Исправление

Anyone who has a bad heart should not despair, because with the help of God a person can correct his heart. You just need to carefully monitor yourself and not miss the opportunity to be useful to your neighbors, often open up to the elder and give alms within your power. This, of course, cannot be done suddenly, but the Lord is patient. He only ends a person’s life when he sees him ready for the transition to eternity or when he sees no hope for his correction (3, p. 230). In order for a person to correct himself, he doesn’t have to suddenly push himself, but like pulling a barge: pull, pull, pull, give, give! - not all at once, but little by little. Do you know the trouble on the ship? This is a pole to which all the ropes of the ship are tied, and if they pull on it, then little by little everything is pulled, but if you take it at once, you will ruin everything from the shock (1, part 1, p. 101). [Once an old man came out into the hut to give a blessing and said: “The owner had geese, and he caresses them: the same, the same, but they are still the same” (1, part 1, p. 108).] [Question: “Father, pray for me to improve.” Answer: “You have to help yourself. The prophet Nathan prayed for King David, and he wet the bed with tears, and prayed for Saul, and he was faster and snoring 43 "(3, p. 217).] ...How can you achieve inner Christian perfection, since your efforts to achieve this are unsuccessful? If you want this business to be successful for you, then the first condition is required - to leave everyone with their affairs to the Providence and judgment of God, to their own will - let them act as they know, as they want and as they understand. The Apostle Paul writes: Let everyone act according to the evidence of his own mind, one this way, another that way (see Rom. 14:5), that is, one reasons this way, and another that way, and each acts according to his own intention. And the One Judge of the living and the dead, knowing the intentions of everyone, will reward everyone not according to their deeds, but according to the intention of their deeds. Adding to the above condition is to always remember that we live in the monastery for our own correction, and not for the correction of others. The second condition is to take care of humble and sincere repentance, and not to bring repentance as superficially as we are accustomed to in the world out of false shame and pride. We look keenly at the sins and shortcomings of others, but we look at our own mental weaknesses and occasional sins as if through a glass darkly. In order to learn humble, sincere repentance, we must carefully read, in addition to other books, the books of Ephraim the Syrian, where we will see that first of all we must abandon jealousy not according to reason, which Saint Isaac the Syrian calls violent jealousy 44 and which, under plausible pretexts, most harms in spiritual life (2, part 1, p. 74). You might be interested in: