ЧТЕНИЕ ИЗ ВЕТХОГО ЗАВЕТА

Chapter 3, v. 49 et seq. God commanded Moses to give Aaron and his sons a redemption from the abundance (over and above the number of the Levites among the firstborn of Israel). And Moses took the ransom silver (for wages) for those who were in excess of the number of those replaced by the Levites; from the firstborn of Israel he took silver one thousand three hundred and sixty-five [shekels], according to the shekel of the sanctuary, and Moses gave the ransom silver [for the excess] (exceeding the number of the Levites) to Aaron and his sons, according to the word of the Lord, as the Lord commanded Moses. This means that we collect tribute from parishioners with dignity and righteousness on the feasts of the Lord. In the Old Testament, the Lord Himself commanded to collect silver for the Levites. Chapter 4, 7. At the table of the offering let them put on it all scarlet clothing 17 and dishes and censers and cups and pourers... and let there always be loaves of bread on it. How much we do in the likeness of the Old Testament tabernacle. And now, for the most part, our clothes at meals are scarlet, and sacred vessels are kept on them. Chapter 5, art. 1 and 2[-3]. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel to send out of the camp all lepers, and all who have a discharge, and all who are defiled by the dead... so that they do not defile their camps, among whom I live. Look what purity the Lord demanded from the Israelites, with whom He was pleased to be, like a Father with his children. Shouldn't you be just as pure?.. Art. 21. The priest's spell addressed to the adulteress: may the Lord give you over to a curse and an oath among your people, and may the Lord make your bosom fallen and your belly swollen... How terribly adultery was punished! Chapter 6, 24–26. The Lord commanded Aaron and his sons to bless the people of Israel: May the Lord bless you and keep you! May the Lord look upon you with His bright face and have mercy on you! May the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace! Chapter 7, 89 art. When Moses entered the tabernacle of meeting to speak with the Lord, he heard a voice speaking to him from the mercy seat, which was above the ark of the testimony between the two cherubim, and he spoke to him. Blessed are you, man of God: how many times have you been honored with all kinds of conversations with God? Chapter 8. We have a seven-lamp lamp behind the throne or on the throne in the likeness of the tabernacle of Moses. Art. 1 and 2. After the Levites were chosen, the Lord commanded Moses to cleanse them. By the way, the Levites were to lay their hands on the heads of the bulls; For this purpose there were two oxen - one for sin and the other for a burnt offering to the Lord, as an atonement for them. 13th century If in the Old Testament the blood of a calf, as an image of the Blood of the Savior, cleansed the sins of people, then, without any doubt, in the New Testament it is the Blood of the Lamb of God. 15[-18]. The Lord says about the Levites: they were given to Me from the children of Israel: instead of all the firstborn from the children of Israel, who open all kinds of falsehoods, I take them for Myself; For all the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine, from man to beast: in the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I sanctified them to myself, and took the Levites instead of all the firstborn of the children of Israel. As the Creator, God has an indisputable right of ownership over us: both soul and body, as the work of His hands, we belong to Him. 24 and 25 art. The will of the Lord was such about the Levites, about the time of their service, that they would enter the service at twenty-five years of age and above and serve until fifty years, and then fall behind the service, probably because old people and accustomed to serving the shrine become careless about their work, and are incapable. Chapter 9, 15 Art. and further. On the day that the tabernacle was erected, a cloud covered the tabernacle of testimony, and from the evening a kind of fire was visible over the tabernacle until the morning. This is how it always was: a cloud covered it [in the day] and a likeness of fire at night. The Lord appeared in a cloud in both the Old and New Testaments. For example, in the New Testament, during the Transfiguration of the Lord, a cloud of light overshadowed the apostles, and from the cloud came the voice of God the Father [Matt. 17.5]. This is because without the cloud the brilliance of the Divine would be unbearable for the mortal eye. Chapter 10, 10 Art. On the day of your gladness, and on your feasts, and on your new moons, you shall blow the trumpets for your burnt offerings and for your peace offerings, and this will be a memorial for you before your God. I am the Lord your God. Now bells correct these matters in our country just as well as trumpets. 34[-36] art. And the cloud of the Lord overshadowed them by day as they departed from the camp. When the ark was rising on its journey, Moses said: Arise, O Lord, and Your enemies will scatter, and those who hate You will flee from Your presence! And when the ark stopped, he said: Return, O Lord, to the thousands and thousands of Israel! Instead of an ark, we have much more and brighter: the most pure Mysteries. We can also proclaim with greater solemnity when erecting them. Chapter 11, v. 7 and 8 et seq. The concept of manna: its use. 11–15 art. Moses' complaint to God about the people of Israel, who grumbled about the imaginary scarcity of food in the desert. 21 [-23] art. Six hundred thousand foot soldiers of this people among whom I am (among whom I live, over whom I am in command); and You say: I will give them meat, and they will eat for a whole month (Moses wonders where God can get so much meat)! Shall we slaughter all the sheep and oxen so that they may have enough? or will all the fish of the sea be gathered together to satisfy them? And the Lord said to Moses: Is the hand of the Lord short (to fulfill the desire of those who murmur)? Now you will see whether My word will come true to you or not? Is this what you say, God-seer Moses? Do you not trust the almighty Lord, who brought His people out of Egypt with His right hand and outstretched arm? Is not the earth His and all that fills it, is not all the beasts of the forest His, and the cattle on a thousand mountains [Ps. 49.10], reptiles and winged birds [Ps. 148.10 ]? Is the hand of the Lord too short to do everything that pleases the Lord? But the Lord Himself will prove this to you by deed. How certain it is that God’s most chosen were not without faults! The most amazing thing is how close to the human heart is disbelief in spiritual things! Chapter 12 Miriam and Aaron grumble against [Moses]. God calls them to Himself for judgment in the tabernacle of testimony: and behold, the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came out. And he said: listen to my words: if a prophet of the Lord happens to you, then I reveal myself to him in a vision, I speak to him in a dream; but not so with My servant Moses (not so I do with My servant Moses) - he is faithful in all My house: mouth to mouth I speak to him, and openly, and not in fortune telling, and he sees the image of the Lord; Why were you not afraid to rebuke My servant Moses? And the wrath of the Lord was kindled against them, and He departed. And the cloud departed from the tabernacle, and behold, Miriam was covered with leprosy like snow... And Aaron said to Moses: My lord! do not put it into our sin that we acted stupidly and sinned (committed a sin); do not let her be like a stillborn baby, whose half of its body has already decayed when it comes out of its mother’s womb [v. 5–12]. What a terrible punishment - leprosy! The leper looked like a dead man: he became pale and lifeless, like a sheet. Moses cried out to the Lord, saying: God, heal her! And the Lord said to Moses: If her father had spat in her face, then should she not have been ashamed for seven days (how much more if I, the Father of every creature, did such a thing, should she not suffer shame and excommunication)? So let her be imprisoned outside the camp for seven days, and then return again. And so it was done. Israel was all standing in anticipation of the cleansing of Miriam. Chapter 13, 34. There (in the land of Canaan) we saw giants, the sons of Anak, from a giant family; and we were in our sight before them like locusts... Cowardly fear has big eyes. Chapter 14. After spying (surveying) the land of Canaan, the Israelites greatly murmured against Moses and said, among other things: oh, that we had died in the land of Egypt or in this desert; why does the Lord bring us into this land just so that we may fall in battle; our wives and children will be kidnapped. It is better for us to return to Egypt now. And they said to each other: Let us appoint an elder for ourselves and return to Egypt. What could Moses and Aaron do with such people? A wondrous thing: the great prophet and seer of God Moses, who performed so many miracles in Egypt, together with Aaron falls on his face before the rebellious people; Joshua and Caleb, surveying the enemy lands, tear their vestments and admonish the people not to believe cowardly people and assure that the land they saw is very, very good; that if the Lord loves His people, He will bring them into that land and give it to them; that the earth is indeed boiling with honey and milk. They exhort not to retreat from the Lord and not to be afraid of the people of this land, because it has already been given over to the Jews for enjoyment, and that the time for these nations has already ended. The Lord determined to wipe them off the face of the earth - and the Lord is with the Jews. The rioters wanted to stone the comforters. But then the Lord Himself appears in the cloud above the tabernacle of the meeting to all the Israelites and says to Moses: How long will these people grieve Me? And not believe Me, despite all the signs that I have done in their sight? I will strike them with death; And I will make you and your father’s house a numerous people, greater than this turbulent, rebellious people. Moses said to the Lord: What will the Egyptians say when they hear that You have destroyed in the desert the people whom You brought out from them with Your strong hand? And all those living in the land of Canaan have heard that You are the Master of these people and appear to them face to face; that Your cloud stands over their army, and You go before them as a pillar of cloud by day and as a pillar of fire by night. Now, if You destroy this people as one person (how long will it take You to do this?): with one wave of the omnipotent will or one omnipotent word - and there will be no one - then all the nations who heard Your name will speak, saying: since the Lord could not bring His people into the promised land, He destroyed them in the wilderness. Nay, let Thy hand be lifted up, O Lord, as Thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in mercy, and true; takes away iniquities and untruths and sins, and cleanses the guilty. Forgive the sins of these people according to Your great mercy, as You have been merciful to them from the Exodus from Egypt until now. The Lord says to Moses: I will show mercy to them according to your word. But I live, and My name always lives and the glory of the Lord will fill the whole earth: that all who saw My glory and the wonders that I did in Egypt and in this desert, and now for the tenth time they tempted Me and did not listen to Me, will not see the land that I promised with an oath to their fathers; unless I give this land to their children, here before Me, who do not yet know good and evil, and to innocent young men, and all those who have angered Me will not see it. Then God commands Moses to declare the following to the Israelites: As I live, truly I will do to you as you spoke to Me (it is better for us to die in this desert): in this desert your bodies will fall... all who murmured against Me. You shall not enter the land into which I have stretched out My hand to make you dwell therein, except Caleb the son of Jephuniah and Joshua the son of Nun. I will bring your children, for whom you feared that they would be kidnapped, into this land that you abandoned. However, your children, like sheep, will be herded in the wilderness for forty years and will bear the weight of your sin - according to the number of days in which you searched the land, that is, forty days: a whole year per day. You will bear your sins for forty years and you will learn from experience that I am righteous in My wrath... The will of the Lord was fulfilled: soon all those who went to inspect the land of Canaan and spoke ill of it died out. And in the course of the subsequent time, the rest of the Israelites died out, saying: it is better for us to die in the desert. O people! People! People! Why is God so patient with you? In the chosen people one can see the likeness of the whole world - people of all times, all places and nations. The only begotten Son of God! For such and such a violent, murmuring, corrupted, ungrateful human race You deigned to suffer! Oh love! Love! Love! Chapter 16. Korah, Dathan, Abiron and Abnan and two hundred and fifty men of the leaders of the host, men of eminence, rebelled against Moses and Aaron out of envy, because they were leaders among the people, saying: It is enough for you to be like all the host 18 of Israel. He is all holy, and the Lord is present in him, as in His chosen people - why are you in charge of the Lord's assembly? Having heard this, Moses falls on his face and says to Korah and his entire host: The Lord Himself looked out and recognized His beings and saints and brought them to Himself; and those whom He did not choose, He did not deign to bring to Himself (how can you say that all are holy). Do this: Korah and all his company, take yourself censers and put fire and incense into them in the morning before the Lord; If the Lord chooses any one of you, he is holy: then let the sons of Levi be sufficient for you. Moses says to Korah: listen to me, sons of Levi, is it not enough for you that God separated you and especially took you to Himself from the entire host of Israel and brought you to Himself, made you His closest ones - to serve in the tabernacle of the Lord and stand before the host of the Lord to serve Him? He brought you and all your brethren, the sons of Levi, to Himself, and you still ask for the priesthood? Is this what you and all your congregation, who are gathered together to do insolence to God, do? It is not against Aaron that you grumble: he did not make himself high priest; he in himself means very little, but he represents the face of God. Moses sent for Dathan and Abiron, but they said to the messengers, “We are not going.” Isn’t it enough for you that you called us from the land boiling with honey and milk in order to destroy us in the desert; You still own us: you are a prince, you are a leader, but did you lead us into a land boiling with milk and honey, did you give us a share of the fields and vineyards? You have poked out 19 the eyes of these people: we are not going. Moses was very angry with them and said to the Lord: do not pay attention to their sacrifices: I did not want anything from them, I did not offend any of them. And Moses said to Korah: sanctify your congregation (that is, make the necessary preparations for appearing before God). And tomorrow morning be ready - you and Aaron and all of them will appear to the Lord; take each of your censers, put incense in it, and bring each of your censers before the Lord - two hundred and fifty censers - according to the number of heads; so you and Aaron each have their own censer. And so each one took his censer, put fire and incense in them, and Moses and Aaron stood before the doors of the tabernacle of the meeting. Korah also gathered his entire assembly and placed it before the doors of the tabernacle: and behold, the glory of the Lord (or the Lord Himself of all) appeared to the entire assembly. The Lord turns His speech to Moses and Aaron, saying: step away from this host, and I will destroy them (like evil reptiles). Moses and Aaron fall on their faces and cry out: God, God of spirits and all flesh (solemn and menacing moments: trembling penetrates the whole soul): one man has sinned, but can Thy wrath be upon the whole host? The Lord again says to Moses: tell the host: retreat around the host of Korah, Dathan and Abiron. Moses went to Dathan and Abiron, and all the elders of Israel followed him. Moses says to the congregation: Depart from the tabernacles of 20 these hard-hearted people and do not touch any of their property, lest you perish in all their sin. Everyone around retreated from the booths of Korah, Dathan and Abiron; and Dathan and Abiron went out and stood before the doors of their tents with their wives, children and their property. Moses continues: this is why you will know that the Lord sent me to do all these things, that I am not doing this on my own: if they die the natural death that people usually die, then the Lord did not send me. But the Lord will give a clear sign to everyone: the earth will open up and devour them, and their houses, and their booths, and everything that belongs to them; They will go down alive into the grave, and you will know that these people angered the Lord. When Moses finished speaking, the earth suddenly gave way under their feet and devoured them and their houses, as well as all the people who were in conspiracy with Korah and their livestock. And they went down with all that they had alive into hell, and the earth covered them: they perished from the host. All the people of Israel with all those around them ran back from their cry, saying: lest the earth devour us too. Then fire came out from the Lord and ate the two hundred and fifty people who brought the incense. And the Lord said to Moses and Eleazar the priest, the son of Aaron: gather copper censers between the burned people and scatter this alien fire there, because the censers of these sinful people were sacred to their owners, and make forged shields out of them to place them at the altar, since they were brought to the Lord and were sanctified, and were a sign for the children of Israel. Eleazar took the burnt copper censers, as many as they brought, and surrounded the altar with them - as a memorial to the children of Israel, so that no foreigner and no one from the seed of Aaron would begin to lay incense before the Lord and would not suffer the same thing as Korah and his advisers. In the morning the Israelites again began to murmur against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You have killed the people of the Lord.” When the crowd attacked Moses and Aaron with a murmur and rushed to the tabernacle of the meeting, a cloud covered it and the glory of the Lord appeared again: Moses and Aaron approached the tabernacle itself. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: Stay away from this multitude, and I will destroy them at once. They fell on their faces. Moses says to Aaron: take the censer and put fire into it from the altar, put incense in it and carry it quickly to the regiment and pray for them, because, as you see, the Lord was angry and began to destroy the people. Aaron took the censer and went to the congregation, because people had already begun to die, and he put incense in the censer and began to pray for the people. He stood with his censer between the dead and the living; and then death stopped its destructive actions. This time, fourteen thousand seven hundred people died from the wrath of God, besides those who died in the Korean outrage. After this, Aaron returned to Moses at the door of the tabernacle of meeting, and death ceased to strike its victims. Terrible is Your wrath, O Almighty and Righteous God! There is no hiding from Your wrath, because You are everywhere, and everywhere Your creation will hand over us fugitives to You. The earth, at Your word, opens up and swallows up the daring troublemakers among Your people. Nowadays, such terrible manifestations of the Lord’s wrath almost never happen: the Son of the Father’s love propitiated His Father about all the unrighteousnesses of men, having Himself endured everything for them, and the earth now does not open up to swallow up the wicked: the spirit of the Gospel is the spirit of meekness, love and mercy. When the Samaritans did not want to receive the Savior to preach, the apostles said to Him: Do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and destroy them, just as Elijah did? But He, turning to them, rebuked them and said: You do not know what kind of spirit you are; for the Son of Man came not to destroy the souls of men, but to save [Lk. 9.54–56]. So now He has mercy on many, even if they deserve punishment. Chapter 17. The Lord commands Moses to take from all the princes of the tribes of Israel a rod - twelve rods - and write the name of each on his rod (the name of Aaron was ordered to be written on the rod of Levi, because it is one rod), and then put them in the tabernacle of the meeting, opposite the atonement (testimony). In these rods the Lord promised to reveal His power, namely: the man chosen by God should have his rod flourish. I, he says, will appear to you here in them. The man whom I choose will have a rod that will prosper; and with this I will destroy the murmuring of the Israelites. The rods were taken and placed in the tabernacle of the meeting; Aaron's rod was among the rods of the other tribal leaders. In the morning, Moses and Aaron entered the tabernacle of meeting - and they saw: the rod of Aaron from the house of Levi flourished, gave a branch, flowers and grew nuts. Moses brought all the rods out of the tabernacle to the people: everyone saw it and each took his rod. The Lord ordered Aaron’s rod to be taken to the tabernacle for safekeeping, as a sign for the disobedient. The Israelites in fear and humility spoke to Moses, saying: Behold, we are destroyed, perished, disappeared: everyone who touches the tabernacle of the testimony of the Lord will die: shall we not all perish to the end? Chapter 18. God forbade the Levites to touch the sacred vessels and come to the altar under threat of death. Our clerics also do not have permission to touch sacred vessels or the altar or altar. 8[-9] art. And the Lord said to Aaron: Behold, I charge you to oversee the offerings to Me; of all that was consecrated to Me by the children of Israel, I have given to you and to your sons, for the sake of your priesthood, as an everlasting statute; This is what belongs to you from the great holy things, from the things that are burned: every grain offering they make, and every sin offering they make... whatever they bring to Me; this is a great shrine to you and your sons. 12[-13]. All the best of the oil, and all the best of the grapes and bread, the first fruits thereof, which they give to the Lord, I have given to you; all the first produce of their land, which they bring to the Lord, shall be yours... 15. Everything that opens the lie of all flesh that they offer to the Lord, both man and beast, shall be yours; only the firstborn of men must be redeemed, and the firstborn of unclean cattle... 17[-18]. For the firstlings of oxen, and for the firstlings of sheep... of goats, take no ransom: they are holy; sprinkle their blood on the altar, and burn their fat as a sacrifice for a pleasing aroma to the Lord; their flesh belongs to you, just as the breast of the heave-hoist and the right shoulder belong to you. 21. And to the sons of Levi, behold, I have given tithes of all that Israel had as an inheritance for their service, because they ministered in the tabernacle of meeting. 25[-27]. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the Levites and say to them: When you take from the children of Israel the tithe that I gave you of them as an inheritance, then you shall offer an offering of it to the Lord, a tithe of the tithe, and your offering will be counted to you as bread from the threshing floor and as taken from the winepress. How does the Lord now reward the priests and Levites of the New Testament on earth for their services? What about the fees? This is a tithe of sorts. Church commemorations... (Prayers, processes with sacred water and the cross.) Chapter 19 Anyone who touched any dead thing was considered unclean for seven days. About hyssop and sprinkling water, which cleanses the unclean. Chapter 20 The Israelites come to the desert of Sin and stop at Kadesh. Aaron's sister Mariam died here. The Israelites murmur against Moses for lack of water. You brought us, they say, out of Egypt and brought the host of the Lord into this desert, in which there is no sowing and there are neither grapes nor apple trees, nor even water. Moses and Aaron come from the people before the door of the tabernacle of the meeting and fall on their faces: behold, the glory of the Lord appears above them. The Lord says to Moses: Take your rod and call the people with Aaron your brother and tell the stone before them to give water, and it will give you water. When you bring water out of the stone, give them and their cattle something to drink. And Moses took the rod from the Sanctuary, as the Lord commanded, and Moses and Aaron called the people before the stone (rock), and Moses said to the people: Shall we bring water out of the stone? - and with these words, raising his hand, he struck the stone twice with his staff: and water flowed out in abundance, and all the people and their livestock drank. The Lord angrily said to Moses and Aaron: Because you did not believe that I would be glorified in a miracle before the Israelites, you will not bring this people into the land that I gave them. How glorious is our Lord in His works! Who is God as great as our God! [Ps. 76.14]. Soon the Israelites come to Mount Hor, which is on the border of the land of Edom. Here the Lord commands Aaron to die because he and Moses angered Him with unbelief at the stone, or at the water of arguing. Moses led Aaron and his son up onto the mountain in front of the people, took off the high priest's garments and clothed Eleazar his son in them, and Aaron died on the top of the mountain; Moses and Eleazar went down with her. All the people witnessed that Aaron died one hundred and twenty-three years old, and all the Israelites mourned for him thirty days. So insignificant is every person before God, who makes a wave so that we live no longer - and we die. Our life, with everything we have, except sins, is a gift from God, which must be used with gratitude and made into a sacrifice acceptable to God. Chapter 21, 6 art. And the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, which bit the people, and many of the people of Israel died. For all the beasts of the forest are Mine, says the Lord, the cattle of the mountains [Ps. 49.10 ], All reptiles are Mine. Everything is obedient to the will of its Creator. Whomever He pleases to use as an instrument of His wrath against people, whomever He sends will go: He sent the serpents - and the serpents did His will. Chapter 22, 4. And the Moabites said to the elders of Midian: This people is now eating up everything around us, as an ox eats up the grass of the field. Great, powerful comparison! What was the fear of this king (Balak), who represented such a terrible power of the Israelites! About Balaam 21, who at first did not agree to curse the Jews at the command of God, finally agreed to go to Balak, king of Moab, with his ambassadors, on a donkey. God was angry with him for this, and so an Angel of God prevented him from riding forward on a donkey. The donkey, noticing the Angel of God standing on the path directly opposite her, and the sword drawn in his hand, turned out of the way and went into the field. Balaam began to beat her with his rod to guide her on the path. An angel of God stood by a row of vine trees; the trees were positioned in such a way that they stood on both sides like a vegetable garden. The donkey, seeing the Angel of God, pressed herself against the fence and pressed Balaam’s leg against it; Balaam began to beat her even more. The angel did not lag behind and stood in a narrow place where it was impossible for Balaam to take either the right or the left. The donkey, seeing the Angel of God ahead and an irresistible obstacle to the right and left, fell near Valaam. Balaam became even more angry and again began to beat her with the rod. And now - oh, miracle! God opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam in a human voice: What have I done to you that you beat me for the third time? Balaam answers her: I beat you because you scolded me: if I had a sword, I would pierce you. The donkey again says to Balaam: Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden from your youth until now? Do you really think that I did this out of contempt for you? He answered: no, not out of contempt. At this time, God opened the eyes of Balaam, and he himself saw the Angel of God standing opposite him on the way, and the drawn sword in his hand. Balaam bows before him. The angel says to him: Why are you beating your donkey for the third time now? Behold, I have come to hinder you, because your path is unpleasant to me, and the donkey has turned off the road for the third time because she sees me on the way. And if she had not turned away from me, I would have killed you and saved her. Balaam says to the Angel: I sinned: I did not know that you opposed me on the way. If my path does not please you, then I turn and turn. The angel did not forbid him to go with the people, but only told him to keep the word that he would tell him. Chapter 23. Balak met Balaam, and he said to him: Behold, I have come to you. But I don’t know if I can say anything; I will only say what God puts in my mouth. Three times Balak asked Balaam to curse the Jews, three times the necessary preparations were made for this: and three times, at the inspiration of God, Balaam blessed the Jews. For the first time he said: King Balak of Moab brought me from Mesopotamia, from the eastern mountains, saying: Go curse Jacob for me, and go curse Israel for me. How can I curse something that God does not curse, or how can I speak evil about something that God does not speak evil about? From the top of the mountains I will see him (Israel) and from the hills I will recognize him. These people will inhabit alone and will not live together with the pagan peoples. Who will number the seed of Jacob, or who will number the hosts of Israel? May I die with these righteous people, and may my seed be like their seed. Balak became angry and took him to another place, wondering if he would at least curse the Israelites here. This time Balaam prophesied: stand up, Balak, listen. God does not hesitate as a man, nor does He change as a son of man: He has spoken, and He will not do it; He spoke His word - and will it not remain in its power? Behold, I have been brought here to bless: I will bless and will not change my words. There shall be no labor 22 among Jacob, neither shall they see pain among Israel: the Lord his God is with him, the glory of the king is upon him. God brought him out of Egypt; his glory is like the glory of a unicorn. There is no sorcery among the sons of Jacob and no sorcery among the descendants of Israel: it was told to him in advance what God would do to them. Behold, people will rise up like lions, and, like a lion, this people will be glorified by its strength: it will not sleep until it has eaten the catch and drunk the blood of those it has slain. Valak got angry again and then again led him to the third place, to the top of Fogor. Chapter 24. Turning his face to the desert in which the Jewish camp was located, Balaam sees Israel arrayed in tribes; and the Spirit of God was upon him. He begins to speak: Balaam, the son of Beor, speaks, the man who truly sees speaks; speaks the one who hears the words of the Mighty One (God), who saw the vision of God in a dream; his eyes are open: how good are your houses, O Jacob, and your tabernacles, O Israel; like shady oak groves, and like gardens by rivers, and like tabernacles that the Lord has set up, and like cedar trees by the waters. Man will come from his seed and will rule over many nations: his kingdom will be exalted greater than Gog 23 and it will increase in size. God brought him out of Egypt; his glory is like a unicorn (who butts everything); He will eat the peoples hostile to him, exhaust their masses and shoot his enemy with his arrows. So he lay down and slept like a lion (after his labors) and like a skiman: who will wake him (the Lord Jesus)? Those who bless You are blessed, and those who curse You are cursed. Valak just clasped his hands in surprise and anger and shooed him away to his place. Balaam says: Didn’t I also tell your ambassadors that if Balak gives me his church full of silver and gold, I cannot transgress the word of God: whatever God tells me, I will say. Then Balaam says what these people will do to his people in the last days... I will show him, but not now; I please, but he does not approach my pleasures. A star will shine from Jacob and a man will rise from Israel and destroy the princes of Moab and take captive all the sons of Seth (captivity of faith)... The beginning of tongues, Amalek, and their seed will perish... Soon Balaam went home. Blessed are those who read the word of God with attention and understanding: from the earthly world they are raptured, as it were, into the heavenly world. The Word of God is equal to itself. Chapter 27. God pronounces His final judgment on Moses, commanding him to ascend Mount Nabob, look from there at the land of Canaan, and then, through death, join his fathers. Moses says: May the Lord God of the spirits of all flesh appoint over this congregation a man who will go out before them (out of the tabernacle) and who will go in before them (into the tabernacle), who will bring them out and who will bring them in, so that the congregation of the Lord will not remain like sheep that have no shepherd [v. 15–17]. The Lord tells Moses to take Joshua, the man in whom the Spirit is, and lay his hands on him. Moses had to place him before Eleazar as a priest, give him instructions in front of the whole host and tell him his glory so that all the Israelites would listen to him. Chapter 30. About the power of a father over his daughter and a husband over his wife in relation to vows made by his daughter or wife. The power is so real that if the father or husband finds out about the vows of his daughter and wife, he has every right to destroy them, and the daughter or wife will be clean of his sins. Chapter 33 The Lord commands the Israelites to destroy all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan; But if, he says, you do not destroy them, then what remains of them will be thorns in your eyes and needles in your sides and will oppress you in the land in which you will live, and then whatever I intended to do to them I will do to you [v. 55–56]. Chapter 35, Art. 34. You must not defile the land on which you live, among which I dwell. Like a father among his children, the Lord lived among the children of Israel. Doesn't He also live among pious Christians? Yes, he lives and acts in them. Chapter 1, Article 17. Do not distinguish between persons at the trial, listen to both small and great: do not be afraid of the human face, for judgment is the work of God. Art. 31 The Lord your God bore you as a man carries his son, all the way that you walked before you came to this place. Look how good it suits you. The Lord God raised you, like a man nurtures his son, along the entire path, or throughout the entire path of your life, until you came to this place, which you now occupy by the grace of God. How grateful you should be to your Heavenly, All-Good and All-Powerful Educator. Chapter 4, Article 11. You approached and stood under the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the very heavens, and there was darkness, cloud and gloom. 32 and 33. Ask the times of old, those who were before you, from the day in which God created man on earth, and from one end of heaven to the other, whether anything like this great deed ever happened, or was anything like this ever heard of? did [what] people hear the voice of God [the living] speaking from the midst of the fire, and remained alive?.. 