Июль 1883 г.

I thank the Lord for his quick and all-powerful help during the service of Matins. For giving me vigor, boldness, health, for a complete victory over invisible and fighting enemies, for a clear, loud, heartfelt voice. I thank you for all the spiritual enjoyment of the Divine service, for the litanies, prayers, verses, sedals, for the irmos and troparia, stichera, for the entire totality, for the entire sequence of the divine service, beautifully compiled by the Holy Spirit and set forth by the holy fathers and by me, the unworthy, performed and perfect today. He served the mass before the Cherubim sluggishly, coldly, rather carelessly - he sinned against the Lord! After the Cherubim and the Great Entrance, at which I usually uttered quickly, as if stealthily, the names of Her Majesty and Highness of the heir out of fear of the devil and was mortally wounded by enemies, I fervently in repentance prayed to the Lord for deliverance and revival - and immediately the grace of deliverance, purification, salvation, peace, freedom, justification descended into my bad heart, and then I prayed with tears until communion of the Holy Mysteries. He received life-giving communion, read the entire prayer behind the pulpit boldly, with sincere feeling and dignity; I said all the leave. At prayer services without the blessing of water there was a strong struggle with invisible snakes, and I won in the Lord. Shlyapnikova served a prayer service and memorial service well. Vespers was served without the Great, Petitionary, and Subject litanies (only with the Lesser Litany). Confession of about forty people. I read the prayers before confession clearly, separately, with deep feeling, by the grace of God. I thank the Lord, who soon delivered me, after looking to Him with a prayer of repentance, from the devil’s malice against Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina in the apartment of Evlampia Petrovna Shlyapnikova. I thank the Lady, through Her intercession the Lord delivered me from the kindled arrows of the evil one, for I also looked to Her image. I thanked the Lord and Lady. Help me from the Lord, my invisible belly, the eternal belly of all earthly creatures and all Angels. I thank the Lord, who saved me from being angry with Kovrigina in the apartment of Paraskeva Ivanovna Oleinikova. (I left the Athos leaflets there. Take them.) Visible proof and manifestation of life-giving power, omnipotence, wisdom, all-goodness, all-bliss, all-perfection, among other creatures, are all plants, especially flowers with their countless, varied, pleasant or unpleasant smells for our whimsical and sin-perverted nature. My God! What a wealth of smells! What sweetness! What a fragrance! It is not in vain that incense is used in church and in homes as a symbol of the manifold grace of the Holy Spirit poured out on believers. And the relics of saints are fragrant like the finest flowers and more than any flowers and are called the fragrance of the shrine. From the repentant confessions and speeches of spiritual children, learn how weak and sinful, how corrupt our nature is, how cunning and vigilant in our destruction is the spirit of malice, the spirit of uncleanness and abomination, the spirit of despondency, cowardice, despair, the spirit of every sinful dirty trick, and with a fervent soul, pray to the Lord for all people groaning under the yoke of sin. Evil demons are insidious everywhere at the time when the priest, at the request of the believers, blesses them with the sign of the cross, and then they put into him lack of faith, coldness, negligence, laziness, negligence in order to deprive him and other fruits of the blessing of the Lord. Everywhere, therefore, you need extreme attention to yourself. In the morning. An acute temptation befell me today during Matins (I am the next one) because of the words of my spiritual daughter, old woman Marina Afanasyevna Markova, in which she complained about her daughter-in-law, who secretly gave me a cassock and cassock from her. I was embarrassed, wounded in my soul by demons and could not speak the litanies calmly, but spoke embarrassedly, hastily, concealing my words, and did not speak at all in a serious and pleading manner. But I thank God, who did not leave me in the storm of temptations and when I heartily fell to His throne, who healed my soul and granted me to read with sincere feeling the prayers for communion of the people. And at home the Lord had mercy on me when I approached Him with a sincere feeling of repentance about my angry refusal to the St. Petersburg peasant woman Alexandra Vasilievna to receive the Holy Mysteries. After mass. Lord Jesus Christ! Today at the liturgy you were for me, as before, the God of miracles, mercy and generosity. I especially remember the time after the Great Entrance, when, through fervent secret prayer, You revived me with the grace of the Holy Spirit, driving away mortal oppression, the nasty dream of the devil and my sorrow, and before that there was a temptation from contemplation. He celebrated mass quite reverently, read the prayer behind the pulpit at the holy altar, stole the dismissal, and therefore the enemy prevailed over me, which was very disastrous and regrettable for me. I was embarrassed and fell into hellish cramped conditions, and meanwhile the parishioners called me from the altar to the middle to serve a prayer service before the image; Satan beat me, tore me, burned me, oppressed me, shamed me. Oh, this prodigal sin, the gluttony that feeds it! Oh, this is partiality! Oh, this color is grassy, ​​that is, feminine beauty! How many stumblings are caused by it! But you can’t not see: the eyes are looking! Instead of marveling at the highest Artist and loving His initial, uncreated, eternal beauty with holy love, we, carnal and unclean, love vanishing flesh, are captivated by forms, leaving in neglect the soul, from which all beauty and beauty come. In the end, the grace of God defeated Satan with extreme efforts on my part. Glory to the Lord! Then he served prayers and memorial services in the church and in one of Shapurina’s houses quite successfully, but not without stumbling blocks, which he tried to smooth out through efforts to defeat his enemies. I thank the Lord, who three times in the evening extinguished the prodigal sparks in me, the unclean tendencies in my heart through my prayer of repentance. May every Christian soul be inflamed with the desire for holiness and truth, for this is its true element, its highest interest, its goal, its food, its light, strength, dignity, its peace, joy and bliss in time and in eternity. From July 4 to July 10, I was away - traveling across Finland to Vyborg (Baron Nikolai's dacha), Helsingfors, Sveaborg and across Estland (Revel) by rail and sea (from Helsingfors to Revel), from Revel to Oranienbaum - by cast iron. I thank the Lord, who was also my guardian, deliverer and savior on this journey (at Baron Nikolai’s dacha there was devilish cramping from the pity of money for travel and from annoyance at my companions for squandering, as I thought, although I was later not dissatisfied with this trip to truly wonderful places). I ran to Him mentally with inner prayer and was miraculously saved by His name, finding deliverance and peace in Him. I thank the Lord, both on the ship and on the railway car, who saved me from the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh: it repeatedly attacked me, tormented me, and through a secret prayer of repentance I was saved and pacified, freed from sinful death, for without holiness in spirit and body the soul dies, being separated from Christ. And at home, upon my arrival, the Lord accepted my repentance despite my heart’s double desires for carnal sin and delivered me from sorrow and oppression. What fast, straight, level and smooth paths are now across the earthly space! All the hills are demolished, and you rush, as if on a canvas, for hundreds and thousands of miles. Oh, if only our paths to heaven, to God, were also straight, smooth, quick, and stumbling-free! Oh, if only our sins and passions, sinful