the deaconry and the clergy with the people! The terrible malice of the enemy! Because of gluttony, I could not resist him. Ivan Grigorievich Tikhonov in Galkinskaya street opposite the Sinebryukhov baths, his own house (wooden and stone). Enter with a cross. In the Fifth Week after Pentecost, the Gospel is about the demon-possessed, about the expulsion of the legion. For this reason the Son of God appeared, to destroy the works of the devil [1 John 3:8]. Our passions are the same demonic machinations; One must pray to the Lord Jesus Christ for deliverance through repentance and fasting. The Lord came to deliver us from working 60 with the enemy. Thou didst not endure, O Master, mercy for the sake of Thy mercy, to see the human race tormented by the devil, but Thou camest and saved us! We confess grace, we preach mercy, we do not hide good deeds: you have created the nature of our race... All creation sings praises to You who have appeared!.. 61 During Matins there is a difficult struggle, painful with the opposing forces that have taken root in me, in my heart for yesterday’s gluttony and intemperance and the trampling of the extraordinary, supernatural gifts of God sent down to me in the communion of the Holy Mysteries. The goodness and power of God left me, and I was subjected to a spirit of malice and wickedness, a spirit of suspicion regarding the abbot and father Alexander Taratin (who were spying on my actions in the church after Vespers), also regarding Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina. The evil suspicion was so strong that I barely got rid of the violence of the devil by repentance and calling on the name of the Lord with all my heart. Yes, breaking the fast is extremely sinful and disastrous for the soul: it becomes completely weakened and is exposed to the action of evil spirits, tormented by them, and rightly so. Oh, how subtly, slyly, quickly, powerfully the adversary the devil fights against us! How captivating and captivating! How it torments and torments! We must constantly watch and pray and always be with Christ! After mass. The current mass was for me a time of terrible temptation and torment: the most petty and painful irritability (for example, at the Ekimovs, the young ladies, for their apparent coldness and inattention to the altar servers (they were in church at mass)), complete deadness and powerlessness of the heart on this occasion; lamentation, contrition, tears; then a murderous offense against the sexton for me for quickly singing It is worthy and righteous to eat... etc. A new severe mortification, new sighs, horrors, tears about the disastrous state of my soul - and this during the whole mass; but my temptations especially intensified when I went to the middle of the church for the holy water prayer; Only a strong heartfelt cry and tears saved me from complete shame, fall and dumbness. After consuming the Holy Gifts, all the enemies disappeared like smoke and I felt quite at ease. God bless! (Temptations for my satiety and delicacy.) I thank the Lord for the greatness of His mercy, shown to me during the service of Matins and after it, for deliverance from the grave, outrageous, murderous wiles of the devil and for the cleansing, sanctification and strengthening of my heart, for the peaceful, heartfelt, sweet, unstumbling service, for the sincere, warm speaking of the litany, the reading of the canons and the singing of the stichera. At the litany of the Midnight Office, the enemy broke and wounded me, outraged me, killed my soul, and I turned to tender repentance, falling to the holy throne and kissing my soul in hope, as if caressing my Creator and Savior sitting on it, and soon the Lord showed me His salvation, especially after the morning prayers of light, read during the sixth psalm. The enemy also wounded me when reading the prayer to Christ, the True Light in the end and when saying absolution, when, out of fear, I spoke insincerely, sluggishly according to the action of the devil. At the end of the service, I fell again before the Lord, and His life-giving right hand saved me. Nine o'clock in the morning. I thank the Lord, who mercifully healed the serpent’s ulcer in my heart just before the prayer service at the Two-Eyes through my secret prayer and who granted help to serve peacefully and sincerely, parting words and a holy prayer service, but when reading the Gospel of the parting words of John, I am the way... [John 14:6] I didn’t read enough due to the deceit of the demons and was again wounded, and again the Lord accepted my repentance when I came home and healed me. Glory to the Lord! He served mass in the Golden Cross, and his soul was bound by iron, red-hot bonds of passion; While serving the heavenly throne, my heart was attached to the earthly. Our treasure is Christ God, life, sweetness, peace, freedom, strength, grace, light, wisdom, greatness, and meanwhile my heart was attached to the corruptible treasure - gold and precious stones in my cross: I was afraid for them, lest they become tarnished and damaged by smoking incense (oh, madness!), and through this I was subject to confusion, crampedness, and my soul was dying. I am destined for heavenly eternity, but with a stupid heart and mind I am looking for something eternal in perishable things - and I am cruelly mistaken, for everything on earth is perishable and transitory; I want my external shine not to be darkened, but I would need darkness so as not to be seduced by a corruptible, deceptive shine that kills a soul partial to it. I often call on the Heavenly Father in prayer, but I myself have clung to everything earthly and have fallen away from the heavenly God and heavenly virtue, from love, meekness, kindness, abstinence, purity, truth and holiness. After the great entrance, after the prayer of repentance, the Lord breathed into me peace, freedom, space, strength, with which I calmly served the liturgy. In the end he appeared victorious over sin by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Damned sinners blinded by passions, we do not want to see the fluidity, impermanence and corruption of all people (in the body) and all things of the visible world, and even the world itself, and we madly cleave to them, falling away from the ever-flowing source of all the blessings of the Lord and not thinking about the future incorruptible, ageless, endless life, neglecting repentance and virtues. Meanwhile, a Christian has an indispensable duty and an inalienable obligation to despise the corruptible and love the imperishable and prepare for immortality, for endless life in heaven, where countless faithful Christian souls have come. We forget about the very essence of Christianity, to which we have the infinitely great happiness of belonging, about the essence of the vows of Baptism and this Sacrament in general, the Sacraments of Confirmation, Repentance, Communion, Priesthood and others. How are we not captivated by the future blissful life, its endless sweetness, carelessness, carelessness, ease, beauty? How are we seduced by earthly blessings that constantly change us, harm us, and disappear? Why are we so clueless? - From lack of faith and unbelief and from addiction to our multi-passionate flesh, which has enslaved our souls, and from darkness of heart. Each passion is a special type of madness, and people who live according to the spirit of the age are at times subject to the frenzy of passions. Thus, pride, envy, anger, fornication, stubbornness and self-will, gluttony, delicacy, drunkenness, foul language, blasphemy, desecration of sacred things or aversion from the Church and from all sacred things, love of money, vanity, vanity, laziness, negligence about prayer, about virtue, in general about the salvation of the soul is demonic possession, there is rage. O height, oh greatness, oh beauty, oh sweetness, oh wealth of spirit and our bliss! During the liturgy, heaven and earth copulate: together God with people, heavenly Angels with earthly people, all the faces of the forefathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, hierarchs, martyrs, saints and all saints! Oh, what a bright, holy, loving, heavenly, red, blissful union! And we, passionate people, often do not notice, do not see this grace of God, such supernatural bounties of the generous God! And we constantly humiliate ourselves with worldly passions, we fall away from such a height of our redemption, from such a blissful, eternal union, from the union with God, with the Mother of God, with the Angels, with all the saints, with all the faithful Christians on earth! Oh, perk up in spirit, rise up every day and hour, son of the Orthodox Church, and do not crawl on the earth with your mind and heart, rise up in your heart! There is your fatherland, your eternal belly, there is the Father of the next century and the Creator of everything visible and invisible, who destined you for that endless age, and here is only the time and place of your preparation, your struggle with sin, your exploits, temptations, your patience. Unless the Lord preserves the city, it will be vigilant in vain [Russian: the guard is awake] [Ps. 127:1]. You suspect your fathers of hiding your brothers' income and are indignant at them, not knowing for sure whether this is true or not. Do not fall away from love and simplicity of heart and from trust in God, but rather pray to the Lord that He will preserve and keep yours and theirs conscience and hearts pure from covetousness and untruth, for who will convict them or observe them if God does not preserve their conscience or convict them of their secret wickedness and theft? So, keep love and only reprove in extreme cases, calmly, with love and meekness. The Greatly Gifted Lord will reward you for maintaining peace and love. Yesterday morning, after resting before mass, I, damned one, was subjected to a severe, long-lasting temptation regarding the presentation of receipt books in elegant cases for signing. I thought that Father Alexander made these cases at the expense of the brotherly (our) money and that he generally deducts a fair amount from the brotherly income into his own pocket. This gave rise to an acute hostility in me towards him, which was extremely painful and murderous for me - a sign that this thought was the devil’s slander; Moreover, here my addiction to money and trust in money, and not in the Lord, who gives everything for our benefit, was revealed, my pride, selfishness, dislike, and I began to repent ardently (even though the enemy terribly rejected repentance), and the Most Merciful, ineffable and invincible in mercy, accepted my repentance in my evil suspicion and dislike, hostility, in my addiction to earthly goods and in negligence about the acquisition of never-falling love, and I was reassured by the Lord and tasted the bliss of His gracious peace. Then he served the good liturgy, read