36. He let you hear His voice from heaven in order to teach you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire. Great are the advantages of the Jews over all the nations of the earth! Although they are now rejected, God will remember His mercy to their fathers. Chapter 5. The appearance of God at Sinai was so terrible, the fire was so great, as well as the darkness, the storm and the voice, that the Israelites said: 25[-26] v. But now why should we die? for this great fire will consume us; If we still hear the voice of the Lord our God, we will die, for is there any flesh that could hear the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we do, and remain alive? Chapter 6, [vv.6–9]. And let these words which I command you today be in your heart [and in your soul]; and teach them to your children and talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up; And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as a blindfold over your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Apply this to yourself. Chapter seven. [The following is a gap of one and a half author's pages. – Ed. ]. The Savior saves our soul, killed by sins. If He does not take away physical life from people who do not lead Him, it is because He is generous and merciful, and His generosity is in all His deeds, because He also gives life to foolish animals. The dust of sin will creep into your heart a little bit, even after communion - the devil can stick to it and act on you with it. This is what explains the stumblings after communion. Understand, man, the high, heavenly dignity of your soul and do not disturb it with earthly passionate attachments. She needs to cleave to God, and not to corruptible things: they disturb her, but God delights her. Confusion is a loss from the heart of the Lord, a lack of faith in the heart in Him, produced by an evil spirit. People incorrectly look at their life as property, which they supposedly have the right to dispose of in their own way: it is a gift from God; The Lord takes her when He pleases. We see this at almost every step. Inscribe: the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. You are the great and terrible Lord, and I am an insignificant and despicable slave. The Lady is not only alive today, but also gives life and [heals] the souls and bodies of Christians who resort to Her. It’s the same with saints – they are alive after death. Save Thy inheritance forever. No, you will not die [Gen. 3.4]. It is the devil who now diligently whispers to everyone and encourages everyone to pick forbidden fruits. Good, bright thoughts from God or from the Angel of Light, our guardian; in man himself, from the heart, without grace, evil thoughts come [Matt. 15.19 ] and so on. Do not despair: God will never leave you, according to your faith and zeal, to delight you in prayer, to encourage and strengthen you. If you sometimes do not receive what you ask for in prayer, then, obviously, there is no acceptability on your part. The same goes for other people. How does the Lord heal unbelief and despair of the heart? He allows the heart to experience spiritual death without faith and hope, otherwise: he allows the devil to kill the heart with terrible sorrow and oppression, from which the whole being of a person dies - both soul and body; and then suddenly, after receiving the Holy Mysteries or after a heartfelt, tearful prayer, He introduces into a person, into his heart, His life, the light of faith and hope, peace, beauty, freedom - so that a person, at least from such sharp opposites in his soul, that is, from the opposites of life and death, knows that there is a Life-Giver, without Whom we die both mentally and physically, and there is the culprit of death - the spirit of malice that strikes our heart and whole being death! This is what happened to me today (May 20, the eve of Sunday). The destructive, hellish fire of unbelief and despair scorched my chest; a deadening heaviness and tightness pressed on my heart; the mind remained in darkness, the body was exhausted from mental suffering and bowed to the ground. But as soon as I received communion with faith of the most pure Mysteries, suddenly my whole being was filled with life-giving warmth; I felt a good and light burden on my heart - Christ the Lord, my body received strength. I was all encouraged, rose from despondency and gave glory to God, marvelous in life and death. The fragrant vessels of grace, I mean the saints of God, are ready to give to you from the abundance of their gifts for your benefit through your prayer. Why don't you contact them? Why don't you ask for them? God! How often has my heartfelt appeal to You during a public service or home prayer comforted and filled my heart with peace and joy! And how, during times of guidance or temptation, do I forget You, become faint-hearted, and lose hope in You? God! Enlighten my darkness! I perish without You, my Joy! Ask, and it will be given to you [Matt. 7.7; OK. 11.9]. Thus, the one who asks will certainly be given. Why is this so? Precisely because we turn to God in prayer; and whoever turns to God surely changes morally for the better - and to such people the Lord gives His gifts. Sometimes I pray easily, with sweetness, and sometimes with difficulty and with a feeling of heartfelt emptiness, even with a feeling of heartfelt resistance to God; in this latter case, faith is the subject of a search, and I do not possess it by deed. I want to ask God - an unfaithful heart resists and considers this unnecessary; I want to thank God - he resists; I want to praise - but praise cannot come from a sinful heart. Only by overcoming yourself can you force yourself to love and find sweetness in it. By praying, I must defeat the enemy within me—the contrarian, the proud adversary. Unable to bear enemy attacks, priests sometimes become corrupted in their lives. Talk some sense into them. Pay all your attention to acquiring faith: it is peace, bliss of your heart and your life. You are tormented by doubt or unbelief: it kills you, sometimes deprives you of the fruits of prayer and communion of the Holy Mysteries, instead of the peace and joy of your heart, striking it with mortal heaviness. Gain faith and you will be happy. If you have faith and do not doubt [Matt. 21:21], says the Lord, then you can move mountains. Look: be strong in faith and fear a single moment of doubt; for a moment of doubt you will pay with many hours of heartache. I angered the Faithful and True One with doubt. The source of unbelief is pride; the unbeliever says internally: others say this, but I do not agree with what they say; I want to believe and say differently. This means that unbelief demeans the words of others and its own thoughts of the heart, and places its own words above the thoughts and words of others. Therefore, in order to have sincere, heartfelt faith, you certainly need to humble yourself in heart. The Lord Savior, according to His humanity, was meek and humble in heart and showed us an example of the greatest humility. About the meaning of the heart in human life: in religious, family and social life. Pay attention to what the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments say about the heart. What does it mean to pray in spirit and in truth? See spirit and truth in everything: in words, in sacred things and actions. In prayer we place burdens on ourselves, and prayer is a good yoke and a light burden. Do not seek what is too difficult for you, and do not try what is beyond your strength. What is commanded to you, meditate on [Sir. 3.21–22]. Rule for faith. There are days in life of spiritual cooling towards God and in general towards everything that concerns faith. This happens to every godly person. On these days, the Lord allows the devil to especially attack those who love Him - to excite their heartfelt heat, to test their faith, love and gratitude to God. For this purpose, the Lord allows stumbling blocks in public prayer that arise from a lack of faith in the heart. In these trials, the Lord allows us to see ourselves. And He faithfully achieves His goal. The voice of joy in the villages of sinners; But is there no voice of joy in the villages of the Lord of Hosts? Oh, there is, there is; only it does not resound as violently as in these villages, but quietly, inwardly, in the heart, just as the voice of joy resounded in the soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary, inspired by the Holy Spirit, who said about herself: My spirit rejoiced in God my Savior [Lk. 1.47]. Oh, how great is the abundance of Your goodness!.. [Ps. 30.20]. The subject of human gratitude to God should also be the fact that He has not destroyed and is not destroying us with our iniquities, but cleanses, cuts off our rottenness or sinful dryness, protects us with the bulwark of His commandments and punishes our souls with His fatherly rod. What the Lord did with the Jewish people, he does with every person: how many reasons for gratitude there are! If He had not been Love, all Patience, He would have abandoned us long ago: He would be a burden to God, to people, and to himself, but he lives. My servant Job will pray [Job. 42.8]. The height of the priestly service and the face of the priest. Why don’t many people want to pray? For where is your treasure... [Matt. 6.21]. They did not learn to value prayer, they did not experience its sweetness, or they did know it, but were careless. An unclean heart loves worldly things. The spiritual is inconceivable for him. What does light have in common with darkness? [ 2 Cor. 6.14]. God, they say, knows everything, God is all-good: why pray?.. […] After sin, thousands of needs befell people, proving that they are not gods; the need for prayer as a petition... What about giving thanks? What about praising? The truth of God is everywhere; only in evil spirits it is not, and often it is not in people who walk in the flesh and in the spirit of this age. The truth of the Lord irresistibly gravitates over me on all sides: he speaks the truth in his heart... he will not be shaken forever [Ps. 14.2–5]. Count, if you can count, how many times the Savior saved you from troubles, and be grateful all your life. My brother's evil is also my evil. You yourself are condemned to the same thing [Lk. 23.40]. Just as in the book of nature we distinguish between things past, present and future, so in the book of God's word or God's Revelation we also see the works of God past, present and future. (Just as in nature we conclude from the present order of things to the same future, so in Revelation.) Pray for the health and salvation of Priest Vasily. When teaching the boys of the Lancastrian class, adopt a teaching method that, covering a small number of subjects, would embrace all the boys, despite their differences in the degree of their knowledge. To do this, there is no other way than to force them all to listen to the explanation of the lesson. Mainly try to study the Catechism and prayers. History will be taught in the district class. From experience, and not from faith, only I know that there will be different degrees of torment at the Judgment to the extent that someone was a slave to sin. The future Last Judgment will be nothing other than the revelation, the revelation in all its power of that righteous judgment of God, which here on earth is partially revealed in conscience and its torment, in confusion, in sorrow and the oppression of sin: and now we are always at the judgment of God. It is impossible to strictly separate the judgments of God. In the name of the Lord Savior, mentioned with heartfelt faith, I receive freedom from confusion, sorrow and the oppression of passions that war on the soul. The devil enters the soul with passions: the soul begins to be confused and tremble. The heavy tread of Satan is very audible: his steps are deadly. And the Sweetest Savior is always a faithful Friend: just remember Him sincerely, just tell yourself from your heart that He is here, just wish from your heart for His help and call with your heart - He will now appear and will now bless you with peace. My Sweetest Savior! Grant me to live always with You. The same is in the name of the Mother of God (in Her name, and not from anyone or anything else). Just as a person burdened with the gifts of God faces the danger - due to his weakness and insensitivity - of becoming satiated with them and, as they say, rummaging through them: considering this, and the other, and the third, as unimportant, and not knowing the value of them - so an educated person who reads a lot, who has many gifts of the Lord - books, also faces the danger of becoming satiated with them to the point that he begins to consider the best of them as unimportant and will either read them little or read fluently, with carelessness. God save everyone from such satiety. Those who are fed up with any gifts of God, who do not know their value and who do not bring the fruits of virtue to the Lord (gifts are given for this purpose) are threatened by the curse of the Lord and burning, like a barren land that drank the rain that repeatedly descended on it... and wears out thorns and thistles (Heb. 6:7-8). By praying to God or His saints sincerely, from the heart, with faith, you certainly, according to the law of God's truth, make them your debtors: and earthly parents, according to the word of the Lord, do not give their children a stone when they ask them for bread, or a snake when they ask them for fish. If they, being evil, know how to recognize it as necessary and fair to give at their request what they ask, then won’t God, who is just and loves us more than anyone else, give us what we ask for, or the saints of God, perfected by His Spirit, made like Him in their holiness? How joyful it is to pray to God and His saints after this! They are our debtors when we ask them for something that is essential and useful for us. And if not now, then in the next century they will certainly repay our debt to us. We study for a long time, from books, in a spontaneous way, and, despite our systematic education, it is full of imperfections and shortcomings both because of the limitations of our abilities and because of the relative imperfection of the textbooks and teachers themselves. Only with the help of God, with the illumination of the mind and the enlightenment of the heart from the Holy Spirit, can our education proceed and be accomplished correctly, evenly, comprehensively, especially from the heart. But the holy apostles were taught first by God’s Word Himself directly, and then by the Holy Spirit, who searches everything, and the depths of God, instructing people in all truth: and their knowledge was the most perfect knowledge, the brightest, embracing everything necessary for the salvation of man, his present and future life, God with His economy of salvation, the Angels with their relationships with people, etc. The God-enlightened mind of the apostles and their mental works without comparisons are higher than all the works of mental other people. Believe everything that is true and holy in itself, no matter who tells you about it. Otherwise, beware lest you suffer heartily for not believing the truth of God. Today, one poor and sick girl, a Chukhonka, to whom I give alms from time to time, having met me on the road, told me that on the night of the third day an old man appeared to her in a dream, who ordered her to read (about me) the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John - about the resurrection of Lazarus, since she does not know how to pray for me in her own way. I asked her if she was deceiving me - she answered that she was not, and I gave her what I could and left. Arriving home, I felt a fire in my insides, painfully burning me, and I considered this fire to be God’s punishment for doubting God’s mercy towards me. ABOUT! Let me not, through unbelief, block the entrance into my heart of the mercies of God, so that they do not turn back from me. A miracle due to the blasphemy of holy icons by one foreigner, an Englishman, namely the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The said Englishman was in an Orthodox society, where, probably, just before the day of St. Nicholas, someone spoke about the need to serve a prayer service to St. Nicholas. The foreigner, having spoken bitterly about icons in general and about the icon of St. Nicholas, spat on his icon, which was there. But what happened to him? That same evening his eye began to hurt and swell, so that he was in danger of losing his eye completely. He told one of his friends about his illness. He asked him: what is the cause of such a terrible disease? And this patient, troubled by his conscience, admitted that when the topic of icons came up, he spat on the icon of St. Nicholas. An acquaintance advised him to immediately buy an image of St. Nicholas, place it in a decent place in the house, invite a priest and serve a prayer service. And so it was done; and soon after the prayer service the swelling began to subside, but the eye, as if in memory of his reckless act, remained blind, although it was clean and open. Such is the glory of holy icons. Tormenting fire is inseparable from sin. This happens to many here too. All the more so will it be there when God’s judgment on sinners is revealed in all its power; ergo 24, there is fire of Gehenna. Deliver, deliver, deliver, Lord, from instability in faith during the communion of the life-giving Mysteries of every baptized person! For unbelief or lack of faith of the heart, such terrible internal torment befalls the communicant, such tightness, such fire that this person would decide, if it were easy, to tear out his womb, his stubborn, crafty and evil heart! Such are the torments of unworthy communion. Whoever you are, man, do not leave the Chalice without heartfelt faith, especially a priest. Priests know more than anyone from the experiences of peace and joy and from the abundance of their lives after receiving the Holy Mysteries with dignity and with living faith, that the Lord is truly and essentially present in them. May 4, 1859. You have an assistant whom you can completely rely on for household things. Trust her in everything and don’t dare distrust her in anything. Trust everyone at home too; Until you trust your family in everyday things, until you trust God in everything? Just as we can love God only by loving our brother, so we can trust Him only by first learning to trust our own. Pets are the touchstone of faith and love. God! You are Who, and without You nothing could have happened [Jn. 1:3], and without You nothing exists even now - whether from things or from deeds. A carnal, fickle, like the wind, changeable man! Can I believe you, your vague inclinations from that in which I want and strive to stand, that which pacifies me, pleases me and puts me in the most favorable relationship with God and people, in a word, from faith and love - to that from which I am ready to turn away with all my might, although, unfortunately, due to lack of faith, I often do not find the strength for that which worries me, confuses me, torments me and puts me in the most unfavorable relationship with God and people, then there is, in a word, to murderous unbelief and passions. Remember your prayerful standing in St. Isaac's Cathedral during the liturgy before the image of the Lady - and be inspired by the ever-present hope for the Intercessor of the Christian race. Oh, what sweetness I had in my heart throughout the mass! ABOUT! Why doesn’t living faith always dwell in my heart! Know, man, all the greatness of your inner sorrows, the cruelty of your passions and the inconvenience of their healing - and become convinced of the need for an internal, spiritual, invisible Doctor. Do not be unreasonable in your sorrows, but hurry as soon as they befall you, to the Doctor you know, your faithful Friend, Who awaits only your sincere or true appeal to Him and is always ready to heal the sorrows of your heart. Don't kill yourself foolishly. Pay attention: it is not in vain that Jesus Christ bears the name of Savior - He will always save. Mother of our Peace, Mother of our Joy, Mother of our Hope, Mother of our Love; Mother of the Existing, Mother of all the Existing and Realizing; Mother of the Most Pure, Her purity is unimaginable by our unclean souls for the height that surpasses all reason; Mother of God, Her goodness cannot be comprehended by the human mind for the sake of the immeasurable superiority; Mother of all Christians, Christian cities and towns are full of her memorable images of quick intercession! Be me, a great sinner, a quick Helper and Intercessor in adversity, and in illness, and in sorrow! There is One Lord, Lord, One Mighty One, Who has all Existed, without Him there was nothing that came into being [Jn. 1:3 ], and - nothing can happen, it can happen, God, blessed forever, is above all, have mercy on me, a man of little faith, a sinner possessed of passions, and add faith to me; that by this I may conquer and receive the crown of victory from You on the terrible day of Your righteous retribution. What kind of thief, knowing for sure that if he steals something today, that tomorrow he will be lashed for the theft, will still steal and, for short-term, illegal profits, endure the most painful punishment and shame from others? But a person devoted to passions does this: the most certain internal, most painful scourgings, the most severe external lashes await him, and yet he, knowing for sure about them, indulges in passions that are the real executioners for him. A passionate person is a thief: he robs himself, he robs the peace of his soul. Knowing from your own experience how strongly passions act in you, what a slave they make you, forcing you to do what you would not want at all, be lenient towards every person possessed by any passion; if this is your superior and superior, do not condemn him, do not respond to his passion with passion, but rather pray for him as if he were sick, and obey him if he orders you to do something legal, even if he is in a passionate state. If he is inferior, punish him moderately, with reason. We are called by God to life, but we often notice that our innermost life is often in danger, that someone is trying to steal it in the most persistent way and plunge us into some kind of murderous state of melancholy, sorrow and confusion. This is where we again need our Life-Giver, our Savior, so that He will again give life to our soul, which is dying by sin of its own free will, so that He will resurrect it from spiritual death as many times as we die, and again bring us into His life. The saints abide in God, and we honor in them the living, pure images of God, the grace of the Holy Spirit living in them. When you eat and drink, may your heart be full of feelings of gratitude to God. Saturation with the gifts of God - spiritual and physical - is a strange phenomenon in the nature of a sinner. Instead of being filled with feelings of gradually increasing gratitude and love for God, we forget good deeds and discover in ourselves the source of evil - discontent and passionate desire for more, stinginess, envy - instead of finding in ourselves the source of bliss - in the thought of the goodness of God and the abundance of His gifts. Thus, an unreasonable and weak person becomes satiated with the abundance of the gifts of faith, with the abundance of evidence of its truth and life-giving, and in the light he remains demanding light, in the area of ​​peace and love - only gropingly seeking this peace and this love. You do not know how bodily medicines are composed, and you do not consider it necessary to know this, but you believe in their medicinal properties; Wouldn’t it be foolish not to believe in medicine or in the healing power of spiritual medicines, for example, repentance, communion, holy oil, holy water and others, just because you don’t comprehend the way by which they become healing? Until I bring You down, O Lord, by faith in my heart, until then there is no peace in my heart. Faith is also very necessary when dealing with people - for what? Not only to believe their words and actions, but to believe - in relations with the highest - in their power, in its Divine origin - and give them due respect; in relations with equals - in their sincerity, conscientiousness, in their universal human dignity; when dealing with inferiors - also in their human dignity. Our feelings see in a person only a person with shortcomings, with weaknesses - an ordinary, always identical figure, often boring with its monotony; but faith sees further: it sees in man an immortal spirit, clothed in flesh, bearing within itself the image of God and having received from God this or that purpose in temporary life, this or that number of talents for their increase. God! You are my wealth: when I have You in my heart, then I am pleased with everything; then I have everything. Both thought and word are all God’s for me. The devil belongs only to the perversion and abuse of God-given thoughts and words. And the evil spirit itself is God’s creation, only it was created not evil, but good; He perverted God's mind, inclined God-given freedom to good towards evil. About the farmer who, being extremely hardworking, constantly - both at home, and before work, and at work, and after work, prayed: Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me; I traveled twelve miles to church every Sunday and holiday; He treasured the gift of God (especially bread) to such an extent that he did not leave a grain of corn in the field for people to trample on, and that at home during meals he laid a tablecloth under the table so that the crumbs would fall on it and not on the floor. I am the image of God. But what is closer to the Prototype? What do we actually see? We are more distant than close to Him. From experience we know that it is good for us to cleave to God [Ps. 72:28], also that it is bad and painful to be away from Him, but by some force we move away from Him and, despite ourselves, we suffer. I am the image of God, says St. Gregory the Theologian, and I am drawn into sinfulness; the worst in me unfairly opposes the best. Oh, original sin! O prince of this world! God! Thy kingdom come. The devil - I see this clearly - is trying in every possible way to erase from my soul faith in the Lord and in everything true and holy; by all means he tries to destroy everything good in me, and in the great, terrible moments of the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts and before accepting them, with hellish tenacity he resists the grace of the Sacrament, hiding in the shortcomings of my heart, my inner man; he also resists when reading rarely read prayers, in which I have not yet conquered myself. When involuntary falls into sin happen to you, striking your heart with intense sorrow, say even then: Lord! Thy will be done! Apparently, it was necessary for You to leave me with Your grace and not heed my prayer for help. Apparently, Your Wisdom needed to be shown […] to me myself, so that I would know how dangerous the state of my soul is and how disgusting it is to Your eyes. Thy will be done. The Lord gives one thing and another another; to one - so much, to another - less: glory to His goodness, glory to His bounty! Guide me, O Lord, on the right path, and I will walk in Your truth! On the Ascension - about the second coming of the Lord: This Jesus was ascended... [Acts. 1.11]. We will always be with the Lord again. Adam fell away from God and tore us away; Jesus came for the first time to restore us and give us strength to unite with Him. This is the order of God's economy. When I unite with Jesus, then my heart is light and sweet, but when I cling to sensual things, it is heavy and languid. God's Spirit is called emanating because He proceeds from the Father, gives life to all things, and accomplishes all things. He passes through all intelligent, pure, subtle spirits [Prem. 7.23], that is, the heavenly powers, accomplishing and strengthening them in the service of God; He descended into the prophets and dwelt in them, prophesied in them; He descended on the Savior in the form of a dove; He descended on the apostles in the form of tongues of fire, imparted to them the gift of tongues and all other gifts, and remembered to them everything that was said to them by the Savior, Who is one with the Father in Divinity; He descends upon every soul that is zealous for godliness. This is Who the Holy Spirit is and what His works are in creatures; that is why He is called coming from the Father. Since God is the first Life and the Source of all life, His Spirit is a Divine Person, just as His Word is also a Divine Person: the Source of all life, in His One being, must exist as the most perfect in Three Persons - the Author, the Born and the Proceeding, or the Father, the Word and the Spirit. What is this, brothers, happening before our eyes? The Son of God, who gives life to everyone, Himself died a blasphemous death from people and lies lifeless in the tomb! The all-powerful King, not of this world, voluntarily yielded to the violence of evil and weak people. Legions of Angels would have been ready to help Him, and yet He did not allow them to stand up for Himself! This is not enough: if throughout His entire life, from the shrouds to the grave, He was not tied to her, and was averse to all splendor and all earthly glory; deigned to be born from a poor Mother, grew up in the house of a poor carpenter, who lived on his own labors; Having come to perfect age, he left this house, this house and, constantly doing good to people, moved with His disciples to preach His Gospel from city to city, from city to city, so that, in His own words, he had no place to lay his head; for His greatest good deeds they wanted to make Him king, but He rejected [Himself] such an election; for His miracles, for which He did not seek any glory and He Himself said that glory does not accept from man - finally, for His saving teaching and miracles He endured spitting, strangulation, beatings, the cross and death! What does this all mean? Immortal - dies voluntarily. The Eternal One does not value our earthly, temporary life in the least. Here, at this tomb, brothers, we are taught a great, true, joyful or terrible lesson about eternity, about the future life. This means that we should not be overly attached to the present life, we should more often direct our thoughts and hearts to the future life; that one should not tie one’s heart to fame and wealth; that we should not become attached to the earth, but there, to heaven, we should raise our eyes more often - in a word, this means that we should try in every possible way to be where our Savior ascended after His resurrection; mountain to philosophize [Col. 3.2], that is, about the heavenly, about the eternal, and try with all our might for the glory of heaven, for the blessings of the future age, which all pious people expected and expect; that to care about the space, wealth and whimsical decoration of our homes for us, Christians, wanderers and aliens on earth, is indecent and sinful. If I only touch His garment, I will be healed [Matt. 9.21]. The word is bleeding. The same thing happens to us. Only we touch with our heartfelt faith the vestments of the Lord - His truth, righteousness and mercy - and now we are saved: now the flow of passionate thoughts stops and peace, silence, joy in the Holy Spirit sets in [Rom. 14,17]. And we! Oh, how ungrateful and blind and stony-hearted we are! We drink from His sources of salvation - and soon we forget that we are freely drawing living water from Him, we even reject in our hearts the reality that we receive living water from Him, as if no one else but Him could give it to us. Lord Almighty! Wake up with us and do not leave us for our treachery. Without You, we are beset by sorrows of the heart, in which we have no other Helper except You. What are writers, workers of truth, goodness and beauty looking for? Peace, joy of heart - and they get what they are looking for. And all this is from the Lord: He can be found in different ways. You are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you [1 Cor. 3.16]. The Spirit of God truly lives in you. Every time you taste the peace and joy of heaven in your soul, the Spirit of God is in you. When peace leaves you and anxiety sets in, you are tormented by fear, crampedness, melancholy, then you do not have the Spirit of God in you, which means that then you have offended Him, driven Him away with the unkind disposition of your soul. Then fall down with tears to the Lord and ask Him with all your heart [warmth] for the cleansing of your sins: when forgiveness is granted, then the Holy Spirit will dwell in you again and cleanse you. It is good for me to cleave to God [Ps. 72.28]. One sincere, kind thought about Him brings me good; and when I unite with His Mysteries through living faith and real acceptance, then I am filled with life: I am peaceful without measure, cheerful too - in a word, heavenly blissful. The main thing in a person is the invisible soul. If this invisible principle agrees, in terms of the state of its spiritual powers, with the First, Supreme Principle, from Whom life and bliss flow, then this invisible, insignificant principle of ours, that is, the soul, is good: it feels peace and harmony of its powers and is therefore blissful; but if it is not in accordance with the wrong direction of its forces, then it feels bad, hard, it feels the struggle of some heterogeneous forces, opposing each other, tearing apart the whole being, and most of all - the predominance of some deadening, evil, extraneous force. The Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood perform wonderful deeds in me. Before communion today, I was dead in soul, that is, I suffered on the spot: then lack of faith or disbelief tormented my heart - and there was some kind of destructive fire in my chest, in my heart - fear, heaviness, tightness; I was completely weak and exhausted in body. What happened to me after receiving the Holy Mysteries with unashamed faith? Cheerfulness, peace, ecstatic joy, and tenderness instantly appeared in my soul. What sharp contrasts! Life-giver, glory to You, glory to Your life-giving Mysteries. You have the source of life, from You is this excess of life felt after communion. This consoles me and confirms in me hope for future, endless heavenly blessings: after all, these spiritual blessings, felt in the soul after communion, are the firstfruits of eternal blessings, a foretaste of them; this Kingdom of God within me is the guarantee of the future Kingdom, the blessed life of the next century. Wake up! Wake up! I hope, Lord, that through fate you will save me, Your unworthy servant. Are You really showing me the beginnings of Your blessed Kingdom in us only in order to ignite my desire and forever torment it with the vain expectation of the blessings anticipated in the heart without the hope of ever possessing them? No, Lover of Humanity, who suffered for us! I believe that this will not happen, and my enemy, who pursues me with relentless malice, will not laugh at Your servant. Amen. April 11. On the eve of Easter. The all-evil demon knows that our faith contains the greatest consolation for a soul stricken with the sorrow of sin, and therefore it tries in every possible way to slander the truth, undermining its inviolable reliability, darkening the mind and cooling the heart of the reader or listener. The destroying serpent is trying in every possible way to pour its poison into my soul, whiter than snow with the Body and Blood of the Lamb, and therefore after communion one must be a many-eyed Cherub in order to watch over the attacks of enemies from everywhere. The Lord is close to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth [Ps. 144.18]. He mercifully descends to the sighs of the soul, heartily seeking the cleansing of sin at the foot of His throne. Approaching the degrees of ranks to the first earthly beginning, that is, to the king, should be a symbol and measure of ascent to the First Principle of everything, that is, to God. Otherwise: those distinguished by ranks and approaching the royal person according to them must at the same time measure their proximity or distance from the Heavenly King and, noticing their distance from Him, consider ascension in their hearts. The closeness of a subject to the king of the earth without closeness to the King of Heaven is of little use to him and unreliable for the king. Why on earth do we all live under the rule and do not get out from under it? In order for us to learn to rise in thought to the First Beginning of everything; so that we always clearly see our limitations, our insignificance, so that we do not become arrogant, but humble ourselves. Woe to the man who does not know the beginning above himself. Making himself his beginning, he places his passions above himself, which plunge him into all troubles. Glory to the power of Your Cross, O Lord, and Your Divine omnipresence! I drove away with the sign of the cross, by living faith, clinging my thought to You with the sign of salvation, the disembodied enemy who deigned to come into my heart upon awakening and began to crush it with heaviness, confusion and melancholy. April 13. Stammering when pronouncing prayers or dismissals is his business. I remained in debt to him for this: so he came to me like an inexorable creditor: you are mine, he says, I’m torturing you. We feel good from communicating with the Lord here on earth. How good is it to be with Him there - beyond this life? Heavenly Truth, vigilantly, severely punishes me for the sins of doubt and cowardice, as well as for others, and the Lady Theotokos, at my faithful voice, is the Unsleeping Most Quick Intercessor, drawing from my chest the arrows of heavenly wrath. Glory to Thee, Lady! Teach me to be a faithful fulfiller of the commandments of the Son and Thy God and our God. If the truths of faith turned out to be incorrect in any way, then the worst enemy of truth - the devil - would not be slow to take advantage of this to undermine the faith. Sometimes, because of one ambiguous word of Scripture, he intensifies to slander the whole Scripture. Through the experiences of this life, I, unworthy, have learned that communion with the Lord in the prayer of faith and communion of the Holy Mysteries of Body and Blood is a source of bliss for my soul. From this [obtains] the reliability of the experience and the truth that in the future life the communion of faithful souls with the Lord will be for them a source of eternal bliss. The beginnings of future benefits are predicted here. The life-giving Mysteries have a divinely powerful effect on the very heart of man, which is nasty, almost constantly emanating from itself evil thoughts... adultery, fornication [Matt. 15:19], blasphemy, doubt, unbelief, etc., and causing torment to a person. Accepted with faith, they completely suppress the nest of sin, and it freezes, giving way to good, holy thoughts, living faith, love, and gratitude. At the same time, the person becomes completely calm, satisfied and blissful with everything. The damaged person, instead of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, now needs to eat the Body and Blood of the Lord. We died from eating these fruits; in order to regain our lost life, we need Animal Bread: Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he who eats Me will live by Me [Jn. 6.57]. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life [Jn. 6.54]. It is true and undeniable that if one who partakes of the Holy Mysteries is exhausted and not able to do so by faith, he will suddenly feel a consuming fire in his chest, sorrow and tightness in his heart; and if faith overcomes unbelief in an unclean heart, then the communicant suddenly feels a light, life-giving warmth with some wonderful coolness and bliss, peace, joy and breadth of heart. Experiences, and between others - the experience of April 21, Tuesday, St. Thomas Week. The Lord acts sacredly and mysteriously within me: for the heart movement of hatred, envy or other passions, He scorches me with an internal, consuming fire, which is destroyed only when I internally correct myself, when I eradicate sinful movements; since it is impossible to eradicate them without the help of the Lord and His Cross, you must with faith make the sign of the cross on your chest or call on the Lord the Savior for help - and they will pass. Contemplate all people in God, who loves them immeasurably, and if you love God sincerely, it will be easy for you to love all people, forgiving their shortcomings. When you pray to God for the forgiveness of sins or for whatever it is, you follow a ready-made, well-known, well-worn road: you have reached your goal quite often. You'll get there now. The path to the Savior is familiar to you. The world is a real book of God and written about God, instead of letters - with created things. Just as every letter in a book necessarily presupposes the activity of the mind, not to mention whole words and speeches that directly point to a thinking being, so every created thing necessarily sends us to the Great Mind, Who revealed Himself infinitely wise in every creature. Things correspond to letters, the world corresponds to a whole book. How is the Lord truly and essentially present in the Mysteries of the Body and Blood? The inherent image is incomprehensible, but it is certain that He is truly and essentially present in the most pure Mysteries, by His omnipresence, just as He is present with us during prayer, resting and delighting our hearts. Who is closest to me than the One Supreme Being of all, from Whom and in Whom is everything? Yes, the Lord is closest to me. How is it that my heart is often far from Him, turns away from Him, or does not find Him? And you want to believe in something worthy of faith, but sometimes you can’t believe it without effort; and you want not to believe in what is really false and disastrous, but with some force you are drawn away by your evil and crafty heart from saving faith. God! Teach me to look sensibly, holyly, simply, firmly at all the holy Sacraments and always perform them with due reverence; Grant me, O Generous and Merciful One, this grace. In marriage, look at the bride and groom as you look at Christ and the Church. Humble yourself before people - and then you will be able to humble yourself before God. Just as the Lord, descending to the Jewish youths into a furnace, kindled seven times, turned the fire into dew, so now, descending in the Sacrament of Body and Blood into our souls and bodies burning with passions, as if into a furnace, He turns their burning heat, with our faith and heartfelt contrition, into the cool dew of His grace. This is experience. The Holy Lamb, standing in the holy church on a sacred platter during the most holy liturgy, stands firmer than the world. The Lord laid it down for salvation once and for all, and will not be offended about it. Glory to the power of Your Cross, O Lord, powerfully and divinely acting to assuage the sorrows and fears of the heart! If only there was a living, sincere thought of the crucified Lord, the Cross will always act on our soul with the power characteristic of the Lord. ABOUT! How close the Lord is to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth [Ps. 144.18]. The Lord even calls things that do not exist as things that exist [Rom. 4:17]. And the Body and Blood of the Lord has existed since 1858 years ago. It is sown in humiliation, it is raised in glory [1 Cor. 15.43]. I look at the dead man: his body is ugly and inglorious, and like useless dust, he is consigned to the earth. But I pay attention to his resurrection and see his future glorious transformation from corruptible to incorruptible, from inglorious to glorious; I see and praise the Lord, who allowed short-term sadness for us in order to bring us joy forever. The priest must perform all services with the consciousness of their heavenly dignity and with a reverent consciousness of his own dignity, to which the grace of God has elevated him, with sedateness and importance, alien to pride and pomp, calmly and evenly. In me and in the grass or in the tree, the Lord alone acts and appears: that is why I am so pleased to look at the plant. How true and immutable should the word of the Lord or His promise be and is, when it created everything and keeps everything created in being, when His word is the same as deed? In addition, faith in His word lives, but unbelief kills, flaring up in the chest and heart with a terrible fire that scorches our insides. The whole depth of human fall, all the corruption of human nature will be known only by those who worthily partake of the Holy Mysteries. At this time, they see - according to the revelation of the Lord - internal evil, or the evil of the heart, in terrifying proportions: the heart is all in an ulcer, in illness, and yet does not seek healing, is stagnant in its evil and, without self-compulsion, will not accept the living, saving faith in the Sacrament; on the contrary, it turns away from him, like an angry, stubborn and capricious child from his mother’s breast. Once I lit a lamp-lamp, which, after burning for a certain time, absorbed all the oil that was in the lamp, and finally, due to its lack, it also drew in the water residues. Pulling the lamp out of the tube and pouring a full lamp of oil, I lit the lamp. But due to wateriness, it soon went out; then, dipping the upper tip of the lamp into oil, I lit it again. At first it ignited, but then began to fade again: the fire could not suddenly overpower and ignite the watery rope, and it either flared up or seemed to go out completely, and the rope only crackled and threw watery splashes from itself; finally he took his power and ignited it. It occurred to me at that time to compare the lamp with the human heart, and in this phenomenon I read the state of my heart and many hearts similar to mine. Isn’t it so that the fire of God’s grace fights with our hearts, strewn, burdened by gluttony and drunkenness and various passions, and cannot quickly ignite them, although we desire and seek it, and then it ignites our heart, having momentarily gained a good disposition of the heart, then it seems to completely go out, and again it ignites, and again it weakens, until, finally, seeing our zeal, it completely overcomes it dampness and will not ignite with a bright and strong flame? I confess that I read the fate of my heart in the lamp, when it, having just lit up with a light from above, crackled and did not give in to the action of the fire, and the fire either flared up or seemed to go out completely, barely gliding across the surface; I prayed: Lord! May the malice of my heart not overcome Your unspeakable goodness; May his sinful dampness be overcome by the Divine fire of Your grace. Brethren! Our heart is just like damp wood; it is saturated with iniquities, like water - and it is not surprising that the fire of grace does not burn in our hearts with a constant and bright flame and only ignites from time to time - and again soon goes out. April 27, 1857. The Holy Scriptures and all church books with all the sacraments and rituals are God's treasure, to which the priest is assigned so that he uses it wisely and reverently for the salvation of himself and others, preserves it with all possible care and does not at all dare to touch it without reverence, much less abuse it. Do not be your own during the service, but God’s - as God’s and should act, and not as your own. The father is rich, and the children go around the world and eat who knows what. Why is this so? Because children are angry and disobedient. People! Get to know yourself here. What does the Heavenly Father not have for the peace and delight of our soul - and even what does He not have for innocent bodily pleasures? Everything is there: why do we run away from Him to a distant country and exhaust our lives in various addictions or evil inclinations of the heart? He came, stayed, left and will not come again. Who came and where? Where did you stay? Where did you go? Why won't he come again? A man came into the world; stayed in the world and went to eternity, from where he will no longer return to the hotel. A one-day man! Why are you forgetting yourself in this hotel? He let him in, let him come in, and he let him out, let him go out to his place. The Lord gave us existence, opened the door to the light so that we could enter and live in it, and then released us through death into another world. We are not our own, but God’s: if we live, we live for the Lord; Whether we die, we die to the Lord: whether we live or die, we are all the Lord’s [Rom. 14.8]. The Lord of Heaven sovereignly rules over us and leads us wherever He pleases; We worms sometimes raise our heads against everyone and everything. Before me there were the luminaries in the firmament of heaven and the whole universe; before me there were both great and small ecclesiastical luminaries and the entire heavenly Church, Angels and men of God. And I'm one-day old. My duty is to look with reverence at the mental luminaries and through prayer bring light from them into my dark soul. When I hear about the fulfillment of clear prophecies, then my thought directly refers to the Being who is above time and created time itself or all things that form time through their flow, as well as all moral beings who were to serve as an instrument for the fulfillment of prophecies or on whom the prophecies were to be fulfilled. Let the preacher liken himself to a field worker who plows with a plow that is not his own, sows the master’s seed entrusted to him and who is rarely, very rarely destined to live to see the shoots and harvest. His job is to anticipate the morning, to diligently cultivate the land, to sow pure seed on it with hands that are not lazy and washed in the hope of pure fruit, when the Lord waters His field with the early and late rain. Letters on the office of a priest; book IV, letter 2. He is My chosen vessel to proclaim My name before the nations and kings and the children of Israel [Acts. 9.15]. What a magnificent word from the Lord Almighty! Paul is no more than a vessel chosen from among the many vessels of God. The name of the God-man, placed in this vessel by the faith of Paul, he will carry to the pagans, various kings and people of Israel, preaching with his lips the name of Christ, who was crucified for us: why do you think so much about yourselves after this, people? Paul is only a vessel - albeit a chosen one; But are you more with God, are you not the same meager vessels 25? And you also sometimes tell lies that are not true! Look, the Heavenly Scrounger will crush you in the truest sense, like meager vessels. Why are you so afraid? How do you have no faith? [Mk. 4.40]. When dealing with demonic insurance, let these words resound within you. Do not allow great sinners to confess. Glory to the Lord! Glory to the Lady! Glory to the Baptist of the Lord! Finally, I defeated the spirit of confusion and fear while reading two prayers: Save, O God, Thy people... and the Most Merciful Master... Not to me, but to Thy name, O Lord, glory! If there is sorrow in your heart before reading prayers, make the name of the Savior from the fingers of your right hand and drive out demons in the name of the Savior; according to His immutable promise: in My name they will cast out demons... [Mk. 16,17]. Until now, I have been vaguely hasty in all my affairs: both in everyday life and those related to faith (in public and home prayer), and I guess: I was being persecuted by one who himself never has peace and will never be able to. Grant me, Lord, henceforth not to be unnecessarily hasty in any matter of life, and in prayer - never, never! May my light always be with me and my mind, instructive in faith, king in my head. In the word before communion, say: we preach mercy (of the Lord in the Mysteries), we do not hide good deeds. Before the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts and before receiving them, as well as during their acceptance, always be as calm and free as possible. If the evil one mortifies your heart with unbelief, say to yourself: even the demons believe in my Lord and tremble at Him [Jas. 2.19 ]; Can I really be worse than the devils in this? And with increased faith, pray to God. There are days when an evil spirit disturbs me And whispers unclear words in my ear, And my soul cannot ascend to heaven. And the burdened head bows. And he, knowing neither joy nor faith, Anger breathes into me - towards whom, I don’t know myself - And the mighty dimensions are a lying mirror Slyly attaches to insignificant details. In the circle of my friends he sits next to me, His presence takes away his gaiety; He fills the sick heart with poison And he puts bitter words into my mouth. And everything that is vicious and evil in me, It swirls and grows thicker and darker, And the radiance of the native day is covered with darkness, And the blue of the sky and the gold of the fields, Transforming into the sad desert and into the night All that I love, believe and breathe. To the chosen Voivode, victorious, as having been delivered from the evil ones, I will write thanks to Thy servant, the Mother of God. During the all-night vigil on the Week of Vai, I was overcome by a feeling of embarrassment, which came from the devil’s fear and distrust of myself, so that I could regularly, without stumbling, say the prayer: Lord, Most Merciful... at the litia. I was melting, destroyed from fear. In such trouble, I appealed to the chosen Voivode for help and - glory to the Helper of Christians: She, the One who quickly intercedes, helped me with Her intercession, brought peace into my heart, and I read the prayer very well, evenly and with feeling. I walked with cheerful feet after reading the prayer and sang thanksgiving to Her in my heart. Before the end of the all-night vigil, due to haste and embarrassment, I could not properly say the prayer: Christ, the true Light... and that is why there are thorns in my heart [Ps. 31.4], with whom I left the church and with whom I stayed at home. Here, in front of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, I again prayed to the Intercessor that She would remove the thorn from my heart - and so what? Again, soon She heard - and the prickly thorn in her heart was gone. I will always resort to Your protection, O Lady, and You, O Merciful One, deign to always mercifully listen to me. As if alive, pray to the Queen Mother written on the icon. Either unite by heartfelt faith with the Lord and be blissful, or if you are far from God in your heart, if you are not united with Him in your heart, then fear and suffer: this is the law of God. This is what has been learned through countless experiences. Holy soul! Consolation, Our Joy! Don't leave us. From this dream, learn that the devil pretends to be inactive and as if dead (a living corpse of a terrible appearance, with huge eyes, a nose and an even huge mouth) in order to more conveniently catch the unwary in his nets. Well, he really scared me last night, you damned one. Children and all Orthodox Christians need to be pointed to the example of the wise Jewish children, who refused to serve the golden body (and now very many serve the golden body) and, in order to preserve faith and love for the Living God, agreed better to die in the flames. Just as the bread with which the Lord miraculously fed thousands of people did not decrease in the hands of the apostles who distributed it, so the living bread, the Flesh and Blood of our Lord, never decreases in the hands of the servants of the altar of Christ. Tell me, is it incredible that the Body and Blood of Christ, no matter how much we teach them to believers, are not exhausted, when it is known historically that the bread in the hands of the apostles did not decrease, did not become exhausted, until everyone was given as much as was needed to be satisfied? I believe that if there were thirty thousand or more incomparably people, then five or seven loaves would be enough to satisfy them. But will not the Body and Blood of Christ be sufficient for the saturation, enjoyment and sanctification of the entire human race? Our spirit is contained in the body, and therefore it seems to occupy a small, definite place; That’s why it’s not always easy for us to imagine God as omnipresent, as the All-Perfect Spirit. After the fall of our bodily shell, this omnipresence will be explained to us, because our soul will then not be constrained by the prison, the shackles of the body. Your love for God is fickle, but God’s love for you is always the same, constant, unchanging. Therefore, when you find your heart cold towards God, unfaithful, do not imagine that God has also grown cold towards you. The omnipresence of the Lord explains how He at one and the same time dwells or rests in millions of Christian souls, in thousands of Christian churches, in thousands and other places where two or three are gathered in His name [Matt. 18.20]. He embraces, surrounds us, always looks at us with His brightest eyes of the sun, but we often do not notice Him with the eyes of our souls, we consider Him as if far from ourselves. The Lord is near. Torment after a vague and hasty, intermittent reading should be looked upon as God’s punishment. Today I was embarrassed from incredulity when reading the last prayers in the Sacrament of Baptism and, from haste, I stumbled and did not read the last prayers; That’s why my heart was wounded by a sharp arrow and was wounded until I realized in the depths of my soul my sin, and I recognized my sin as it should, having been admonished by the Lady. Namely, I realized that I had extremely offended not only the shrine of the Sacrament of Baptism, but also the Shrine of the Body and Blood of my Savior, which had just been received inside during the liturgy and rejoiced me with the joy of the Holy Spirit; I realized that, although I had the strength to resist my weakness, I could not resist due to inattention, due to lack of zeal. It is remarkable that as soon as I felt my sin in the depths of my heart, I immediately felt at ease, immediately the mercy of the Lord poured out on me. The Lord is the Judge of the thoughts and thoughts of the heart: you need to behave carefully everywhere, especially when performing holy services or the holy Sacraments. Why the suffering of the God-man? So that we can rest forever? Why did the Life-Giver taste death? In order to deliver eternal life to us, the spiritual dead. From the height of His Divine throne He looked down upon the eternal bliss of the Angels, then from heaven He looked down upon the sight of all the sons of men [Ps. 32.13] – so what? Death reigned over them, and the tormentor the devil tyrannized over them, endless torments awaited them, and yet man in the beginning was diminished in a small way from the Angels and was created capable of enjoying eternal bliss; So the Lord came in the form of a man to restore to people the ability they had lost for eternal bliss, having fallen from life to this one. How can we recognize the lying breath of the devil in us? The devil usually attacks generally known and generally revered persons and objects of faith: the Divinity, His economy of salvation, the Sacraments, His saints, etc. He tries to suspect what constitutes the everlasting, inalienable property of the Church and every faithful Christian, and snatch from us, like a dog a sweet piece from the hands of a baby. In the temptations of the devil even now, as in the temptation of the first people, one can clearly hear an insidious question: did God truly say?.. [Gen. 3.1] or: did the Church truly say? - that is, he always tries to instill doubt about the immutable, the truest: did God really say this? The devil is now making strong inroads about eternal torment; regarding the decrees of the Church. Did he really say that? What does this mean?.. I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly [glory: more] [Jn. 10.10]. Thus, this voice is heard from Thy tomb, Sweetest Jesus; Even while you are resting in the tomb, you tell us: I am dead and have belly fat [Jn. 10.10]. ABOUT! Indeed, we have life through Your coming, and we have it more and more abundantly. Let us listen to the voice of the chosen humanity, how it feels with You. More and more glory to You, Lady! I prayed to You to pacify my heart, troubled by demonic fear, during Matins before the time of reading the final prayer: Who can do anything... and You pacified him, hastened to help me, the faint-hearted one. As if in desecration of the good deeds of the Sweetest Lord, the very members with which He performed good deeds for suffering humanity were ulcerated. The head that thought [only] about our salvation, about fulfilling the will of the Father, is crowned with thorns, pierced with a reed; the face, always brightened by meekness and humility, is spit upon and strangled by unclean hands; the lips are drunk with alcohol; the ribs, which concealed a heart that ached for us with love as strong as death, were perforated; hands stretched out to heal the blind, deaf, dumb, dry, to raise the dead, were pierced with nails; the feet, which so carefully hurried to preach about the Kingdom of Heaven, were also pierced with nails. Love Incarnate, the Sweetness of human souls, is all ulcerated, there is neither form nor greatness in Him [Isa. 53.2 ]; His appearance is dishonorable! Behold, the Lamb of God, slain for us! But don’t we also swear at our Savior, at His good deeds? We also swear; we also strike Him with the reed; we also pierce His hands and feet; we also spit in His face; We hit Him on the cheeks too. How? Let's explain. O material passions! As soon as you touch my heart, it becomes hard for me. O spiritual, holy affections! As soon as you enter my heart, I feel at ease. With God’s help, I will give up all attachment to material things and love God and my neighbors above all else. Glory to the Most Merciful Lord, Glory to the Mother and Virgin! I asked for a great blessing - to read the prayer behind the pulpit at the Presanctified Liturgy without stumbling, which I could not read properly for a long time - and today I read it safely; how much agony there was before from [stumbling] reading! God bless! When in prayer, especially before receiving the Holy Mysteries, your heart is deceitful and filled with unbelief, just make an effort to say with all your heart the words: Sweetest Jesus, save me, and living faith will fill your heart. Humanity of all times and places falls before the Savior, weeps at His feet about their sins - and receives pardon, proven by peace of heart. Brethren! This day is the day of betrayal for the suffering and death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Faithful souls, noble, sublime souls, able to appreciate and feel the greatest self-sacrifice for the salvation of your Lord and Friend! From now on, guard your heart most carefully for Him alone and do not let anything worldly, corruptible, or any passion take possession of it. Prove that you also know how to respond to love with love, that you are true Christians and, out of love for Christ, you can stay vigil with Him for at least a few hours, that is, watch over your heart, during which He alone drank the Cup of heavenly wrath for us. Bring by faith into your hearts Christ the Lord, who suffers for us; suffer there, in your heart, with Him; Bring your sins to memory, lament and, if you can, weep for them: weep for yourself 26, the Divine Sufferer tells us [Lk. 23, 28 ]; send your sighs and tears to Christ - and this will be the most pleasant sacrifice to the Lord who suffers for us. He will not hesitate to reward her immediately with spiritual peace and heavenly quiet joy that surpasses all understanding. Having been cleansed of your sins this coming evening, tomorrow you will be honored to partake of His Body and Blood: may this supper of love unite you with Him who commanded it to be celebrated in His remembrance, and may it give you the strength to spend the coming great days holy, in the spirit of fiery love for the Lord, who is coming to suffer for us. Amen. The never-ending worm, about which the Lord speaks in the Gospel, even here on earth, shows all its hellish torment, sharpening our heart (when we, for example, are devoted to some passion). And God knows what we would be willing to give just to get rid of him. Just as we see the firstfruits of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth - in peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, so we see the firstfruits of eternal torment in sorrow, crampedness and longing of the heart. What a wise dispensation of Providence, so irrefutably and powerfully assuring us of little faith! Yes, there will certainly be a never-ending worm and an unquenchable fire. When sins, like worms, sucked the heart of one man and he found no peace from them, he turned to Christ, Who alone has the power to forgive sins; fell to Him with tears, begged, cried out to Him for their forgiveness; the worms of the heart disappeared, the heart became light - so what? The healer soon dared to say that he received healing from heart disease not from the Physician of our souls - the Lord, but somehow by accident. Oh, the deceit of the heart! Oh, ingratitude! Thus, when the king’s wrath weighs down on a person, he trembles, grieves, and is distressed; but when the king forgives him, has mercy on him, he often quickly forgets and says that he did not receive great mercy from the king, that he should have been forgiven. They always err in heart [Heb. 3.10]. The error of the heart is very dangerous for the soul. It consists of unbelief, ingratitude to God’s mercies, pride and other passions, and hardening of the heart. The cave was sometimes kindled by the Seven, but the pious three youths were not cooked in it by fire. Oh, great miracle! Cast iron, copper, silver, gold and other metals, solid in their essence, are transformed into liquid by the power of fire and become fluid from solid ones, but the bodies of the venerable youths in the furnace, lit seven times, were not damaged in the least. I was in a foundry and saw how gray cast iron, thrown into a furnace, melted in it and then flowed into the hole in a fiery stream. If it is not the light, solid metal that makes material fire liquid, flowing, fire-like, then the fire of the grace of the Holy Spirit will not soften the heart of stone itself, if this heart is given over to it like metal to fire? Will it not make him warm, bright and pure from cold, dark and unclean? Yes, we have seen many examples of this. What will I bring as a gift to the Lady for Her merciful protection of me, a sinner, for Her speedy hearing of my sinful prayers? During the Lenten services, I asked Her for peace to my troubled heart and to carry out the services without stumbling - and I received mercy from Her. O Most Swift Intercessor! Do not abandon me with Your help in the future, but always listen to me, a sinner, and help me, the weak. Realize yourself in time: the devil wants to deprive you of love. The Lord punishes me terribly for the passionate movements of my heart; the mortal vessel of my body cracks from the blows of His rod: the consuming and painfully destroying fire then rages within me and, like flax, threatens with imminent destruction. Root the following in your heart with living faith: I am a slave, and a fallen one, a guilty one; I have the Lord of my life and my God, the Supreme Judge and my Savior; I will always ask for His mercy, I will always humble myself before Him and will not allow myself to become arrogant with any of the people, especially with Him, the Master. Behold, the servant of the Lord. Remember often the words of the Savior: the thief does not come unless he steals and kills and destroys: I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly [glory: lishe] [Jn. 10.10]. The thief - the devil - always steals and destroys: you know this; but the Savior gives life, and even more gives life. You know that too. When praying publicly, so that there is humility, faith and love in the heart - what is in the heart is also on the tongue; against the devil it is good to use irresistible persistence, that is, if, for example, he confuses and hurries, do not rush at all and try to calm yourself as best you can, stopping in silence after pronouncing one or two words. It is a well-known truth that what is not in the heart and thoughts is not in the tongue; there is no faith in the heart and thoughts - there is none in the tongue; There is no oral prayer either, sometimes even if someone is strengthened without faith, due to the obligation to say a prayer. God's wondrous dispensation. Why have you come so early, my enemy? Why are you waking me up? Then, to prove to me your sad existence, to the evil of God’s creatures? I know that you exist. This is not the first time, uninvited guest, you come to me. I know you, unfortunately. Or to make me feel like I owe you? I cry and weep that I owe you, and I pray to the Lord that I will not be your debtor, at least after death, so that I may die with complete hatred of you. Be gone, thief, who comes and steals and kills and destroys [Jn. 10.10]. The Lord, seeing the fickleness and changeability of my heart, allows the devil to tempt me and torment my heart, which cannot stand in faith and truth - so that it cleaves more closely to the Lord, Who alone has my deliverance, peace and joy. Thank the Lord! Glory to Thee, Climbed Voevodo, Queen Theotokos! With your help and intercession, I do not hesitate in prayer from the devil’s excuses. When going out to the people to read prayers, always make a heartfelt and bodily bow to the local icon of the Mother of God. What does it mean that I suffer torment when I am untrue, deceitful, or do some evil, and I am blissful when I stand in the truth, am simple in heart, trusting, and do good? This means that the Highest of all, a morally free, spiritual Being is constantly with me, Who imputes good and evil to me, rewarding me for one, punishing for another, Who responds to my thought with His thought, to my feeling with His feeling. From now on, do not rush when reading, but instill truths in your heart through calm reflection. Communion of the Body and Blood of my Lord establishes and maintains peace in me with myself and with God: without them I perish. Experience. The Lord is present with us as a thought, as spiritual light, as love, delighting and resting the heart, as sweetness, as peace. That’s why when you sincerely think about some truth (legal), it feels pleasant and easy for you; when you love (according to the law), you feel sweet. Acquire love and you will acquire everything; He who has not acquired love has not acquired anything. If you try your best not to stumble in public prayer and pray to the Lord and His Most Pure Mother for help in your weakness, and then you still stumble, do not get excited and do not be discouraged, but humble yourself and sincerely admit your weakness. Today I did this, and although I [hurried] and stumbled, the Lord had mercy on me, saving me from torment. With the torment of the heart from unbelief and the fear of demons associated with it, there is only one hope - for the sign of the cross, made with living faith, for sincere, humble and contrite prayer, and most of all - for the life-giving Mysteries. Why does the tongue sometimes stop in prayer? Why does the hand on the clock stop? Because the inside of the watch becomes dirty or damaged, for example, the wheel, drum or hair is damaged. Likewise, the tongue in prayer, as happens with some, stops because the interior of the human being—the heart—is clogged or damaged; when, for example, the heart is deceitful, filled with unbelief, according to the Apostle, or when enmity or other impurities enter into it. Language is, in some way, the same thing in a person as the hands on a clock. The arrow proves the internal movement of the clock - and the tongue is the herald or advocate of the heart and thought, the herald of what is happening inside, what fills the heart. Therefore, the Savior says: what comes out of the mouth... this defiles a person, for from the heart come evil thoughts... adultery, fornication [Matt. 15.18–19] and so on. Hitherto there was a great flaw in your prayer: you wanted to receive what you asked for at once and, not receiving it right away, weakened in faith and prayer; From now on, pray constantly, relentlessly, with increasing faith: knock, and it will be opened to you [Matt. 7.7]. (Dream. Mother of God at the gates of the church with a palm branch in blue clothes.) The Savior has filled my whole life and is filling it with His blessings: one part of it is without my consciousness of it, the other with a weak consciousness of it, and the third, flowing, with my clear consciousness of it, so that daily and obviously He performs miracles of His goodness and His salvation in me, and should I not remember with gratitude about my Savior, should I not always resort to Him with undoubted faith? When you pray to the Lord, at the head of your prayer, to strengthen your faith, put all the heavenly powers, prophets, apostles, martyrs, saints and righteous people - and, guided by their host, their faith, pray yourself with their faith, hope and love. Experience has taught me that to the extent that through faith I see the Lord with the eyes of my heart, I easily read prayers in the ears of the people; As soon as I lose sight of Him, I begin to feel burdened or embarrassed and stammer. And the enemy is not asleep here. God! If it is You, command me to come to You on the water [Matt. 14.28]. Come, said the Lord to Peter; and he walked on the waters, but then he doubted and began to drown. The same thing happens with priests of little faith. Prayers are the water through which we walk to the Savior. If we walk along them with faith, then we walk calmly, evenly, easily, but when we hesitate, we begin to drown in them (mind, heart and tongue), and if faith is completely choked in us by confusion, then we can completely drown in prayerful words. This may be at public prayer. When the enemy attacks you, run under the wing of Christ: there is only one salvation. There are countless incomprehensible things on earth in everything that I see, and very much I must accept by faith - Will I expose the Heavenly Mysteries to the action of reason? No, I must believe them unquestioningly, without reasoning: they are life-giving for me - what more? So that I know, I believe, that the light of my mind is from God, the Lord often punishes me with darkness of mind; and so that I know that the spaciousness of the heart is from Him, He strikes me through the invisible enemy with heaviness and confusion of the heart. Hear the accusatory voice of the Lord from the prophet: what unrighteousness did your fathers find in Me? [Jer. 2.5]. And this accusatory question also comes to you. What sin have you ever found in the Lord God? He is the most faithful Friend. The apostles, by the very continuation of their existence, not to mention their closeness to God and great holiness, alien to change, are worthy of our high respect. Yesterday a thought came to me about my insignificance, namely: that I had recently emerged into existence from the expired moisture - and I picked it up, and I put it on my heart, and began to warm and nourish it, and it brought me the sweet fruit of humility. The heart became strong and calm from humility; The evil one did not twist them, did not push into the soul with his outrageous thoughts of unbelief, blasphemy and deceit. I will plant humility in my heart and will live and rest in it, and will not leave it, despite the fears of the evil spirit; May I settle Christ within myself and follow Him as a stronghold, putting down all the tricks of the fallen spirit against me, diligently and unremittingly seeking my destruction. The truth of God requires that those who pray with all their hearts be heard. He is faithful who said: With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7.2]. You gave God your heart in prayer - and He will give Himself to you. Or: Ask, and it will be given to you [Matt. 7.7; OK. 11.9]. The current of universal life, the emergence and disappearance of private lives, silently cries out for the Life-Giving Spiritual Principle, eternal, ever-living, and the presence of reason and free will in people, initially hidden and then gradually revealed, proves that this Principle is rational and free, righteous, holy. Christian! Turn to God more often in your life, like a son to the Father, like a servant to the Lord, like a creature to the Creator. If you feel the mercies of God on yourself, run to the Father and thank Him with all your heart: every perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of lights [Jas. 1.17 ]; in misfortune, humble yourself and give thanks again: the Lord punishes whomever he loves [Heb. 12.6 ]; early and late, morning and evening, day and noon - always keep the Heavenly Father in your thoughts. The Holy Guardian Angel powerfully, lightly, sweetly pointed out to me in a state of light sleep after waking up in the morning the example of the Lord Savior, Who for the sake of love for us, truth and righteousness labored all my life, knowing no rest, suffered and died for us; gave me a strong and sweet feeling that He fully sympathizes with all people who labor on earth for the sake of truth and goodness and look at Him, and blesses them, and prepares crowns of immortality for them (the Angel’s suggestion was after my thoughts about Mary of Egypt as first a great sinner, and then a great righteous woman, whose great sins and zealous conversion are shown as an example to us: how long-suffering and merciful the Lord is and with whom With love He accepts those who come to Him from the sinful path). God! Be it with me too. When the thought and heart are chained by faith, so to speak, to the Savior, then a person is both calm and blessed, and when the thoughts and heart are not in the Savior, then there is heaviness and darkness in the heart. Experience. It is remarkable that some hostile force in prayer greatly prevents us from sincerely uniting our thoughts and hearts with Christ, and even obviously tries to remove us from Him and keep us in our bleak, terrible captivity. But who is the enemy of Christ if not Belial? Because it's his business. When during prayer you feel that your heart is deceitful against your will, full of unbelief and pride, do not be indignant at this and do not at all bow to its deceit: it is the devil who is inclining you to spiritual fornication with himself. Also, when you notice confusion and fear in yourself, do not be embarrassed by this: this is also the action of the spirit of darkness, fear inclining you to wander with itself. Be strong and introduce humility and faith into your heart as deeply as possible, look steadily to the Lord and expect His mercy - He will certainly visit you and drive away the enemy; you yourself will feel it in peace and sweetness of heart. What, do you [love]? Look into your heart more often and find out if there