inclinations and habits were defeated, removed by the power of grace and the efforts of our own will! And we must take every possible and reasonable care of this journey to Heaven and make our paths serviceable, straight and even, like earthly railway tracks! Help, God, us, Your heritage, to go to You directly, steadily, quickly. Correct our ways, we pray. Glykeria, my cousin, died in the Kronstadt hospital on July 10, Sunday, when I was riding on the Baltic Railway from Revel. She died at one o'clock in the afternoon. She is a great martyr, long-suffering, uncomplaining. She suffered from uterine cancer for several years. Forgive her, Lord, every sin, voluntary and involuntary, and rest her in Thy heavenly abodes, as if she had completely accepted her sins, living in countless exhausting labors and illnesses. Amen. July 11, 1883. One o'clock in the afternoon. I thank the Lord, who has now surprised me with His mercy in delivering me from the sorrow and hardship that righteously befell me for my severity and obstinacy and stinginess regarding a poor boy of fourteen years old. I tearfully repented of my sins, of the destruction of the entire law of God, which is love, meekness, kindness, mercy, patience. I thank the Lord, who showed great mercy to me in Golubev’s house, that at the market in the apartment of the tanner Zakharia Ivanovich Sidorov, during the prayer service, and especially after the prayer service, when the spirits of evil fought me strongly, forcing me to embitterment and contempt - for what? - for the pockmarked, unattractive face of the widow Ulyana Dimitar, poor sick, but possessing great faith and piety towards God and towards me, nourishing the greatest spiritual love and respect to the point of adoration, meek, humble, kind, long-suffering, truly beautiful soul. After a prayer service before the Lord, I deeply repented of my secret painful sin with the return of my heart to respect and love, and the Lord took away the spirit of malice, the spirit of confusion and oppression and gave the spirit of peace, meekness, respect and love. Glory to the benefactor God! Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Does the Holy Trinity reign in us - Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Do holiness, truth, faith, love, fear of God, mercy, meekness, self-control, purity, obedience and other virtues reign in us? More often we need to test ourselves, does God reign in us, does love for heavenly things reign in us, and not for earthly things, love for incorruptibility, for the eternal and Divine? Doesn’t the devil, the spirit of the earth, earthly passions, pleasures, acquisitions, the spirit of malice, pride, envy, self-love, voluptuousness, greed, ambition, vanity and other things reign in us under various types of sins? The liturgy is an abbreviation of the entire Gospel, a depiction of the entire earthly life of Jesus Christ, a repetition of His Calvary sacrifice - the everlasting immolation and death for the sins of the world, the remembrance of His resurrection and ascension into heaven. One must go to the liturgy with the greatest reverence and stand during it rationally and with a reverent feeling, with concentrated thoughts, putting aside all worldly cares, as it is sung in the Cherubic Song: Like the Cherubim secretly forming... How do we portray the Cherubim? By the fact that we sing the Trisagion hymn, as they do, that we perceive Christ God completely within ourselves and in our hearts, as on the throne of the Cherubim, we carry Him and if we passionately love Him, as the Cherubim love Him, and for the sake of His love we renounce our hearts from all earthly love. For earthly love is incompatible with the love of God. Despise, Christian, carnal sweets in order to enjoy the Divine, true, eternal, holy sweetness. Otherwise you will not be able to taste the sweetness of God. Always pray from the depths of your soul and do not be lazy to deeply dig the furrows of your heart, to open 128 the field of the soul, so that the seed of God’s grace falls into the very depths of your heart, penetrates the entire being of the soul, sending out roots of faith, hope, love and fear of God in all directions. Superficial prayer is like a seed along the road: it sends out roots, does not penetrate the soul, does not water it with life-giving tears, does not renew it and does not transform it into God’s and saint from sinful and multi-passionate. The nature of true love is universality, all-embracingness, selflessness, impartiality and impersonality, constancy, and the nature of untrue, false, carnal love is exclusivity, isolation and limitation to a close circle of loved ones, useful, beautiful or rich, in general self-interest, inconstancy and changeability; the root and end of true love is in God, from God and for God's sake; the root and end of worldly love is in man, from man and for man’s sake, or rather, for one’s own sake, for the sake of self-indulgence and self-interest (egoism). Plant and establish, O God, true love in our hearts and root out, uproot, worldly, carnal love, for the sake of the world and only for ourselves, for it is not from You and will not receive reward from You, but punishment is like idolatry. I thank God, who kept me pure while showing love and affection to a kind and pious girl, who loves God and seeks Him and communion with Him. After mass at the cemetery in the Holy Trinity Church for the servant of God Glyceria, my cousin. Having not served mass for more than a week and having been on a long journey through Finland and Estland, I was naked from the grace of God and became spiritually deadened to the point that it was extremely difficult for me to pronounce familiar prayers, I was entangled in a spiritual spider-catcher, like a fly, wounded, darkened, offended, had no boldness and performed proskomedia in extreme numbness. But when the liturgy began, I fell several times to the holy life-giving throne, or rather, to Him who sat on it, with a prayer of repentance and supplication, that He might revive me, deadened by sins, and - oh, miracle of mercy! I immediately felt the vital currents of the Holy Spirit within me, I received freedom, peace, boldness and, what is especially dear, very abundant tears of tenderness, which revived me even more. This was after the Gospel, before the Cherubim and after the great entrance until communion. And when I took communion, I felt a sudden renewal, revitalization, tranquility, strengthening, peace, joy and spaciousness. He finished mass very well, with great boldness. I read the prayer of permission with dignity, separately, loudly, calmly. Lithiums served at the graves, some well, and some because of grief - in cramped conditions and with stumbling. Strong winds, rains and atmospheric coolness strengthen plants, which can wither and burn due to constant heat. Everything is for the benefit of people and livestock. We must immediately receive a pension from the treasury. It's already the thirteenth tomorrow. Go after early mass, around eleven o'clock in the afternoon. I thank the all-generous Lord for her. For a whole week, from July 4 to July 10, it was cold with strong winds and rain at times. On the ninth we were very seasick in the Gulf of Finland between Helsingfors and Revel. Having set off at seven o'clock in the morning from Helsingfors, we arrived in Revel at two o'clock. Thanks to Mr. Pavel Mikhailovich Andreev and Elena Lvovna, his wife: he kindly invited me to his house and consoled me with love and hospitality together with his wife. With the greatest love, my spiritual daughters served as a farewell and farewell to my cousin Glykeria’s sister into eternity, and collected money for the funeral, and for the coffin, and for the grave. I didn’t have to pay anything, I just did the removal and performed mass with the funeral service. Thank God for everything. Glory to God for the spiritual fruits of my spiritual daughters, wonderful fruits of love and zeal. And what kind of love do they have for me in Christ?! And I can’t say how great it is - they are ready to lay down their souls for me, they are extremely