the prayer after the litany especially warmly and sincerely, without stumbling, but after the great entrance he was embarrassed by the fear of demons and the failure to clearly pronounce the names of the empress and heir, again he prayed to the Lord - and again he was awarded peace. While saying prayers before communion, he became embarrassed, didn’t say enough, and again became offended; As a result, he read the prayer behind the pulpit with omissions, restlessly, he spoke abbreviatedly, without boldness; At the funeral service, I crumpled up my release from the devil’s confusion, but when I consumed the Holy Gifts, the Lord completely pardoned me for repentance, and I rested 62 . Glory to the mercy and intercession of the Lord, but to me, uncorrected, shame on my face! After mass. I want, unworthy, to glorify the mercy and power of God in me, at the very beginning of the liturgy and then revealed in me: having come to church, I was dead with my passions, cold, bound, darkened, unloving (especially because of suspicion of Father Alexander), but in a state of such deadness I turned with prayer, repentance and heartfelt contrition to the Lord, falling to to the throne of His mercy, and miraculously came to life: the bonds of death were destroyed, passions ceased, I felt peace, freedom, life, strength, boldness. After the great entrance he again died due to fear of demons, but soon he again petitioned the Lord for mercy; The enemy stumbled at the prayer behind the pulpit, but the Lord had mercy when he spoke the word to the people. Upon arriving home, the Lord also cleared away the sin of not giving to a beggar and refusing to lend Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina! I thank the Lord for the merciful, speedy, sovereign deliverance of my unworthiness in Lev Alex’s apartment. Alexandrov after the christening, at which I could not fully maintain myself with dignity, calmly, sincerely, but I was embarrassed and stumbled. I especially could not restrain myself at the prayer service at the Blessing of Waters and, out of false shame and fear and wickedness, I did not pronounce many words of the Gospel of the Blessing of Waters, since there were many Jewish Christians there. Oh, the wickedness of the devil! The devil, having struck me down while reading the Gospel, outraged me, disarmed me, drowned me, and extremely wounded and tormented me; I rushed about like a ship in stormy weather on the sea, until I recovered somewhat by praying thanks and singing to You, God, we praise. Then, feeling sorrow, oppression and shame, I bowed several times before the Lord with repentance and a request for mercy and deliverance from sins and confusion - and received peace and freedom with boldness. Praise the Lord. Hypocritical love does not withstand the slightest criticism of reason, as changeable and fickle, as exclusive, limited to one or several persons who are pleasant and useful to us (which means we love ourselves in them), excluding love for everyone, selfish, carnal love, unworthy of a rational being, whose love should be holy, highly moral, based on respect for the moral dignity of man as a god-like and god-like, immortal, rational being. Hypocritical love soon turns into anger and hatred if the beloved person is in any way displeasing to our habits, desires, and passions. Our heart is full of pride and at the same time blind, unreasonable when passionate inclinations overcome it, and therefore we must turn away from our own heart, go opposite to it, overcome it, conquer the mind, break its stubbornness (regarding the departure of the servant girl to whom they are accustomed). Deliver me, Lord, from chimerical, dreamy, passionate, insane, false, unclean, corrupting soul and body and separating from God, carnal love, which is not worthy to be called love, so that I may cleave once and for all, directly and decisively to the Lord God, the source of life and holiness, the incorruptible Source of all beauty, sweetness, true glory, power, and all good. I thank You, Lord, who twice delivered me through Your infinite goodness and mercy through fervent prayer and my repentance from the fornication of my heart and my flesh. Oh, for ever, O Lord, do not allow me and every person to be pitifully separated from You, the Source of life and holiness, but grant us to be with You forever and to abide in Your righteousness all the days of our life, deliver us from the flattering, deadly shackles of sin and grant us the freedom of Your righteousness. May the flesh be crucified with its passions and lusts! May the spirit be revived and enlightened and strengthened by every virtue. You, my Lord, Lord, infinite kindness and beauty, ineffable beauty and goodness, created beautifully, beautifully all invisible and visible creatures and me, a verbal animal made up of an invisible soul and a visible body! Grant me the grace to cleave to You with all my heart and mind, to love You alone, to do Your will unceasingly, unfailingly, without falling away, for Your will is molded 63, perfect, good, eternal, blessed. Remember what mercy and power the Lord Jesus Christ did with you and in you through faith in His name during your repentance and your secret prayer, when you and Ivan Fedorovich Palyanov, walking in the garden at Lukin’s dacha, approached a locked fence, behind which a goat and a kid were grazing on the grass, and Palyanov’s dog went outside the fence under the locked door. You with an effort called upon Palyanov to search for the door key, prayed, diligently calling on the name of the Lord, and captured from Him the greatest mercy and victory over the adversary, who fled from you in shame. Glory to Thee, Lord of hosts! Glory to Thee, my Savior! My good listener, my quick listener, my deliverer, the horn of my salvation, my intercessor! May everyone know this, O my Lord, Lord of heaven and earth! God! Destroy in me the greatest destructive, manifold demonic delusion and grant me to walk in Your life-giving truth. Morning. When looking at the image of the Eternal Child of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Most Pure Mother. You bear my image, the image of a man, Master Lord Jesus Christ, my God! Oh, with what infinitely great honor You have honored me! With what immeasurable love You have loved me, the work of Your hands, created in Your image! From what a terrible fall You restored me, from what abyss of cruel sins You delivered me, from what burden of a righteous curse You freed me, from what eternal torments You rescued me! But he also raised our fallen nature to heaven, and seated us on the Father’s throne, and deified us, and granted the eternal Kingdom, eternal bliss to me, unworthy of a temporary life with all its also countless earthly and heavenly blessings: education, enlightenment, rebirth, inclusion in the Church - this society of those who are being saved, imprinting with the seal of the Holy Spirit, communion of the life-giving and all-saving food - Your most pure Body and Blood, as well as bodily food, clothing, housing, a good name among people and external differences and advantages, health, vigor and strength of soul and body, restored, supported and strengthened by Your grace, especially the commission and offering of the Bloodless All-Redemptive Sacrifice of Your Body and Blood and frequent prayers and praises, For it is good for me to cleave to God, to place the hope of my salvation in the Lord 64 [cf. Ps.72:28 ], finally, with contentment and abundance of earthly blessings, for in my years of maturity and especially during my priesthood, I never endured any poverty by Thy mercy, unless from the abundance of earthly goods and addiction to them I deprived myself, the accursed one, of Thy life-giving grace, from which may Thy goodness preserve me henceforth, O Lord! I thank You, Lord, for everything that I have received and receive from You every day and hour. Grant me to love You, the Greatly Gifted One, who has given You Yourself to me as an inheritance, to love You with all my heart, with all my thoughts, with all my strength, as the only one worthy of love, and not to cleave my heart to living and inanimate creatures, to dust and corruption, and grant me to always do Your perfect, holy, wise, saving, life-giving will. Amen. But how I will praise and thank You, O Most Immaculate and Most Pure Mother of Christ our God, who was deemed worthy to embody from Your most pure blood the Eternal, All-Holy Word of the Heavenly Father, and for this reason She was worthy of perfect deification and deified the Christian race and directed human nature, which had fallen away from life, back to life! Through You we have been rewarded with countless benefits and we continually receive them through Your prayers and intercession from Your Son and God. So, You are the Lady and Queen of all creatures, visible and invisible, and everything obeys You, as the Mother of God; With You, everything is sealed with the Divine seal according to Your eternal and closest union with the Divine, for You are the church of the Divine: Your face is Divine, Your eyes are Divine, Your ears are Divine, Your ear is the ear of the Holy Spirit, Your hands, Your nose are Divine, Your mind, Your heart, Your wisdom, Your goodness, Your will is Divine - everything, everything in You is most pure, incorruptible, Divine. Teach us to worthily revere You, to love You and glorify You with a pure heart, and for this purpose, purify the thoughts of our hearts, reflect all passions from our hearts and give us all the inalienable holiness of our souls and bodies, the Divine and unshakable peace. Amen. I thank the Lord for deliverance from sorrow and oppression and the temptations of the enemy, granted to me through the prayer of faith and repentance after the prayer service in the apartment of the tanner Zakharia Ivanovich Sidorov and Olga Mikhailovna, for during the prayer service I was tempted by the all-evil Belial, who was mercilessly attacking me. I thank the Lord for His great deliverance in the apartment of Spiridon Pavlov at the memorial service for him at the end, during the pronouncement of dismissal, after unsuccessful attempts to defeat the enemy at the litanies of the dead. The Lord gave me boldness, peace and freedom, and I firmly said all the release. Thursday. I thank the Lord for the numerous deliverances of my weakness from the deadly machinations of the enemy, especially at the very beginning of the funeral liturgy, when, in order to avoid the enemy’s killing and oppression, with repentance and faith I venerated the holy altar in the Assumption and the chapel of the Baptist Church; and then many times during mass and the funeral service for Mikhail Ivanovich Kazantsev and after the funeral service on the way to the Kronstadt Gate and back to home and home, where I bowed before the Lord with humility in repentance, He delivered me from mortal