is love in it. Don't forget this. Also remember that all passion is deceptive. Experience. If it were not for your wife, you would have reached the most ridiculous, humiliating crisis of passions. She is your earthly Angel, your guardian; it protects you from many bad consequences. Eat as much as you like: let’s not be poor. The Lord will not leave us for love. And if we are poor, you will help as much as you can. God looks at the heart of the person who prays. See also, during prayer, pay all attention to your heart and try to pray without fail with your heart. Man sees on the face, but God... on the heart [1 Sam. 16.7]. In order to quietly, without embarrassment, read church prayers to you, behave quietly everywhere: at home, be quiet and meek with everyone and outside the house - with everyone; walk quietly, speak quietly - in a word, be quiet everywhere and in everything. The main thing is to be quiet and meek internally: when there is internal silence, there will be external silence. When in (church) prayers you ask God for any benefits for others - your spiritual flock, ask for them (benefits) as sincerely as you would ask for them for yourself. The shepherd especially needs to love his flock with the most sincere love; you must, so to speak, always carry them in your heart and, like the mother of a baby, warm them there with the constant prayer of faith and love. The love of the shepherd for his flock in the saints of God, or, better, the love of the Holy Spirit of God acting in them, found what to ask God for for them (in morning and evening prayers, and especially in prayers of the liturgy, also in prayers during the celebration of all the Sacraments and other prayers). And the love of an ordinary shepherd will always find, in addition to the objects of prayer set forth in the Church Missal, Breviary, Canon and other books, its own objects of prayer; love will reveal many needs in the flock, for the satisfaction of which (needs) he will consider it necessary to appeal to the Giver of all goods. My heart is crappy, weak, flexible, changeable. And he needs to be hard and motionless, like an anvil. Such was the heart of the saints of God. Their heart was firmly and motionlessly established in faith, hope and love. This firmness of heart was discovered by them in the feats of martyrdom and in the most prolonged - throughout their lives - mortification of their flesh and their passions. Their hearts were real adamant. God! Grant me, a sinner, the grace of a strong heart! What a miracle I am now what I am! My grandfather was unenlightened, my father was also unenlightened, but I received an abundance of mental light! How did I become what my parent and grandfather were not? They couldn't give me what they didn't have themselves. My benefactor, Lord Jesus! I know You. I do not conceal Your good deeds. Your goodness has made me what I am. Treasure of the good! Heavenly King, Comforter, Soul of Truth! I reverently kiss Your right hand, which always benefits me. There is some kind of evil principle in us that strives to separate even that which is inseparable, that which is eternally one: the Son from the Father and the Spirit from the Father and the Son, and starting with the Divine Trinity and that which is created from Her, which should be one in spirit and should not be separated, that is, the human race - from God and them among themselves. This separation is painful: the heart feels it, but is unable to help itself. And the union is sweet, life-giving (with God of people and among themselves). That is why love is a union of perfection; that is why it leads to mutual union and bliss. The heart also feels this. A prayer of faith to the Lord or a petition with faith has always healed me from the ferocity of passions. The son knows that he has a father above him, loves him and obeys him in everything; the slave knows that there is a master over him, and fears him and obeys him; the subject knows the king and reveres him and carefully performs royal duties. Will the priest, as a child, as a slave, as a servant, as a creature of the Lord God, forget that there is a Lord above him, and will not constantly turn to Him with prayers of faith, hope and love? Will he not reverence Him in every place, he who does everything in His name, great and terrible? I am, and as if I am not 27: because mine is so recently. Who can deny that an invisible, spiritual principle lives in us - the soul, which is sometimes anxious, sometimes calm, sometimes tormented, sometimes rejoicing; then it experiences sorrow, crampedness and heaviness, which do not pass even at night, then joy, calmness and lightness... And if so, who will deny the reality beyond the grave and eternal torment? Learn to understand the words of your heart: when you understand and fulfill them, you will be blessed. In the thought of my insignificance I find peace and delight in my heart, because after self-contrition the Lord rises in me - and the Lord is the peace and sweetness of our hearts. Savior - things Truth. And I am one of those things. Brethren! When praying, do not weaken in prayer: not a single heartfelt sigh of yours, not a single sincere, kind and holy feeling will be lost for the Lord; if you try to keep it in your heart, the Lord of our life is always with us: He sees and hears everything, He sees and hears all the thoughts of the heart; we live and move in Him, and He knows absolutely everything in [and around] us. That He is with us always and in every place, this is easy for you to verify even by experience: you are good in your soul - and you feel good, peaceful, easy, joyful; you are not good - and you certainly feel somehow bad, awkward, unpleasant, hard, restless. What does it mean? This means that when you are good at heart, then the Lord is with you, in your heart, then He is your Father, and you are His good children; you yourself then feel that God is your Father: in your heart every now and then you hear a voice: Abba, Father [Rom. 8.15; Gal. 4:6]. And when you are evil in your soul, then the Lord comes out of your evil heart, because how can light deal with darkness, how can good deal with evil? Then you are not of God and not with God, but of him who is darkness and the first evil; you know his name. And how he is a murderer from the beginning [Jn. 8:44], then he enters our heart when we become evil in order to rob our soul of all good and kill and destroy it forever; often he succeeds. Then, that is, when a person himself bows to his side and does not listen to anyone’s good advice or reproofs, it becomes terribly difficult for such a person: he prematurely carries hell in his chest, he is cunning towards everyone, double-minded, crafty, and angry. God save every Christian and every person from this. Why does the evil one enter into us? Because we keep in our heads, in our hearts we nourish and warm bad thoughts, bad wishes, various passions: hatred, envy, pride and other sins. Beware, brethren, of being bad, unkind, unclean in your soul, otherwise the evil one will take possession of you and destroy you; on the contrary, try by all means to always have good thoughts and feelings, be humble, try to be kind to each other with brotherly love, not envious, not covetous - and the Lord will rest in your hearts. How long shall I insult the Lord? How long should I torture myself? How long should I be embarrassed when reading prayers? Finally, find out what God wants from you, what does your torment mean? Damn az! I have often imagined... deceitful [1 John. 1:10] God and looked for evidence of His words, did not want to take His word. A white towel gets dirty terribly quickly, and black clothes get dirty almost imperceptibly or not. So it is with the soul. Whitened by repentance, the pure soul now feels the dust of sin being crushed, and the soul living in sins does not notice how sins stick to sins. My torment, truly hellish, passed from communing with the Presanctified Gifts. O my Lord, terrible in anger and wondrous in mercy, have mercy on me, save me from all sin! Before reading your prayers, take a heartfelt breath and say to yourself: I am a sinner! You need to fix your head, otherwise there is chaos in it; for the devil, the father of all disorder, such a head is free: he knows how to command such a person - he just spins, poor thing. The Lord is the King of the ages: he was predicted in the Old Testament, he appeared in the New Testament and receives worship from everyone throughout the ages. When thoughts of pride and unbelief disturb your soul, focusing you exclusively on yourself and rejecting the Author of every creature, then mentally go inside yourself, look with your intelligent eyes at the internal functions of your body, starting with the circulation of blood to digestion and its ejection, and ask yourself: Whose mania does all this obey? From whom is this wise order that supports your life? Also: Who clothed you with skin and flesh, and sewed you together with bones and sinews? Whose breath do you have, without which you cannot live for even a few minutes? The work of Whose wisdom is this bodily composition in which your proud, unfaithful soul dwells? You did not build yourself, and you will not destroy yourself, but you must certainly destroy yourself: you will not live in the body forever. My God! How blind is the proud man! What a stupid, short-sighted infidel! Fear!!! There is an evil spirit of insomnia: it nests in the pit of the stomach and turns out to be a melancholy that does not allow you to sleep. Doubt, unbelief, nasty, crafty and blasphemous thoughts are not the property of the human soul, but the work of an evil spirit, therefore there is no need to pay attention to all such moments in the life of our soul, much less be embarrassed by them, but when they are found, immediately realizing where they come from, neglect them and cling more firmly with mind and heart to the truth, as to the mother who gave birth to us and our constant nourisher and comforter. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth [1 Tim. 3.15]. Like her, our heart, as the Church of the Living God, must also be a pillar and stronghold of truth, against which every enemy of lies must be broken. In your early youth, you were insignificant in rank, had nothing, knew nothing, so that later, having become noble, and possessed, and knowledgeable, you glorified God, who gave you all this, so that the abundance of God’s power and goodness, and not your efforts and labors, could be seen on you. With your own labors you would not have gone further than the sphere in which you were born, or you would have gone lower. In parallel with this, put your physical age: how insignificant you were at first, and now... And sleep is God's gift. Therefore, when you are unworthy of God’s mercy for your sins, sleep will flee from you, or your sleep will not be peace, but torment for you: even in your sleep you will be disturbed by the images of your sins. By the grace of the Lady, on Saturday of the first week of Lent, I successfully, without confusion, read the prayers for communion in the hearing of the people. In my early youth, my thought was more constant, brighter and stronger regarding the learned truths of faith, but now it is fickle, more dark and powerless from impurity, from the powerlessness of the heart. At all ages, the devil places special obstacles to piety in accordance with the circumstances, inclinations and characteristics of each person. When you hold the most pure Body of Your Lord during the Liturgy, there will be two bodies before your eyes: one is the Body of Christ in the form of bread, and the other is the body of your hand; just as your Body was borrowed from the earth - from the earthly body of the Most Holy Theotokos, so yours is from the earth - from the earthly body of your mother: the Creator of both is one Lord. Just as your body became a body by Divine omnipotence, so the Body of Christ in the form of bread became a Body by Divine omnipotence. Just as God hitherto creates people with His omnipotence and wisdom (Thy hands have created me [Ps. 119:73]) in the wombs of mothers, so He hitherto creates His Body from bread in Himself, omnipresent, according to His goodness and omnipotence for our sanctification and salvation. Savior. How full of reality (essentiality) and life this word is. Millions of people (not to mention the Angels) at the present moment (not to mention other minutes, hours, days, months, years, centuries) are blessed from one humble, sincere thought about Him, from one living faith in Him, not to mention those who are devoted to Him with all their hearts, whose bliss is indescribable. Glory to Thee, Savior; pleasant myrrh is Your name, the sweetness of our hearts! I, like Thomas, believe in the Lord as I should only when I put my hand into His wounds, when my insides are poured and life-givingly warmed by His most pure Blood, when I feel from it in my heart the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4:7], and even then, when during prayer heavenly sweetness enters the heart. You believed because you saw Me; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed [John. 20.29]. Don’t be discouraged when at times you feel uneasy inside: it often comes from bad weather, from your stomach. A person who begins to build a great and complex building under the guidance of a wise and experienced architect, who alone can give the necessary strength and correctness to this building, will he really be so crazy that he will leave the architect at the very beginning or in the middle of the work and will himself manage the work and its direction, without knowing the point of it? But this is precisely the building of the salvation of our souls. So, be devoted all your life to the great Architect - God, so that you do not ruin your works and so that your building does not fall down and crush you with its weight. You yourself are ignorant, blind in this matter. Let the Lord dispose of your life and do not grumble at His orders if it seems to you that He is not building your building as you would like. He knows perfectly well what to do: where to add lime and where to put what kind of stone - where large and heavy, and where small and light, where to pour more lime and where less. The Lord sometimes comes to me tangibly - in a voice of subtle coolness, 28 light and pleasant, sometimes in peace and joy and sometimes in sweet tears of contrition; and the spirit of malice also perceptibly comes - in the suffocating, heavy air of despair, in murderous cowardice and fearfulness of the heart without any obvious reason, in soul-killing self-humiliation and distrust, in a poisonous melancholy in the pit of my stomach, in thoughts of unbelief, blasphemy, wickedness, impurity, etc. The Lord is always near me - and the devil is not far away. Grant me, Lord, to always look to You with my eyes, and to drive away the evil one who comes to me by always remembering You, the All-Good and All-Powerful. When you read the memorials, remember that under each name hides an immortal soul in need of pardon and repose; place each name on your heart and warm it with the heartfelt prayer of faith, so that the God of love, seeing the prayer of love, will accept into His peace those who need His peace. Do not abuse the power of attorney and donations from living relatives, friends and acquaintances of the deceased. The Lord entrusted His verbal sheep to your prayers during the Sacraments and other services and prayers - to propitiate the Lord for them, to revive and sanctify them, or to bring down heavenly blessings on them. Be attentive to your prayers: you are doing the greatest, most sacred, most beneficial work on earth. Don’t forget, don’t be careless, lest the heavenly curse strike you. God is an avenging God, a God of vengeance. A vain and vain person is embarrassed and blushes with shame when a tattered or soiled part of his clothing is exposed; From this it is clear that he wants to appear. A vain person is afraid to speak and does not trust himself in his words, believing that he will be condemned immediately when he says something out of place. Countless works of human minds, the most conscientious, sincere, are directed towards the Divine, like radii to the center of a circle or like intelligent rays to the mental Sun, with a necessity innate in souls. So strong, universal, innate is the conviction in the existence of God in the largest and best part of the human race. (This should be said about all the truths and promises revealed to humanity in the word of God.) Lord! Inexhaustible in means to do us good, to satisfy us with Your temporary blessings! I am amazed at Your wisdom, I glorify Your goodness! Grant me 29 hope in the shelter of Your wing [Ps. 62.8] and never be faint-hearted about perishable things. So that you can always be firmly confident in the success of your heartfelt prayer, for example, for health and salvation, as well as for the repose of the persons for whom you offer prayer to God, remember how faithfully and constantly the Lord fulfills your prayer, for example, for the remission of your sins, when you, having sinned, bring a heartfelt, especially tearful, prayer to God. How many times has peace and joy of heart and sweet tenderness testified to you that God has heard your prayer! Pray about everything with faith and hope in God’s mercy; sincere prayer never remains fruitless, both for others and for you. For example, you prayed for the healing of NN’s wife, who was seriously ill, and look what a miracle happened to her the next day after your prayer: your prayer moved her, who was completely dead, to prayer; everyone around her was surprised where such a wonderful power came from, what kind of power moved her to prayer. And this power was your prayer. Give glory to God [Jn. 9:24 ]: all knowledge, all good actions 30 you owe to the Lord God. Although it seems not so noticeable, it is so. Take a large tree apart into layers: how many layers you will see here, how harmoniously and wisely layer after layer copulated until, finally, a tree was formed. The appearance of the tree hides from our eyes the wise formation and layering of it, but when you tear it apart, then this layering is visible, the increment of layer to layer. Likewise, your inner, spiritual education is not noticeable at first glance; but if you analyze your spiritual life, made up of past and present, if you delve into your gradual education, then you will notice how the all-wise Builder of your salvation laid in you knowledge after knowledge, deed after deed, perfectly arranged all the circumstances of your life, how wisely He layered your spiritual life into a great tree. The only difference is that the tree was exclusively formed by God, and your education was with the participation of your freedom, under the guidance of Providence; God healed or cut off the bad things brought by your freedom, but He watered and grew the good things. Translate this to the body. The spirit of unbelief is also the spirit of stubbornness, malice, blasphemy, confusion and fear and, therefore, an evil spirit. Contrast the speed of the enemy’s attack with the speed of your mental and heartfelt gaze towards God; do not for a moment allow yourself to be carried away by his deception, but look to the Lord. We ourselves are extremely sensitive to the slightest insults, and when we ourselves insult God every day, even with important sins, we do not feel this except upon the awakening of our conscience, when it begins to reproach and torment us for our sins. Long-suffering Lord, have mercy on us! Either faith and sweetness, or unbelief and torment - choose one of the two. Only from the Lord, through heartfelt prayer, do I receive the strength to serve without stumbling. If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ, says the Apostle [Gal. 1.10]. So you will never be Christ’s servant if you please people. Proud! You recognize yourself as wiser than God when you murmur against Him, why He treats you this way and not otherwise, why He doesn’t help you when you ask Him for help. O blind man! How long will you be so blind that you will not submit to God completely in all the circumstances of your life? How long will you admit that you are right, while you are full of sins and iniquities? Inscribe, carry and keep in your heart the word love constantly and align all your deeds with it. Then your ways will be right, otherwise you will have no order in anything. Remember that in comparison with love, everything is of little value. If, in prayer, sins are expressed to the Lord from the bottom of a contrite heart and abundant tears are shed, then He amazingly delights and calms the soul. The soul can be as pure as snow or a wave. If your sins be... 31 [Isa. 1.18]. Sprinkle me... [Ps. 50.9]. During every divine service or religious service, at home and on the street, say to yourself internally: the Heavenly King, His Most Pure Mother, the Heavenly Host are looking at me (and they, for sure, always see you: walls do not block us from immaterial minds) and all the saints, and try to behave as holyly as possible, as carefully as possible. Seeing the constant use of your property for your needs, say to yourself: the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away [Job. 1.21 ]; let it be a constant sacrifice to the Lord. Despise everything on earth. My enemy! You see how merciful my and your Lord are: why are you bothering me? If I sin, I will repent and again receive forgiveness. There is peace in my heart now, because I was reconciled with God and received remission of sins in tearful prayer. The Savior is my Life-Giver and Benefactor. When I anger Him, I suffer, I am destroyed internally; moreover, all the benefits, whatever they may be, no matter how they do not exist for me then. And when I am at peace with Him, then I walk in broadness, I feel calm, easy, joyful, and in everything I find innocent pleasure, everything seems to beckon me to joy. In church during prayer, as a precaution against embarrassment, imagine only God and yourself. And people are earth and ashes: there is nothing to think about them, that is, there is nothing to be afraid of them. If I, an evil person, know how to do good, then You, Lord, the Innumerable Blessing, how much more will You give good things if I ask them from You. If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him [Matt. 7.11]. Ask the Lord for blessings without any doubt, especially spiritual ones. Serving the Living God - the omnipresent, all-seeing, all-righteous, God of minds, we almost always forget and offend Him, serving Him as a non-Living God, distant from us and not all-seeing - God, it’s scary to say, as if he has no reason, who does not righteously judge our every act, word, thought, heart movement. The spirit is evil, insidious and crafty! Now I am finally convinced that all my confusion and fears during worship are your fault. Yesterday, with God's help, through the prayer of the Most Pure Mother and Forerunner, I overcame you, your fear and your hesitation - and now you, an arrogant slanderer, with your characteristic cunning, wanted to lead me into the sin of blasphemy and blasphemy against God through laughter during Vespers on some holiday, by dressing me in the sacred vestments of the late Archpriest Nektarevsky and Deacon Al. Taratin and placing me with them extraordinarily, outside the service, to be a listener and spectator of their disorderly, blasphemous service (and this is slander! The archpriest was distinguished by his reverent service, the deacon never allowed himself indecency during the service), in order to lead me into the sin of laughter; you see, he wanted to use the example of a superior and characteristic person to more conveniently incline me to sin. I, a sinner, grinned, but then immediately came to my senses and came to fear before God. Oh, vile, base slander and blasphemy! God! Arm me against the enemy with the weapon of faith! – the villain wants to capture someone else! oh, apostate 32!!! When I take communion with faith and serve without stumbling, without succumbing to the fear of demons, I spend the whole day wonderfully: it’s easy and fun for me; and when I stumble through fear in the service, I feel cramped and sorrowful all day long; neither prayers without tears, nor crosses relieve me of heartache. Unhappy man I am! Who will save me from this death? It’s good to be with the king all the time, but you need a lot of attention to yourself, you need to be careful in your speech and actions; You must always stand in line, everything must be clean and smooth, from the hair on your head to the boots on your feet. Likewise, it is good and sweet to be with the Heavenly King for a person, for example a priest, but attentiveness to oneself, to one’s thoughts, to one’s heart is an inevitable condition for this: the soul must always stand in line before the Heavenly Lord. It is bad when a courtier commits a crime before the king; the king punishes him either with a reprimand or something else every time he notices his guilt - and he has occasions to notice almost all of his actions. In the same way, bad things happen to those who serve the Heavenly King in the closest way and are guilty before Him: He punishes them often and strongly, which others who walk far from Him do not experience. The Lord punishes whomever he loves [Heb. 12.6]. He takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and live there [Lk. 11.26]. Yes, damned spirits, I feel that you are entering me and living in me. Hellish guests! May the power of the god cast you out! It is fitting to fear You alone, O Lord! In order not to be embarrassed at public prayer, kindle prayer in your heart; confusion - because an empty heart, not occupied with heartfelt faith and prayer, is taken over by demonic fear. Medical friends of humanity! Why are you silent and not loudly crying out to the people about the dangers of smoking tobacco? Don't you see how humanity is gradually corrupting its body with poisonous smoke and dying prematurely? Why do you not instill in him that smoke, a nitrogenous substance, should in no way be inhaled by the lungs, which were designed by the Creator only for inhaling and exhaling air? Don’t you see how in people who love to smoke a lot, the very face often becomes pale, lifeless, colorless, which proves the thinness of the body from excessively ingested smoke, the suffering of the lungs, the improper digestion of the stomach; and they themselves become lethargic, boring, painful at a time when they do not satisfy the introduced need? Why don't you show them many examples of death from consumption due to smoking tobacco? You have taken upon yourself to heal the material side of humanity (the body) - do your job, take care of the public good, otherwise the Lord will punish you for this negligence. Do not worry only about your own benefits, do not be proud, but think conscientiously about how to reduce the evil that has become common. Your words, especially if you speak together, will have power over the people. Do not pay attention to the fact that the interests of tobacco manufacturers or anyone else will suffer from this: people, their health, especially their soul […] with their body, is more valuable than all selfish calculations. ABOUT! What evil does this tobacco produce on the soul due to its close connection with the body! Which one, you ask? There's no need to ask. Look and you will see, or, better: you see it yourself. Tobacco has become a common need, and a greater need than food and drink: people resort to food and drink only three or four times a day, and many people resort to tobacco almost indefinitely; Use of tobacco smoke, especially among people who have a lot of free time, is extremely frequent. And isn’t all the time of smoking almost lost time for the soul, for satisfying its spiritual needs? For pious people, let us suppose, the very time of some sensual pleasures, for example, taking bodily food, is not time lost for God, for the soul, because a God-fearing and poisonous person, eating the Lord, gives thanks to God [Rom. 14:6], and he drinks to the glory of God. But when smoking tobacco, which is an impermissible whim, an imaginary, and not a real need, can there be thanksgiving to God? Wouldn’t it be blasphemy to give thanksgiving? You will say that even when smoking you can have good thoughts and feelings, even do things well - at a good hour. But I think differently: during the meal, the gastronomer only thinks that the table is amazingly good, tasty, that enjoying a beautiful table is a high pleasure, and, it’s true, at this time any spiritual pleasures do not come to his mind, just good thoughts and feelings, for example, let’s say the thought that while he eats beautifully and to the point of satiety, many of his brothers remain hungry, half naked, that one must have compassion for them, that they need to be helped, that he owes them help. Tabacopat (tabakopaf) goes almost hand in hand with the grocery store. Either please the flesh or please God – one of two things, but you can’t do both. And the snuff-eater caters to the flesh. The tobacco user, while smoking his favorite tobacco, is almost incapable of having any positive thoughts; does the thought occur to him that the money spent on tobacco, on this positively harmful potion, would be much better given to the poor who do not have a piece of bread; that he throws his money, perhaps very little, straight into the ground, depriving himself, perhaps, often of the most necessary things? ABOUT! How would that person reap abundantly in the future life if he distributed all the money spent on tobacco to the poor! And now, poor thing, he is bringing eternal fire on his own head. Yes, brothers. This fire in your cigarettes, cigarettes, pipes is a sure forerunner of the fire of hell, if you passionately and constantly kindle it. This is hangover drunkenness! This is not an exaggeration, but the pure truth. Just as the fire of wine in the womb of a drunkard is the forerunner of the eternal fire, so the fire in cigarettes, pipes and cigars of people passionately devoted to them is a sure forerunner of fire. Oh, satanic blindness and captivity of people! Where your treasure is, says the word of God, there your heart will also be [Matt. 6.21; OK. 12.34]. If tobacco is your favorite indulgence, your treasure, then your heart and thoughts certainly go with it. Meanwhile, the thoughts and hearts of people should turn most often to God, engage most of all with God, the Source of our life, in order to breathe into their nature, corrupted by sins, through faith His Divine life, the grace of heartfelt peace and joy. If the enemy inclines you to sin during public prayer through human fear, tell him: there is no one more terrible, more formidable than my Lord, marvelous in truth, the Punisher of human iniquities. If you are seduced by human praise for the work of God, say: the glory of man, like the flower of grass, soon disappears, but the glory of God is eternal; to accept glory from people means to lose the glory of God: they are already receiving, says the Savior, their reward [Matt. 6.2]. There is no one more glorious than my God. The obvious certainty of all the promises of God is from the experiences of their fulfillment in this life. For example, the Savior promised rest for the souls of all those people who, being burdened with sins and various sorrows, would flow to Him with faith and hope. So what? The promise is faithfully fulfilled over millions of people in one day, even in one hour: everyone who flows to Him in prayer with the burden of their sins throws off this unbearable weight from their hearts and feels a sweet lightness in their hearts. This is how all His promises or all the predictions spoken in the Gospel will be fulfilled exactly (the Second Coming, the Last Judgment, eternal torment, the Kingdom of Heaven). Just as a son who has committed an offense against his parents and is under their wrath finds everything unpleasant in his parents’ house, whereas before, when he was in their love and mercy, everything was pleasant, so exactly to a Christian man who has sinned before God, nothing is pleasant in the world, in this great house of God. The beauty of God’s world seems to not exist for him: he sees the stamp of sadness on everything, in everything he sees as if a reproach to himself. Experience has proven that he who does not love his neighbor cannot love God; An ungrateful person cannot be grateful to God. A limited, small, insignificant being, such as a person, needs to start from the limited, small and, with God's help, go to the less limited, to the highest. Do you have a wife, children, relatives? Learn to give them their due first and then you will be able to give due to all people and to God Himself. By being at enmity with someone, you insult Love, Which is God, and drive It out of yourself. Always look to Love - God, and praying with the Holy Spirit, keep yourself in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, into eternal life. The Lord is always faithful to delight the hearts of those who turn to Him with all their hearts; if only you are faithful, He always remains faithful: for He cannot deny Himself [2 Tim. 2.13]. As soon as you notice your unfaithfulness in anything before Him (and your conscience and inner confusion will now tell you about this), now turn to fidelity, remember your faithful Friend - and you will not be ashamed. The need for a person to have a Guardian Angel is revealed by the fact that every person is mercilessly pursued by evil spirits and seeks his destruction in every possible way. Be sober, be vigilant... [1 Pet. 5.8]. I feel within myself very clearly the actions of evil spirits, I know them from their fruits in me; but I also feel the quiet, light, sweet actions of the good Angels. During public prayer, you need to forget yourself and everything around you and think only about God. Internal torment convinces me of the need for a Savior and turns me to Him. Oh! My torment is undoubted, but my Savior is undoubted and unique - Christ. If during the day you had the misfortune to anger the Lord with some important sin and at evening prayer you sincerely repented of it with abundant tears, then your sleep throughout the night will be the most restful, quiet, pleasant, pure, holy dreams, and upon awakening you will not have a single dissatisfied, anxious and vague thought, on the contrary, holy, saving thoughts. You will feel an extraordinary calm throughout your entire being, like the deepest silence after a storm. It is obvious that the peaceful Angel, our faithful mentor, guardian of our souls and bodies, protects our bed with his actual presence, and this is the reason why dreams are pure, holy, why we feel such deep silence throughout our entire being and why, when we wake up, the first calming, holy thoughts come into our heads. But woe if you have not sincerely repented of your sin before going to bed: you will not taste a pleasant sleep; in a dream you will see only fears, you will often shudder, as if fiery arrows would tear apart your being. Fear the slightest enmity as if it were the most deadly poison: through it the enemy takes possession of us. God! Grant me eyes to see, ears to hear and a grateful heart. Always thank the Lord: He constantly shows you His mercies. After all, you know me, he sometimes says to each other. Contact me, and I will certainly help you, I will not refuse, I will give my soul for you, if necessary. In the same way, the Lord says to you: you already know Me, you have experienced My faithfulness many times in your misfortunes - turn only to Me, and I will certainly help you, I will not refuse; My omnipotence has no limits, there is no sorrow from which I could not deliver you. Call upon Me in the day of your sorrow, and I will exalt you... [Ps. 49.15]. The Lord should always be served with joy. You are the leader during worship. Be strong and take courage against invisible enemies. It is bad if the leader stumbles and falls. This will cause loss of spirit in those who pray. As you fast for Lent, be inspired by the example of the Lord, in whose imitation and glory you are fasting. During the service, do not worry about what people will say about you, but what the Lord God will say: before Him all people are nothing. Do not be ashamed of a person’s face during the service - for God’s service is. When your mind is darkened, your heart trembles and is embarrassed, your tongue falters, your lips become closed - then, apparently, you are not right before God with your heart, you dishonor Him with your heart, and therefore you yourself become dishonest: you get bogged down in the affairs of your heart. Humiliating Me will be dishonest. With demonic fear, now take on the fear of God’s inevitable punishment for demonic confusion and despondency and say to yourself: there is no one more terrible than my Lord. In order to lead us to repentance and silence, the Only Begotten Son of God, the Word of the Father and God said in His Gospel: repent. By this very thing He commanded not simply: repent once, but repent constantly, just as you constantly remain in sin. Because as long as you are in this life, in this body, as long as you live in this age, until then you will all sin unceasingly. Therefore, we must repent constantly and at all times, until our death, like criminals, like those accused and convicted. Cleanse yourself from your wickedness, which I hate, and from your vile deeds. Find out that I am a jealous God. I am the Son of God, I am the Light of the world (to all who know), I and the Father, according to the beginningless beginning, are one. I am the one who searches the hearts and the wombs and penetrates the brain. I know the number of the hidden bones; I have numbered all the hairs on the head, and I call the host of stars by name. I am the Creator of the universe, all the dust and sand of the sea are numbered with Me; I am an inexorable Judge, strong, righteous, impartial; I know all your secrets, I know them before the existence and birth of people themselves, and I will reward each according to his deeds and merits. Our Savior told us this as a threat. (Isaac the Syrian. About silence and silence and about a solitary life.) Have fraternal, sincere love for all authors when reading their writings and do not be proud, do not swear at them in your heart, do not say internally: this has long been known, or: I write better than them. The great-gifted God gave you a mind and a heart meaningfully, and to them too; and to many – in the most