bored and sad when I leave the city. Glory to Christ God, who acts in them, glory to the Holy Spirit, who has given them such faith and love, who breathes in them. Glory to the Holy Consubstantial Life-Giving and Indivisible Trinity, sanctifying and perfecting them. Look down from heaven. O God, see and visit this grape (and have always visited): and perfect and plant what Thy right hand has planted [Ps. 79:15-16]. After mass and the funeral service for Glykeria at the cemetery, I fell into temptation from not knowing the place of the grave of the orphan girl N and from the long walk and then from the distance of walking to the grave of Olga Mikhailovna, Anastasia’s sister, although this walk in the fresh air was very useful. For the sake of sincere repentance, the Lord later took away my sorrow, destroyed the pincers of the devil, with which he squeezed my heart, calmed, expanded, and revived my soul. I condemn myself for impatience and bitterness and for the madness of all my passions and for my rapid falling away from love for God and neighbor. The evil incense of sin, once it has crept into the soul, then stinks in the soul for a long, long time in nasty and evil and blasphemous thoughts and feelings, so that rivers of tears are needed for the incense of the grace of the Holy Spirit to come into the soul and cleanse the soul and body from the filth of sin, and especially the frequent communion of the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, which renews our nature corrupted by sins, is necessary. (Smoking incense symbolizes grace.) Wednesday. It was with difficulty that I celebrated early mass today for Olga Afan. The heart was weak, fearful, humiliated, unclean, the voice was intermittent, there were few tears - probably from the Markovs’ gluttony yesterday. I received communion, thank God, in a life-giving way. At twelve o'clock I was at Anna Grigorievna Shaturina's for lunch. I thank the Lord, who has now had mercy on me for the sake of secret heartfelt repentance in the voluptuous, albeit momentary, caress of a girl and who has delivered my heart from weakness, melancholy and tightness. The body is food for worms, pus, stench. I thank the Lord, who saved me twice from the hellish cramped conditions that befell me once for being angry with a beggar, pock-marked, playful boy who asked me for a handout, and again for seduction. Each time, oppressed and tormented by sin, I entered the church, the altar, and in repentance, with faith and hope, I kissed the holy throne, or rather, the Lord Jesus Christ, my Creator, Redeemer and Judge, sitting on it, and immediately received the cutting off of my sins and, together with my sorrows and oppressions. On Sunday, July 10th, warm, clear weather began, with occasional light rain - so warm that you could walk around in at least one shirt. For a pension to the treasury. Letter to Ivan A. Pesotsky. A true Christian constantly rejects self-pleasure, which prevents him from pleasing God and his neighbor, and the one who calls himself only a Christian and does not care about Christian affairs seeks more self-pleasure and is very upset when he does something beyond his expectations and calculations, when he needs, for example, to force himself and tax the flesh, although this is useful for him, while a true Christian rejoices, enduring labor for the sake of benefit neighbors, especially spiritual benefit, for he sincerely wishes the best for everyone. Do you always sincerely pray to the Mother of God and are you not being a hypocrite? Are you not cold and lacking in faith in your prayer to Her and to the saints? If you are not sincere and cold, then do not be surprised that you do not see obvious signs of Her mercy and the protection of the saints, and immediately always be a sincere and zealous prayer book. We diligently sing at prayer services. We resort to You... - all the more we must be reverent and sincere towards God. Why did the saints pray unceasingly, why is a Christian commanded to pray unceasingly [1 Thessalonians 5:17]? In order to be constantly in communion with God and not for one minute or second to give room within ourselves to sin, which constantly seeks to catch and trample our feet on the path to the heavenly Kingdom. Pray without ceasing, says the Apostle [1 Thess. 5:17]. Just as it is necessary to breathe unceasingly, so it is necessary to pray unceasingly; prayer is the breath of the soul, strength, its light, food, drink, delight, peace, joy, space, glory. I thank the Lord, who thoughtfully sent fifty rubles to the poor through His servant Mikhail Fedorovich Alekseev, who handed them to me last night when I was his guest. Glory to Your bounty, Lord! From the depths I cried to You, Lord [Ps. 129:1]: because if not from the depths, then the prayer that comes out is not sincere, but false, from a double heart; With our lips and tongue we pray or sing, but in our hearts we think unkindly or serve our passions: laziness, absent-mindedness and vanity, sweets, love of money, covetousness or envy, pride, vanity, condemnation of our neighbors, we become angry and angry. Would such a request be acceptable even to a person - a king or a boss? Wouldn't he also have driven us away from his presence? Oh! Every person is capable of extreme cunning even in prayer before God, the knower of the heart, Who is a simple Being, all-good, all-knowing, all-perfect, all-wise, all-true and all-righteous. Help me, Lady Theotokos, in the fight against the all-vile, all-evil and all-destructive, all-wily sin, or against its equally culprit, the devil. May Your seed - Christ God - erase in me the head of the omnivorous serpent, the all-destroyer. Hey, amen. After mass. I thank the Lord, who made me completely successful in serving the early liturgy from Mrs. Anna Grigorievna Shaturina. The sexton Dobryakov served unbearably yesterday and today: sluggishly, deadly, senselessly, without any feeling or honor. I read the prayer behind the pulpit with great boldness, as well as the dismissal; He received life-giving communion by the grace of the Lord and gave communion to the servant of God Anna with perfect faith and with perfect feeling. Before her communion, I overcame by the grace of God the machinations of the enemy, who were at the prayer service during the reading of the Gospel and the pronouncement of absolution at the memorial service (for a peasant for his mother) and especially during and before the prayer service of the Iveron Mother of God for a simple woman, which I did not want to serve for many needs and was in some annoyance and crampedness, but overcame my lazy and wayward heart with the Blood of God, that is, with faith in the redemptive Blood of the Lord and Lord. After Vespers. I thank the Lord, who performed two greatest miracles of salvation in me today: once after a quarrel with my wife and grief at her for demanding money in excess of the hundred rubles delivered and then after sincere repentance and condemnation of myself and after touching the holy altar in the main church with my heart and lips multiple times (I was at twelve o’clock before going to the treasury for a pension) and, secondly, after vespers and the christening of baby Olga in the church, when I due to the machinations of his enemies, he stumbled, was embarrassed and wounded. I repented of this, venerated the holy throne with faith, with firm faith in the salvific name of the Lord sitting on the throne - and now, dead, I have come to life. I thank the Lord for the miracle of mercy and salvation that took place in me at six o’clock in the evening before the all-night vigil: once initially - in Mr. Golynsky’s apartment, where I gave a prayer to the mother in labor (before prayer), another time finally - in the corridor on the stairs of the Dyachkov house, where the English office is. I have been delivered by the Lord from the tormenting violence of the devil, which befell me for being upset with the beggars who pestered me strongly asking for alms. I repented of hard-heartedness, love of money, unmercifulness, self-indulgence, and voluptuousness. Stupid and crazy, we fix the gaze of our hearts most often on perishable things, not caring about looking at imperishable goods - good deeds, especially works of mercy, and ineffable blessings of the future life, which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and has not entered into the heart of man [1 Cor. 2:9], so great that it is impossible to utter their greatness. In the science of worship, it is necessary to speak about the obstacles to godly prayer: laziness, absent-mindedness, daydreaming of the mind and heart, the heart’s attachment to temporary and perishable objects. These people draw near to Me with their lips... but their heart is far from Me [Matthew 15:8]. And about the means to godly prayer: faith, zeal, love, simplicity, sincerity, composure of mind and heart, patience, purity of heart. I thank the Lord, who gave me tears of tenderness during the service of the early liturgy (according to Vasily Voronin the Elder) with the life-giving communion of the Holy Mysteries and unfailing service, and I read the entire prayer behind the pulpit sincerely, with boldness, to the end, and said the whole dismissal. I thank the Lord, who, through the power of my faith in His Blood, broke the grave temptation of Satan (the seduction of a healthy girl by the breasts) and delivered me from hellish tightness, embarrassment and shame. I thank the Lord, who saved me and my home three times from terrible voluptuous indignation. Into liturgical science. In the Old Testament there were bloody sacrifices, depicting the bloody sacrifice of the cross of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and bloodless ones, especially bread [and consisting of wine], depicting the Bloodless Sacrifice, under the guise of bread and wine, offered on the altars of Christian churches. Divine service in the form of dialogue or theology 129 for the full and lively participation in worship of all members of the Church. Among Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans, everyone really participates, because everyone is almost literate and has books for guidance in worship and participation in it. But with us, not everyone, but only the clergy and clergy and singers, and the people stand in a more passive state. What do you need? A detailed presentation and explanation of the divine service is needed. Divine service is needed as a conversation between a beloved creature and the Creator God who loves him immensely, as a living connection with Him, as a service of repentance, petition, praise, thanksgiving, as a celebration of the Sacraments of faith, as a celebration of the Mother of God, holy Angels and holy men, our helpers and intercessors, our prayer books and intercessors before God and joint heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, as members of the same Church. The worship of the Orthodox Church is a parallel between the Old and New Testaments. This must always be kept in mind when compiling a science of worship. Divine service is the sacred act of educating a Christian man for heavenly citizenship or for the heavenly fatherland, it is a matter of due retribution, glory and thanksgiving, love and gratitude from the creature to the Creator, from the perishing to his Redeemer and Savior, from the legislated to the Lawgiver, from son and daughter to the Father, from nothingness or from nothingness called from nothingness to being - to the Being beginningless, eternal, all-existing. Let all creation sing to the Lord and exalt it to all ages 130. Lutheran and Anglican worship suffers from extreme inconsistency and fragmentation: there is no idea of ​​churchliness, the idea of ​​the primacy of Christ and the sacred union of members of the heavenly and earthly Church, there is no concept (idea) of the Church, just as Lutherans and Anglicans indeed do not have the Church in its true sense and meaning. Contact the Rasteryaev merchants (iron trade above Shchukin and in Gostiny Dvor). I thank the Lord for the salvation that happened to me on July 3 while walking along Sadovaya Street in a cab and the former temptation of my eyes (a bourgeois young girl with a young man) and the wounding of my heart by voluptuousness (fornication). I repentantly prayed secretly to the Lord with all diligence, and the Lord had mercy on me: I was cleansed, calmed down, and became free from sin, which was corrupting my soul and body. Truly there is no sin that overcomes Your love for mankind, Lord! And there is no destruction of the devil, inflicted on our souls every hour, which Thy power, O Lord, life-giving and Thy mercy would not consume, would not destroy. In Lebedeva’s house in the outbuilding (opposite the English pickaxe) I was wounded to death by the enemy because of one glance at the baptismal scarf, and in Tikhonov’s house in Galkinskaya Street, before reading a prayer to my postpartum wife, through a secret prayer of repentance, I was healed (from the said sin) and strengthened in spirit and with the greatest boldness I read all the prayers. Glory to the Lord! All trees, flowers, grain grain plants, herbs, light, water, air, earth, mountains and rocks, the sky with its luminaries constantly stand in their rank before God, all insects, birds, fish, cattle, animals, reptiles - too; one person, some people leave their rank and boldly commit arbitrary acts in the world; glorifies everything, all creation [glorifies] its Creator in its own language - only man, who is more revered by God than all creatures, often does not want to glorify God and blasphemes Him with his tongue and deeds. For the twenty-fifth anniversary of the gymnasium service, compile, with God’s help, a science about the worship of the Orthodox Church. To ask the Lord for spiritual illumination to draw up a good plan for this highest science, which contains the highest thoughts of God, glorification, moral teaching, thanksgiving, and repentance. Why did God allow evil in the world of spirits and in the earthly world? – Yes, from the manifestation of evil the superiority of good is most revealed, from the manifestation of insolence, pride, the madness of fallen spirits and fallen people, the most humility, reverence, devotion and obedience of the good angels and men and God’s wisdom, truth and goodness shine forth; from the manifestation of punishment and torment prepared for the evil, let the desire for eternal bliss appear; from the manifestation of darkness and darkness, the beauty and bliss of all light will be revealed. Wonderful are Your works, O Lord! I thank the all-good and all-merciful, benevolent and benevolent Lord of my life, the Lord Jesus Christ, who soon accepted my heartfelt repentance for the sins of hard-heartedness, severity and obstinacy regarding a poor woman who often asked (and today asked for money to move to St. Petersburg) for alms. I gave it to her, but with annoyance and displeasure, and for this my falling away from the love of the Gospel, for anger and hardness of heart, I was subjected to grief, and cramped conditions, and scorching fire with dignity. But when he came to church (this was before Matins) and venerated the holy altar several times with faith, he soon felt in his soul mercy, and healing, and perfect peace, and bliss. Glory to the Lord! (But the money was given to be distributed to the poor, not mine.) After early mass. I thank the Lord, who delivered me three times from the fierce onslaught of the devil’s malice against Paraskeva Ivanovna Kovrigina: at the beginning of the liturgy during the hours, during the small entrance and before communion with her and the other wives. It took me a lot of effort, and not suddenly, with intense heartfelt repentance and self-condemnation, to get rid of this murderer. After the request I fell asleep. Before waking up, I saw in a dream: some large bird like a crow entered my office and sat down on my writing table. I drive - it doesn’t fly, I get into a cab - it sits on the shaft and rides with us. To satisfy and caress the flesh in excess means to nourish sins and passions, while, on the contrary, to mortify the flesh means to mortify passions. Monday. After early mass. Many