sorrows. I thank the Lord, who granted me, after a long struggle with invisible enemies and after getting rid of all their dirty tricks in me and painful arrows, to perform a litia in the hall of Alekseev’s kitchen with great dignity and boldness, calmly, unfailingly, loudly (without a deacon). I thank the Lord, who revealed in me, through the prayer of repentance, in irritation with beggar boys and in the passions of my heart, His great salvation and who gave me grace and strength with dignity and boldness, in peace, to conduct a memorial service in the evening, at eight o’clock, along Spiridon Pavlova (Ekaterininskaya Street, my own house). How good and good it is to be with God and to have God in yourself, I know this from experience, and I don’t need any other wealth, any other bliss, and I can’t find a better one, for this wealth - the Creator Himself and my God - is incorruptible, eternal, most blessed, life-giving. So, why am I still seduced by the world and its things, its property, its faces, that is, people, just like it, corruptible and transient, its happiness and charm, which always almost cruelly scourge my soul for my unreasonable, heart-corrupting attachment? It is good for me to cleave to God, to place the hope of my salvation in the Lord [cf. Ps.73:28]. With the Lord I have no one and nothing to fear. I thank the Lord for delivering me yesterday from the oppression of the enemy and for strengthening my heart during the service of the memorial service for Spiridon Pavlov. Drive away the hard-heartedness that occurs at funeral services, insensitivity towards the deceased and the relatives around him, and arouse in every possible way sincerity, sympathy, condolences and compassion, in order to pray with a sincere, warm heart for the repose of the soul of the deceased and for the forgiveness of sins, and do not be bored with many litanies about him, for these are what are needed, the soul of the deceased and the souls of the living surrounding the coffin of relatives especially need them, They shed great consolation and hope into the heart. And during memorial services and funeral services, and in general during all services, pronounce them slowly, sincerely, with feeling, clearly, calmly and with dignity, for they express God’s wondrous love for mankind, invincible by our sins, and the hope for mercy for us sinners who pray and repent. The priest would have deprived people of great consolation, joy and hope if he had somehow, carelessly and with omissions, senselessly begun to pronounce the prescribed prayers and supplications, exclamations and dismissals, and he would have brought himself into great spiritual trouble and would have been subjected to the curse of God, for cursed is man who does the work of the Lord with negligence [Per. 48:10]. Evilly, thinking basely and badly about the female or male nature, a person rebels against himself, against his own nature, for man and woman after the Lord are the source of life - one through the all-embracing seed, and the other through the formation from this seed of a living, animate organism and a rationally free being. I thank my Lord Jesus Christ, who created [His mercy] in me this day before the liturgy, during the liturgy and after it in the cemetery church (funeral liturgy for Spiridon Pavlov), at the prayer service in the house of Tsepov (No. 14) and at Olga Afanasyevna Karpova’s, and especially in the Assumption Church during the all-night vigil and after it. At the beginning of the Liturgy, the Lord crushed in my soul the bonds of hell that bound me and killed my soul, and bestowed peace, space, boldness, freedom, life, strength, dignity and self-control; the peace that was shaken in my soul at the great entrance and again the mortal bonds that bound me again the Lord broke and gave me heartfelt space; before the Gospel, he clearly, sincerely, with dignity said: God through prayers... - and so on (I thank the Lord for the gift of boldness), so that I myself was happy; When I said the release, I became afraid of the devil’s delusion and was extremely confused and hesitant, but through the prayer of faith and secret repentance the Lord again raised me from my inner fall and gave me peace. Before the prayer services at the birthday girls shown, I was angry with the sexton for fussing around to no avail, for delaying me and for lying, but, having prayed to the Lord in repentance, I received forgiveness and peace. During the all-night vigil, it was extremely difficult for me and I wanted to sleep from overeating and drinking and from the advancing rain clouds, but I prayed to the Lord to revive me with the spirit of grace and give life-giving fire in my heart, and the Lord gave great zeal, great heat and animation, and I read the Gospel and the canon very sympathetically, sincerely, solemnly. While reading the prayer to Christ, Light... at the end I was confused by the action of Satan and was pitifully wounded, but through the prayer of repentance and touching the Holy Altar with faith I was healed in soul and body. Mironovna Olga served a prayer service very easily and joyfully. Glory to the Lord! No matter how frequent and numerous my sins are, so often and great is God’s mercy for me every day, every hour, every minute. Whoever proclaims the mighty powers of the Lord is heard and will do all His praises [Ps. 105:2] (that is, worthily praise) according to His good deeds? They are more numerous than sea sand, more than raindrops. Alleluia (praise God), the cherubic song, despite its brevity and simplicity, is very meaningful, testifying to the constant contemplation by the Heavenly ranks of Angels of the infinite wisdom, truth, [holiness] and goodness of God, as well as the omnipotence of God in creation, providence and redemption of the world, and about their surprise and awe before the Creator and Redeemer. This song is often used during worship to mean that during our service to the Lord the Angels serve invisibly, forming with people, as it were, one choir, one Church, one meeting, union, and this circumstance teaches us to stand and pray reverently and wisely in church, listening to singing and reading. Every one who sins rebels against God, his Creator, who created him in His image and likeness in holiness and truth, and against people like himself, against himself, against his own good - eternal salvation and life, against his moral and physical integrity, against peace and health, against his conscience - this incorruptible guardian of our soul and witness of all our thoughts, desires, intentions and deeds; the sinner arms against himself both God, and himself, and the Angels, and holy and righteous people, and even sinners like himself, arms all nature, and therefore the Creator often arms the creation for revenge on His enemies, heaven and earth and the sea. Resurrection. Just before the mass and during almost the entire mass, I was greatly tempted and suffered grievously because of fifty kopecks (50 kopecks) from the fraternal income that I had earned, which I intended to give to the poor. Belial killed my soul because of one thought about this, driving a heavy, deadening wedge into my heart. How much contrition there was, secret prayers, falling to the throne of grace! Only before communion of the Holy Mysteries did I beg the Lord with the strongest cry of my heart, and He gave me peace. Vacation said freely, boldly, completely. I didn’t read all of the pulpit: I was embarrassed, I was in a hurry. Monday. I thank the Lord, who delivered me from the fierce sorrow of wanting money for the farewell words of the sick Skobkin. I have fallen into grave temptation! How I suffered! But, having prayed with sincere repentance, I, dead, was given life. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, except the name of Christ [Acts 4:12]. I thank the Lord, who delivered me from hellish cramped conditions and sorrow on the way to Peterhof over the pity of money (as far as I remember). By repentance and whole-heartedly calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I was saved and received peace. God bless! Man in his fallen state (sinful) is a strange, often absurd, mixture of good and evil, wisdom and stupidity, faith and unbelief, courage and timidity, truthfulness and servility, love and hatred, goodwill and ill-will, compassion and malice, straightforwardness and guile, simplicity and cunning, mercy and hard-heartedness, gaiety and despondency, hope and despair, importance and frivolity, sadness and laughter, generosity and stinginess, abstinence and intemperance (greed), chastity and debauchery, praise and slander, hard work and laziness, zeal and inertia (apathy), reverence and blasphemy, respect and contempt: everything that is good, true, pure, honest, holy, he can pervert, from the most longed-for, life-giving truth he can fall and fall in contrast to and contrary to one’s conscience and heart, to hold on to what is contrary, to become rigid in it and perish. What madness, willfulness and stubbornness! We must constantly guard ourselves - the mind and heart and will in a good direction and also constantly resist the evil direction, for this latter constantly strives to overcome us and take us captive. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you [James 4:7]. He served an early mass in the cathedral in the former choir due to the painting of the cathedral with preliminary cleaning. After two days of non-service, entertainment with a walk around Peterhof, and especially gluttony with nightly temptation, I became extremely weak in spirit and highly susceptible to the temptations of invisible fighters, evil and my own passions. First of all, I was defeated from the evil demons by secret contempt for the abbot for his apparently cold, insensitive performance of divine services, without consciousness of the importance and holiness of the work (but this was the slander of the adversary of the devil and the deadly poison of the serpent), for which I repented, that is, of my hostility, slander, disrespect for the abbot, suspicion, wickedness, and the Lord had mercy on me, giving peace; another time, I was tempted through the memory of making public in the press about an award from my parishioners by the priest (archpriest) Mikhailovsky and wished for myself the same publicity, which confused and killed me, and I repented of seeking false, vain, earthly glory and of negligence in gaining heavenly, eternal, incorruptible glory, and the Lord, through zealous repentance, again had mercy me. In general, disembodied enemies terribly inclined me to the sin of cowardice and despair, dumbness in pronunciation, but the Lord overcame it through my faith and calling on His name. Then I was tempted at a prayer service by Vasily Fedorovich Nikitin from temptation and demonic fear, without finishing reading the Gospel: I am the door... [John 10:7], but then