Symphony based on the letters of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

compiled under the editorship of Archimandrite Roman (Lukin) With the blessing of His Grace Theophan, Bishop of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz Part one. Letters to monastics A • B • C • D • E • E • F • G • I • K • L • M • N • O • P • R • S • T • U • X • H Part two. Letters to the laity A • B • C • D • E • E • F • G • I • K • L • M • N • O • P • R • S • T • U • X • C • H Part three. Letters to family and friends Silence • Possession • Thanksgiving • Neighbor • God • Pleasing God • Illness • Swearing Faith • Eternity • Visions • Attention • The Will of God • Education • Seminary Students • Enemies • Time Gifts • Work • Devil • Virtue • Friendship • Spirits • Clergy • Spirituality European Enlightenment • Heretics Earthly life • Monastic life • Retired life • The sea of life Atonement • Temptation • Confession Choir • Oath • Cross • Blood Love for neighbor • Love for God • Love for enemies Charity • Mercy • Peace of Christ • Opinion • Prayer • Jesus Prayer • Prayer rule • Youth • Silence • Monasteries • Monasticism Punishment • Intention • People • Mentor • Mood • Leadership • Infirmities • Hatred • Inconstancy • St. Nicholas Babaev Monastery About your life • About your health • Communication • Bitterness • Optina Pustyn • Condemnation of disobedience • Renunciation of the world • Holy Fathers Fall • Singing • Translation of the Holy Fathers • Change of monastery • Rewriting of the Fathers' writings. • Sacred Scripture • Fatherly Scriptures • Letters • Flesh • Asceticism • Repentance • Thoughts • Care • Divine permission • Obedience • Fasting • Poetic experiences • Charm • Vocation • Passion • Divine Providence • Prophecy Entertainment • Absent-mindedness • Relaxation • Reasoning • Parents • Russia • Leadership • Russian translation of the Holy Scriptures Self-knowledge • Self-reproach • St. Sergius Hermitage • Heart • Sorrows • Word • Word of God • Church service • Mortal memory • Death • Humility • Council • Contrition • Sleep • Estates • Works • Works of St. Ignatius • Salvation • Poems • Passion • Insurance • Vanity • Son of God Dismissal • Pleasing people • Retirement • Solitude • Human mind • Smart doing • Consolation Thanksgiving • Neighbor • God • Knowledge of God • Illness • Warfare Faith • Eternity • Visions • Attention • Retribution • The Will of God • Education • Time Deeds • Doing • Virtue • Spirits Gospel • Unity of Mind • Heresy Sacrifice • Church painting • Spiritual life • Life after death • Life on earth • Sea of Life Envy • Commandments • Earth • Knowledge • Seeing your sins • Seeing yourself Redemption • Temptation • Truth End of the world • Beauty • Cross • Blood Lies • Love • Love for neighbors • Love for God Mother of God • Mercy • Divine Mercy • Alms • Peace • Peace of Christ • Prayer • Jesus Prayer • Prayer rule • Silence of Christ • Monasteries • Monasticism • Wisdom Hope • Punishment • Dress • Mentor • Heavenly joy • Infirmities. B • Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery About your life • About your health • Renewal • Society • Loneliness • Despair Fall • Remembrance of God • Sorrow • Holy Scripture • Fatherly Scriptures • Crying • Asceticism • Repentance • God's Help • Thoughts • Portrait • Obedience • Charity • Wisdom • Vocation • Passion • Communion of the Holy Mysteries • Divine Providence • Simple-heartedness Self-justification • Self-denial • Self-knowledge • Satan • Holy Trinity • St. Sergius Hermitage • Heart • Sorrow • Boredom • Word • Word of God • Death • Humility • Christian Perfection • Conscience • Council • Contemplation • Works of St. Ignatius • Salvation • Poems • Pilgrimage • Passion • Fear of God • Insurance • Last Judgment • Superstition • Happiness Creator • Patience • Sobriety Solitude • The human mind • Consolation • The Teaching of the Holy Fathers • The Teaching of Christ Christian • Christianity • Christ Silence • Thanksgiving • Good intentions • Well-being • Prudence • Piety • Neighbor • God • Knowledge of God • Illness Widowhood • Faith • Eternity • Visions • Attention • The Will of God • Education • Time • The Last Time Deeds • Devil • Virtue • Friendship • Spirits • Confessor Spiritual Life • Afterlife • Earthly Life • Monastic Life Testament of Bishop Ignatius • Commandments Cowardice • Mercy • Almsgiving • Mercy • Prayer • Jesus Prayer • Prayer rule • Monasteries • Monasticism Nadezhda • People • Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery About your life • About your health • Loneliness • Optina Pustyn • Leaving the world • Cutting off your will Easter wish • Changeability • Paternal Scriptures • Flesh • Feat • Sacrifice • Knowledge • Repentance • Thoughts • Fasting • Communion of the Holy Mysteries • Willfulness • Divine Providence • Simple-heartedness • The Path Self-delusion • Self-knowledge • Self-reproach • Sergius Hermitage • Heart • Sorrows • Word • Service to God • Mortal memory • Death • Humility • Temptation • Sleep • Works of St. Ignatius • Salvation • Love of Covetousness • Old Age • Passion • Insurance • Marriage • Schema • Happiness Dismissal • Retirement • Solitude • Human mind • Dejection • Consolation This Symphony is composed on the basis of the personal correspondence of St. Ignatius, Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea. The material for the book was the seventh volume of the works of St. Ignatius, as edited by Abbot Mark (Lozinsky). In these letters, Ignatius Brianchaninov talks about his life, personal experience of spiritual formation, and also gives instructions to help his relatives, friends and acquaintances. The book contains three parts: letters to monastics, laity, family and friends. Each part contains thematic excerpts from the saint’s letters in alphabetical order. At the end of each individual text the number of the letter from which the text is quoted is indicated. The text of the letters of St. Ignatius has been adapted to the modern Russian language. All biblical quotations are enclosed in quotation marks and are followed by a reference to the Holy Scriptures. In cases where the text of the Bible is not given verbatim, the reference “see” is placed in the reference. This publication, we hope, will be useful both for the spiritual development of any person and for use in scientific work. By Divine Providence, you and I are destined to live in an era of great changes. The turn of the millennium was marked by a whole series of changes: socialism gave way to capitalism, industrial society is being transformed into a post-industrial one, the Cold War of the superpowers was replaced by a total confrontation with terrorism, the collapse of a great power in the east of Eurasia with the emergence of weak states due to the mere fact of their newbornness, and the unification of Western Europe. The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes once exclaimed: “Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth!” However, we have to admit that human communities and each individual in an era of instability need a fulcrum so that, in the words of the holy king-psalmist David, “his feet do not move.” Throughout the two-thousand-year history of its existence, the Church of Christ has proven itself to be the most stable social organism that has survived eras, socio-economic formations, states and peoples. The key to such stability lies in the supramundane origin of the church organization and its Divine guidance. However, the human mind, not enlightened by Divine grace, considers such stability of the Church as a consequence of the tendency to adapt to surrounding conditions. In every historical era, the Church put forward God-enlightened men who interpreted the eternal Divine Truths of Christianity in concepts accessible to their contemporaries. We emphasize that they did not change them to suit modernity, but only interpreted the unchanged in an accessible way. Such people are called Holy Fathers of the Church. We, residents of Stavropol, are happy to state that the last Father of the Universal Church occupied the Stavropol See a century and a half ago, in 1857–1861. This is Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea. It was a difficult era. This is how the saint himself described it: “Our time has been given another feat, associated with many difficulties and stumbling blocks. We had to make the journey - not during the day, not in the clear light of the sun, but at night, in the pale light of the moon and stars. The Holy and Holy Scriptures have been given to us for guidance: the Holy Fathers of recent times say this directly... Do not think that our feat was devoid of sorrows and crowns: no! It involves martyrdom. This martyrdom is similar to the languor of Lot in Sodom: the soul of the righteous languished at the sight of incessant and unbridled fornication. And we languish, surrounded everywhere by minds that have violated fidelity to the Truth, entered into an adulterous relationship with lies, infected with hatred against the Scriptures inspired by God, armed against them with blasphemy, slander and hellish mockery. Our feat has a price before God: our weakness, our means, our circumstances, and time itself are weighed on His scales.” The century that has passed since the saint’s earthly life has not brought anything fundamentally new to the spiritual state of society. This is a time of worsening of the total illness of the spirit that Western pseudo-enlightenment gave to the world, and Russia in particular. In the 19th century, this disease was just coming to the surface from a latent stage, but now we are witnessing its rapid development. The same disease, the same treatment, only more difficult, the same spiritual medicines. Added to this is the task of preserving intact souls from spiritual infection. And we have such an encyclopedia of spiritual healing - the works of St. Ignatius. They need to be actively studied, they need to be actively used by spiritual shepherds: both those who seek spiritual rank and those who seek the Kingdom of Heaven. It may be objected to us that the study of the ascetic heritage of the Holy Fathers is primarily the lot of