temptations [came together] today during early mass from the malice of the devil, which embittered my heart, either against the sexton [...] for the very mischievous singing of the Lord’s Prayer, then against the guards for the uncleanness of the marble elevation (sole) in front of the iconostasis and pouring oil on it, then for the smell of melted wax in the censer. It was hard, fierce for me every time, but the immeasurable grace of God overcame a lot of the devil’s malice, seeing my zealous repentance, my faith and hope, and delivered me from all troubles and evils, changed my heart into a meek and humble, peaceful, spacious, contented and joyful one. Glory to the Lord for everything and for the non-judgmental communion of the Holy Mysteries. I thank the Lord, who has repeatedly delivered me from the machinations of the all-malicious enemy - from contempt and anger for no legitimate reason against the old woman Paraskova Ivanovna Kovrigina, when we were traveling together to Novaya Derevnya on a cab driver’s horse, also in the very house where we arrived (at the young widow Maria Alexander), in a stagecoach and in some houses in St. Petersburg. I thank the Lord, who saved me many times, both from inner voluptuousness in my thoughts when faced with temptations, and today, the twentieth, from a voluptuous movement of flesh and spirit with a strong handshake from Ekaterina Markova. I begged the Lord in heartfelt repentance and received forgiveness and a change of heart and flesh. Thursday. I thank the Lord, who gave me hope and boldness during the service of the late liturgy in the cathedral while reading the prayer for the king and the people after the special litany, for before I was overthrown by invisible enemies. I thank the Lord, who, through the prayer of repentance, delivered me from the tightness of my soul at the beginning of the liturgy, who, at the great entrance, gave me peace, space and tears of tenderness, who gave me the non-judgmental, life-giving communion of the Holy Mysteries, the cheerful, sincere reading of the prayer behind the pulpit and dismissal completely both at the liturgy and at the memorial service. Oh, with what freedom and courage I read the prayer behind the pulpit! Glory to the Lord! But in vain he went to the Markovs after mass and took advantage of the excess of affection! It extremely relaxes the soul and the body itself. In the Church, in her worship, in the word of God, lie the highest, most sacred, most precious, eternal objects and interests of all humanity; here a person, as it were, comes face to face with his Creator and God, constantly turning to Him (in the person of the Church serving) in the second person and talking with Him, glorifying and thanking Him or bringing repentance to Him and propitiating Him; face to face with the Mother of God, with the Heavenly Powers and with all the saints who have pleased God from the ages; becomes face to face, I will say figuratively, with the eternity of God, with infinite goodness, holiness, truth, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotent power, calling everything from non-existence to being and preserving, all-controlling. Here he will hear wonderful words: Divine, wise, omnipotent, gracious, pure, penetrating the soul and reviving. Here, in images and chants and readings, the wonderful works of God are presented to his astonished gaze: the creation of the world and man, this latter - in the image and likeness of God, his greatest holiness, primitive and blessed life, pitiful fall and punishment and then the endless goodness of God to the fallen, the promise of his redemption from sin, curse and death through the future incarnation and incarnation of the Son God's here he meets the faces of the prophets and their writings, in which the coming of the Son of God is foreshadowed, here and His wonderful Mother with the faces of the apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, saints and other saints who shone in new grace, in whose lives every virtue was realized; here he will see in the faces and hear in the readings and chants the indescribably wondrous mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God, amazing the heavenly minds, His infancy, growth, entry into the service of our salvation of the Son of God, the God-Man, all His most important speeches, miracles and prophecies, His countless benefits to people, His entire life from the swaddling clothes to the grave and resurrection and ascension into heaven; here you will learn about your completed redemption from curse and death and the granting of blessing and resurrection and eternal life; here you constantly hear the joyful truth that you have been honored with immortality, from death to life, from earth to heaven, brought by Christ Jesus, and not only immortality, but also adoption to God and deification, and seated with Christ on the Divine throne. Here he will encounter all sorts of examples of the repentance of sinners in the faces and examples of repentant prayers, in psalms, canons of repentance, in stichera and other chants, and wondrous praises and thanksgivings and petitions to God, to the Mother of God, the Angels and the saints. The Church and its worship are a wondrous spiritual granary, feeding with heavenly Bread every believer who seeks to satisfy spiritual hunger, reviving and strengthening his spiritual strength for the march to the eternal fatherland - Heaven. Oh, what wonderful things and deeds the Church reveals to us every day, what joyful promises it communicates with the assurance of their inevitable fulfillment! And how many she has accomplished 131, changed, led from sin to truth, from evil to good, from death to life, from corruption to incorruption - from every rank and condition, gender and age, which we must imitate in our strength. Here you see every virtue in the faces: firm faith, unshakable hope and unfeigned, undying love, meekness, humility, kindness, patience, self-sacrifice, mercy, obedience, courage, purity and holiness; here you encounter the lofty dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church about the Trinitarian Divinity, about the incarnation of the Son of God and the union of two natures in Him, about the ever-virginity and greatness of the Mother of God, about Her all-powerful intercession and intercession of the Christian race, about the Sacraments of the Orthodox Church, especially about the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, about the sanctifying and strengthening and the grace of God guiding salvation, about the resurrection of the dead, the second coming and the Last Judgment of Jesus Christ over the living and the dead, about the life of the next century, endless life and eternal torment, about the need for fasting, about all virtues, especially about love and mercy, about the one body of the Church and its holy union - heavenly and earthly, triumphant and militant, about the same prayer for each other, for the living and the dead, about [crying out] for all the blood of the Lamb of God the Lord Jesus Christ - for the living and the dead, and about the endless power of the sacrifice of the cross, intercession, propitiation and thanksgiving, and about the high title of the shepherds of the flock of Christ, their duties, power, or rights. Who after this, having recognized such great [...] given to us by the Church, will not want to be a faithful and obedient member of it, who will not want to participate in its divine services every day, and at least every Sunday and holiday? I thank the Lord, who hastened me today in the service of the all-night vigil for the day of St. Martha and Mary Magdalene and who broke the horns of the invisible adversaries in me through my resistance to them and constant repentance of gluttony and voluptuousness and satiety. I read the Holy Gospel superbly, smoothly, expressively, calmly. I read the canons with great enthusiasm and joy. I thank the Lord with all my heart for the manifestation of His greatest Divine mercy in me this morning in delivering me from the consequences of the harmful grief of Anna Gerasimovna