he recovered and peacefully finished the prayer service, but not the Gospel... On the military ship “Red Hill” I served a prayer service by the grace of God with the greatest animation and without stumbling. I thank the Lord, Helper and Savior, for all this. I thank the Lord, who repelled the deadly machinations of the adversary during lunch on the military ship “Red Hill” through the zealous invocation of His holy name. It was a wonderfully warm day on July 15, and at night there was lightning and almost no thunder with heavy rain. Glory to God, who revived plants and all living creatures! At the christening in the wooden wing of Vasiliev’s house at Ivanov’s, I baptized calmly, evenly, with a triumphant spirit, not knowing any obstacles, but at the end of the Sacrament I was imperceptibly carried away by the dream of how I would receive the Order of St. Anna of the second degree and, if God blesses, next year I will go to my homeland and appear in glory (oh, vain glory, vain, false, temporary, earthly!), and this caused him to become agitated in spirit, began to speak with difficulty, and barely finished reading his prayers, having in the heart of the enemy, who brazenly and strongly opposed me and killed me with his dreams, with his hellish, fiery arrows; I hid and missed, did not pronounce many words, even in the Gospel of the words: all power has been given to Me in heaven and on earth: therefore you are going to teach all languages [Matthew 28:18-19] and others... But at the end of the Sacrament, in sorrow, confusion and distress, I fell in confession to the Lord, asking to fill with His grace what I had missed and to have mercy on me and to heal me with His grace, and - oh, endless goodness! “The Lord forgave everything and healed my humble soul. Dreaming with passion while serving God (for example, performing the Sacraments) about earthly objects, a person thinks to combine incompatible things, to unite the incompatible: the Creator with creatures, the spiritual with the material, light with darkness, truth with sin, good with evil, incorruptibility with corruption, truth with falsehood, Christ with Belial (the devil). That is why the church hymn says: Let all human flesh be silent (that is, our many-passionate flesh, or the varied and destructive passions of the flesh) and let it think within itself of nothing earthly 67 . The earthly, sinful dreams of a Christian, especially a serving priest, during divine services are severely punished by deprivation of God's grace, peace, silence, space of the heart and painful confusion, scorching fire, darkness, shame, heartfelt timidity and fear, powerlessness, madness. Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Remember in Whose Kingdom you live, to Whom all rational creation, animate and inanimate, heaven and earth, obey and Whom you must obey! - To the Lord God, Creator and Provider of the whole world and all creatures and Savior of the human race. Eternal God and King of every creature (hence my Creator)! Forgive me every sin, voluntary and involuntary, and teach me to do Your will, for You are my God [Ps. 143:10], for You are the source of life! (May 9 omitted.) I thank You, Lord, for Your great and swift mercies and deliverance in the maid’s apartment in the first wing (Akimova Evdokia Agafonovna) after irritation with the sexton, even though I myself was to blame; and earlier the Lord had mercy in Sampson Ilyich’s apartment soon after irritation with the sexton and extreme embarrassment, then in the cathedral before reading a prayer to the mother in labor and during a prayer service to the Mother of God (at Kromido’s prayer service I was hurt by the impurity of my heart and was saved by repentance and faith). During worship, we learn to sincerely believe in God and love Him with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves, or to love ourselves in our neighbors, considering everyone as brothers and members of the one body of the Church of Christ, looking to the Lord as the Head, as the King and Ruler and Savior of all people, especially the faithful, and to the Mother of God as the Lady. Blindness is that we chase after perishable goods and do not strive for heavenly, spiritual, painful corruption, blinded, deafened, suppressed, killed by corruption, or addiction to perishable things. To appear and not to be, to deceive myself and others with outward piety only, to make an idol of myself, to attract the eyes, thoughts and hearts of people to myself, to be a hypocrite, to be occupied with dreams, vanity, and not the affairs of my rank - this is what my stupid, multi-passionate, godless flesh, or my old man, strives for, this is why I seek distinctions, orders! Cursed be in me such an arrangement of thoughts and aspirations of the heart, such an ungodly desire! Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven [Matthew 5:3]! From now on you will see the sky open and the Angels of God ascending and descending to the Son of Man [John 1:51]. Now we see during the all-night vigil and liturgy the clergy ascending and descending to and from the altar, which mean the Angels of God, the opening Royal Doors mean the open gates of the Kingdom of Heaven (you will see the sky open). Hence, in the prayer of entrance it is said: create holy angels at our entrance 68. Questions from a priest to his spiritual son: are you successful in self-sacrifice? Are you in friendship with any sin? Do you mortify the passions: self-love, ambition, anger, vanity, covetousness, love of money, voluptuousness, laziness, negligence, partiality, deceit, suspicion, insincerity, ill will, malice, malice, slander, reproaches, blasphemy, backbiting, willfulness and stubbornness, rudeness and roughness in treatment (in the hostel)? Are you trying to succeed in loving God and your neighbors? Are you trying to get out of the narrow frame of self-love and plant love for all people in your heart? Are you trying to live up to your calling? Do you always perform services, Sacraments and rituals reverently? Are you devoted to any passion with particular intensity? Do you with attention, with faith, willingly and with zeal, sincerity and readiness, teach the blessing of the Lord to those who require it? Are these a holy people, people of renewal? Is this the holy and chosen flock? Are these members of the Holy Apostolic Church? Are these members of Christ? Are these the branches of the vine, Christ? – These are idolaters and bitter 69 idolaters. These are the offspring of the serpent [Matthew 3:7]. Disrespect for parents, equating oneself with them, touchiness when making comments about a malfunction, breaking fasts (accompanied by whiteness and relaxation for the good of the heart, ease of access to the heart of the devil), disposition towards lustful thoughts, anger, malice, unbrotherly love. Give up your addiction to the flesh, do not feel sorry for it, do not pamper it with long sleep, sweet and fatty dishes, amusing and stupefying drinks that burden the soul and body; leave the addiction to worldly, transitory, vain glory, love the heavenly, God's, righteous, incorruptible, eternal glory; give up your addiction to gold and silver, to money, to wealth and try most of all to acquire heavenly, spiritual, divine wealth, the wealth of virtue, faith, hope and love, mercy, self-sacrifice, purity, abstinence, humility, patience, obedience, devotion to God and earthly power. Leave your addiction to earthly beauty, to earthly, carnal voluptuousness, which destroys the beauty of your soul, created in the image of God, weakens your entire being and alienates you from God, the Source of life, for endless centuries, unless a person turns back and repents. Midnight. I thank the Lord, who reflected from my heart and from my whole being the charm of voluptuousness that seized me and strongly drew me into soul-spirited and corporeal captivity. I resorted to the sign of the cross, and the passion stopped. I received peace and freedom. God! Bless Thy servants [Otto] and Vladimir, and through their intercession and zeal Thy bounty has been sent down upon the House of industriousness. With faith, hope and love we pray to Thee. If the multi-passionate flesh and the tempter of the human race tempt you to carnal sin, then tell them firmly: get away from me, my enemies, who, under the pretext of sweetness and pleasure, seek the destruction of my soul, created in the image of God; I don’t need your perishable pleasure, chastity of soul and body is dear to me; I myself need my strength, my life, which you want to deprive me of insidiously; I myself urgently need the purity of my soul and body, which the all-holy Lord, Creator of soul and body, will seek from me; I urgently need the shrine of the church of God, what a Christian is; The name of a Christian is dear to me, which I must justify by fulfilling every virtue, especially abstinence and chastity; I must protect in every possible way from sin the members of Christ, which are the members of my body, which must rise in the general resurrection and then either glorify or shame me before the Judge and the whole world. If Christians are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people taken as an inheritance [1 Pet. 2:9], then they must reign over the passions, keep tightly the sanctity of soul and body, as precious deposits of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, be in fact a holy people, and not working (like the pagans, who do not know the true God and the promises of eternal life) to every sin, new people, grace-filled, and not old, filled with all the passions of the old, unrenewed man, working against sin and death. I must keep and constantly fulfill the will of God, which is our holiness [1 Thess. 4:3], so that each of us may preserve the vessels of our body in holiness and honor, and not in the passion of lust, like the pagans who do not know God [1 Thess. 