excellent measure. Remember that it is dangerous to be smarter than others: from everyone who has been given much, much will be required [Lk. 12.48]. It is better and safer to learn humbly from others: not many become teachers, knowing that we will be subject to greater condemnation [Jas. 3.1]. Don't scold the teacher; for there is only one Mentor, Christ [Matt. 23.10]. It is scary to be puffed up in heart before the holy mentors when reading their writings: since they wrote their writings by illumination and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in them, then the one who is puffed up in heart while reading them is proud before the Holy Spirit, resists the Comforter, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding. A person in whose heart passions nest is thoughtful, two-hearted, abrupt in his words, imprecise, and indecisive in his actions. He does the best deeds with coldness and double-mindedness: holy warmth of the heart is not given a place for passion. He often gets embarrassed when doing a really good deed if this deed is repeated often and takes a long time. On February 24th I was in Rambov - I buried the wife of priest Al. Ivanovich Sokolov. Arriving at one cemetery church, I was in a state of painful languor of heart, which comes from weak faith and the spirit of malice. Looking at the local icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God, I involuntarily looked at Her most pure, humble, serene, love-filled face and said to myself: what unearthly calmness is expressed on Your face, Most Pure One, and as if I heard from Her the following words, clearly echoing in my heart: what prevents you from having peace and tranquility in your heart? Don't you know where to look for them? After this, I turned my thoughts and hearts to the Source and Giver of peace - and immediately I found the desired peace and stood in peace throughout the entire service (mass). In Rambov I met an acquaintance - the most venerable priest Gabriel Markovich Lyubimov, who is remarkable for his work for the benefit of the peasants and peasant children of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. His whole life is spent in labors combined with constant self-sacrifice. How much he does to educate peasant children, to educate them in the rules of morality! What am I worth in comparison to him? What are my works? - Nothing. Dare I compare myself to him as a priest in any respect? Here is a man who does not live in vain, does not spend his days in vanity! And I am exercising the earth in vain. How can the Lord not cut me down like a barren fig tree! God! Save him and have mercy! There is no need to pay attention to the evil, nasty, blasphemous and unbelief thoughts inspired by the evil one during prayer: they are not imputed to us as sin. You need to calmly continue your work. Only an extremely inexperienced person in spiritual life can be outraged by satanic fears! The heart sometimes sleeps during prayer, only the mind acts weakly, but it needs to be awake. Why doesn’t doubt arise at home prayer and stop the tongue, but this happens at public prayer? Then the devil is only strong over me when there is no Christ in my heart. The life-giving Mysteries put my inner life in order, into a state of peace, which, in addition to the Mysteries, can be done by one fervent prayer or the most decisive living aspiration of thoughts and hearts to God with faith and hope. Glory to my God, truly and essentially present in the life-giving Mysteries! The touch of the life-giving Mysteries, received with faith and a grateful heart, is always life-giving for my soul. This is all the more palpable because some kind of force is often applied to my heart, confusing, poisonously gnawing and deadening the soul, and it always touches as a result of doubt, disbelief in the known truth: this last force is the power of the murderer of the devil. By their fruits, the Savior said, you will recognize them [Matt. 7.16]. Faith is sweet, peaceful, life-giving for the heart; unbelief is bitter, painful, murderous. Whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, whether you are heartily convinced or not, all services, prayers during services and all the Sacraments are an everlasting, unchanging, life-giving shrine. The light of faith disappears imperceptibly from the heart, as well as hope, love and all virtue, just as the Kingdom of God comes imperceptibly to a person - in his heart. Unbelief, despair, enmity, all sins and passions also enter the soul imperceptibly, gradually, easily. It is easy to lose the Kingdom of God, but more difficult to gain it. Therefore, you need to watch your heart with all your eyes. Moses calls paradise on earth a paradise of sweetness. And our current paradise of sweetness is Jesus, the Sweetest in the heart. A priest must have a sense of his own dignity, otherwise he will be low both in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. There is an area almost limitless in its space - an area of ​​needs and sorrows, inaccessible to the charitable activities of living people living in the world and who do not have the gift of spiritual, heavenly consolation. This entire area is full of invisible, but real, blessings sent down from God, His Most Pure Mother and His saints. The importance of heavenly help is great, and many do not want to resort to it due to pride and unbelief. If I partake of the life-giving Mysteries unworthily, with doubt, sin will throw me far from God, and I need a lot of tears and sighs in order to again draw closer to God and have boldness before Him. But if it is worthy, then I cleave to Him more firmly, I become firmer in love for Him, then lightness and joy are in my heart all the time from one liturgy to another, until new reinforcement, if I watch over myself. When prompted by the spirit of unbelief, tell him: I know Him (God) [Jn. 7.29] and His Sacraments (that is, I believe in God and His Sacraments), and if I say that I do not know Him [Jn. 8:55], I will be like you, lie. But how terrible it is to be like you: death is with you, terrible torment! No, I know Him, and I keep His word! See that you believe and keep His commandments. I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind [Jn. 9.39]. This judgment is also carried out on you: Christ comes to you in His life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood and in other Sacraments, reveals in you His Divine miracles of peace and joy, driving away murderous passions or sins in general from you, gives you His wonderful Divine freedom - and you, seeing, do not see, having such experiences of Divine visitation, you often doubt. If you had not seen these visits, you would not have sin, but you see: your sin remains 33. The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly [Jn. 10.10]. Lord Life Giver! We see every day the fulfillment of these words of Yours. The thief - the devil - comes to us every day only to steal the faith of our soul, its good thoughts and feelings and the best deeds, to kill and destroy it through our carelessness, insufficient firmness [of will] and lack of attention to ourselves. And You come to us, unworthy, always with life and with an abundance of life, if only we open our hearts to You by faith. We feel an abundance of life every time we accept with faith within ourselves the life-giving Mysteries of Your Body and Blood: wonderful calm, unearthly joy, the goodness of our hearts, for us, by nature evil, completely extraordinary, embracing all people, living faith, hope more than hope in Your mercy - then fills our hearts. We feel the abundance of life every time we pray to You with unashamed faith, known hope and unfeigned love. We feel an abundance of life, or spiritual peace, well-being even after prayer - as long as we have not stained our souls with any sin, which always seems to undermine our life. Notice the expression of the Savior, full of love for us: He calls us His sheep, in contrast to the hireling, to whom the sheep are not his own [John. 10.12]. If I do not the works of My Father, do not believe Me; and if I do, then if you do not believe Me, believe My works, so that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me and I in Him [Jn. 10.37–38]. So you too, unbeliever: if you do not believe in the Lord Himself, whose earthly life is 1858 years removed from you, then believe in His wonderful works, which He clearly performs in you. An invisible force torments and kills your soul for unbelief, you do not know peace and joy, but if you partake of His Mysteries with faith, the torment will suddenly disappear, joy and tranquility will come. Are these not wonderful works of the Lord? Nothing can drive away your murderous torment, but the Body and Blood of the Lord are now driving away. When you do not believe Me, believe My works [Jn. 10.38]. It is a work of Thy wisdom, O God, that Thy Scriptures have come down to us from the most ancient generations, as well as all other monuments of antiquity for our teaching and admonition; that Your Kingdom is the Kingdom of all ages and Your dominion in every generation and generation. How could anything remain if You did not will? [ Prem. 11.26]. From my own experience I know in advance that there will be indescribable bliss for the righteous in the next century, and terrible torment for sinners who have not repented of their sins during life. I know in advance, by reason, that they will be eternal. Our soul, as a spiritual being, is simple, eternal, and sins, according to the experience of life here, torment and destroy the soul spiritually, and then only does it cease to suffer from them when it repents of them. But after death there is and cannot be repentance. This means that then the soul will forever be tormented by its own passions - and here is the eternal fire. They understand with their hearts. 35 Our scholars will say: How can one understand with the heart? You can only understand with your mind, and you can only feel with your heart. But it is rightly said: understand with your heart. He understands miracles and the word of God, feels the heart together with the mind, and if the heart does not understand, then the mind will not recognize it: if you do not believe, it is said, you can understand below (Is. 7:9). Believe first with your heart, and then you will understand with your mind. He who believes in Me does not believe in Me, but in Him who sent Me. And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me [Jn. 12.44–45]. What is the unity of the Father and the Son, the Sender and the Messenger! If you see Christ, you see the Father at the same time; If you believe in Christ, you believe together in the Father, you even believe, as it were, only in the Father - such unity! I have come as light into the world, so that whoever believes in Me will not remain in darkness [Jn. 12.46]. What a holy, good, divine purpose. Not for glory, not for His own benefit, but for benefit, solely for the benefit of people, so that everyone who believes in Him would not remain in darkness, the Savior came into the world. See how lofty His words are, how they reveal His Divinity: if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I will not judge Him for that, because I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects Me and does not accept My words with faith has prepared a judge for himself: the word I have spoken will condemn him on the last day. I did not speak on My own behalf, but the Father who sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what to say and what to say. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. This is the truth that no one can resist. How victorious she is! How obvious it is! The ancient patriarchs, judges, kings, prophets, New Testament apostles and all the saints are removed from us at a great distance of time, but in the Holy Scriptures we read their words and about their actions as if we had heard and seen them: this written way of communicating with them is a symbol of our closeness to them in spirit; I want to say: just as their writings are close to us, they are close to us in spirit. And this is the wise dispensation of Jehovah, Who has no time. You, living in time, are lost in past centuries, so that the most distant centuries for you are, as it were, emptiness, but everything is inherent in the Lord as present, as today, and He even allows you, in part, to become like Him in this - to communicate through the scriptures with long-past persons, as if with the present. (The same applies to civil history.) If you want to call on any of the ancient saints in prayer, call on them: they are close, as are their writings. Always have hope: hope will not put you to shame. Do not forget the extraordinary delight of the grace of the Holy Spirit with your sincere desire to freely distribute spiritually instructive and edifying books among the people. There is no doubt that your body is from the earth, but how this is is not clear; so the Body of the Savior is made of earth, or bread, but how is unclear. God is the God of miracles, omnipotent, and we are meager vessels, animated by His Spirit, limited in mind and in everything. When, during prayer, thoughts enter your heart and confuse it, then remember the words of the Savior: why are you troubled, and why do such thoughts [glory: thoughts] enter your hearts [Lk. 24:38], and know that you have nothing to be embarrassed about and you should not allow outrageous thoughts into your heart. Instead of penance, spiritual children are ordered to buy the books of St. Gennady and the Follow-up to Communion or ask them to enroll in the Society for the free supply of spiritually instructive and spiritually edifying books to the residents of Kronstadt. Brethren! Secular society, civil society, is now taking rapid steps towards perfection regarding the conveniences and pleasures of temporary life, including our Kronstadt light; but it is imperceptible that Christian enlightenment and Christian piety of the people (including our Kronstadt people) move towards perfection, while with the mutual competition of Christians in this good deed, this grief could easily be helped - namely by distributing cheap spiritually instructive and spiritually edifying books among the residents of Kronstadt. I invite the friends of humanity, redeeming the time of this life, seekers of the incorruptible and eternal Kingdom of Heaven, to participate in this spiritual charity with monetary offerings, which anyone can make according to their diligence. These offerings will be kept by one of the benefactors (excluding me), who will enter them in a book specially made for this purpose, sealed by several persons from among the benefactors. I, for my part, take upon myself the responsibility of determining which books to buy for the Kronstadt residents. Books will be bought in the synodal shop, sometimes in other shops, depending on the need, on my instructions, by one of the merchants or townspeople participating in the charity, or by myself, when I am in St. Petersburg for some occasion. Books are intended to be purchased cheap, edifying and accessible to the general public in their simplicity and clarity. Prices are set from 1 kopeck to 25 kopecks in silver. The society will exist in secret, so that, according to the word of the Savior, the Heavenly Father, seeing good deeds being done in secret, will reward the benefactors with His mercy. Therefore, it is not advised to disclose this to anyone. It is best to hand out books to spiritual fathers after the confession of their spiritual children. And the time and place could not be more appropriate for this good deed. Those participating in charity can do this themselves, writing down the names of the persons to whom the books were given in their memorial book. God bless our business! Almost everyone, apparently, cares diligently about the development of worldly taste, about providing themselves with secular pleasures, but few people think about the development of spiritual taste, about the means to provide Christians with spiritual pleasures, which with their purity, sublimity, sweetness, alien to any spiritual anxiety, surpass all possible secular pleasures. For secular pleasures there are meetings, and in them the public is occupied as best they can, or the public itself is engaged as best it can, sparing nothing for its pleasure. There is also a meeting (church) for spiritual pleasures, but not everyone finds pleasure in them, mostly for the simple reason that they do not know the meaning of worship or do not go inside themselves enough to cleanse the heart of sinful attachments and make it capable of holy, life-giving prayer. Therefore, it would be good to provide all those who are insufficient (not excluding those who are sufficient) with spiritual and instructive books free of charge - with the goal of providing them with edifying home reading (especially on Sundays and holidays) for spiritual pleasure and to prepare them for listening to public worship. He was a funny man: he spoke the truth and was embarrassed; He doubted whether he was telling the truth, and repented that he had spoken. You know, he was very cowardly and had little faith. The devil never loses hope of leading you into temptation—and he does often, and you never lose hope of getting rid of his temptations, with God’s help. And in order to get rid of his temptations, you need the grace of the Holy Spirit, holy fire in your heart, undoubted faith. The worth of a Christian man is determined by how often he is with Christ. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you [James. 4.7]. Always make efforts to rise above the wiles of the devil - and he will run away from you, seeing your resistance. Otherwise you get scared and run away when you should be running away. Don't dream about yourself [glory: don't be wise about yourself] [Rom. 12:16], says the apostle. So you should always be wise not about yourself, but about God. Seeking not your own benefit, but the benefit of many, so that they may be saved [1 Cor. 10.33]. From now on, have these words as your motto. Brethren! Watch over your heart: the devil is trying in every possible way to drive out simplicity from it and install wickedness in it (the wicked one himself, he wants to make people like himself through wickedness), uproot faith and install unbelief, eradicate pure love and install unclean or, on the contrary, enmity. You may not even believe that the devil exists, and you think that everything bad comes only from you; and he not only exists, but also reigns in the world, over people devoted to the world: he is the god of this age; he is the prince of air power; he is the ruler of this dark age. Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary is the devil... [1 Pet. 5.8]. The king is here. Apply it to the Deity. Conduct yourself before God as in the presence of a king. Read out loud. This is an excellent remedy against embarrassment, of course, with sincere faith. Why is there no faith in some people and it is with great difficulty that it fits into their hearts? Because their hearts are occupied by some passions, and their culprit is the devil; but since the place of faith is in the heart, and the objects of faith are opposite to the passions, namely: God, Angels, saints of God, then it is impossible to have faith in a heart filled with what is opposite to it. Faith lives in the heart - this means the same thing as holiness, purity, all truth live in the heart; unbelief lives in the heart - this means the same thing as passions and all uncleanness live in the heart. The heart in a person is the most important thing. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart [1 Sam. 16.7]. In the Epistle to the Thessalonians, the apostle says: to establish your hearts (and not you) blameless... [1 Thess. 3.13]. Evil thoughts come from the heart [Matt. 15.19]. Wash away the evil from your heart, O Jerusalem [Jer. 4.14]. The heart is the same as the soul: take away wickedness [Russian: evil deeds] from your souls before My eyes [Isa. 1.16]. Holding all things by the word of his power [Heb. 1.3], that is, controlling, restraining what can fall apart. To hold the world means no less than to create the world, or, if one can say something amazing, even more. For to create means to bring something from non-existence into existence, and to hold something that already exists, but is ready to turn into nothing, to unite what is opposed to each other - this is a great and amazing thing. This is a sign of great power. John Chrysostom. Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Conversation 2, art. 3. For the sake of God the Word, have all respect for the word: and never listen to the formerly verbal, intelligent creature that has become dumb 36 . Otherwise, God the Word will condemn you at His court for neglecting the gift of speech. And now He severely punishes you when you insult the word, especially the sacred word (in the Holy Scriptures and in church liturgical books) with your omissions or hasty, absurd reprimand. And then he will punish you even worse. In order to properly honor the Mother of God, learn first how to honor your mother. And in order to properly honor the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, learn to honor your father according to the flesh. He who is faithful in a little is also faithful in much, and he who is unfaithful in a little is also unfaithful in much [Lk. 16.10]. On Your side, Lord, is truth, omnipotence, goodness, sweetness, life; and on the side of Your enemy - constant lies or slander, weak power that acts only through lies, boundless malice, unspeakable bitterness, spiritual death. Give glory to God, the Jews said to the blind man, we know that That Man is a sinner. He answered and said to them, “Whether He is a sinner, I don’t know; One thing I know is that I was blind, but now I see [Jn. 9.24–25]. This is how the devil often approaches a pious Christian internally and forces him through his thoughts to agree that our Savior, the God-man Jesus Christ, is not God, is not a Wonderworker who constantly benefits us (in the life-giving Mysteries of His Body and Blood and in other Sacraments). How to mentally respond to him, the slanderer? The second half of his answer: I know that I was blind from sins, I was intolerable to myself from them, but now I see, now it’s easy and sweet for me, when I accepted His most pure Flesh and Blood into my heart. So He is God. How can a person... create such miracles? [In. 9.16]. In order to worthily honor and love your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, learn first to be grateful for the benefits of a human benefactor. The miracles that I feel from the worthy acceptance of the life-giving Mysteries cannot be performed by anything or anyone other than the Lord. This means that the Lord is truly present in the bread and wine. And what after this can shake me? My Lord is obvious in the Mysteries, just as the two states of my existence are obvious: sorrowful and joyful. Who is God as great as our God? You are the God who works miracles [Ps. 76,14–15]. Thy right hand, O Lord, is glorified in me with power; Thy right hand, O Lord, has slain the enemy. By the greatness of Your glory You have brought down those who rebelled against You [Exod. 15.6–7]. Almost the entire night from February 13 to 14, I did not sleep from the chaotic wedding of the official Yakovlev: heartache and some kind of convulsive fluttering throughout the body occurred all night. My God! How scary it is to be embarrassed and stammer, to get lost while performing the Holy Spirit. rituals and sacraments of faith! Let the love of God be established and established in your heart, otherwise it is only a short-term visitor to you. And you often kick her out. Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? [ 1 Cor. 3.16]. Pay attention to yourself, man: the Holy Spirit lives in you. But you drive Him out, the Life-giving Spirit, the Comforter, the sweetness of your heart, every time you sin. What audacity! What ingratitude! What madness! What if He were not infinitely good and long-suffering? Then He would have left you after long patience and would not have come to you, would not have entered into you, despite any of your prayers, even if you [dropped] a river of tears. But be afraid, ungrateful one, to abuse His patience now. When He sees that you are not correcting yourself, despite frequent admonitions, He can finally leave you, like Judas. Every time you lose faith, when you succumb to the deception of sin, you drive Him out, the Life-Giving One, and let in the devil in His place. Oh, human blindness! O good soul! The saints of God, with one lifting of their hands, asked God for great mercies for many people. Is your raising of your hands so strong, and if not so strong or not strong at all, then why? - From disbelief. Thoughts induced by Satan are nothing in their essence: they are a cobweb, an empty dream. Just call on the Lord with faith and everything will disappear. Should you be indignant at the pretexts of the evil one? You know from experience how true, faithful and almighty the Lord is! I am both a believer and an unbeliever, good and evil, humble and proud, simple and evil, God’s and the devil’s. My soul seems to be stretched by two opposing forces. I'm strange! I'm a stranger! The Lord my God - I dare say so - is a Friend of proven fidelity; therefore, I also need to be faithful to Him in everything, or, in other words: to believe Him in everything unquestioningly. Now the clothing of our flesh and the material world, like a shell, a veil with which our Creator covered Himself from our weak, material feelings, do not allow us to see Him face to face. But after the fall of our perishable clothing - the body, our soul will penetrate the substance of the world, rise above it and see the face of the Living God, as man now sees man; knows Him as she herself is known by Him. [Hope]: We will see Him as He is [1 John. 3.2]. Our prayer is as valuable, valid and pleasing to God as it is true: the truer it is, the more valuable and valid. Wonderful, glorified is my God: I do not see Him, but I am blessed by Him; One sincere, humble thought about Him delights my heart. He is invisible, but He is my sweetness, my bliss. Mother My sweets! Teach me to praise You worthily, to revere You! Confusion of the heart or fear of the heart occurs because our heart is filled with something other than Christ: it is the absence of Christ in the heart or the loss of Christ through our unbelief. Christ is our peace. Confusion is the voice of the heart crying out for the deprivation of the Sweetest Jesus. No one will snatch them (the sheep of the Lord) out of My hand. My Father, who gave them to Me, is greater than all... I and the Father are one [Jn. 10.28–30]. Ah, our Savior! Now the time for the safety of Your sheep has not yet come. Now at every step they are threatened with the danger of abduction from the mental wolf, which often delights Your sheep with its charm. But even now, Lord, if we hold on to You by faith, no one will snatch us out of Your hand. Give us, Lord, faith in You. A Christian should try most of all in life to arouse, nourish and perfect a heartfelt feeling of gratitude for God’s mercies, starting from ordinary, natural, daily and minute-by-minute mercies, to extraordinary and extraordinary ones. The need to improve the feeling of gratitude is revealed by the fact that a Christian, above other people, has been favored by God through His Only Begotten Son and Comforter of the Spirit. The Christian faith is God's continuous blessing to man. But if we lose the feeling of gratitude, then at the same time we will lose the feeling of God’s mercies, and without this we cannot assimilate them, because all gifts of grace are assimilated by faith. And faith, in fact, is a sense of the truth of what the Lord did for us in the New Testament. The flesh and blood of the Son of God are taught daily to Christians for the purification and sanctification of their souls and bodies. This Sacrament alone evokes constant, heartfelt gratitude to God. That is why it is called the Eucharist, or thanksgiving. We are not talking about gratitude for other countless mercies. Here is a deplorable reality that bothers me: I often have a poisonous pain in my heart, from which I am freed only by hot tears in my sadness about sins before the face of God or in the prayerful aspiration of my mind and heart to God in living faith. Every day, every hour, I am convinced by experience that Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit is for me the only strength, the only joy, the only consolation in life. How can I protect my heart from allowing unbelief or stifling, poisonous doubt to creep into it even for a moment? - With fervent, humble prayer to God. Never rush your heart when reading prayers and always be in a calm and cheerful mood: you are talking to the God of mercy, generosity and philanthropy; There’s nothing for you to be sad about here. Brethren! As you commemorate the three great saints, honor them with your cordial disposition, pure and humble hearts. How you honor ordinary people, your benefactors or friends, especially if they are from the upper class! Sometimes you don’t know, out of the fullness of your heartfelt gratitude, what is the best, most pleasant body position to take in front of them, you are looking for the most expressive word to say to them so that they can see and appreciate your gratitude. But what class is higher and more honorable than the class of holy hierarchs? What benefactors are worth more love and gratitude than the saints of Christ, the good shepherds who laid down their lives for the sheep, the universal teachers? Honor their memory with heartfelt respect, unfeigned love, pure hearts and undefiled lips. Try to constantly carry in your soul the holy images of the Lord, His Most Pure Mother and the saints, so that you do not then draw (depict) them in your soul when you come to church for prayer or when you begin to pray at home, but so that you always have them ready, like a good artist or icon painter, who always has ready-made portraits or icons in stock. When you read any church prayers in the hearing of the people, consider yourself unworthy to read the golden, pure words of the saints of God. If during prayer you notice that prayer is not accepted by the heart, like damp wood by fire, then take all measures so that the prayer penetrates into it. Otherwise, there is no benefit to you from prayer: it is cold, it will remain dead, and with it the soul. The heart becomes damp especially from eating and drinking a lot. Unbelief, like a snake, bites the heart and confuses it. Brethren! Listen to the sinful priest! For the life-giving Mysteries to have a life-giving effect on us, the only thing missing is us, our sincere, heartfelt faith. Oh! How true is the word of the Savior: all things are possible to him who believes [Mk. 9.23]. With faith, he who partakes of the life-giving Mysteries establishes within himself, in his heart, not only paradise, but God Himself, and with Him the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4.7]. If your heart grows cold during prayer, then remember that for every minute, for every moment of living faith and diligent service to the Lord, you will be rewarded from Him with thousands of years of bliss. We are looking for truth: it is not ours (in conclusions, in the construction of entire sciences); We are looking for faith: it is not our inalienable accessory - we are looking for and finding, finding and losing; We acquire virtue: it is also not our property. Great God! And I am Yours, all Yours, and not mine in all spiritual and physical functions, Yours - regarding my essence, wise connection and structure. I believe in the plans of the Coming One to judge the living and the dead with glory. Today (January 31) the weather is most unpleasant (rain), and yet, by the grace of the life-giving Mysteries, I feel great - both mentally and physically. Before transubstantiation […] I fainted in faith; Before communion I was also not entirely strong, but after communion, reading the Sunday troparia with strengthened faith, loudly, freely, I was resurrected by faith. O life-giving Mysteries! They give life to me both mentally and physically, if only I receive them with dignity. Glory to Thee, my God and Lord! After committing sin, it remains difficult for me until I reach the Savior in my heart, imagine Him in my heart, or until I depict the cross on my chest with living faith in Him Crucified on it. A word is an expression of thought; a leaf of a plant is also an expression of thought; man himself is an expression of an infinitely wise Mind; and starting from man, everything in the world is an expression of this Mind, and nothing can be considered independently of the great Mind, because everything is an expression of the One Wisdom. No matter what you look at, when you see everything, you can speak only in these words: you have created all things with wisdom [Ps. 103.24]. The apostles, while in prayer, waited for the descent of the Holy Spirit, and this descent turned out to be a stormy breath, heard first in the air, and then filling their entire house, and tongues of fire. Likewise, pious people of all times, not excluding the present, who love to indulge in the pious activity of prayer, have also been vouchsafed the invasion of the Most Holy Spirit during their prayer. They noticed that a stormy breath suddenly filled the whole house, where their soul, that is, their body, sat; their breathing became intense and frequent from the stormy breath that entered them, their chest and heart expanded easily, pleasantly, their hearts became life-givingly warm, an extraordinary light appeared in their minds, their eyes shed tears of tenderness, and they seemed to disappear at these moments to themselves. The words of prayer are spirit and truth; the word is a veil of thought, a garment of truth. The cross is an expression of love, just as a word is an expression of thought. My love has been crucified, said Saint Ignatius the God-Bearer, looking at the Cross. Everything that the Church puts into your mouth has this inscription: the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). So that you know about the grace of sanctification and peace given to you after receiving the life-giving Mysteries or after fervent prayer, God allows you to experience great internal torment after any stumbling block: Beware how dangerously you walk (Eph. 5:15). The Lord usually shows His mercies through His holy servants - Angels or through holy men: Old Testament history is full of these examples; in the New Testament, when many people became saints through the grace of the Incarnate Lord. The Lord very often reveals His mercies through His holy saints. Hence the duty of Christians is to turn with reverence in prayer to the holy Angels and saints. Their significance in the matter of our salvation. The nature of holy people, detached from their holy bodies, is extremely light and convenient in its spirituality, and the globe for them is the same as a point, and at the same time they can hear people living in the most distant places from one another, and at the same time can appear to help them. The example of the risen Savior explains this, as well as examples of the miracles of many saints. Christ lives and acts in us insofar as we believe in Him and hope in Him, and keep ourselves from all sin; Christ is strong in us when we humbly acknowledge our weakness and with heartfelt faith hold Him in our hearts. The heart, burdened with food and drink, is rude, insensitive to prayer and - to top the misfortune - subject to unbelief. It is dangerous to perform public worship with a full stomach: the devil has the most available means to act on [our] heart, burdened with gluttony and drunkenness. The enemy knows what weaknesses the enemy has, and tempts them in a dream, and through them he laughs at the person. Without any doubt, always pray invisible to the Invisible, smart to the Clever. The spirit of the spirit hears. Since matter is changeable by nature, people make of it what they want with their minds. Will not the Infinite Mind make of him what it wants; Will He not change its nature if necessary: ​​for example, fire into dew, bread and wine into His Flesh and Blood? Words: take, eat: this is My Body, and: drink of it, all of you, for this is My Blood [Matt. 26.26–28] – divine: they are spirit and essence [Jn. 6.63]. Only the Creator, who deigned to take upon Himself our flesh, could say this: in them one can see unspeakable love and the strongest desire for a blissful life for humanity that is decaying and suffering from sin, the desire to accept them into His unity, to make them partakers of His Divine nature. Human! Understand how lofty these words are! Oh! I'm damned! The devil often takes a word or faith from my heart and leaves me ashamed. Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say: Rejoice [Phil. 4.4]. You are in church - like the owner of the house. Remember that when you pray and perform services, you are a servant of Love. You serve Love, that is, God, Who is Love, and try to always have a heart, if possible, filled with love and goodness. Always introduce God to Love. You see that in all prayers and proclamations God is primarily and almost exclusively called Love, Goodness, Mercy. The soul of animals and humans in relation to their material body is the creative principle: take away the soul - and the body will begin to smolder and decompose. But what the soul of animals is to their bodies is God in relation to all worlds. But the soul grows or creates, so to speak, by Divine power only its body, and God is the Creator of spirits and all flesh. Speak ready-made conversations and teachings, without becoming lazy or deluded by pride. The benefits of this are great. February 2. If you sometimes feel, apparently without any reason, longing in your heart, then know that your soul is burdened by the emptiness in which it is located, and is looking for a Being who would fill it sweetly, life-giving, that is, looking for Christ, Who alone is the peace and delight of our heart. Like a son who lives at the support of his parents and from head to toe - at their mercy, when he shows before them the severity of his character, dislike and disobedience, it is sometimes enough to remind him to return to his duty, what illnesses his mother suffered at his birth, in what care, in what tenderness he was fed by her nipples and what sincere, constantly unchanging participation he enjoys to this day, how they care to provide him with everything he needs - from food and clothing to high needs soul, - so for every Christian, when he withdraws in heart from God and shows in his life some moral savagery, dislike and disobedience towards God, it is often enough just to remind him to turn him to the duty of God’s love that he is entirely in the mercy of God, that the Son of God endured the suffering of the Cross for His rebirth into a spiritual and grace-filled life, shed His Blood for him and constantly to this day, like a most tender mother, feeds him with His Flesh and Blood, so that with this Flesh and Blood he can bring into his nature, corrupted by sin, Divine life and heavenly bliss, that everything, from hair and toes 37 to the high feelings of truth, goodness and beauty, is God’s: both the clothing of the body, and the entire inner man, except for his sins. It is easy for the heart to pray to God when the stomach has not taken food, and sincere, living faith is easily introduced into it. When I read various church prayers for my salvation, then I become cheerful, trustworthy regarding my salvation and think: my malice will not overcome the unspeakable goodness of God and mercy, and He will save me, according to the message of destinies. The glory of the saints is a reflection of their spiritual virtues, their glorious, beneficial deeds, just as the glory of God is some reflection of His Most Illustrious Being, and the dishonor of demons is a reflection of their internal ugliness, their destructive deeds. See how the glory of some and the dishonor of others are constantly justified by deeds themselves. The saints to this day do good to humanity with examples of holy life, their writings, miracles of mental and physical healings and various types of help; and demons, to this day, also use all their means to treacherously over people, harming their souls and bodies in every possible way, with God’s permission for our sins, for our lack of faith, for our inattention to ourselves. The good deeds of the saints and the evil deeds of the demons speak for themselves to this day. Glorify the saints of God with all your soul, and hate demons with all your soul. God! You are my Creator. Who, if not You, can protect me from all enemies, visible and invisible? So, Lord, You are my only defense: You protect me from myself, because I am an enemy to myself, to my own salvation. He who guards his heart and does not allow his inner, invisible thieves to color it, enjoys the Divine world. Good God! What a scourge for us is unbelief! It stings us like a scorpion, and until then the ulcer remains in our insides, until we cry out unbelief in tears and place humble faith in our hearts. Unbelief strives forcefully to invade my soul during domestic and public prayer, especially during the liturgy and especially before the consecration of the Gifts and before communion, and during communion itself, during the performance of all the Sacraments. Woe to me if I am not attentive to my thoughts: unbelief, like a stormy, muddy stream, will now invade and fatally flood my soul. Don’t give in to your thoughts for a moment; fight them to the point of sweat and blood. Recover whole days of peace of mind in just a few minutes. Be wise as a snake: guard your head and heart. When, during prayer, when pronouncing the names of the Most Holy Lord, His Most Pure Mother, the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, saints and all the saints, you do not feel high reverence and love for them in your heart, but only weak, superficial, careless, cold respect - then know that you have a lot of spiritual pride and you need to humble yourself in your heart and feel for them in every possible way sincere, deep respect and love. Force yourself to sincere humility more often: it moves away from you; eradicate pride more often: it takes root in you more and more. The Lord says that if you have faith and do not doubt [Matt. 21:21], then you will move the mountain from its place; and I, who have little faith, often doubt, despite my efforts to strengthen myself in faith - so weakly does my heart stand in the truth. The spirit of unbelief often attacks me and, attacking me, hurts me and torments me for a long time. God! Grant me undoubted faith. The sons of this age build magnificent and comfortable houses in the hope of living in them peacefully and pleasantly. And throughout your entire life, try to build a spiritual house, a house of virtues: it will give you rest and bliss forever in another, eternal world, in the city of the Heavenly God. But know that if the Lord does not build the house, those who build it labor in vain [Ps. 126.1]. Build your home always with God, and never alone. God! Have mercy on Your servant, my father Elijah, who gave life to me, unworthy, to see Your light, Your wise deeds - unworthy to be called Your creature, because all Your creatures are so beautiful, and I... am full of moral ugliness! Yes, cleanse me too from all defilement, especially from the defilement of conceit and unbelief. God! Plant in me, in the very depths of my heart, humility: let it be the basis of every deed and word. What kind of executions will I be worthy of if I, of my own free will, fall away from God, while He, who had fallen away, again restored me through the death of His Only Begotten Son? But I fall away from Him due to my madness, through unbelief and through the dislike of my brethren. God! Only You have the salvation of my damned soul. I have learned this by experience a thousand times. May You always be my refuge and salvation. God! May I always be with You! Know the Father, fleeting son of dust and spirit; remember how recently you exist by His grace and how quickly you are rushing towards the end of earthly existence. The fallen spirit tries in every possible way to instill pride and unbelief in me and resists me in every possible way when I try to instill faith and humility. To overcome it, do not be wise about yourself, do not do anything good with your own mind and your own strength, but call on God for help. Without Him you can do nothing [Jn. 15.5]. I am the light of the world; whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life [Jn. 8.12]. Oh! What darkness there is in our souls without the Lord, without faith in Him: the area of ​​spiritual light or knowledge is then so limited that a person sees almost nothing except the pitiful image of his soul. But with Christ there is such a light in the soul that with him a person sees everything in its proper form, and this light, as he comes to know Christ, becomes wider and wider, clearer and clearer: then a person boldly and directly goes to salvation. If you do not believe that it is I, you will die in your sins [Jn. 8.24]. How much faith in Christ means for our salvation: without it, spiritual death is certain! The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do what pleases Him [Jn. 8.29]. And God will not leave you if you do what pleases Him. If you remain in My word [glory: in word], then you are truly My disciples [Jn. 8.31]. Do you, brothers, abide in the words, in the commandments of Christ, so that you can rightly (truly) be called His disciples and followers? Are you false disciples? You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (that is, from sin) [Jn. 8.32]. Just as truth frees us from sin, so lies (in everything) enslave us to sin, and every sin is a lie. Anyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. But the slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed [Jn. 8,34–36]. Ah, golden, worldly freedom bestowed by the Son of God, when will you completely free us from slavery to deadly sin? The devil was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks his own way, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But since I (Sweet Jesus) speak the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you will convict Me of unrighteousness? If I speak the truth, why don't you believe Me? He who is from God listens to the words of God. You do not listen because you are not from God [Jn. 8,44–47]. It's all coming to you. If you do not believe in Jesus Christ, then you are the son of the devil. But what happened when the Lord was unfaithful against you? Faithful in everything. And if he has always been faithful in everything, why don’t you believe Him in that? He who is from God listens to the word of God and is faithful to Him; if you don’t believe, then you are not from God. Terrible words! True words! What idea is in science, faith is in prayer. Just as an idea gives life to science, so faith gives life to prayer; Just as the author of science, while creating it, becomes confused and falls into mental darkness if he loses sight of the idea, so the one who prays falls into heart and mental darkness when he lets faith out of his heart. Womb of philanthropy, womb of God’s goodness, do not close the ear of Your compassion from Me. You see how important the womb is in a person: isn’t that where the soul really is? Why is it that goodness, love, and other virtues are all placed in the womb, so that the name and meaning of the womb are even transferred from man to God? Understand from here what the Savior’s commandment means: Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness [Lk. 21.34]. A womb burdened with food loses the good qualities that a person needs to have; she loses her sense of faith, love, goodness; she moves away from God; It’s not for nothing that it is said: uty, thicker, wider [Russian: fattened, thickened and fattened] [Deut. 32.15] and - deny. Truly, this is where fasting comes into play in our spiritual life. A heart unburdened with food is always incomparably more capable of holding faith in God, goodness or love, feeling God’s mercies, and in general standing in the truth. Slaves of sin, sinful habits, passions, know that with each satisfaction you strengthen them, submit to them more and more: you and slaves... of sin unto death [Rom. 6.16]. Servants of God, who do the truth, who acquire skill in virtue, know that you, too, with every effort to do good, acquire more and more spiritual freedom, which Christ gave us [Gal. 5:1], the freedom of the glory of the children of God: such is the life-giving law of righteousness and such is the murderous law of sin. During prayer, you need to insert your heart into God, so that the one praying feels in your heart the truth of the words of the Lord: abides in Me, and I in him [Jn. 6.56]. The Lord unites with us both during and after our heartfelt prayer, just as He unites after receiving the life-giving Mysteries. Although this last connection is closer, more sincere, through the Flesh and Blood Itself. We will come to him, says the Lord, and we will make our abode with him [Jn. 14.23]. The presence of the Lord in us is revealed by heartfelt sweetness, peace or silence of feelings, self-satisfaction. Young pets! Listen to a man who himself was a pet and was subordinate to others, but now he is a shepherd and commands himself. It is difficult for a person to control himself; It is better to submit to others, it is better for others to rule us, taking responsibility for us before God. Then most of the burden lies on them, and their labor becomes our peace, their worries our provision; and this is both mental and moral, and, partly, physically. And when your upbringing ends, then everything will fall on you: the whole burden of earthly life with all its needs, worries, temptations of various kinds will fall on you; you yourself will need to steer the boat of your life in this worldly sea with all its vicissitudes. Jealousy often overcomes me at the sight of pets who have a wonderful boss and good mentors: like sheep, they follow their voice in their lives and are safe (if they follow): the light of the boss’s orders and the mentors’ instructions precedes them. But it's hard to shine for yourself; It is difficult to fight the various thoughts, passions, visible and invisible fighting enemies that rise up within us. Obey your leaders and be submissive, for they watch over your souls, as those who must give an account [Heb. 13.17]. I will get up and go to my father [Lk. 15.18]. Note, brethren: how many individual sins, how many individual passions or bad habits and inclinations, there are so many return paths to the Heavenly Father, therefore in the Holy Scriptures our life is called paths or feet (as in church prayers): every sin, every passion, every vicious inclination is a path to a country far from God - whoever went along which road will return along that one. The conversion of a person to the path of virtue is so called because a person, having previously walked along the path of destruction, returned to the path of life. You have left along the road of unbelief - go back along the road and take your place again, on the path of faith, and make this disastrous path forward impassable for yourself: it is in your will - at least fill it with those sorrowful memories of the torment that unbelief causes to the soul; You have gone along the path of pride—turn back along it and stand in the place of humility from which you left, and hate pride, knowing that God opposes the proud [1 Pet. 5.5 ]; you went along the road of envy - return along it and take your place again in the place of contentment with what God has sent you; if you have wandered away along the road of avarice, turn back along it and stand in your former place of generosity and flood this disastrous path with tearful streams: let it become for you like a dead sea, in the place of which your lawless fiends are mired; went along the road of hatred and anger - return and take the place of meekness and love; on the road of satiety, debauchery - turn back and take the road of moderation and chastity. In a word, everyone go back along that disastrous road that someone has chosen for themselves, and don’t walk along it anymore, but clutter it up with whatever you can, so that it is no longer passable for you forward; hate, feel disgust in the depths of your heart for every sinful path; You know from experience that death lives on those roads, so do not go to obvious spiritual death, and often physical death, but walk in peace along the path of life that the Lord of your life commanded you to follow. All sins and passions are our death: they slowly kill the soul until they finally kill it completely and make it food for the eternal fire of Gehenna. Whose order is this, according to which evil is punished with torment of the heart here on earth, and good is rewarded with peace, the sweetness of the heart? The order of the invisible, but omnipresent, all-seeing, righteous Lord. Sinners! Above you there is the Supreme Judge and the Rewarder, eternal and righteous! Righteous! There is a faithful Rewarder for you! Both sinners and righteous! You are still here receiving pledges of the future Last Judgment or rewards, heavenly crowns! Passions drive faith, hope and love out of the heart, but virtues strengthen them in the heart. God gave you existence, and what does it cost Him to support it for endless ages of ages? It's worth nothing. To give being means more than to support it in infinite being, since God Himself is infinite. Yes, you will be forever. Look how wide His material world is spread out! What an infinite number of creatures it contains, animate and inanimate, great and small, small and insignificant! Well, what does it cost Him to support your existence for endless ages of ages, when He keeps an infinite number of creatures in existence? It's worth nothing. Look, how many holy people, who have long since outlived their time on earth, still live in the memory and glory of even our human glory, although earthly, human glory is transitory, like a dream, like smoke? Is not this glory, so to speak, an echo of the eternal glory of God, prepared for God's elect in heaven? Yes, this glory is an echo of their eternal glory in heaven. Well, why should He forever support you in existence, when you already see all the guarantees of your eternity here on earth? The risen Son of God is the guarantee of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. He who does not give generously to the poor (having such an opportunity) is not firm in his trust in God; and whoever, being able to give, does not give at all, has no hope and is afraid of poverty, although, according to the prophet, a righteous person is never abandoned by God, and his descendants do not ask for bread. Enemies of pious people, boldly mocking them! Do you really think that they are despicable just because you consider them to be such that purified gold is not gold when you have breathed on it with your infectious, deadly breath? Brethren! You definitely need to come to your senses, cleanse your heart, full of evil, and completely change: notice, willy-nilly or unwillingly, that there is an abyss of evil in you, and you give it scope, without worrying about eradicating it - after all, it will flood you, drown you, if you do not take care to resist it, and will certainly make of you food for the worm of Gehenna, which will painfully gnaw you forever and ever, and fire hellish, terrible, unimaginably painful fire. And you, people of God, the holy seed, the standing of the world, walk in the light of the face of God, in His commandments, enjoy heavenly peace and the joy of the heart, poured out on you by the Holy Spirit, which the wicked do not know and which constitute the guarantee of your eternal bliss in heaven. Have pity, grieve and pray for these unfortunate barkers 39 . They have always been and will be - until the great serpent, flattering the entire universe, is finally cast into Gehenna, until all wicked sinners are sent into eternal torment. The priest is a living organ of Truth. Always remember this and serve the Truth zealously. Christ is our life and our peace. How many times in my life have I experienced that an instant thought of unbelief in my Lord, coming from nowhere in my heart, tormented me, and the torment of my heart did not pass away until, by living faith, I again introduced my Christ into my heart. It fills it surprisingly easily and sweetly. If the impurity of sin enters the heart, then Jesus Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit leave the heart, because there is no communication between light and darkness. Therefore, take care of your heart in every possible way at all times, especially during prayer, especially during the liturgy - before and after receiving the Mysteries; if you sin before receiving the Holy Mysteries, you may lose faith and boldness before God and receive communion unworthily; and if after acceptance, then Christ, Who has just entered you through the Mysteries, will leave you. Consider how you walk dangerously, not as if you were unwise, but as if you were wise (Eph. 5:15). During the service, be especially afraid of lack of faith and avoid any kind of cowardly fear: fear is a consequence of unbelief and despair. When my soul is filled with evil, I just pray with all my heart to the Lord and tell Him my sorrows, I cry for my sins - my heart immediately becomes light, immediately the burden of sin seems to be lifted by someone’s hand, and I am calm; and with sins, the heart is terribly heavy, extremely restless. Those who are about to work for the Lord! We warn you that for every sincere, humble thought, for every heartfelt bow, you will receive a reward from the righteous Lord - inner peace and joy of the heart. Do not spare your whole heart for the Lord: give it to Him - and you will rejoice at the profit from such a giving. Our Lord is and is called the Sun of Truth. This name comes to Him in its entirety of meaning. Exactly, the Lord is the same for the moral world as the sun is for the material world. Look what happened on earth for five thousand years - before the Savior came to earth? The coarse darkness of idolatry, sins and passions, often the most coarse, senseless, corrupting human nature to the last degree. Before the coming of the Savior, the moral Sun, humanity was a rotten moving mass that moved without knowing where, because it did not know its place and purpose in the world: only darkness wandered in the minds of the majority of people. But look what happened with the coming of the Savior. The millennia-old errors of idolatry are falling; the light of the Gospel penetrates the minds and hearts of people, and their lives suddenly take a different direction; thousands turn to the faith of Christ at once and do not spare their lives in order to belong to the followers of the Crucified One: the faith of Christ had such a delightful, life-giving effect on the hearts of people. The moral forces of humanity, revived by the life-giving, spiritual Sun, began to develop, grow and give wonderful fruits: martyrs, ascetics, saints, righteous people, unmercenaries; all kinds of virtues flourished on earth. The leaven of the most pure Body and Blood of Christ the Giver of Life is placed in the mass of regenerated humanity, as in three sats of flour, and if people simply, as it should, accept this leaven with faith, it revives and grows spiritually everyone who accepts it into themselves. And now every servant faithful to Christ knows that without Christ, like grass without the sun, he absolutely cannot live and grow spiritually: without Him he dies every day and hour and falls deeper and deeper into spiritual death. And with Christ, he feels in himself the life-giving warmth or grace of the Life-giving Spirit of God, peace and tranquility, which did not exist in the pagan world - among the fanatical pagans, nor does it exist in today's people who walk without Christ, without the consciousness of the need for Him. For the Sun of Truth to be life-giving for a person, it is necessary for it to rise in his heart through the faith and love of a person. By faith may Christ dwell in your hearts [Eph. 3.17]. Cowardice, fearful, selfish embarrassment and haste in pronouncing prayers in the hearing of the people are equal to the cowardly renunciation of the Apostle Peter, who [also] denied the Lord out of fear - even worse, because Peter was in danger for recognizing the Lord, but for you there is no danger of calling and recognizing Him in prayer; The importance of this sin is also evident from the fact that after embarrassment and confusion in the reprimand of a prayer or exclamation, the grace of God, faith, boldness before God apparently leaves the heart, and some dark, soul-dead force takes its place, which becomes a strong barrier between God and the person who has sinned, constricting his heart with unbelief, despair and strong melancholy. Let everyone be afraid of this inappropriate, cowardly embarrassment. While enduring various sorrows and temptations in life, keep in mind the future, endless life, rest in it. Why does it happen that if, for example, someone was invited in advance to dinner or to the king, then this person often thinks about it, and speaks to others, and prepares to appear there as [decently] as possible; but about the supper of the Kingdom of Heaven, about the appearance of kings to the King in the clothing of good deeds - the All-Righteous, the Great, the Terrible - they either care little or not at all. Because they often remember this, they mean it, but they either don’t remember it, or completely lose sight of it, or don’t believe it. It is necessary to remind or convince minds. Oh, the corruption of the human heart! They go to a social gathering beautifully dressed, with cheerful faces and spend time there cheerfully, in lively conversation; and they go to church haphazardly dressed, with faces expressing habit or compulsion, and stand here, often bored and yawning, not knowing what to do in church, why they came here, as if the creature, all around blessed by the Creator, has nothing to say, as if the beloved child of the Heavenly Father, for whom the Blood of the Only Begotten Son of God has been shed and is being shed, has nothing to say out of love and gratitude? As if a person for whom an endless Kingdom has been prepared from the foundation of the world should not even worry about how to enter it? Are these Christians? O spirit of the age, O spirit of demons! My soul magnifies the Lord [Lk. 1.46]. A person who has been honored to receive the Holy Spirit into himself, as it were, disappears for himself: he sees in himself only the greatness of God. And rightly so: how can we not see and glorify the Lord when He lives in us, acts in us and reveals to us His immeasurable greatness? Oh, magnify, my soul, the Lord and exalt His name! Do you notice that sometimes it feels like a stone is on your heart when you pray? This is the action of an invisible enemy hindering a holy cause. Overcome it with your zeal for prayer. Invisible fighting enemies during prayer are mentioned in the morning prayers of the lamp. The Church is God's paradise on earth. Is everyone happy in this paradise? It is known from experience that not everyone, because many, coming here with unclean hearts, full of the things of everyday vanity, passions and all kinds of evil, do not crush them with humble prayer, do not want to sigh or shed tears over their sins. And without this, impurity remains in the heart. How will the grace of the Holy Spirit enter such hearts? How can the Life-Giving Spirit warm and revive such hearts? That is why people with such hearts stand in church with dryness and coldness of heart, absent-mindedly, boringly: for them - and so it is clear - the church of God has no place; their place is some other house, with other accessories: the shrine of the church is not their lot. Let's take this to heavenly paradise. What if a person with such a heart, with such a mood, is allowed into heaven? Without any doubt, it will be difficult for him even there, because his heart is not akin to this heavenly light, is not prepared on earth to enjoy these joys that exceed all description, which only a purified heart can taste. Never give up prayer or conversation with God during your life - and God will not leave you at death and after death. He will fulfill His words: With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7.2]. Brethren! May you lament your sins and prepare for the Judgment, the Terrible Judgment, the righteous Judgment, the only Judgment, after which there will be either eternal bliss or endless torment! Do not be surprised that I say so decisively: truth is royal, it has the right to say so. Moreover, the greatest need will come to speak decisively about preparations for the Judgment. When there is obvious destruction of souls from carelessness and negligence, then it is necessary to act decisively, then decisively and directly express the truth. When they see that a person is in clear danger of dying in a flame or drowning in water, don’t they then act with all determination? Yes, because if those who want to save a dying person from death are indecisive, he may now perish... So we must save many, with determination and fear of the Judgment of the future, from the fire, admiringly. So, get ready for the Judgment... Get ready from today... We have worked in hustle and bustle enough. It's time to look at the poor soul with the eyes of trial... The Church constantly thinks about the Judgment - both in the morning, and in the afternoon, and in the evening: every day, early and late, she reminds her children about this great day, which decides the fate of the entire human race, but her children, it seems, do not even think about this Last Judgment, their thoughts are occupied with what pleasantly turns their head for a few minutes, gladdens their heart, passionate about earthly joys, most of them unclean. The Lord, Truth, Life, thunders with His voice about His judgment, which is sure to take place, commands us to watch and pray at all times in spirit, to prepare for the outcome of our deeds, so that we may be honored to avoid the terrible fate of the condemned; the apostles cry out silently about the same thing... but it’s as if we don’t even want to hear about it. Others think and even say: what a Last Judgment! The Lord is merciful: He will have mercy; after all, we sin more out of weakness... But they will not think that only the merciful... will receive mercy [Matt. 5.7], that judgment is without mercy to him who has shown no mercy [James. 2.13]. Where are your works of mercy when it is obvious: you only care about yourself? There is no spiritual trouble, no sorrow, no matter what it comes from, to destroy which the power of my Lord would not extend and after which He would not establish peace in my heart. I know this from experience. I will resort to my Lord in all sorrowful cases of my life. My soul suffers sorrow either from invisible fighting enemies, or from visible ones - from people. But by faith in the Lord I can overcome everyone and arrange my inner life so that it flows, at least for the most part, in peace and tranquility. There is no sorrow, no trouble that my Lord would not destroy in me and after which He would not give me His peace. When I pray, I believe and hope that my prayer, offered with all my heart, will be heard by God; I am trustworthy in this case, because I see an example of the quick hearing of Jesus Christ from God the Father: when Jesus Christ prayed to the Heavenly Father, God the Father quickly responded to His prayer. So He, the Invisible One, responds to our prayer, although it is unknown how this happens: after all, He is all everywhere, the world for Him is one point. We feel in our hearts that He is with us and in us. Jesus Christ set an example in everything: I have given you an example [John. 13.15]. I cry and sob when I feel strong, painful, spiritual damage in the very middle (in the heart) of my being. This damage, as I notice, consists in unbelief of the heart, in persistent aversion from the truth, and how painful, how murderous is this unbelief, this aversion from the truth! But glory to You, Lord, glory to Your life-giving Mysteries - when I accept them into myself with sincere, unfeigned faith, then the pain of the heart, struck by unbelief, passes, and it becomes easy, easy for me! ABOUT! How should I cleave to My Lord! How good it is for me to be with Him! Until a person strives in the spiritual life, hitherto the language of the holy fathers - in their prayers and in the descriptions of cases of spiritual life - seems in places difficult, strange, incomprehensible to him; but when he himself strives in it, then he will see that the same language suits him, and everything will become clear to him in the words of the holy fathers. Glory to You, Lord, who creates everything for the benefit of our lives, may we always look to You, the Savior and Benefactor of our souls. You allow the enemy to hurt us so that we, having left You with our hearts, again, again cleave to You with all our hearts. Trusting in You, Lord, I defeat the enemy. My God, my Life, my Love offers Himself to me as food and drink: what have I done to deserve such love? - Nothing. This is the only mercy of God towards me. I owe such immeasurable love of God for me to the fact that God is Love. After committing evil, even if only with the heart and tongue, some kind of constraining, deadening force of the heart and mind and the whole being tangibly enters into us, in contrast to the expanding and life-giving grace of the Holy Spirit. Try by all means during divine services to pray and act in complete silence of feelings. God bless! My heart, from receiving the Holy Gifts with faith and love, rejoiced again today after the strong preceding sorrow and oppression that struck me for stumbling in my heart, mind and tongue during the celebration of the Sacrament of Baptism and the prayer of the small blessing of water at the prayer service. Now I can ask: what kind of communication does Christ have with Belial? Christ is in me - and Belial is far from me. Again the Lord reigned in me - and Belial left. Again the Lord delights me with His peace, and the devil’s sorrow is driven away; again I laid upon myself the light yoke of Christ, and the oppression of Satan, which had deadened my soul, passed away. Just as Jews, bitten by snakes in the desert, looking at the copper serpent hanging on the cross, were healed from the sting, so Christians, wounded by mental snakes - evil spirits, looking at the Lord hanged on the cross, trampling down the power of the devil, are healed from the mental sting. By their fruits you will recognize them [Matt. 7.16]. From the vague burning of passions and all sin, felt in my heart, I conclude that the cause of it is always the devil, because although he is varied in his actions, he is always the same in one thing - in the vagueness, anxiety, painful burning of his actions and in the compulsion to new sins. He strives to establish his dominion in me in all possible ways: by instilling thoughts of unbelief, blasphemy, etc., so that if you do not have time to repel his onslaught and do not defeat him with the weapon of faith and the word of God, he will gain access to your heart and will torment it, because his passion is to torment us, confuse us, upset us. In this case, the most beautiful and most effective remedy against it is the introduction of the crucified Christ into the heart in thought: from the very moment the crucified Christ is introduced into the heart, it leaves it - and the painful, burning pain of the heart, combined with embarrassment, passes. The Savior offers us the Bread of Life and the Blood of Immortality, and we, like crazy, evil spawn of vipers, are more inclined to accept the bread of death, which is offered to us by a spirit fallen from life. Who knows? In moments of the greatest triumph of God’s love for us sinners, we are insensitive to it (unbelievers), asking: how can He give us His flesh to eat? [In. 6.52]. We are good, it is clear that we cannot at all respond to the endless love towards us, and when we need to shed tears of gratitude and tenderness, we feel only coldness and insensibility in our hearts. God! How can You not strike us at this time? The grace of God, on the contrary, produces in me peace, tranquility, ease, and freely moves my heart and will towards virtue. And just as this phenomenon comes from the Spirit of God, from His grace, so it is undoubtedly from the spirit of malice. There is no doubt about it. In its actions, the spirit of malice is extremely infinitely angry, persistent to the point of impudence, and always strikes, at all costs, to the stomach or to death, that is, to victory or defeat. It is intensifying... Brethren! Many of you live as if you will not have to die and give an account of your life. What does it mean? Is this because they think of repenting only before death and receiving complete forgiveness? Of course, God will not reject those who come to Him even at the eleventh hour of life. But if your heart was far from God for most of your life, do you think that you can easily move it towards God, arouse a feeling of repentance before death? Oh, brothers! This is where it will come against you to your destruction. We have seen more than once how difficult it is for those who did not think about their correction during life to hear the word of repentance. No, brothers! Christian death is a reward for true Christians. Repent as much as possible throughout your life - and you will meet a peaceful death. Keep the boldness of your heart before God as the most precious treasure of your soul: with it all your prayer will prosper and all your deeds will be corrected. If you lose it, immediately try to return it. Otherwise, the evil spirit will easily take possession of you and confuse your soul, confuse your thoughts, take away your heart and your tongue, and will not allow [you to do anything] at public prayer, depriving you of freedom. Whose breath is it that comes out of your mouth? [Job. 26.4]. You are entirely in the mercy of God. Even the air space in which you are and which you breathe, and the ability to breathe - both from God; you use the gifts of God continuously. You have nothing of your own. And where God’s mercy is, there, remember, is God Himself, because, of course, where there is goodness, there is the Benefactor, since where there is creation, there is the Creator. Faith is the agreement of the heart with the truth, which we do not feel with external senses; the faith of the heart is the same as the feelings of the body: as if seeing the truth, the heart recognizes it, vividly feels it. Faith during prayers consisting of petition, doxology or thanksgiving, or during reading of the Holy Scriptures, is a warm, living agreement of the heart with every word, a feeling of the truth of every word. Unbelief, on the contrary, is a painful, stubborn, false disagreement of the heart with what is said in prayers or Holy Scripture, or the writings of the holy fathers - dead insensitivity to the living, truth-filled words of prayers or Scripture; therefore, unbelief is secret pride, and faith is deep humility. Unbelief is a fiend of Satan, faith is a child of God; faith in religion means the same thing as truth; unbelief in religion means the same thing as falsehood. The truth of God is one, just as God is one, the Source of truth, although it is multi-faceted in the material and spiritual world. All types of sciences serve the one truth, everyone who engages in them partakes of life-giving heartfelt joy, which is the gift of all truth to its seekers and lovers. All those engaged in science with zeal, out of love for truth (goodness and beauty can also be classified as truth: goodness is truth in the moral deeds of a rational being, beauty is truth in the creation of the Creator or the works of man), do the work of God and have testimony in their hearts, in their conscience, that their work is pleasing to the Lord, the Chief of truth. Therefore, for the sake of their diligent labors, with faith and good deeds, as devotees of the truth, they will be saved. They will certainly be rewarded by the One who said about Himself: I am the way and the truth and the life [Jn. 14.6]. The Heavenly Father also has an abundance of bread for the mercenaries [Russian: mercenaries have an abundance of bread] [Lk. 15:17 ], not only for children, and His generosity to us is always great - not according to our merits: imitate the Heavenly Father. Let you always have plenty to eat and drink, not only for your children or for those who were given to you instead of children, but also for mercenaries. What does it mean that in my heart I sometimes encounter a strong obstacle to