Obedkova for annoying me in the church garden (she wanted to kiss my hand another time in a row); I angrily told her: “You’re boring me,” and casually thrust my hand at her, and then I felt confusion and tightness in my soul, sorrow, shame and darkness, and began to repent of my impatience, irritation, and embitterment; He came to church and began to inwardly beg the Lord for mercy, as he was obedient, quick to obey, kind and helpful, and was not ashamed of God’s mercy: he immediately felt in his soul the currents of life and the disappearance of the mortal current in his entire being. Glory to God for this and everything. Grant me, Lord, the grace to perform the cathedral liturgy without stumbling on this highly solemn day at a meeting of military officials. Raise me up, like the apostles after the descent of the Holy Spirit on them, for the sake of the glory of Your name, for I want this, although I do not have the strength for worthy service. Through daily struggle with sin in all its many forms and with the sower of sin, good spiritual forces are strengthened, as well as love for virtue and aversion to sin and vice, peace and spiritual contentment, boldness before God and people are acquired, for then the image of God shines in the soul, darkened and distorted before by passions. Thank God for this! Evening. I thank the Lord, who graciously revived me for faith and repentance with the prayerful invocation of His name, when I was killed by my sins, and especially revived me after communion of the Holy Mysteries; I thank the Lord, who gave me abundant tears of tenderness at the great entrance, especially when singing Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts... and then. I thank the Lord, who granted me victory and victory over the ethereal enemies who fought me hard during the celebration of the Sacrament of Baptism in Galkinskaya Street in the house of Tikhonov at the official’s house. All day I had a painful lethargy, a weakness that made me sleepy - apparently the enemy was involved in it, except for an organic reason. After the baby was baptized, it passed, and during the celebration of the Sacrament, while reading the prayers, I struggled with all my might, for the enemies trampled, fought, kicked, embittered, killed, accursed villains! Saturday. I thank the Lord, who performed wondrous miracles of His mercy and power in me during Matins and especially early mass: He revived me, mortified by sins, and delivered me many times from the cramped conditions of hell, from the fierce, murderous machinations of the enemy, which befell me because of the stale prosphora of the prosphora and because of the deprivation of my nephew Peter of the government’s seminary allowance. The Lord, for my faith and hope, for repentance and strong petition with a fall to the holy life-giving throne, finally delivered me from the wiles of demons, as heavy as death, and gave me peace and silence, reviving my soul at the end of the litanies after the great entrance. I received communion by the grace of God life-giving, for sanctification and joy, for peace and great blessing! I read the pulpit solemnly, boldly, all the way down to the last word, resolutely letting go. Praise the Lord. I sinned: I greedily ate soup and meat cutlets at lunch and drank grape wine, and then another time I satiated myself with sleep during the day (I also slept in the morning). Due to the extreme, excessive satisfaction of my many-passionate flesh, during the all-night vigil the tempter overcame me (especially at the end of the service), and I could not cope with him, and the grace of God left me to my own weakness. I could not utter absolution and prayers to Christ, the true Light, for Satan forbade me. But I thank the Lord, who accepted my repentance after the all-night vigil, when I fell before His holy life-giving throne in the Pokrovsky chapel, and who revived me, killed by the machinations of the enemy. At night I could not sleep until three o’clock in the morning due to sleeping twice during the day and a new satiety of salted balyk at a party. I fell asleep with the windows half open. My sides are too full of the seeds of life, which are never squandered by the grace of God. Together with the Archangel, the evangelist of the Divine mystery and incarnation, I am horrified by this wondrous and terrible and all-saving condescension of the Son of God, who so loved our nature created by Him in the beginning, and renewed and deified. Oh, grant me, Lord Lord, to honor human nature both in myself and in people through my honest and holy life and sincere service to humanity perishing in sins or rising from sinful slumber and being saved. I received all the good things from You and through You from the Lord, Mother of God! Sunday. After late mass. Glory to the Lord, who conquered my sins in me: satiety, bitterness, hard-heartedness and stinginess and all the machinations of invisible enemies, and who gave me abundant tears of tenderness after the great entrance, and who made me worthy to partake of the Holy Mysteries without condemnation for my revival. He spoke a good conversation on the Gospel about the healing of the blind and the dumb demon possessed. After mass I visited the sick Anna Nikolaevna Nikolaevskaya. I had a snack and drank Hungarian (seven rubles) wine, Madeira and Marsala before. Monday. Today during matins I was completely weak in spirit and throat due to yesterday’s multiple treats and sitting by the open window (at Stepanida Avvakumovna Yudina’s). During Matins, in the middle of it, I began to experience painful hiccups and loss of voice; I became very irritable to everyone, nervous. I slept at home at night with the chimney open. This also had a bad effect on me. This day (July 25) is the day of God’s greatest mercy to my unworthiness. Due to my sins - gluttony and satiety, and especially impatience and anger towards the poor (Bear Street), from one of whom I tore off a tuft of beard in anger, and pushed another out of Ilyichov’s yard with a curse - I was subjected to abandonment of grace, cramped conditions, sorrow, fire, cowardice, fear, powerlessness of heart (I could not read prayers during parting words Nikolaevskaya Anna Nikolaevna and Ilyichov Ivan Ivanovich). This was after Matins. And he could hardly serve Matins due to the same weakness of heart, hoarseness, hiccups, shyness and timidity of the devil. He came to mass deadened in spirit, but not in despair. And so, in repentance and hope, I began to prostrate myself before the Lord and fall to the throne of mercy, speaking in my heart words of hope in the invincible mercy of God, and the Speedy One did not abandon me in His intercession. I began to feel the currents of life in my dead soul. And during the mass itself - the Liturgy of the Catechumens, falling still to God's mercy with hope, I received a new manifestation of God's mercy in me - heartfelt warmth, and at the end of it, tears of tenderness, and throughout the rest of the mass, abundant hot tears of tenderness. I rose from the dead, served with spiritual fervor, was completely in tears, received Holy Communion in a life-giving manner, pronounced all the exclamations with special sincerity, read the prayer behind the pulpit quite well, however, missing words in certain places, and pronounced the dismissal with a firm gaze and a firm tongue. The prayer service and memorial service were served with strong language. Glory to God, my Resurrector and Savior. Truly, I have risen from the dead today. Oh, how great this is, I cannot imagine and thank the Lord! He gave me a new spiritual existence by His grace. Evening. I thank the Lord for deliverance from the storm and demonic oppression during Vespers, when reading prayers and especially when pronouncing the great litany, which he said, concealing it absurdly, and the petitionary one, which was also not spoken in clear (calmly) words; and not only for deliverance, but also for the gift of boldness and trust in the mercy and help of God when pronouncing the special litany, which I pronounced with extreme tension of spirit, boldly, expressively, rarely, to