4:4-5]. To watch for a short time and struggle against sin, and for a short feat - eternal reward, eternal bliss with countless blessed spirits and with the faces of all saints; short-term sinful pleasure, and for it eternal condemnation, eternal torment along with evil demons. May the Lord save all Christians from every kind of sin, may He cover, have mercy and save, as He is good and a lover of mankind. Amen. (Five and a half o'clock in the morning.) Saturday. On the night of this day, in Anna Konstantinovna’s apartment in St. Petersburg, in the house of the Annunciation Church, due to the action of the devil, there was an unclean dream, as a result of which fornication defilement occurred, plunging me into uncleanness and spiritual relaxation and carnal inflammation; the invisible enemy has girded me with his scorching ring of fornication. I prayed to the Lord for a long time to deliver me from uncleanness and corruption; the enemy resisted in his nest - in my heart and stubbornly held on; I leaned on him with repentance and confession, walking along the streets of Vasilyevsky Island adjacent to the Seventh Line, and finally, by the grace of God and the power of repentance, his strength was broken, the impurity was cleansed, and I was pardoned while standing in the Church of the Annunciation during the service of Matins by priest John Ilyich Panov. I thank my Lord, benevolent and benevolent (an unclean dream occurred as a result of my gluttony in Kronstadt with the birthday girl Marina Markova and drinking sweet tea with prosphora in Anna Konstantinovna’s apartment (she was not there) at night). What lightness and joy occurred in me after the Lord sent me His grace! I couldn’t feel my legs under me, walking along the island, along the embankments, along the Alexander Garden and along Nevsky Prospect back and forth: forward to Gostiny Dvor, back to the ship! After the all-night vigil. I thank the Lord, [who delivered me] from the poisonous, fiery stings of carnal passion and from the imagination of the [cold-free 70] wife seen in St. Petersburg in the photograph. Oh, how unclean sight is destructive to the soul! (During the all-night vigil.) I thank the Lord, who delivered me from the same house, before going to bed. I thank the Lord, who has endeared me with a wonderfully loving disposition to the hearts of pious people without my seeking and even despite my frequent rudeness and some severity. The adversary pressed heavily on me with a prodigal thorn and tormented me during the all-night vigil, not allowing me to sincerely pray to the Lord; finally, when I resolutely stepped on it, completely despised sin, it bounced off me like an arrow, and I felt light and free, peaceful, joyful. Glory to God the Deliverer, who tortures 71 my spiritual and physical purity and does not allow the all-evil and all-filthy serpent to completely possess me. Resurrection. I thank the Lord, who by His grace made it possible for me through the prayer of my repentance to perform the Divine Liturgy in the side church in the choir, driving away the sleepy despondency and crampedness of the enemy and confusion. The communion of the Holy Mysteries brought life to life; after communion, the enemy tempted my heart with hostility towards the women who brought children to communion, and especially towards my friend Alexandra Ivanovna because of her special disposition towards me and spiritual zeal; I barely overcame my hostility - so the enemy overcame me for gluttony and voluptuousness. He spoke his sermon in the hearing of everyone standing both below and above, from behind the throne, standing half-turned. I thank the Lord, who showed me His mercy and help at prayer services outside the city in a woman’s hut on Knyazheskaya Street, at the Kizemsky carpenter’s in the red wing, and especially before and during the prayer service at the officer Nikolai Yegorovich Guntashev’s house in Shebunin’s house; I prayed for a long time, repented of my hostility towards the poor, towards the abbot and Father Alexander, towards Father Peter, and the Lord changed my heart from evil to good, troubled to peaceful, cramped to spacious, cowardly to courageous. While reading the prayer behind the pulpit, I was confused by the demonic machinations, and also when I cried out: First remember, Lord, the Holy Synod and our master... Upon arriving home, the bodiless enemies stung with lust, which I overcame by the grace of God after an intense repentant prayer to the Lord. Glory to God the Savior, who destroys the charm and violence of sins. Our trouble is especially that our heart, despite all that it has experienced the destruction of every sin, the bitterness of its consequences and the inevitable punishments for it from the truth of God, still continues to secretly love sin, make friends with it, flirt with it, instead of completely hating it, rejecting it once and for all, as from a known terrible, eternal, irreconcilable enemy. God! Enlighten the hearts of all people and turn them away from all sin. Amen. The main thing is to learn from experience to despise carnal pleasures and to know through experience the science of humility, patience, kindness, and obedience. Afternoon. You have shown me many and great mercies even this day, Lord, my Helper and my Savior, and, firstly, during the Liturgy, when I, not properly prepared for the service, was weak in spirit, You gave me tenderness and revived my soul, overcome by sleepy despondency, and gave me the grace to perform the Liturgy in grace. By the grace of God, I received Holy Communion in a life-giving way, with joy and gladness and spaciousness and boldness of heart. He read the pulpit with animation, he said dismissal without stumbling, prayers were held at Burov’s in Knyazheskaya Street, at the master’s, at Terentyev’s in Gostiny, at the musicians’ school – with grace, with the overcoming of enemies fighting. I thank the Lord, who forgave me for my sincere repentance the sin of hard-heartedness and insolence, committed against a beggar just before Vespers (I hit him on the leg with a cane), and who delivered death to the longed belly. Before Vespers, in an hour (at the fourth hour), the Lord in my kindergarten delivered me from voluptuous, painful, captivating, nasty, insane, deadly tendencies (for repentance). After Vespers, the Lord delivered me from the sinful cramped conditions in the bookbinder’s apartment, and I served the prayer service well, life-giving, renewingly. God! Protect and protect my weakness from the evil violence of the devil, from his false fears, when I pray before You and before Your people according to the duty of my service and at their request. And for this purpose, create a pure heart in me... and renew a right spirit in my womb [Ps. 50:12], for because of the uncleanness of the heart, for the sake of various passions in my heart, I am subjected to the temptations of the evil one, who finds in me suitable soil for his temptations. Alas for me, a sinner, a prodigal, an evil one, a self-loving, selfish, voluptuous one! It is necessary to make it a rule to eat and drink as much as necessary, once and for all to put an end to the friendship of the flesh, to the friendship of sin, flattering, insidious, all-destructive; do not stare where it is not necessary, do not droop your ears, do not shake hands, do not give free rein to your imagination where it is not necessary, where temptation can easily be. Likewise, the adversary, by the same stupidity of his cunning, does not allow you to pronounce the word of Bethesda, who does not allow you to pronounce many words from the Gospel, from prayers and exclamations. Defeat this most evil one by the power of God, in the name of Jesus Christ. Tuesday. Morning. I thank the Lord, who sent me great deliverance during Matins through my secret prayer of repentance from the sorrow and distress that befell me for suspecting Father Alexander, my brother, of withholding money for prayer services, for suspiciousness and greed, lack of trust in the all-good Providence of God, for falling away from love and hostility towards my brother. When I realized this, reproached myself sincerely and placed my hope in the Lord, rejecting hostility and selfishness with His help, then the Lord sent me peace, freedom, boldness, and I read the sedals, canons, kontakia and ikos with animation. God! Grant me the enlightened eyes of my heart, so that I can truly, unblemishedly, calmly look at a person in both sexes, at all his members, wisely, graciously, beneficially, unblemishedly created, and not have evil, unclean, nasty, disturbing and soul-killing thoughts and feelings. I thank the Lord, who has now delivered me from the delusion of fornication. Oh, carnal sweets, corrupting the soul and body and humiliating man, raised by God to such a height of communion with God, communion of the Divine nature! Wednesday. Twelve o'clock in the afternoon. I thank the Lord, who has granted me sincere and complete repentance for my sins, which were revealed in me with fierce power and lethality today after mass and the royal prayer service, when I went with sexton Mikhail Bystryakov to a prayer service in the wooden house of Daniil Isakov and when the sexton boasted that he received two rubles for the betrothal of one couple in the apartment of Father Alexander, the cathedral priest (July 21), which, I thought, probably received five rubles in my favor. I was envious, accursed, proud, dissatisfied, greedy, selfish, unkind, envious, hateful, hostile, unpeaceful, incontinent, prodigal, lazy, careless, disobedient, impatient, murmuring, frivolous, passionate spectator, hypocrite, idle, fickle, cowardly, fearful and fearful, sad, desperate, obsequious and people-pleasing, deceitful, unrighteous, irreverent, absent-minded, [ridiculed], malicious, malicious. I was in terrible spiritual trouble of confusion, cramped conditions, [...], dumbness, devilish fear and fear, but for sincere repentance the Lord gave me tangible forgiveness, salvation, peace, boldness, health, a good yoke and a light burden, and I thanked Him deep in my soul. Grant me, Lord, the grace of dispassion, goodwill, love, and unenviable contentment with my property. (I thank the Lord, earlier, at ten o’clock in the morning, who delivered me from cramped conditions and grief over the dog’s eruption in our rooms.) My hope is not in money, not in food and drink, not in clothing and various ornaments, not in distinctions and advantages, this is not my joy, my peace, my bliss, my strength and glory, but in the Lord my God: He is every good for me, for soul and body, an abundant and unfailing good. Grant me, Lord, carefree 72 to always be in hope of You, in the unity of my spirit with You. May I not be outraged by losses and damages, material, real or imaginary. Deprived of them unexpectedly or deliberately, let me not madly deprive myself of communication with You through my heartfelt addiction to earthly goods, which are corruptible and perishing in every possible way, and let me not fall away from love for my brethren, for my neighbors, who abundantly admire Your, or my imaginary, property, for You are my true, eternal property, You Yourself are my Creator and Savior, and not creatures. We are Your unworthy property, Your houses, Your churches and animate churches, as it is said: you are the church of the living God, as God said: I will dwell in them and walk in them... And I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty [2 Cor. 6:16:18]. After Vespers. I thank the Lord, who surprised me with the mercy of His salvation during Vespers, when I, falling in repentance at His throne of mercy, prayed to Him for deliverance from selfish jealousy and envy of my brother Father Alexander, who, in my absence, stole the brotherly income for himself (betrothal at the house of the bride and groom). You enlightened the eyes of my heart