prayer, to living faith, which can only be overcome by an effort to sincerely elevate the mind and heart to God or His Most Pure Mother? Oh! Often at first I find my heart completely incapable of prayer, of sincere reverence, of sincere love for those persons to whom I want to pray. Often I realize that their shrine is completely alien to my sinful heart: I have [no] feelings for them. It is worth the effort to warm your heart with life-giving and unfeigned love. [Sometimes] it’s worth it, that is. We are dust, and we cannot always argue [with God]. Faith is a heartfelt, calming feeling of the invisible truth of God. For example, the feeling of God’s omnipresence, the feeling of God’s world rule, the feeling of God’s goodness, and so on. Faith is also the steadfastness of the soul in the truth. The devil does not stand in truth: he is a lie. Brethren, starting to work for God! We warn you that a strong enemy - the devil - with the spirits of malice subordinate to him will stand on your path to God, and will lay ambushes on all the paths of your life. Since he is a murderer from the beginning [Jn. 8:44], then you will recognize it by its murderous breath on your soul, by a force hostile to everything holy, which will try to deviate you from faith in God and serving Him, by internal slander against God Himself and His saints, by nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts, and other similar things. Stand firm in the faith of God and in the service of God and do not be embarrassed by the excuses of the strangler of the serpent. The faith in which you stand is the faith of all the saints who were saved through it. They were confessors of the Holy Trinity, participants in the Holy Sacraments, readers and performers of the rites and statutes of the Church. They lived by the faith, hope and love by which you live (From the peace and joy of soul with which every good is rewarded in me, and from the internal torment with which every evil is rewarded, I conclude with certainty that there is heaven and hell.) With a quarter of an hour of patience, redeem peace of heart for whole days. Understand. When you do a work of faith, be completely faithful and trustworthy: you stand in the truth. Peace and joy of the heart from the sense of truth confirm this. The Church of God is a living pillar and ground of the truth [1 Tim. 3.15]. Glory to you, victorious, incomprehensible Divine power of the Honest and Life-giving Cross! This is the umpteenth time I experience your life-giving power, pacifying and delighting the heart, offended by the poisonous remorse of the enemy. January 15, 1858. During prayer, I notice: the evil spirit is trying to instill in my heart its poisonous, deadening lies, its disobedience, whispering to me: this is not so, don’t believe it. What to do, how to defend against the enemy? Stand your ground and don't trust him. Tell him: I stand in the truth. Protect your heart in every possible way from the flow of poison of lies poured into it by the father of lies: he tries to enter it under different guise - under the guise of unbelief, under the guise of fear and embarrassment, where there is no fear [Ps. 52.6], under the guise of despair, enmity, hatred, envy, love of money, pride and other passions. Contrast his lies with the bright face of truth: for example, when during prayer you notice in yourself feelings of deep humility, heartfelt tenderness and heartfelt calm, and the sweetness and spirit of lies will whisper to you that you are now very close to God, that is, it will tempt you with pride, then you contrast it with the following truth: by the grace of God I am what I am [1 Cor. 15:10], glory to His grace, and not to me, a sinner. ABOUT! I know how weak, unclean, sinful I am, how gloomy and upset I can be without His grace; Then I should be thrown out, like stricken salt, out, then I am moral and physical pus. The meaning of truth is so important, so vast, that if I stand in the truth, then I am a believer, and a hoper, and a lover; I then fulfill the whole law under the name of one word: truth. I am then a wonderful family man and citizen. Moreover, I then know, if possible, the price of every visible thing and use it in accordance with its purpose. Why is the meaning of truth so important and broad? Because in the world, in fact, there is only one truth - whether in matter, in thought, in word or in deed; it is only essential, as He Himself is the Truth; a lie is only an accidental and temporary evil, the product of an evil, rationally free creature. Doubt about any truth is poison for the heart. Experience. Let the truth be the truth for my heart. When doubt or confusion enters your soul during worship or any prayer, immediately rise up and say internally: deception, deception of the evil spirit! And, being firmly convinced of his deception, do not fall into it, but stand in the truth. My brothers! have faith in Jesus Christ our Lord of glory, regardless of personalities [Jas. 2.1]. Apply these words to your heart and, if you have to correct the matter of faith before some noble person, do not look at his face, but do your work with all your heart, sincerely. Do not have malice against anyone in your heart, otherwise it itself will punish you in the most severe way: the devil enters the evil heart and acts with it as his most convenient instrument. Why did the star show the birthplace of the Savior? Why was the sun darkened during the Savior’s suffering? Why did the Savior ascend to heaven on a cloud? Why did He walk through the air? In order to make it obvious to earth-born that the Savior is the Creator not only of the earth and everything that is on it (of water: He walked on water; of plants: He cursed the fig tree, and it withered with one word; people: He healed them with one word and resurrected them with a word; animals: a lot, a donkey; birds: the Spirit in the form of a dove; fish: how the Apostle Peter caught a fish with a fishing rod and found a statir in it the prediction of the Savior, how he caught many fish in the deep sea), but also everything that is above in the sky, that all the planets are His creatures, and the clouds, and the air are all His business, and He, as the Master, disposes of all this. Look how the spider walks briskly in his little world, which he himself created, in his circular web, while other insects get stuck in it. So, I dare say, in His infinite world the Lord, as in the work of His hands, is a complete, autocratic, free Master and acts in it with perfect freedom and power. When the passions are indignant, introduce Love crucified for us into your heart - and the indignation will disappear. God! Why am I afraid of the evil enemy? I just need to remember You - and I am saved. Stand for your God-given right. Understand. If the Cross of my Lord miraculously saves me, which I have experienced many times, then how much more will the Lord Himself save me when I call on Him with faith, even in just a few words? The enemy gives me a cold, but my Lord is stronger than him. By doing good to those who do not deserve good, you, so to speak, oblige God to show mercy to yourself, which you do not deserve. Your wife was closely connected with the priestly place that you now have. Understand from this circumstance that both your wife and place are great gifts from the most generous, all-good God, and be always grateful from the bottom of your heart to the Lord and to those who gave birth to your wife. Wonderful are Your works, O Lord! With my mental eye I look around at all of Your earthly creatures and see how all of Your creation, hidden in it by Your omnipotent power, hastens to reproduce itself and silently serves Your wisdom. I look at people, animals, birds, fish, insects, reptiles, different types of trees in the forests, different grains and herbal plants - and what do I see? While some of them have already grown old and are living out their lives, and others have reached perfect age, others are reaching it, I see many among them who are still in all the freshness and tenderness of early youth and are in a hurry to replace decrepit old age, hastening to its end, and those who have just emerged from non-existence to being - everything flows in a constant, continuous order. The wondrous, magnificent circle of life. What a fast, unstoppable stream flows life everywhere without the slightest impoverishment, despite the extermination of many animals and plants! Boys, puppies, birds, fir trees, pine trees, stems... Why are the Sacraments in the Church, to which you are subject almost from the very first day of your birth until death? In order to remind you all your life that you are not all your own, but God’s; that you are a slave of the Heavenly Lord, moreover, a corrupt, unclean, evil slave, whom, however, the infinite goodness of the Lord wants to correct, cleanse, sanctify, make, if possible, good, strengthen in goodness and [usher] to heavenly bliss. Others ask: why the Sacraments? I will ask these: why do you exist? How do you exist? And that mystery is how we exist by the goodness of God, how God tolerates our existence. We are limited creatures of the most perfect Creator, and how can there not be Sacraments for us, how can we do without Sacraments? If there were no God above us, and we were governed by a person similar to us, then you could still say so - why the Sacraments, although even then they would be secrets for you. But since the Lord controls us, then secrets are inevitable. Inscribe mentally in your heart and keep the word indelible and always inherent in your consciousness: truth. What is this for? This is why: you stand in the truth, surrounded by truth from everywhere, and the spirit of lies, the murderer, is trying by all means to inscribe in your heart the soul-killing word: lie, and, under the cover of this word, taking up residence in your heart, it opposes all truth. Having mentally inscribed the word “truth” in your heart, you will at the same time inscribe in it the great and glorious name of God, Who is Truth. This will be written about for the next generation, and the coming generation [glory: people of zizhdemia] will praise the Lord [Ps. 101.19]. I really like the words here: people are alive. People are created by God, like buildings, like small houses. So, man, remember that you are the building of the great Builder God. To write these words after the glory of communion of the life-giving Mysteries. Hear: just as good qualities and dispositions are formed and improved by exercise and habit, so also bad qualities and dispositions, for example, anger, hatred, envy, stinginess, pride, and all passions and sins also grow, increase in size and degree from exercise and habit. Because just as good qualities and dispositions need to be improved, bad qualities need to be cut off at the very beginning. It is good whom the Heavenly Heli-Grower cuts off, so that he may bear the greatest fruit [Jn. 15.2]. When you encounter works of well-intentioned content, beautifully written, give glory to God, who spreads His light and His truth among people, and give thanks in your heart to the author of the book; If the essay, although written with good intentions, does not reveal in the author the talent to write well and even conscientious work, do not condemn him, but wish him the best success from your heart and offer a prayer to God to enlighten him in the future. Yes, he understands what he says. Imagine the entire Gospel story as if it were one living face of the Lord and make it always inherent in your consciousness. Unbelief says: there is no God, Creator of heaven and earth. And we affirm: there is God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and this God is glorified: His right hand is glorified by power in visible nature, in human affairs and in you; Thy right hand, O Lord, has slain the enemy [Exod. 15.6]. When people rush at me with their malice, envy and slander, then the internal struggle with the spirits of malice, according to the good providence of the Lord, is weaker, and you feel peace and tranquility of your heart. That God is always with us and looks at us when we pray to Him, especially with a contrite heart, evidence of this is especially evident in tears during prayer. This water source is decisively from the grace of the Holy Spirit acting at that time on the heart; He then touches our hearts with the all-purifying fire of His grace, and all sins and impurities of the heart flow out in the form of tears. The holy king and prophet David calls sins the waters of wickedness: the waters of wickedness have reached [my] soul [Ps. 68.2]: here they are - these waters of malice, that is, tears for sins. There is an invisible Fullness of being, Which until now brings creatures from non-existence into existence - from man to blade of grass; there is the invisible, immaterial, infinite Creator of life, there is the Spirit, its Life-Giving. It was not in vain that You, Lord, became incarnate and suffered for me; but it is not in vain that You feed me so often with Your Flesh and Blood; It is not in vain that you punish me for every sin, reward me for every good. You relentlessly want and seek my salvation. Glory to the power of Your Cross, Lord! Last night the hellish elements of sin penetrated my heart and weakened my soul, already unstable in goodness, and struck it with the constraint that is characteristic of sin. But at evening prayer, with humility and contrition of heart, I healed her: God’s mercy, according to the measure of my faith and heartfelt contrition, poured out on me in peace and tranquility of heart. But at night, unclean visions again disturbed, weakened my soul and again plunged it into the tightness of sin - upon awakening I felt it. What did I use to drive her away? Again and again by the power of the Cross of my Lord, on which He, having suffered, killed passions. Use the sign of the Cross of the Lord when the oppression of sin grips your soul. But depict the holy sign in such a way that with the hand depicting the cross, living faith in the One who suffered for us is inseparable and walks together, so that all your attention, your whole heart is here - at the sign of the cross, at the crucified Lord. When you are engulfed in the unclean fire of passion and your soul begins to experience the sweet captivity of inner voluptuousness - oh! remember then that your immortal soul, redeemed from eternal destruction by the suffering and death of the Son of God, is in great danger of being exposed to hellish, unquenchable fire; that there is often only one step from internal sin to external sin; remember then that you are forbidden by the Lord for your greatest benefit to look at seductive faces with lust; prove in these moments that are so important for your soul that you remember the commandments of our Sweetest Lord - the Savior, and you want to fulfill and are fulfilling them; Prove at this time in practice that you are Christians, that this word is not just an empty phrase for you. And if, from which God forbid, you were carried away by passion and desecrated your soul with uncleanness, then, at least then, learn a lesson for yourself for the future - not to sell precious purity, freedom, peace of the soul for an unclean, short-lived, albeit sweet, murderous heat of blood, excited by the action of a passionate fire; For cramped conditions, longing of the soul, do not exchange freedom for captivity, walking in the breadth of God’s commandments for the prison of lawlessness. What is a hotel in our city N? This is a gathering of people (almost exclusively sailors) who, with all the zeal of a depraved heart, offer sacrifices and libations to their insatiable idol - the womb, and mainly on those days when the Church invites us to spiritual joy in the Lord. It’s scary to see what happens in them: a person in the exact sense here is likened to senseless cattle, even worse than him; as if into some foreign vessel, which he does not need to take care of, he throws or pours into his stomach so much food and drink, especially intoxicating drinks, with such greed, with such blind haste, alien to any reasoning, that this animal vessel soon fills up, and often overflows, and all sorts of things thrown into it finally go out. And then! Oh, horror! Oh, disgusting! Man loses his human dignity to such an extent that it is painful for every person with a sound mind and heart to see the humiliation of human nature to a state incomparably worse than dumb creatures. And what happens when this happens? Their minions, the tavern comrades, laugh at such an unfortunate person, drag him around like a fallen ruble, or, meeting people passing by, with their appearance and body position, with frantic cries, they seem to tell them: this is how we live for glory (good glory!), this is how we are willful, fearless; This is how we use the time given to us for rest; This is how we celebrate the holidays! Yes! The pagans hardly reveled so much in the days of their festivals after sacrifices to their gods! Unbearable! (And who will stop such riots? Are they really those who themselves look at man as an animal or as just a working tool?) What is needed here is love for humanity, respect in man for the image of God, the immortal soul, redeemed by the precious Blood of the Son of God. And those people who have are obliged to have supervision over such people, or they themselves care little about their souls, they themselves are cold to faith and therefore, like the blind, cannot lead the blind, or they care, if possible, to correct the blatant evil, but do not have enough strength and means to do so. My God! How far will Satan's power reach over these people? ABOUT! Satan has apparently set up his throne on our small island. You live where the throne of Satan is [Rev. 2:13]. Evening prayers in the mouth of a prudent, believing Christian are the greatest blessing. It cannot be that a person does not stumble several times during the day - and the righteous man falls seven times a day; For the most part, we fall many times during the day, so that evening greets us with a soul burdened with sins, scourged by our own conscience, deprived of grace-filled, life-giving peace and joy, gloomy and despondent. (And God forbid every person from going to bed at night without prayer.) At this time, evening prayer is an invaluable benefit for us. How can she be such a blessing? Here's how: if a person knows what true prayer is and prays true, that is, not only externally, but also with heartfelt prayer or, better yet, with his whole being, then even before prayer he will go inside himself, with his inner eye he will see everything that has entered into his thoughts and heart during the day and is done in action, and during prayer, with heartfelt contrition, heartfelt sighs and tears, he will cleanse his soul from this accumulated day of evil; and the Lord, who always thirsts for our cleansing and salvation, will never reject a contrite heart, spiritual sighs and tears for sins. When you pray heartily, with living faith in the omnipresent, all-seeing, righteous Lord, with contrition for your sins, sigh, cry, then in this contrition, in these sighs and tears, your sins fly out of your soul, you are cleansed, and it will be so easy, easy for you: you will feel as if some malignant, painful abscesses have broken through and in a few minutes have cleansed your insides; peace, tranquility, joy will replace the former anxiety, the former heaviness and melancholy. Therefore, how unhappy are those people who do not pray in the evening, who do not cleanse their souls with their heartfelt prayer and tears! ABOUT! They are becoming further and further from the Heavenly Light; the garment of their soul becomes blacker and uglier, and it’s scary to think what lengths such people who do not pray in the evening can reach: they fall deeper and deeper, they fall so much that it is finally difficult for them to rise up; they get used to lawlessness and live in it without feeling its burden. All people given over to vices, all who sin without a twinge of conscience, rightly, either do not pray at all, or pray only outwardly, out of habit, out of decency, and are only burdened by their prayer, because those who pray heartily and love prayer as a crucible of purification will not sin without a twinge of conscience; they fall, but soon they rise. In our morning prayers, having brought gratitude to God for preserving us with His goodness at night, we ask for grace-filled help - with a cheerful heart and sober thoughts to pass through the night of our present life. Unrighteous rich! You can buy almost all sensual pleasures, but if you forget God, being rich in unrighteousness, you cannot buy the greatest of pleasures that a person can have on earth and which only the Lord gives to those who turn their hearts to Him. This is the heavenly world, the Kingdom of God is within us. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, I give to you [Jn. 14.27]. He speaks peace upon His people... and upon those who turn their hearts to Him [Ps. 84.9]. Isn’t that servant of God who owns this heavenly treasure richer than you? Isn't he more honorable than you? Passions reign in your heart, namely: voluptuousness, covetousness, passion for the riches of this world and worldly pride, and with them the devil, but in the heart of a faithful servant of God God Himself and the heavenly world reign. When pronouncing the words of prayer, do not rush, but give them time to resonate in your heart, to become the words of your heart, your property. When you give alms, beware lest you despise the beggar inwardly in your heart, otherwise the Lord will punish you in that same heart. Do not forget that in the person of the beggar you are giving to the Lord Himself; and if you disgrace Me, He said, you will be dishonored (1 Samuel 2:30). So, today (Sunday) I felt as if a thorn was stuck in my heart throughout Matins, despite my repentance in the prayers for communion. If you begin to serve the Lord your God, then prepare your soul for temptation [Sir. 2.1]. Thus, those who wish to serve, and in fact serve the Lord, must always be ready to face temptation in their service. The Lord punishes whomever he loves; he beats every son whom he receives [Heb. 12.6]. The Lord beats His servant often and strongly so that he improves more and more, and since the Lord is all-holy and does not tolerate the slightest sinful stain in us, and persecutes the slightest unclean, false, and evil thought, then the servant of God has to endure the blows of God’s rod for every unkind thought or unclean desire, not only for every bad deed. Meekness and humility must be united in every servant of Christ, as in Christ Himself: I am meek and lowly in heart [Matt. 11.29 ]; prayer and fasting must also be combined. Prayer blooms when we fast spiritually and physically. There is a Judge and a Last Judgment. While still on earth, we experience great mental anguish for sin and the world, joy after doing a good deed. Present mental anguish is a harbinger of future torment; the peace of mind and joy of the righteous foreshadow future bliss. And why is mental torment so strong today that with it a person finds no place for himself, is tormented internally in reality and in a dream, and is overwhelmed with fear? Because the all-good Lord wants, by the very power of torment for sins, to leave an indelible memory of them in the soul and through this to induce us to turn away from sin in every possible way and cleave to Him alone. For this last purpose, He allows us to taste peace and joy when we turn to Him with all our hearts. This peace and this joy are unusually sweet and the very sweetness leaves the memory of them in the soul for a long time. And the Lord does this according to His wisdom, just as He does the intensification of torment after sin. Why is the Kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of peace and joy, taken by force, and only those who use force delight it [Matt. 11,12 ]? Because there is a lot of internal, natural evil in us that needs to be eradicated and which, like a snake that they want to kill, resists and hurts us; that there is a strong enemy of the Kingdom of God, who, by all means, is constantly trying to expel the Kingdom of God from us and establish his kingdom in us, the kingdom of sin, darkness, confusion, sorrow and oppression. Don’t be surprised that you always have to go straight to the Kingdom of Light. As for the believer, all things work together for good [Rom. 8:28], so to the unbeliever everything is evil; because the believer is with God, and God, as the Self-Existing Good, turns everything for his good; and the unbeliever is with the devil, and the devil, like evil, turns everything into evil for him. This has been proven by countless experiments. I taught you through bitter experiences not to trust your ethereal enemy in anything: whether through the sweetness of sin he attracts you to do his will, or through confusion and fear he bends you to his side, because everywhere he is evil. And you believe him. You know the benefit of your faith in Me, how faithful, soothing, sweet it is, and yet you do not believe Me. What blessings are pleasant and dear to me without Your peace? - None. Without peace, nothing pleases me. Grant me first of all Your peace. What does it mean to pray in spirit and in truth? It means to pray with the faith, hope and love with which the holy fathers prayed, who left us the spiritual treasure of their prayers, their praises and thanksgiving to God. It is a pious and very beneficial thing for our soul to create a memory of them in church or over the ashes of our parents and relatives: we ourselves become chaste, humble ourselves in the memory of their death, and we bring joy to their souls, offering a heartfelt prayer for their repose - our heart warms up over their ashes, the passions and sorrows of everyday life fall silent; their sepulchral voice tells us that everything on earth, except piety in God and virtue, is vanity. The disembodied enemy, who has managed to seduce a person to his side, receives, by God’s permission, access to his heart, enters it as a conqueror and lives in it until the person drives him out of there with tearful, hot repentance. And living in a person’s heart, the devil terribly oppresses and constrains him, does not allow him to rise to God, does not allow feelings of faith, hope and love to kindle in him, but plunges him into unbelief, hopelessness and disgust for everything. Always be trustworthy: trust in God - and He will never leave you. I am a great sinner, I often fall into sins willingly or unwillingly, and from time to time I think: what if I become an eternal prey to hell? Oh woe, woe is me. But again I think: I fall into sins more involuntarily, I don’t stagnate in them on purpose, I often cry and sob because I anger my Lord, my Benefactor and Creator, and the Lord of my life is the All-Good Being, maybe He will look at me with a gracious eye at a time when I am quickly approaching death, will send me, according to His usual mercy, the spirit of contrition and tenderness, and before death I will cleanse my sinful soul - after all, you can always find cleansing with Him: with You there is cleansing [Ps. 129.4 ]; He will send His light into my soul in moments that are so important for me, the most important of all the minutes of life, and I will see the sinful ulcers of my soul, in tears of repentance I will present them to the One who takes away the sins of the world and tell Him: if you want, you can cleanse me [Matt. 8:2] and now, how You have cleansed me many times throughout my life - in the sight of my spiritual father, in church confession, and - only before Your face during prayers at home. ABOUT! If only this had happened before my death! I would then triumphantly leave this world. The end, they say, crowns the matter. The priest, as the representative on earth of the Chief of peace and silence, as the image of Jesus Christ, must always carry in his heart peace and a constant prayerful disposition - so that he can truly, from the abundance of heart peace, teach peace and blessing to the people of God, so that in spiritual peace he can perform all services, Sacraments and prayers, so that he can always be ready for prayer, which is primarily the property of a priest. Even if I sin gravely, I will not despair of God’s mercy, because I and every believer have such a guarantee of God’s love for people, which is able to calm every sinful soul: this is the Son of God, who took upon Himself before the face and by the will of His Righteous Father all the sins of the world and incessantly intercedes for us before Him. This pledge is always before my eyes. I mean His most pure image and the life-giving Mysteries of His Body and Blood. Anyone who is often inclined to get angry and pout over any unpleasant word or deed is an angry, proud, impatient person. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it away [Matt. 11,12]. These words must also be applied to the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood. Since with them we accept the Kingdom of God into ourselves, then without need, without effort, we cannot accept them with dignity, but we must experience an internal struggle before accepting them: the enemy constantly, relentlessly tries to steal faith in the Holy Mysteries from our hearts, so that we accept them as judgment for ourselves, because everything that is not according to faith is sin [Rom. 14.23]. The above words must also be applied to all other mysteries, to all prayers, to good thoughts, desires and actions. The more the Kingdom of God increases in us, the more persistent and fierce is our struggle against the spirits of evil. This is a constant experience experienced in the soul by pious people. Be careful that the spirits of evil do not mock you because of your lack of faith and lack of spiritual skill. Never give up your heart to despondency and fear, otherwise you will become their prisoner: then they will tie you hand and foot. Make it a rule before noble and powerful people standing in church or at home in prayer to raise your voice stronger and more solemnly, in order, if possible, to humble their pride with words of truth and Christian humility. There is a thorn in the heart, but one must certainly pray; otherwise the splinter will torment more and more: unze mi thorn [Ps. 31:4], says David, but he had to pray - and he prayed. It would be good to never celebrate the liturgy without tears; In that case, there would be much more success for the soul. The prayers that are included in the Service Book and the Breviary are written with complete freedom of spirit, therefore you should pray according to them with a free, unfettered spirit. When dealing with God in prayer, be at least as attentive as you are when talking with your boss, not to mention the king. According to the words of the prayer, the fire of grace of the Holy Spirit flows like sparks along a stem; In order for a prayer to warm your heart, you only need to pronounce it slowly, word by word, with heartfelt attention, without skipping or cutting off words; otherwise, the fire of grace spilled in words will greatly scorch and wound your soul. When reading prayers in the hearing of the people, imagine the crucified Lord in your mind. People devoted to the world do not have a heartfelt feeling of need for a Savior, but pious people feel the need for Him at every step and cannot do anything without Him. Delivery to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved [1 Cor. 5.5] probably consisted, as it still does today, in the fact that God allows Satan to move into a person and torment him with inner sorrow and oppression, because the apostle, asking to accept again into love the one devoted to Satan, presents the reason: so that he would not be consumed by excessive sadness [2 Cor. 2.7]. And the dominion of Satan is terribly heavy in us! Experience. With my faith in a future life alive, will I allow myself to remain silent when I see that you live without thinking about it at all, and are flying headlong into the abyss, ready to devour you forever? With a living faith in the life-giving Mysteries, with the consciousness of their saving actions, will I allow myself to remain silent when I see that you receive communion very rarely and do not approach them as you should? With my love for you, will I be indifferent when I see that you, through inattention, laziness and negligence, are preparing for yourself certain and eternal destruction? No! No! Then I myself will be without faith, without love! Therefore, excuse me if I do not spare you and, like a trumpet, raise my voice. Glory to Your life-giving Mysteries, Lord! I will not be lazy to sing their glory again and again! How heavenly I am when I receive the Holy Mysteries in a worthy manner! In a feeling of unspeakable sweetness, I am filled with love for everyone and wish that everyone would be worthy of such a state, that the all-good God would pour out His grace on everyone and save everyone. I pray then, I pray with the purest, most sincere prayer. December 1, after the service at the cemetery. Where unbelief begins, there begins pitiful, base slavery and loss of spirit; and on the contrary, where there is faith, there is greatness, sublimity, freedom of spirit. Experience. If I know not only by faith, but also by experience, that Christ is the peace, tranquility and joy of our hearts, and yet I see that very many have abandoned Him, the fountain of living water, and have hewed out broken cisterns for themselves that cannot hold water [Jer. 2:13], then will I not, out of Christian love and out of zeal for the glory of God, raise my voice against such insane behavior of people who are called Christians, but in deeds are pagans? They know [glory: they confess the message] of God, but by deeds they deny [Tit. 1.16]. Shall I not show them this fountain of living water, Which they have forgotten? Thus, faith teaches me to wish for others what I wish for myself and what I strive for with effort. But I desire and strive, as the Apostle said about himself, to always have an immaculate conscience before God and men [Acts. 24:16 ] and always carry Christ in your heart - our peace, our sweetness, our joy. Our soul often thirsts for life-giving drink, but not very many people know where to get it. And it is close - in faith in Christ: if anyone thirsts, come to Me and drink [Jn. 7.37]. Have living faith in Christ, Who is the inexhaustible Drink for our souls, recognize yourself as a sinner, sigh for your sins - and Christ will dwell in your heart and with His presence will water and delight your heart. These are not just empty words or promises. What is being said is something that has been experienced by millions. There are miracles of moral transformations in me: sin, as always, [tormented] my heart, but as soon as I turned spiritually and said within myself: I will get up and go to my father [Lk. 15.18], - my heart suddenly felt light. So you, brothers, if some sin has penetrated your soul and is growing through various thoughts and feelings, stop it with these words spoken from the heart: I will arise and go to my father. Through sin you moved away, through conversion you draw closer, and the Heavenly Father will receive you again. Ask... seek... knock [Matt. 7.7], says the Savior. Why exactly is it necessary to ask, why does God, who knows our needs in advance of our request, not give us what we need without our request? Because a rational being must know and feel its constant dependence on God, must know that all its natural gifts are from God, as from the Source of all good. Therefore, we need to ask that it does not consider the gifts of the Lord to be its own and does not become proud of them. For the same purpose, it is necessary that a rational being be grateful to its Creator and Benefactor for everything. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you [1 Thess. 5.18]. The Savior said: in spirit and in truth he is worthy to bow down [Jn. 4.24]. It was not in vain that He added these words: in spirit and in truth. He who does not pray with the spirit or with the heart does not pray with the truth. Everyone has probably experienced this themselves. Without praying with your heart, you do not feel the benefit of prayer, you remain almost the same as you were before prayer, but when you pray with your heart, you receive pleasure in your heart. Therefore, during prayer, every word of prayer must pass through the heart. Your blessed image of the Savior is a gracious image: at the Academy it had a wonderfully touching effect on you, disposed you to holy love, and here, in your apartment, it has the same effect. What is the best time of our lives, not to mention the time of childhood innocence? – A time of well-ordered prayer, a time after worthy communion and a time of attentive reading or listening to the word of God and the writings of the holy fathers; time for conscientious performance of one’s duties and rest after them; in general, a time when we are on the path of truth and goodness. The rest of the time is a time of mental anxiety, boredom and emptiness of the heart. God alone is truly good, and people are more evil than good. So, I left, not satisfied in my request, with a cramped, dissatisfied heart from people known for their kindness, distinguished by the severity of their moral life, even when I had every right to have my request satisfied; but I never left God dissatisfied or displeased, but almost always left with peace and joy in my heart, except for those cases when I myself did not pray properly to my God! Glory to Your goodness, O Lord, incomparable to any human goodness! What you wish for others in the sensory, visible realm, wish for them in the spiritual, invisible realm, in the realm of faith, even more of the latter than the former - due to the special importance of the latter. You know from experience how to pray well - wish from your heart to pray like that for others, and teach them to pray like that. Watch over your heart and always keep it in check. Just as internal pain in the body testifies to its painfulness, so pain in the heart testifies to the painful state of the soul: the painful state of the soul is first of all revealed in the heart. Don't speak ill of anyone and don't judge anyone! The degree of faith and fervor in prayer performed daily shows daily the degree of our moral state, our purity or impurity of heart. This means that prayer serves as a measure of our progress or cooling in spiritual life. When you pray, with your intelligent eye, watch your heart, what purpose it has during prayer: whether just to read prayers, or to cleanse your soul with them; if the first goal, then now you need to eliminate it and set the last goal - the true one; the first goal destroys the prayer and makes it one multi-verb, which God will not hear. I am a servant of God, and here is experimental proof of this: He rewards or punishes me; rewards for good and punishes for evil. I feel it, feel it every day and hour. God is greater than our heart [1 John. 3.20]. During prayer, be afraid of displeasure against anyone; otherwise you will not be able to speak. Displeasure and anger are a sign of pride, and God opposes the proud. Don’t be so crazy as to pray before the face of the Most High without humility, without meekness. The meek and humble in heart also listens to the prayers of the meek and humble, but does not accept prayers from the irritable and proud. Be patient: without patience there is no salvation. With your patience, it is said, save your souls [Lk. 21.19]. So that you do not have displeasure when parishioners make many demands for prayer services, say to yourself: I thank You, Lord, that You give me the opportunity to fulfill the commandment of Your Apostle: Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks [1 Thess. 