monastics. This objection was best answered by Bishop Ignatius himself. He wrote: “A scribe who has learned the Kingdom of Heaven can wear out both the old and the new, subduing the old to the new and adapting it to it (that is, to the new); and those who have not learned, obviously, can wear out only the old, which is death and enmity towards God, which also produces on others its own characteristic (that is, disastrous) impression... We perish from ourselves, having loved our own teachings and rejecting or little valuing the teaching sent to us by God.” The Stavropol saint was not only concerned about the salvation of monastics. His extensive correspondence with persons of various classes and ranks, of different spiritual ages and ranks, in which the problems of spiritual life and the path of salvation are comprehensively examined, priceless advice and instructions are given, testifies to the fact that the saint, in the words of the Apostle, “to all... became all things, that he might save at least some” (1 Cor. 9:22). You can also verify this by opening the table of contents of his works. We will find the titles: “The Order of Self-Attention for Those Living in the Middle of the World,” “The Sea of ​​Life,” and others like them, testifying to the universal significance of these creations. The universal nature of the ascetic heritage of the Caucasian archpastor naturally stems from the fact that the path of salvation for both monastics and non-monastics, and for clergy and laity, is fundamentally the same. In both cases, this is the path of fulfilling the Gospel commandments, this is a narrow path, a sorrowful path. Emphasizing the complexity of the path, Saint Ignatius noted that enduring sorrows is a sign of chosenness. “Nothing can happen,” he wrote, “that God will not allow... A husband is not tempted, says Scripture, but he who is tempted will receive the crown of life and acquire the gift of helping those who are tempted.” Saint Ignatius did not speak about any spiritual activity, much less write, without testing with his own experience this or that teaching or activity and its consequences. It is for this reason that his works were written by him on the slope of his earthly life, in the rank of archimandrite and bishop. Already in retirement, in the Nikolo-Babaevsky monastery, he devoted all his free time to revising and updating ascetic writings. Reworked, corrected and supplemented articles written by the saint at different times, including in 1857–1861, during his stay at the episcopal see in Stavropol, made up the first two volumes of his works entitled “Ascetic Experiences”, published in 1864. Particularly remarkable among the published works are the “Tale of Death” and the “Addition” to it, compiled somewhat later, included in the third volume. The next two volumes - "Ascetic Sermon" and "Offering to Monasticism", consisting of advice on outward behavior and spiritual activity - were published in 1867, just before the death of the Bishop. The sixth volume, entitled “Fatherland,” containing sayings of the Holy Fathers and stories from their lives, was published after the death of the compiler. The seventh volume includes letters to various persons containing spiritual advice and instructions. In the preface of the first volume, the author explains the reasons that prompted him to publish his works: he recognizes himself as obligated to give an account to Christian society of his “seeing the promised land, sharpening spiritual blessings.” In the works of St. Ignatius, the Christian feat is depicted in its gradual order; the reader learns to lay a solid foundation on doing the Gospel commandments, on repentance and penitential crying, learns to avoid hobbies and delusions, untimely striving for high spiritual states. The works of Bishop Ignatius are largely compilative in nature, that is, they consist of a large number of carefully selected excerpts from various works of the Holy Fathers. “Fatherland,” for example, is a pure compilation in form. This can be explained by the fact that the saint, in his modesty, trusted his divinely inspired predecessors more than himself, and chose from their heritage that which would be most acceptable both for his time and for his contemporaries. Adhering to this rule, he created works of extraordinary purity of style and clarity of meaning, which were based on the same ascetic, repentant mood of his God-enlightened soul. Our theological school, I think, can become an example in the study and application in pastoral activities and in everyday life of this most valuable component, this pearl of the patristic heritage - the works of St. Ignatius Brianchaninov. The great Saint himself can become our assistant in this matter, because he hears our prayers, the prayers of Orthodox pastors and lay people, teachers and students living in the Caucasus in a heterodox and heterodox environment... Bishop Feofan of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz, rector of the Stavropol Theological Seminary. May 2007. 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