and taught me to despise self-interest and to be zealous for peace, love, the salvation of souls, for the glory of God, for the essence of the Christian faith is to despise the world, silver and gold, the many-passionate flesh and direct the mind and heart to the mountain, to the true, incorruptible fatherland, to an incorruptible, undefiled, unfading inheritance, observed in heaven. Set your mind on things above, and not on earthly things... where Christ sits at the right hand of God [ Col. 3:2,1 ]. It is absurd for a Christian, if that is what he is, to grovel on the earth in the dust, and for a heavenly one to be poor. God! Grant me to hold on to You with all my heart and to shun all sin with all my soul and all my thoughts, for You alone are the source of life and all good, and sin in all its forms is the source of death; With You is true wisdom, and sin is foolishness; You have light and peace, but sin is darkness and confusion; You have freedom, but sin is a grave slavery, even if this slavery were to gold and valuable stones, or sweetness and bodily beauty, or dignity and power, or beautiful and valuable clothes, or distinctions and social advantages, or wealth, or land ownership and other things that are revered on earth for happiness and which are envied by those who love this temporary, feigned, evil age. Infinitely higher, dearer, sweeter, more beautiful, more glorious is what the Lord promised to give in the future, without end, to all those who truly loved Him and kept His commandments with all their hearts. Do not pay partial attention, Christian, to everything visible in the world, to all its so-called benefits. They are decay, vanity, smoke. We are quickly captivated by visible beauties and sweets - why are we not captivated by the beauty and sweetness of the invisible, original, uncreated, intelligent, creative, from which all angelic, human, all-created beauty came, from which all sweetness, except the sweetness of sin? Because we are flesh and blood, given over to sin and enslaved by corruption, have not learned holiness and truth, have not purified the eye of our minds, otherwise we would have loved God with unsatisfied love, would have been captivated by His beauty and sweetness, so that we would not have even thought of being captivated by the beauties and sweets of the corruptible, elemental, rough, like the apostles and prophets, like the martyrs, saints and saints, shining forth in holiness and righteousness and manifold mortification. I thank You, Master Lord my God, that You have called me today to the service of Your Divine, all-redemptive, all-sanctifying, deifying liturgy, delivered me from the violence of deadening passions, revived me with the grace of Your Holy Spirit and helped me to accomplish it without stumbling and to partake of Your life-giving, wonderful, loving, adoring, renewing soul and body Your gifts, Your Most Pure Body and Blood. Then, at the end of the liturgy and requiem service, when, through the cunning of the demon, due to confusion from [his] deadening breath, I involuntarily missed a few words from the dismissal of the requiem service and was hellishly wounded by it, the Lord accepted my repentance of cowardice and fear and had mercy on me, granting me, both before consumption, and especially during and after the consumption of the Holy Gifts, perfect peace, perfect space of spirit and boldness. I thank the Lord, who gave me peace after my confusion before the prayer service at Trofim Ivanov, the gingerbread maker, on the day of his Angel at nine o’clock in the morning. I thank the Lord, who surprised me with His mercy as I walked along the left side of Nevsky Prospekt (I was in St. Petersburg that day) and sovereignly, kindly delivered me from the charm of voluptuousness in my flesh with the gift of peace and freedom; I thank the Lord, who mercifully delivered me through the prayer of repentance from the soul-dead (binding, shackling, darkening, shaming) anger towards the old maid, my spiritual daughter Paraskovya Kovrigina for incorrectly saying the address of her fellow countryman, fisherman Kozma Faddeev, in St. Petersburg living near the Semenovsky Bridge (near the Fontanka), and forced me look for him. Wonderful are the works of Your mercy in me, O Lord! My passions are great and persistent in me: self-love, pride, impatience, malice, irritation, fornication, lust, greed, laziness and negligence, opposition, contemplation, cowardice, fear, servility and man-pleasing, despondency and murmuring and other countless passions. God! Save the dying! You came to seek and save the lost [Luke 19:10]. Wake up! Are you ashamed and afraid of people who are servile 73, passionate and sinful, when you need to fear the only God, sinless and most holy, who searches hearts and bellies and judges righteously every person [Ps. 7:10;66.5]? And then and there are you afraid when you need to boldly, with boldness proclaim His glory or bring Him solemn confession and thanksgiving, and not cowardice and fear of sin? Fear the One God; in the church or in general when performing praise and thanksgiving to God, do not fear anyone - not the king himself, nor anyone from the mighty and rich of the earth, for they are dust and ashes before God. Look at the female sex with deep respect and with all purity, as the work of the all-wise and pure and all-good God and as a wonderful, beautiful, gentle, worker of the human race, filled with love and goodness, a nurse and educator and guardian of the human race. Remember through whom you became a man from an insignificant seed, who with love carried you and gave birth to you in illness, took pity, took care of you, nourished you, cherished you, showered you with tears, taught you the word, knowledge of God, everything good and useful! Isn’t it a woman, isn’t it your mother and father? And look at the man with all purity and respect, as the culprit 74, after God, of the human race, bearing and keeping (if anyone keeps) the seed of the human race. Whoever looks at a man or woman in a crafty and nasty way, defiles himself, curses his Creator, who beautifully, most purely, and truly created everything, especially man - His image and likeness. Let us create man in Our image and likeness... And create... and behold all good things [Gen.1:26,27,31]! After Matins. I thank the Lord, who through the prayer of repentance delivered me from sorrow and cramped conditions and gave me peace, space and boldness and a living, sincere feeling for what is sung in the church on the canons. At ten and a half o'clock in the afternoon. I thank the Lord, who saved my soul from the aphid of voluptuousness after a secret prayer of repentance. Glory to Thee, most merciful and obedient Master, Lord Jesus Christ, my God! When the beauty (beauty) of the flesh and the voluptuousness of the flesh seduces and confuses you - oh, then remember, imagine the wondrous, bright, holy, incorruptible beauty of the holy saints of God, the holy Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Heavenly Dominions, Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones bearing God Almighty, especially the incorruptible, most holy, unblested beauty of the Ever-Virgin Mother of God and mainly the incomparable, endless beauty of the Lord God Himself in Three Persons: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and then the desire for all earthly beauty, all earthly pleasure will go out in you, then you will want to cleave with your whole being to the one God, like David the forefather, who cried: What do we have in heaven? and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever [Ps. 72:25–26]. My soul clings to You [Ps.63:9]. Most often and more often than not, I, accursed and multi-passionate, violate the commandment of abstinence, for I always eat and drink with greed, in excess, and therefore I easily fall into anger, malice, rancor, internal fornication or lust, into greed, vanity, laziness. A Christian is one who sees grief, is a heavenly, heavenly person, who despises the temporal and constantly thinks about eternity and, constantly doing deeds of repentance and virtue, achieves eternity; who, like the Apostle Paul, says: for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain [Phil.1:21]; one for whom there is nothing pleasant on earth without Christ, and only in Christ and with Christ there is pleasantness; for whom all treasures are in heaven, where Christ God abides forever with the Father and the Holy Spirit [ Col. 3:1–3 ]; for whom the earth, as a place of sin and exile and cohabitation with the devil, is unpleasant and for whom the desired fatherland is heaven - a place of truth and holiness, where only one God reigns forever in unapproachable glory, in an eternal, ever-joyful light. As someone himself is, so he represents other people, and there were and are people who imagine that God is servile to them: you despised [Russian: thought] iniquity, that I would be like you, says the Lord, but you are deceived: I will reprove you and bring your sins before you [Ps. 49:21]. Dormition of the Holy Righteous Anna, the Holy Wives of Olympias and Eupraxia. I thank the Lord for his great mercy and deliverance and healing from the acute sinful death of my soul, which secretly fell into pride, suspiciousness, suspicion, waywardness, resistance and malice against the rector, Father Paul, who closed the southern altar doors upon my exit through them to the choir; Then I deliberately opened them in defiance, but I was mortally wounded in my soul and repented for a long time on the way to the Lord, especially while walking in the church garden with the elder Vladimir D. Nikitin, where I received mercy from the Lord, who exists everywhere and listens and saves everywhere. Praise the Lord. Resurrection. I thank the Lord, who surprised me with His mercy before mass in delivering me from the death of sin (after giving the fortieth cleansing prayer to four mothers with babies) and during mass after the great entrance, at which invisible enemies struck me with crampedness and despondency, and especially after mass, when I let the cross be kissed and through sight was tempted, falling into internal adultery for the sake of the breasts of a young woman - only faith into the atoning Blood and Flesh of the Lord, on Whom I fervently trusted in repentance, delivered me from the terrible internal captivity and oppression. Evening. Why did the Lord leave me with His help during Vespers and not deliver me in time from the violence of invisible enemies? For my intemperance and for trampling on the Divine Gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ, which I had just received at the liturgy, for I went to the funeral and ate and drank wine, although in moderation, but more than proper, and laughed with the narrator of St. Petersburg and indulged his sins with my laughter (stealing), which he himself