the end, and I also pronounced the release with an open face, boldly, calmly. The Liturgy is a universal, heavenly sacrifice performed by Jesus Christ Himself through the mediation of the officiating [bishops] and priests. The sacrifice of God's righteousness is perfect, eternal, unchangeable, the sacrifice of God's mercy for the human race perishing in sins, the ministry of satisfying the righteousness of God for the sins of the world through the righteousness and suffering and death of the Son of God for people, the ministry of justification, cleansing by the Blood of God, sanctification, renewal, confirmation in truth and deification, the ministry of immortality and incorruptibility. Therefore, a bishop or officiating priest must be fully clothed in Christ, in His truth, in His love and mercy, in His holiness, in His meekness, humility, kindness, patience, self-sacrifice, in His mortification, in His devotion to the will of the Heavenly Father - in a word, must be completely clothed in Christ, in His wisdom, in His power: then only His service will be pleasing to God and will bring benefit to everyone the true greatest benefit to the faithful, he will comfort everyone, sanctify, confirm, and fill with the Holy Spirit. One must constantly breathe in the name of Christ God and the Mother of God, which is why the Church often mentions the name of Jesus Christ and the Ever-Virgin Mother of God. Why are you somehow ashamed to pronounce these wonderful names clearly and loudly during church holidays? From uncleanness of heart? But it is this that must be purified by invoking these names. How many empty, absurd thoughts sometimes come into the minds of people standing in church, men and women! Thoughts that they would not want to have not only in the church, but also at home and outside it. This influx comes from the devil and from an unclean heart. The Holy Church prays to the Lord to deliver us from these absurd thoughts and memories (see prayer in the evening). After Matins and early mass. I thank the Lord with all my heart for the success in the service of Matins and the Liturgy (at Matins I pronounced all the litanies and dismissals with the canons by the grace of God successfully, sincerely, without stumbling). There were temptations during the canon from the incorrect and discordant singing of sexton Mikhail Bystryakov, the devil became embittered against him, but through the prayer of repentance the Lord delivered him from his fierce machinations. Then, at the proskomedia, because of the prosphora, the adversary aroused indignation and bitterness, but the Lord consumed even that for repentance; then, many times during and after mass, the enemies embarrassed and oppressed me, burned and skewered me, but for my repentance the Lord delivered me each time from their fornication (because of Alex. Vasil. Petersburg). After mass, requiem and prayer service in the church, I went to St. Petersburg. [merchant] Ivan Ivanovich [Kovrigin] and to the Markovs. The Lord defeated the beginning of voluptuousness and gave peace and freedom. Evening after the all-night vigil. I thank the Lord, who delivered me from the absurd embitterment of the devil after going to polyeleos against Natalya Leontyevna Neustroeva (secretly in my heart), from sorrow, confusion and cramped conditions and who gave me peace, freedom, boldness after the repentance I brought in secret and a calm, sincere reading of the Gospel of the Martyr (St. Panteleimon). Then, after the all-night vigil, the Lord delivered me from the distress that befell me for missing a few words of the Gospel at the prayer service. I read the canon with the greatest enthusiasm and freedom of spirit. I thank the all-good and all-powerful helper - the Lord of glory. He gave communion to a sick old woman in the Kudryavtsev wing on Pesochnaya Street. The devil kicked in with the thought of remuneration for work and did not allow the initial and commonly used prayers to be read (the Trisagion of the Lord's Prayer). In my soul I renounced all reward, saying to myself: I will not take anything, and the evil one fell behind, I began to speak freely. Severe stomach upset due to berries, watermelon and three raw eggs eaten yesterday as a guest at the house of Semenov (Vladimirskaya Street) and Grigoriev (Gospodorskaya Street) and Tsepov at Volkov’s. I sinned before the Lord and before myself. Have mercy, Master, on me, rude, carnal, passionate. Evening. I thank the Lord, who revived me when I was mortified and depressed by my sins in the morning just before mass upon arriving at church, being offended by the abbot for his orders, apparently inappropriate (regarding many years), and secretly resisting these orders in my soul. Having venerated the Holy Altar with fervent repentance, I felt in myself the destruction of death and the establishment of life, peace, space and freedom in me, and I served the Liturgy with tenderness, remembering the quick and great mercy of God. Vastel said firmly, in full, and involuntarily shortened the prayer behind the pulpit somewhat. He served the All-Night Vigil with grace, sang and read stichera and canons with enthusiastic praises of the Mother of God. I read the Gospel on the holy [throne], made a pass out of devilish embarrassment, but at the prayer service I corrected myself. Thursday. If you go to celebrate the Liturgy, O priest, take care with all the strength of your being that in your heart there is the love of Christ, that is, both for Christ, and in Christ for all humanity, for the human race, - especially for the human race - especially reverence and love for the saints, or for the triumphant, heavenly Church, for in order to worthily serve the universal and about the universe liturgy, you must clothe yourself in all of Christ, in His love, in His truth and holiness, in His meekness, humility and gentleness, in His long-suffering, in His mercy. But which of us has such love, such virtues? Are we not all weak, sinful, selfish, partial, self-seeking, lust-loving, evil, impatient, unclean, vain, lazy, disobedient? Oh, with tears of repentance we must ask the Lord, who can transform and recreate and renew our hearts, to grant us a heart that embraces all people with love as descended from one blood and especially Orthodox Christians as members of the one Church, the one mystical body of Christ. The Liturgy is a sacrifice for everyone and for everything, the most pleasant sacrifice of the Son of God, who laid Himself down for the life of all to God His Father, His and His eternal truth. Why do you caress your flesh, why do you make friends with it, which is hostile to God and to yourself? She does everything contrary to God’s gracious will and yours. You want to pray - she wants to be lazy, she turns away; you would like to read the word of God - she turns aside and wants to better read empty secular books, newspapers, magazines, novels; you would like to be meek, humble, kind, patient - she gets angry, irritated, does not tolerate anything unpleasant; you want to be merciful and compassionate - she is hard-hearted and does not sympathize with the grief of others, sometimes she is malicious and gloats openly and secretly; you want to be an obedient servant of all for the sake of Christ - she resists, disobeys, does not obey; you would like to always observe abstinence in food and drink - she is looking for delicacies, satiety, drunkenness; you want chastity - she rushes towards uncleanness and debauchery; you want peace and tranquility - she is restless, arouses a storm of passions; you want to believe, hope and love - she is unfaithful, suspicious, superstitious, gives in to despondency and despair; you want to be courageous - she is cowardly, fearful, timid; you want to be friends - she is at enmity; you want to remain in prayer - it is in idleness and idle talk; you want to be simple - she is cunning. Why are you caressing her? Why are you friends with her? Crucify her, crucify her with passions and lusts, so that the spirit may come to life, may truth reign in you, may the Kingdom of God come to you. I thank the Lord, who prospered me in serving the Liturgy and gave me abundant cleansing tears of tenderness, and uncondemned communion of the Holy Mysteries, and a great victory over the invisible enemies who fought me, especially after mass during the service of the prayer service to the Mother of God in the middle of the church, which I reluctantly went to, but then changed in my heart as a result of repentance and self-condemnation and the mercy of God and began to willingly serve. I regret that at the widow Ekaterina Step, I ate with greed and drank wine with greed, which clouded and weakened my heart and deprived me of boldness when teaching the Holy Mysteries to the sick woman David in Lower Broad Street. I thank the God of mercy and indescribable miracles for the miracles of goodness and strength performed in me this morning in delivering my weakness and thinness from the malice of invisible enemies who tormented me with secret anger at women who coughed in church during the reading and singing of the canons from Octoechos and Menaion and during further services; because of embarrassment and cramped conditions, I did not say the small litanies, only on the ninth song, with haste and stealthily, I spoke, also the petitionary one; but he dared to speak a special litany about the Lord - and he said it all loudly, slowly, as well as a prayer to Christ, the Light... and dismissal. The Lord’s mercy towards me in delivering me from the hellish dogs that attacked me is indescribably great: how the Lord delivered me from hell. After mass. I served mass with the grace of God with feeling and with tears of tenderness and received communion calmly and life-giving, but at the communion of infants, among others, I gave communion to the baby girl N Martha Mikhail, a sailor's wife, and through the action of the devil and his caprice, malice and partiality, I only despised her for a moment in my soul, and the devil began to fan this spark of malice with terrible speed and by force, so that I either fell or rose up in the struggle with him and was terribly languishing, embarrassed, fidgeting, and finally barely overpowered him with the sincere consciousness that this child, like everyone else, is worthy of love and respect as a child of God by grace and a participant in the Divine Mysteries, an honest and our member of Christ, and to despise him is absurd and impudent. With this weapon I blunted the scorching arrows of the evil Belial, but the ulcers in me from them still remained and ached painfully, and I still earnestly prayed to the Lord to heal them, and He did not hesitate and healed them. The Church is a hospital for those sick with sins, and I, as a young doctor, bring them to the main Doctor for treatment with His wonderful medicines! Who will judge me for this? And I myself receive healing from Him, and I bring them to Him. Saturday. I thank the Lord, the all-merciful Helper, who showed me, unworthy, His great mercy and help against invisible enemies during the service of Matins and the reading of prayers before communion for the laity from Kronstadt and St. Petersburg. Why was my voice weak, unclean, why was my larynx clogged? After mass. I felt weakness and coldness of heart, which I tried to overcome with inner prayer and repentance for self-indulgence, impatience, and laziness. After the great entrance, he began to serve in a burning spirit, with tears. He received good communion, but when he began to cut parts of the Holy Lamb for the communicants, in one of the parts in the connection he felt a very thin, as if airy, place and instantly became indignant at the prosphora-maker for her wickedness (maybe imaginary) and profiteering, and as a result of indignation, the ethereal villain, noticing my greed and malice, turned the spark into a hellish flame and terribly confused and embarrassed me, He put me to shame, and barely, through repentance and faith and hope in God’s immeasurable mercy, I got rid of my secret anger towards the prosphora maker. I already jumped and shivered at the Holy Altar with the curtain closed, in front of Father the Deacon! Finally I got rid of the trouble, but the ulcer in my soul still remained. Only later, at the end of everyone’s services, I was completely healed from the scorching ulcers of Belial. About thirty people gave communion. For what insignificant reasons can one be terribly tempted! Be sober and watchful, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour [1 Peter 5:8]. Father Superior Pavel Vasilyevich Trachevsky gave a wonderful oral review of me publicly on the Oranienbaum steamship (reported by Ivan Ivanovich Kovrigin). This is the first time I've heard this. I thank the Lord for his help during the unction of Anisia Egorova (an old woman of eighty-three years old) and for his help during the prayer service for Ivan Zakharov, a sailor, in the house of Gerasim Murashov. I thank the Lord for the speedy salvation of me in the sorrow and distress that befell me for my fear in saying goodbye. After the prayer service, I prayed secretly in repentance and received forgiveness, peace and joy, and space. My food and sweetness is to serve God and my neighbors with dignity. This is my reward, my reward, my subject and my goal. My desire and desire is not for food and earthly pleasures, not for money and any earthly acquisition, for all this is insignificant, as temporary and often vain and will be completely taken away from me, but for the exact fulfillment of God’s commandments. Before any service to God and your neighbors, pray to the Lord to make you worthy to serve worthily, sincerely, reverently, with love and without entertainment or division. When you see people dying or hear about them, think that you will face the same fate, and let each death be a reminder to you of your death and of immediate preparation for it, for you do not know... the hour at which the Son of Man will come [Matthew 25:13]. I thank the Lord for the miracles of my salvation, the miracles of mercy, quick obedience, benevolence and benevolence towards me, a sinner and many-passionate, the miracles revealed in the apartment of Alexei Machigin just before the reading of the prayer to the mother in labor and the baby (sorrow, cramped conditions, confusion, powerlessness of the heart due to the small giving of alms), during the reading, when I thought about taking photographs in the coming hours as favorable due to free time and a flourishing state of health of soul and body, and for this splitting of the heart, punished by abandonment of grace and deprivation of peace; then before the christening at Dmitry Gavrilovich, the cellarer in Turygin’s house, and after the christening, performed with the greatest boldness of spirit; only at the end of the sequence he omitted, without uttering, a few words in the litany, doxology and dismissal, which is why he lost peace and freedom, but again received them from the Lord for secret repentance at baptism. I thank the Lord for stopping the excitement before photographing me. I thank the Lord for the new visit by His mercy to me, a sinner, before the christening and during the christening at the artisan’s house in Tsepov’s house. Have you not disparaged the word of God, the work of God - prayers, rituals - before so-called noble people, rich, noble, learned, falsely thinking that the word of God and the church is incorrect, not in accordance with human reason or wisdom, or in itself in some places, or as if foolish? This is a grave sin, blasphemy against God. Have you not thought and been overcome by the thought that God does not accept prayers for some sinners who have died and that prayer for them is sin, and therefore you did not pronounce the words of prayer, submitting to the fear of the devil? Imagine yourself in the place of a dead person: you are the same sinner - should I pray for you? And do you dare to set limits to the love of mankind and the mercy of God? That is, in the form of an interview or conversation with God. Canon to the Most Holy Theotokos at Matins. Irmos of the 8th song. Complete (church glory) – to complete, to complete, to make perfect, to sanctify.