laughed about. Oh, my lack of attention to myself and to the Holy Mysteries! (I ate quite a lot of veal with greed, drank sherry and beer.) But at the end of Vespers, the Lord allowed me to overcome my enemies, and spoke the last litany loudly and loudly. I thank the Lord, who at home at six o’clock in the evening delivered me from the heavy waves of voluptuousness through my prayer. The end: you need strong, constant abstinence and fervent prayer. Six and a half o'clock in the evening. Now I have sinned gravely before the Lord, before the Mother of God, before the holy Angels and the holy saints of God and before all people, strongly and painfully, dragging to tears one boy who begs from me every day and is dissatisfied (of course because it is not enough) with the alms given. It was I who annoyed your member, Lord, I despised this little one, but his Guardian Angel in heaven always sees the face of the Heavenly Father [Matthew 18:10]! Have mercy on me, O Master, who repents, and do not judge me according to my deeds, according to my malice and my hardness of heart, according to my greed and stinginess and selfishness, according to my lust and carnality and my dislike for my neighbors. (This irritability of mine comes from my satiety after communion: I offended the shrine of the most pure, most heavenly, life-giving Mysteries.) I thank the Lord for the sincerely celebrated memorial service for Gavrila Skobkina. I lament and groan, I mourn my infidelity before the Lord, for hitherto, with all the powerful benefits of grace, on occasion and occasion I am ready to commit any sin with zeal and greed; sins, like thieves, lurking in a dark place - in my heart, are ready to rush out of ambush at the first opportunity and commit gluttony, drunkenness, murder, fornication, theft, pride, envy, and vanity; Some I actually do, and others I am ready to do, but thanks and glory to the Lord, by His grace, who does not allow me to commit grave, exorbitant sins and removes cases and reasons for them. Oh, sin-loving heart, bad heart, oh, sin-loving disposition, crafty, unfaithful, evil, prodigal, greedy, selfish, deceitful, thieving, proud, hostile, envious, ambitious, vain, lazy, careless, treacherous, stubborn, ungrateful, wayward, unrighteous, irritable, insincere disposition! To you, my Lord God, I confess my sins and pray that you grant me time to repent, that you correct me and make me clean from all sin, that I may hate every sin with all my soul as disgrace, abomination, as madness, as destruction and death, as the devil himself, his culprit, that I may crucify the flesh with passions and lusts, and that I may love and practice every virtue. Grant me, Lord, the grace to sincerely cry and pray for human infidelity, delusion, darkness, ignorance, passions, countless sins, for they are my members and have the same nature and are subject to the same temptations, but many, many are in greater spiritual ignorance compared to me, do not know those life-giving and saving truths, the gifts of grace that You deigned to reveal and reveal to me, unworthy. I thank the Lord, who mercifully and quickly delivered me from the hellish cramped conditions that befell me for tormenting in anger a beggar orphan boy who asked for an increase in the nickel I gave him and cried heavily; when I called him to me later, he came up to me in kindness, I asked for forgiveness and gave him fifteen kopecks. I felt like a malicious demon was sitting inside me through an act of malice and was oppressing and tormenting me; I was tied up, boring, gloomy, stormy, taciturn; secretly repented and cried. God! Remember all those who sin like me, and grant them repentance and deliverance from all their sins, and bring everyone to the knowledge of Your righteousness, gather everyone to You, for You came to seek and save the lost [Luke 19:10]. Evening. From the many miracles of Your power, performed in my weaknesses and bitter temptations, I am always amazed, I stand in awe of them and thank You, the Author of them. Today, before the liturgy and during the liturgy, you saved me ten times or more from the demonic evil machinations, and even after mass during the royal memorial service for the empress and prayer service to the holy great martyr healer Panteleimon, [...] Nicholas and at Spiridon Antsev many times. Oh, how great is my sinful inclination! If you wish for an order, your thoughts will burn with something evil for a moment, and you will be scorched and embarrassed. There is no permanence and peace with the shrine. I thank the Lord, who through my prayer gave me sincerity and boldness (courage) in serving the all-night vigil and with much strength, almost without stumbling, read the Gospel and the canon of the Mother of God and pronounce the dismissal loudly, boldly and completely. Bodiless enemies, envying beyond measure our exaltation by the Lord through the mystery of His incarnation and the deification of our nature and our future bliss with God and bursting with annoyance at the failure of their malice and wickedness in the destruction of believers, are in every possible way, through various intrigues, inducing cowardice, despondency, humiliation, fear, sorrow and oppression on us and tormenting us with their us with dirty tricks, especially worldly addictions and passions: malice, envy, greed, ambition, vain glory, sensuality and carnal love. But we must overcome them with faith and the grace of Christ and strong, never-falling love for God, philosophizing on heaven, not on earth and trampling on despondency and cowardice. When I think about the Divine and spiritual, then I am calm, joyful and blissful, but when I think about earthly things, especially during prayer, then I immediately fall into confusion, sorrow and crampedness, into cowardice and sadness. From here it is clear that we were created not for this corruptible world and not for corruption, but for the heavenly fatherland. This is where we will direct all our thoughts, desires, and aspirations. May God help you. After mass. Who will worthily confess Your glorious miracles, O Lord, in me? For their greatness and multitude and their goodness are without number. Before mass in the cemetery church, when I was killed by my sins and bound by them like iron bonds, You miraculously, quickly released and revived me after I, in repentance, with the prayer of faith in my heart, fell to the throne of the seat of Your glory in the church, and after that I freely, peacefully served the conciliar liturgy according to Alexei Neustroev (a year after death), and had from Your grace tears of tenderness at the performance of the Bloodless Sacrifice, and communion of the Holy Mysteries in a very life-giving way, for joy and new life. Glory to You! (Philip Stepanov seems to be a good person, simple and cordial at dinner.) Lord! Grant me in You, as in a wondrous, bright and imperishable beauty and a bright, beautiful robe, to clothe myself in the beauty of Your virtues, and in the ability to impute all earthly ornaments, not to desire them and not to value them and not to be captivated by them, not to attach my heart to them. Let my heart be above and not on the earth. You are the greatest part, O man! The body is earth and smoldering. To the pure all things are pure; But for those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but their mind and conscience are defiled [Titus 1:15]. This is me, the damned one. But cleanse my mind and my conscience: Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me [Matthew 8:2]. Wednesday. Morning. I will ascribe victory to You, my Lord God, who gave me a great victory by Your mercy against the invisible evildoers, who fought me fiercely with worldly addictions and malice and quickly fled through Your mercy and power through my prayer. (They were not allowed to speak the litany at the Midnight Office and the first litany at Matins (about the king), and the first litany at the canon.) From the beauties of the earth, although perishable, let us recognize the original, incorruptible, incomparable Beauty; from the treasures of the earth let us know the one incorruptible life treasure, from the riches of the earth let us know the only rich one who truly enriches us, the corruptible, with His Divinity. New life is constantly given to me by the Lord for repentance and faith. The sweets and pleasures of life (food, drinks, carnal pleasures) kill my soul, plunge it into weakness and powerlessness, and the grace of God reflects death from my depths, from my soul and from my heart and gives me wonderful life and strength, after a storm peace and silence, after cramped space - space, after despondency - joy and cheerfulness, after loss of spirit - boldness and vigor. How many times every day did I die from sins, especially gluttony and wine drinking, and Your wonderful grace revived me and gave new life to my soul and body. But even after all these miracles of Your mercy in me, I continue to voluntarily die of sins and, only having felt the iron bonds of death within myself, I again turn to Your mercy with a prayer for salvation and healing. How long will I abuse Your grace, O Lord! The ancient saints were all decorated not with crosses, orders and ribbons of red, blue and light blue, but with labors and sufferings and virtues - the true adornments of a person: love, meekness, humility, kindness, mercy, patience, self-sacrifice. They did not serve vanity and vain opinion, surprise and human vision, comforted by vain things, but they represented to the Lord pure, adorned hearts, burning with the fire of love. These decorations of the heart are not deceptive, imperishable, imperishable, life-giving, for they lead from God and to God and unite with God, and do not separate from Him, like everyday decorations, when people cling to them with their hearts. After mass. I thank the Lord, who made His power perfect in my weaknesses. I served mass without stumbling and the exclamation In the first memory, the Lord said with boldness, expressively, loudly, with inner strength. Why? From the inner conviction bestowed by grace in the greatness of the order of the priesthood and in the greatness of grace bestowed by the grace of God on mortals, the weak and sinners who perform such great, saving and terrible heavenly mysteries as the Eucharist, Baptism, Confirmation, Repentance, and Priesthood. It was then that I seemed to understand for the first time the words: First remember, Lord, the Most Holy Governing Synod, from which comes the bishopric, the priesthood, and the deaconry. Imagine the same about the Tsar and Tsarina: the father of the Tsars, the mother of the Tsars of Russia, the trustee and intercessor of the entire Orthodox Church within Russia and beyond its borders. What a high rank, calling, purpose! What a great gift of God to people is royal power! After Vespers. What a sharp, deadly sting this female beauty is! Walking through the church to the altar and seeing a beautiful young woman I knew, I involuntarily felt the sting of carnal love and could not overcome it and calmly, with ardent love for God and zeal, serve Vespers. I was exhausted in the fight because I ate a modest meal today (Wednesday): cod with quick butter and semolina porridge with milk, and slept for a long time before evening. And he drank sweet hot tea just before the evening party, and even the devil was jealous of the new cassock, for he envies everything, he becomes enraged at everything, even at his small monetary income. At the end of Vespers, the Lord had mercy and reconciled. Secret fornication is corruption of soul and body, bonds, slavery, darkening, deadening of the soul to truth and goodness. Oh, the pitiful falling away from life, from God, of man, enslaved by carnal pleasures, such as: love of money, anger, gluttony, drunkenness. The object of our passion fixes our entire heartfelt gaze on itself, rivets to itself the whole heart, all the thought, all the imagination, all the forces of the soul and completely turns the soul away from God and from love for neighbors. This is the main problem with passions! What we need to revere with grateful praise to the Creator, the devil taught people to mock and curse (foul language); What was given as a means to increase life, to multiply the human race, the devil taught to use as a means to corruption, to uncleanness, to the reduction of the human race, for intemperance kills the fruit. I have experienced a thousand times and without number that the Lord is my every treasure: my peace, the space of my heart, my joy, my boldness, my adornment, my glory, my strength, my perfection, my all-bliss, my inexhaustible treasure, my food and drink, the bright robe of my soul (put on Christ [Gal. 3:27]), my true greatness. In a word, every good that can be thought of and desired is for me the Lord Jesus Christ, and what else do I desire, am I foolish enough to desire? Are there any earthly differences and advantages that distinguish me from the rest of my fellow priests? But in the Christian sense this is reckless and impudent: who am I to consider myself better than others? Is it not the scum of the world? Am I not a dog that stinks because of my sins? And I, a stinking dog, want to seem like a peacock?! What does this mean? God! Knower of the secrets of my heart, forgive me my insolence and pride! I need to sit lower, food 76 who will be more honest than me from the brethren. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted [Luke 14:8–11]. May I first take away the absurdity, ugliness and stench of the garments of my soul and may I clothe myself in the beauty of humility, purity, chastity, abstinence, mercy and generosity, generosity, forbearance, and patience and obedience. If we delved more often into the pitiful state of our soul, reeking of many different passions, then we would not seek and covet external differences, but would consider ourselves unworthy even of the advantages that we have, and would turn all our attention to the decoration of the inner tabernacle, which remains neglected and desolate due to concern for external, vain decoration. God! My light, glory to you! How did the devil fall to such madness that, being an incorporeal spirit himself, he teaches us, who have an immortal soul, to care about the carnal and corruptible and fall into his madness, and how do we, foolish ones, allow him to laugh so impudently at us? After all, we know that he is a spirit himself and exists for many thousands of years in torment and darkness, and that our soul is also a spiritual being and will not need anything corporeal after the death of the body - why so much care, sadness, care about a momentary and disappearing substance or a momentary, earthly, vain glory? But we must care about eternal, imperishable, spiritual glory, and care about it unceasingly! To her! Morning. I thank the Lord, who delivered my soul from the teeth of lions many times during Matins and after Matins, when I went to the sick Eusebius in the Duma (at the Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God in the porch I stood and prayed for my mercy and forgiveness of my anger towards the beggar boy). After mass. I thank the Lord, who has given me the grace and strength to complete the Liturgy completely without stumbling from beginning to end; In the end, the enemy stopped my inner steps with anger towards Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina, but the grace of God for my repentance overcame the anger. He received Holy Communion in a wonderful, life-giving way. Our service has the goal of reconciling souls with God, it is the service of eternal life, the service of holiness and truth. Have bishops and elders as the Savior Himself, for they do His work, the greatest of all works - the work of revival, renewal and salvation of the human race, they lead to eternal life, to truth and holiness. Evening. I thank the Lord, who mercifully raised me from my fall and delivered me from inner heart captivity by carnal sweetness; I thank the Lord, who returned to me the freedom and boldness befitting righteousness and holiness. Away with all friendship with the treacherous and multi-passionate, unfaithful, flattering, voluptuous, envious, selfish, proud, unloving, unfriendly, vain, proud, ambitious flesh! May I be dead for her, so that I may be alive for God, may my flesh be crucified with passions and lusts, may I be crucified, the separator from God and from His incorruptible, eternal Kingdom. Oh, how flatteringly and sweetly the devil pours the mortal poison of sin into our hearts and bodies! How charming, captivating, violent, brazen! What is the intention of the devil, what is the purpose of voluptuousness? To corrupt the image of God in man, to desecrate him, to separate him from God, to mock him, to humiliate him, to spit on him and kill him, to consign him to eternal torment. Oh, hellish deceit! Here comes the Assumption Fast. Fasting is active Christianity; it must begin the mortification of the flesh with passions and lusts; without it it is impossible to kill passions, for they are nourished and strengthened by intemperance, and the Lord in His Person indicated the need for fasting, at the very beginning of His ministry, fasting for forty days and forty nights. And now those who wisely slyly recognize fasting as unnecessary, and I, a sinner, in fact, seem to reject fasting, for I observe very little and rarely fasting. That is why the passions in me are very strong and painful. All passions away from me! So that your spirit does not exist in me! Away with anger and rancor! Away with gluttony, voluptuousness of the flesh! Away with greed! Away with self-esteem, pride, love of fame! Away with self-will and stubbornness! Away with idleness, laziness and carelessness about the one thing needed and about other family, social, and church responsibilities! Away with despondency and cowardice! Away with false fear and shame! Away with contemplation, partiality and hypocrisy! Away with concern for appearances and neglect of the inner, hidden person of the heart! Away with servility! Away with lack of faith, lack of hope and false love! Come to me and instill in me all virtue! For I am a child of Christ God, His birth, His redemption! A heavenly, incorruptible inheritance is prepared for me! The sufferings of this present time are not worth anything in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us [Rom.8:18]. When we read the Lord’s Prayer, we must read it with special clear understanding and animation, namely: 1) deeply understand every word and expression; 2) to desire with all our soul and with all our heart what we ask; 3) have zeal, zeal to do with all our might what God wants from us in this prayer, and 4) actually do what is required. Thus, saying the words: Hallowed be Thy name, one must desire with all one’s heart to live holy, try to live holy, have a zeal for holiness and live holy in deed itself; saying: Thy will be done, to have zeal for the fulfillment of the will of God, holy, perfect, saving, all-blessed, wise, omnipotent, eternal, and so on. Preservation and fulfillment of the will of God is already a great reward for a rationally free being, whether he is an Angel or a man, for the will of God is the greatest good and bliss of rational beings, their perfection. Instead of the sweetness and pleasure that comes from fulfilling sin, although they always entail torment and bitterness, we must imagine true, incorruptible, eternal, incomparable, unfading bliss that comes from fulfilling the will of God. All the righteous will be filled with bliss for endless ages. Fill them with the flow of Thy sweetness, and from the fatness of Thy house they will be satisfied, says the Psalmist [Ps. 35:9]. After mass. I thank and extol the Lord for the multiple, great salvation that occurred in me during the liturgy from the deadly oppression of me by incorporeal enemies for intemperance in food and drink, my drowsiness; I thank the Lord for the unfaltering performance of the Liturgy and the uncondemned communion of the Holy Mysteries, which revived me by the ineffable mercy of my Lord; I thank the Lord for overcoming ethereal enemies while reading the prayer behind the pulpit; I especially thank the Lord for delivering me from the wiles of demons before consuming the Holy Gifts after the funeral service, at which, as during the mass, ethereal enemies burned me with a passion for my new (non-church) red vestments (I was afraid that they would become rusty 78 from the incense smoke, and my heart was hurt because of this). I sinned before God by having a stupid concern for earthly things when I should be all heavenly, all in God, thinking of nothing earthly in myself. Work (church glory) – slavery. From the follow-up to the Great Blessing of Water. Pochiti (church glory) - to rest, to rest. Lepy (Church Glav.) – good, beautiful, graceful. Prayer “Master Love for Mankind...” from the follow-up to Holy Communion. Hooting (Church Slavic) – sense of smell. Kukhmisterskaya is a small, inexpensive restaurant and canteen. Hymns at the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great on Holy Saturday. Prayer of the priest at the liturgy at the small entrance. Gorshiy (Church Slavic) – the worst. Bezstudny (Church Slavic) – shameless, arrogant. Torture (Church Slavic) – meaning to demand, ask back. Carefree (church-glory) – having no worries, uncaring. Obsequious (church-glory) - just as susceptible to suffering, passions, just as fragile as everyone else. The culprit (Church Slavic) is the one in whom the reason (guilt is the cause, the source). Umet (Church Slav.) – litter. Food (church-glav.) – perhaps, or perhaps, or not. Rebirth (Church Glav.) – rebirth. Ore (obsolete) – i.e. reddish-brown, get rich - turn brown.