5:17–18], and rejoice while serving any kind of prayer service: whether ordinary for the Savior and the saints, or thanksgiving or with blessing of water. In this way you will always maintain the peace and sweetness in your heart that is necessary in every prayer, private or public. Do the same at every other need, at every public service. Maintain holy, godly, peaceful, invaluable freedom and breadth of spirit in every service, in every word and deed in dealing with people outside the home, as well as at home when dealing with everyone. Slavery and narrowness of spirit are the characteristics of a cowardly person. Be careful that your humility does not turn into this spiritual slavery: in this latter case it is not a virtue. Virtue is a matter of freedom. Freedom of heart and thought: this should be your motto. Pay careful attention to yourself so that you are always obedient to everyone: to your superiors or to your flock, to whom you owe perfect obedience for Christ’s sake. You, according to the word of Christ, are a servant to your flock: and whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant [Mk. 10.43–44]. Be afraid of disobedience in any task: it can kill your soul and deprive you of the reward for your labors. Obedience is better than sacrifice [1 Sam. 15.22]. If our fathers, the luminaries on earth, would not have been our leaders in faith, if they had not worthy of the festivities in honor of the Lord, His Most Pure Mother and the saints, if they had not been our leaders in the performance of divine services - ah! - how poor and pitiful the human race would be then, how empty and spiritually dead the earth would be then, how few praises of the Lord would be heard then! And now, by their mercy, we have bright festivals that nourish and cheer the soul, resurrecting in our memory the most beneficial events from the life of the Lord and His Most Pure Mother and His saints. We echo their chants and ourselves become participants in their spiritual, rapturous joy. How pitiful are those church societies that do not have holidays. I sometimes notice in myself complete moral impotence, the absence of any good in myself and the inability to produce any good through my efforts. This is where I see all the need for the grace of the Holy Spirit; This is where I see that without the grace of God I am a complete moral nothingness and that everything good in me is a gift of the Spirit of God. Oh! How hard it is to feel a moral emptiness within yourself, a lack of goodness and the impossibility of introducing it into your soul on your own! What melancholy is in my heart then, murderous melancholy! O Comforter, Soul of Truth! Come and dwell in us, and with Yourself instill in us every good thing! Comfort us in sorrow over sin. Your consolation is necessary for us: without Your consolation we would melt away from sorrow over sins. Also, in particular, I notice in myself at times, especially during service, a [painful] deceit of the heart or a moral fermentation of good and evil, when the evil that has arisen tries to overcome the dormant good that has not been strengthened in the heart. The heart is deceitful and puts me to shame against my will. To destroy this wickedness, the grace of the Spirit is needed, which would consume the evil of the evil one and instead place in the heart goodness and simplicity inseparable from it. In the dark moments of your life, always remember the bright and joyful moments, of which there were incomparably more, and say to yourself: will we really accept good from God, and not accept evil? [Job. 2.10]. For the Lord is righteous and loves righteousness [Ps. 10.7]. I, humble and much of a sinner, preached the word of God in the cathedral church by order of my superiors. With God's help, my preaching went on successfully for a whole year: and the listeners, as you know, were pleased with it, and the censors - two archimandrites - were also very pleased, to the point that one of them extolled my conversations with praise. I worked willingly on the work of God, well-intentioned, conscientiously. But what did envy and malice do to me subsequently, or, better, not to me, but to the word of God? Having spoken for a year, I had to continue the work of preaching for another year. Without complaining, I willingly accepted this, although it was not entirely legal to force me to practice this another year. I spoke for six months and, as usual, presented my conversations for consideration, compiled, as before, in good faith. What do anger and envy do? My work is sullied and I am denigrated and scolded as much as possible, ordering me to remain silent in advance. Reluctantly, I accepted the pressure of human malice and, out of grief, did not know what to do: make excuses or remain silent. I thought it best to remain silent. I thought: after all, the Lord will surely fulfill His word: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay [Rom. 12.19]. Or: With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7.2; Mk. 4.24]. So what? Soon, soon the Lord would take revenge on my worst enemies for me before I even thought about it. In print, in the hearing of the whole world, He exposed the untruths of my judges, and they should blush for themselves in the face of all the people who blow, as if on a horn, about their vile untruths! Glory to Your justice, O Lord! Your word has been fulfilled: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay. And: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. At the beginning of reading the word of God or the writings of the holy fathers, and also at the beginning of prayer, I sometimes feel a strange, most stubborn resistance of the heart, contemptuously turning away from reading and prayer. In this case, there is usually something like a stone lying on the heart, which weighs it down with melancholy and languor. As you force yourself to do a good deed and as you strive for extreme humility, resistance passes along with anguish of the heart; in this case, I noticed that something seemed to be torn from my heart, and then my heart suddenly felt light, light. Have you heard the words of the Solovetsky Elder Nestor? Imitate him in zeal for the word of God, in the fearlessness of the nobles and mighty of the earth, in holy impulses of piety. Doesn’t it often happen that when we begin to pray, we are, at least at the beginning, ignorant in language, thought and heart? The word of the Savior is true, that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and those who use force take it by force [Matt. 11,12]. In order to do good, I must constantly fight with my heart, which is always ready to incline me to evil: good is always achieved with need, but evil is always easy to do, just give up. Our heart is the source of evil, according to the Savior. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior [Lk. 1.46–47]. See how the Spirit of God works equally in the souls of men. The Mother of God, after the descent of the Life-Giving Spirit upon Her and the overshadowing of Her by the power of the Most High, magnifies God and rejoices in Him. The same thing happened with the apostles after the Holy Spirit descended on them: they also magnified God in different languages ​​and rejoiced in the Holy Spirit; the same thing happened with the household of Cornelius the centurion and with Cornelius himself: after the Holy Spirit descended on them, they magnified God and rejoiced spiritually. The kingdom of God is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14,17]. People who seek God, who strive for an immaculate life, are pursued by the evil one at every step: before, during and after every godly deed, he constantly, tirelessly puts obstacles in their way of good, and - oh, misfortune! He often catches the unwary in his captivity and traps them in good deeds! And when he, the evil one, manages to seduce us in any way, then he gains some power over us, as over captives, pinching our hearts with melancholy and despondency, producing feelings of impatience, annoyance, murmuring, and sometimes instills fear in the heart, discouraging us even for the future in the Lord’s mercy towards us. What to do when he tyrannizes our heart with melancholy and despair, when it aches painfully? Then make three signs of the cross on your stomach with faith in the Crucified One, who trampled down the power of the devil, and in the boundless mercy of the sovereign Trinity towards us - and your heart will certainly calm down, calm down from pain. Yes, I have experienced this more than once. The evil one disappeared like smoke: I felt this clearly. Glory, glory, glory to the power of Your Cross, Lord! When you read the word of God or prayers, the writings of the holy fathers, read with your heart or, in the words of the Savior, listen with your kind and good heart. I advise everyone to take care of this. When you, brothers and sisters, are at evenings and in a whirlwind of dancing, with streams of light from chandeliers and candelabras, with the sounds of an instrument, rushing through the vast rooms with rapture of your heart - oh! Then the vanity of you and your days, spent in thoughts, worries about dancing and in the dancing itself, involuntarily comes to mind, and that eternal gnashing of teeth that awaits all the unworthy slaves who have killed their days in idleness comes to mind. And when you sit at sumptuous tables, laden with a multitude of drinks and varied dishes, and drink and eat sweetly, often to the point of satiety, I then remember the words of the Savior: Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life [Lk. 21:34], or: Woe to you who are now full! for you will hunger [Lk. 6.25]. And I remember those who cry and hunger, who were promised in that century eternal joy and endless satiation. (If you like to go to dinner parties - the word is true - you are not far from destruction; soon, very soon, perhaps, the terrible hour of death will suddenly come upon you.) Ah, do not be seduced by the satiation of your belly, do not indulge with the enthusiasm of your heart in any secular amusements and pleasures; if sometimes it is impossible to do without invited dances and dinners, at least do this without heartfelt sympathy and always carry in your heart the words of the Lord, warning you from eternal destruction. Oh! Who loves you more and wants to give you peace and pleasure more than He who laid down His life for you? The hospitable hosts who have called you for refreshments and fun certainly want to give you pleasure and peace of mind; but they themselves are people just like you, they themselves are slaves of sin and the devil. Can they bring you true peace and tranquility of heart? Listen! For a person devoted to earthly acquisitions, for the benefit of his soul, it is necessary to break the stronghold of his wealth and various acquisitions, behind which his soul is, as it were, behind a fortification: that is why the all-wise and all-good God often allows people to endure various hardships from fires, floods and other hardships. Holy faith is like a great, living river flowing through a vast desert; This river is very long, its beginning is in the Spring of Living Water, which is a great distance away from us; we see the continuation of the river and will abundantly draw from it nutritious and refreshing drink. You need to learn to pray in such a way that during prayer, as during a conversation with people, you look with the eyes of faith directly in the face of the Being to whom you are praying. And indeed, beings of the spiritual world, with our faith and purity of heart, can communicate with us just as easily as living people with living people. Imagining my Lord on my right side, I am calm, I say my prayers boldly, slowly, evenly, with feeling. What kind of work is it for you to imagine Him at your right hand or before your eyes - always imagine Him. What sweetness, what peace, the life-giving Mysteries spill into my soul when I partake of them worthily! So today, November 5 (Wednesday), I took communion to my joy. All living creatures: people, animals, plants - like nothing: a very small number of years of existence; are born, grow and die, and new ones appear in their place. One Lord is eternal, immortal, fulfills and fulfills everything. When your mind and heart are turned to God, you are calm and cheerful; and when you walk without God, especially when you do things contrary to God, when you sin, then your heart is heavy, you experience torment. What follows from this? Here's what: always look to God and do what pleases Him, what supports peace and love. Here you are, with God’s help, in front of a large crowd, you celebrated a beautiful wedding - because you had God the Helper before your eyes and were not in any hurry, but said your prayers with feeling, according to the word. And henceforth behave this way at every need. You have experienced a lot of grief from haste in reading church prayers. Learn, with God’s help, not to rush. You humiliated the spirit of prayers, therefore God humiliated your spirit; and in prayers the Holy Spirit moves. Glory to Thee, God, glory to Thee, Lady, glory to Thee, the Forerunner, you heeded my prayer and granted me what I asked - to perform the Sacrament of Marriage without stumbling, with dignity. God! You are the light of my mind; You are the sweetness of my heart. ABOUT! How good I feel with You! But how bad I feel without You, when I let You out of my mind and heart! Then it’s dark in the head, dim in the heart! November 8. The Akathist to the Savior and the evening prayer have so delighted my heart today that at the end of a well-organized prayer, our soul reluctantly parts with prayer, like a baby who is suddenly taken away from his mother’s sweet breast. Prayer with faith is a real suckling, which our baby, our soul, greedily sucks. Glory to the faith of Christ! Glory to the prayers of the church! How wonderfully, life-givingly they change and transform the soul. What sweetness they pour into our entire being! This is life, this is our life! What kind of life is there without faith and prayer? Shadow of life. Glory to the Lord, who does not deprive us sinners of the gift of prayer! We must try in every possible way during prayer so that the current of faith in the heart, like an electric current in a telegraph, is not interrupted during prayer: then prayer will have an amazing sweetness, no matter how long it is, because then a person has a continuous communication with God; but as soon as the current of faith is cut off in prayer, communication with God is cut off, just as through the telegraph one cannot have relations with a particular place if the current of electricity in it is cut off. Oh, Divine, priceless gift of faith! Oh, our life is faith! Oh, the sweetness of our hearts! Oh, the light of our mind! It happens that prayers are [read] with living faith. From this night’s dream, recognize yourself that you are people-pleasing and partial. Be sure to correct yourself and don’t look at anyone’s face when you need to give someone justice. Lord Jesus Christ! You are my mercy and my judgment! The breadth or narrowness, the tightness of my heart - from You. Do not for a moment succumb to the feeling of cowardly timidity, otherwise the evil one will lure you far, as always, when we succumb to the movement of any passion, but be strong in faith and hope in God. The prayer of faith will save the sick. I found this out through experience myself. With the prayer of faith he asked for the health of the sick woman - and she began to get better. And [she is sinful in nothing] except stinginess, and in that she has no hope in God. I am entirely not mine, but God’s; my whole life consists either of rewards or of God’s punishments to me: I am good - and God rewards me; I am bad and punishes. As faith weakens in the heart, the spiritual life of the soul is extinguished: peace and joy in the Holy Spirit leave it [Rom. 14,17]. Experience. Another skilled moneylender, seeing that another rich person has a lot of money lying uncirculated, regrets that money, such a flowing, useful thing, remains dead, useless capital both for him, the rich man, and for others; Therefore, he himself (the usurer) never allows himself to do this, knowing the benefits of capital if it is turned into trade turnover (because it makes him a profit). Rich man - Church; money - the word of God and prayers assigned to believers; moneylender - a prudent reader or listener-prayer. We can daily give every word of the Holy Scripture, every prayer, every word of prayer as growth to God, if with living faith we read or listen from the heart or send them to Him. He perfectly, infinitely knows how to multiply the growth of His holy word or the prayers we send, if we read the word of God as a child in the simplicity of faith or entrust ourselves to Him in prayer: He will make every word of prayer for our soul not only living, but also life-giving capital, and all prayer in general - wonderful, life-giving wealth. Who is the wise and faithful servant who will apply these words to his heart and put them into practice? He who has ears to hear, let him hear! [Matt. 11:15, 13:9; Mk. 4:9]. When you say a good word or do a good deed, even when you think, look whether you are thinking, saying or doing for the good; Does the heart do this for itself, for its own bliss, or does it look to others and for the sake of decency only does good, hypocritically, feignedly. My son! give your heart to me [Prov. 23.26]. Try most of all, man, about correction, about the purity of your heart: the heart is the most important thing, the soul in a person. Blessed are the pure in heart, says the Savior, for they will see God [Matt. 5.8], – with the heart, not the mind; These people draw near to Me with their lips, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me [Matt. 15.8 ]; those who have heard with a good and good heart receive the word... the devil takes the word from their hearts, so that they do not believe and are saved... [Lk. 8.12]. For from the heart come evil thoughts... [Matt. 15.19]. You see, the Savior points to the heart as the most important thing in a person. The holy king and prophet David says: Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in my womb [Ps. 50.12]. You see, he directly places the soul in the womb, that is, in the entrails. My son! give your heart to me [Prov. 23:26], says God through the prophet. This is what the Holy Scripture says about the importance of the heart in a person. And experience assures us that our soul, animating the whole body, primarily lives in the heart. Whether something pleasant or sad happens to us, the heart first of all feels joy or sorrow. Whether you did a good deed - the heart first of all experiences joy, expands with joy; Whether we do a bad deed, the heart first of all experiences sorrow, oppression, torment; when the heart rejoices, then the head is light and bright, and when the heart grieves, then the head is dark and heavy. So, our soul primarily lives in the heart of our bodily being, although it animates the entire body with its omnipresence. And the Lord our God, being omnipresent, primarily reveals Himself in heaven: heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool [Isa. 66.1]. If I do not pray with my heart, my prayer is invalid; if I don’t have faith that unites me with God, I am nothing; and faith is in the heart: if I do not love, it is of no use to me... [1 Cor. 13.3] from all apparently good deeds; but love lives in the heart, not in the mind. ????? ???? 40 and therefore I suspect that others are also evil before me, ill-wishing me. Correct your heart [evil to good]. God! Help me! “You have angered beings,” said the Savior [Matt. 12.34]. Who doesn't feel this in themselves? So, Lord, we are truly evil. If sometimes we experience a special surge of anger and we begin to hate everyone, we will not be surprised at this: this is blind pride, which considers itself good, but we humbly admit that we really are like that, and turn this into a reason for humility; then there is a special mercy, the grace of God for us, when we are truly kind to others, truly well-disposed. Let us say to the Lord more often: Lord! You came into the world to save sinners, from whom I am the first (1 Tim. 1:15): save me from the evil hidden within me. I can’t do anything without You [Jn. 15.5], and not only can I not do anything good without You, but I cannot, as if from myself, have good thoughts, feelings of goodness, of the holy. Help me, Lord! There is so much evil nesting in my heart that it confuses me almost at all times, because the property of sin confuses our spirit, often brings a blush of shame to the face during interviews with people and makes me not entirely sincere in dealing with them. During prayer and at all other times, you must try to align your spirit with the Spirit of God. Be afraid to prefer anything to the Sweetest, Most Exalted Lord, especially when you go to celebrate the Liturgy and enjoy His life-giving Mysteries. Let nothing occupy your heart except these terrible Mysteries; Put everything of this life aside before mass. Begin, with God’s help, to exercise yourself in love, first of all, for your family. Let neither stinginess nor hatred touch your heart: let your heart be full of love, and let your lips speak out of the abundance of a loving heart. Remember the words of the apostle, that if I do not have love, I have no... profit [1 Cor. 13.3]. Be glad that you can bring joy and pleasure to others. How many times was it hard and painful for your heart from lack of faith or disbelief when receiving the Holy Mysteries - and how many times was it sweet, life-giving from faith when receiving them! How many times has sin tormented your soul, and how many times has virtue pleased and pacified you! Are you still unfaithful? Be not unfaithful, but faithful [Jn. 20.27]. Peace of mind, peace, sweetness of heart is the grace of Jesus Christ. Come to Me... and I will give you rest (learn from Me meekness and humility): and you will find rest for your souls [Matt. 11,28–29]. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you [Jn. 14.27]. For this reason, the Lord often greeted His disciples with peace and commanded His disciples to greet the believers with peace (Whatever house you enter, first say: peace to this house [Luke 10:5]... My peace I leave with you), in order to show by this that peace is His gift and without Him there is no peace. This is why we feel peace during and after worthy prayer and after worthy reception of the Holy Mysteries. The Lord always reveals Himself sovereignly over our hearts and does not allow insignificant creatures to become conceited with Him, and we are inclined from habit to be conceited with everyone; Without living faith and a deep sense of humility, I cannot but to my own detriment appear before His face if my heart and thoughts are in any way disobedient to Him; for example, if I allow myself, even only in my thoughts, only in my heart, some dissatisfaction with His deeds, His Providence, I feel very cramped and sorrowful, as it is said: Grief and distress for every soul of a person who does evil [Rom. 2.9]. Therefore, if you have the misfortune of grumbling against God in your soul, you must immediately heal from this poison with thoughts and feelings that are opposite, that is, you need to thank God from the bottom of your heart for His countless benefits to us - then peace and tranquility will return to our hearts again. God! You are the God of our heart, You sovereignly carry it in Your hands, You reveal Yourself in it. People, like all nature, act on our soul through external feelings, and in this respect they (people) are limited, because they cannot otherwise have relations with our soul, other than through these so-called windows; but God directly acts on our soul as God, as the Creator of spirits and all flesh. I feel it, I sense it, as I feel it, I sense it when people and nature act on me, and in this regard, may the power of the great God be glorified over us and may unbelief be barred, which claims that we do not see the Lord, and therefore do not know when and how He acts on our soul; I know, I absolutely know when He acts on me, although I don’t know how. You hear his voice, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes [John. 3.8]. Therefore, a person must first of all respond to God with his heart, and not with external feelings. Esau and Jacob (summarium 41) are a visible image of that invisible struggle that happens within us between good and evil. There is an almost constant domestic struggle going on within us: evil always tries to block the way for good, to take precedence, and good - to evil, and also wants to take precedence; pride wants to overcome humility; unbelief - faith; self-love, hatred - love for God and neighbors; cowardice, daring dissatisfaction with the affairs of Providence shakes devotion to the will of God, submission to His Providence; indignation of passions - peace of mind. What should be the consequence of this constant struggle? Good must know the art of stopping evil, of overthrowing its uprisings at the very beginning. For example, thoughts of pride arise in you: do not let them grow stronger, but now let humility suppress them and put them in their place; if there are thoughts of unbelief, let faith overcome them at the same moment; if there is a murmur against God, let them immediately be filled with heartfelt gratitude to God for the wise deeds of His all-good Providence. By our corrupt nature, evil (Esau) has primacy, but by grace, good (Jacob) in justice must suppress it; the sons of light must be wiser than the sons of this age, virtue is wiser than evil. What next? Esau still did not remain without a blessing and with tears begged his father for a place in the kind of blessing. What does it mean? Our trouble comes from sin: it furrows, tearing at our soul throughout the entire course of our life, even when doing good deeds. Sometimes people complain that bosses or ordinary people forget all the good things they have done and remember only the bad and only pay for the bad. But the word of the Savior is true: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7.2; Mk. 4.24; OK. 6.38]. You forget God’s blessings to you, but look and grumble at His punishments, which, although severe, are all beneficial in their consequences. Don’t complain if they forget your goodness, and only see your evil, which is truly evil. Therefore, we need a Savior, Who would constantly save us from sin in this life, and who would completely deliver us from it in the future. If sin did not kill, then there would be no need for a Savior; but he kills the soul both here and after bodily death - for endless centuries. How is a Savior therefore necessary? Who doesn't see this? We cannot live without the Savior. Prayer is the most precious treasure for a person: pronounced with faith and trust in God, it drives away passions and heartache from the heart and restores peace and tranquility in the soul. Therefore, if any passion torments you, immediately turn to prayer; If you really don’t want to pray at this time, then overcome yourself and tell God frankly: Lord! Here I am like this and this, let’s say - proud, envious and proud, etc.; I have a lot of evil in me; You can do everything, You can cleanse me, transform me; cleanse me, transform me, heal my passions. Experience. I partake of the Supper of Love and - I do not have sincere love for my neighbors, I do not love them as I love myself - [not] in accordance with anything. May the Supper of Love be for you an incentive to love. Let your other motivation be the internal gnawing of passions, for example, pride, hatred, envy, etc. You know that passions gnaw at the soul like the fiercest dogs of hell. Sacrifice for love to others what is important to you, what is valuable: otherwise how will you prove your love? In whose heart passions live, he cannot be capable of enjoying feelings of pure, ardent love, feelings of the good, the beautiful, the sublime. What does light have in common with darkness? [ 2 Cor. 6.14]. And therefore it is already necessary to eradicate passions. A passionate person - if a servant of God - is either cowardly or insolent in the face of God, and cannot be a worthy servant of the altar unless he changes for the better. We often see people of easy character who soon become arrogant with everything that surrounds them. If such people are placed at the height of the priesthood, then here, right before the throne of the King of kings, they also become arrogant. But the King of kings powerfully admonishes them, leaving them with only His help. Then they either give in to a perverted mind and do indecent things [Rom. 1.28], or become like dust, which the wind sweeps away from the face of the earth [Ps. 1.4 ], or a leaf carried by the wind. A passionate person loses boldness before God and removes Him from his heart. This can be quite noticeable. The Lord punishes even one inclination to sin: He knows us more than ourselves: God is greater than our heart [1 John. 3.20]. This is what I feel. When I live according to the laws of the Lord of my life, I feel good, I walk in breadth; and when I deviate from His laws, I sin, life is hard for me, I walk with a constricted heart. When any passion begins to take possession of you, then remember the Savior and call on Him for help: He will now appear and deliver you from the darkness and tyranny of it. Tell Him: behold, my Savior, the time has come to show You Your mercy and power on me - show it, O Lover of Mankind! God! May Your terrible Sacrifice always be great for me, always new, just as it is always life-giving for me. Always thank God for the peace that you now enjoy with faith in Him, and remember what it was like for you without His peace. Oh! What a peace of God! How desirable and precious he is for our soul. Glory to the life-giving Mysteries! What order, what peace and tranquility they create in the small world - a person who in general can boast so little of internal order and the peace and joy of the heart that comes from it! How palpable and noticeable the Lord is in me after receiving the Holy Mysteries! In the outer world I see the Lord in the amazing order, the harmonious flow of all things great and small, in this flow of the luminaries, in this emergence and growth of animals and plants, of which each genus knows itself without the light of reason - and in me I recognize Him by the sweet consent and peace of my spiritual powers, by the order of my spiritual life. It is no longer because of your words [glory: for your conversation] that we believe, for we ourselves have heard and learned that He is truly the Savior of the world, Christ [John. 4:42], they said to the Samaritan wife, who told them about Christ the Messiah, when Christ lived with them for two days. So we first believe in the Lord for the conversation of others, namely for the conversation of the holy evangelists and apostles, and then we ourselves, with the inner feeling of our hearts, are convinced that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and us. The actions of Christ living in us experimentally assure us that He is our Savior. When you meet the poor, say to yourself: as their eyes are turned to our hand, so our eyes are to the Lord our God, until He has mercy on us [glory: will show mercy to us] [Ps. 122.2], and never be lazy about giving alms. Sententinae 42. August 28, 1858. God! By the power of Your cross, depicted with heartfelt attention and faith on my chest and belly, I drive out the painful fear of demons from my heart: glory to Your power, glory to the power of Your Cross, Lord! Invincible, incomprehensible, Divine power of the Honest and Life-giving Cross, do not forsake us sinners! Always have before your eyes the mirror of God’s perfections: wisdom, goodness, justice, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, so that you can walk in the light and correct your steps. If, for example, you stumbled, sinned and are suffering punishment for sin, internal or external, then remember that the just God, having punished you here, will not punish you in another life. With justice, which, however, has already been disarmed for us by the Son of God, imagine His goodness, which draws us to God with the same force with which justice rushes to punish the sinner; even goodness hides itself in justice, so that, having punished the criminal, it may pardon him with eternal mercy. If you suffer punishment, then God treats you as sons. For is there any son whom his father does not punish? [Heb. 12.7] - says the apostle. Lord, who bears all things with His power [Heb. 1.3 ]! Support me too, who is falling from despondency and cowardice. You support my physical life - support my spiritual life too. How sharply, tangibly, two completely opposite states differ in me: a state of grace, a state of peace and freedom of spirit - and a state without grace, a state of torment, sorrow, melancholy, slavery of the soul! I throw myself into the latter, damned, pitiful, powerless, every time I sin before God, my Righteous Judge; in the first, I experience sincere, ardent repentance for my sins, when tears flow from a heart torn by grief, when the Righteous Judge and Knower of the Heart is transformed into a loving Father, with open arms accepting the prodigal son who turned to Him, and when, by His grace, I am refrained from sins and do good. Good God! Heavy is Your rod with which You strike me! But Thy will be done! God! You know that I fall involuntarily. Look at my efforts not to fall, look at my tears after my fall; Look at my joy when, with Your help, I overcome myself and do not succumb to my weakness. This generation is being cast out [glory: comes out], the Savior said about the demons that have entered people, only through prayer and fasting [Matt. 17.21; Mk. 9.29]. And indeed, this kind comes from people through prayer. People who are not of this world know this from experience. Often, after fervent prayer, in moments of peace of mind, in moments of freedom from temptation, they remember with horror the terrible torment that the dark demon inflicted on them, and they rejoice, as if having been saved from hell, when by the power of prayer he comes out of them, and the peaceful Angel overshadows them again with his holy and sacred wings. God! Grant me tears to mourn my spiritual dead man - my soul. With horror I see that my heart has died to faith, hope and love; the mind has become darkened: there are no holy contemplations in it, there is no light of truth in it; some kind of darkness wanders in my head. God! May Your ever-present light shine upon me, a sinner, too! Sweet dream. I saw the late Emperor Nicholas in a dream (but it was as if he was alive and had not died). He surveyed his kingdom; while looking around, I went into the house of some person he patronized (as if Kudr.), from whom I learned that I had done a generous act to someone by giving significant alms. It was as if I was near this house: I wanted to see the king. The Tsar warmly accepted my deed with love and a royal air of concern for all his subjects, caressed me with the Tsar’s word, gave me as a reward some piece of paper, which I thought was a ruble, and ordered me to go with him and drink tea with him. Meanwhile, I allegedly showed my piece of paper to others, and it turned out that it was a royal ticket, with which I could receive one hundred and sixty silver rubles from any treasury, while others said that it was more than a thousand. The king rewarded so generously for one alms. So I waited until the king went home; grinning, he looked at me and went home to rest from his work. I walked away from him. The Emperor walked as a private rank: no one recognized him (so we will not recognize the Providence moving within us). He came home. I also went into the royal palace; here I found some beggars and the king’s servants who asked why I was here, and I said why. I waited a long time and wanted to go and change my bad hat, which I hastily took from someone instead of mine; The princes began to appear to see whom the king had honored with such mercy; the princes again appeared from other chambers, with bright, grinning faces, kind, friendly, and asked me: what, father? I answered: your dad ordered me to drink tea at his place. The princesses also appeared with a good-natured, cheerful look and greeted me. Soon tea was served, and I got drunk. But I never saw the king again. I told my wife: look how God rewards us for a good deed; let us never miss an opportunity to do a good deed. What sweetness I felt from sleep! How long did his traces remain in the heart! The Holy Scriptures are the light shining in the dark place of this world. How many it has enlightened! How many people have borrowed the power of their words from him! All the great church preachers, all the creators of spiritual creations, in which we find so much delight, so much sublimity and beauty of words, were formed by the Holy Scriptures. Your torment after each sin and your peace of mind, your joy after heartfelt repentance or after another good deed, success in business means that without Christ you are the subject of the tyranny of the devil and passions, but with Christ you are a child of the Heavenly Kingdom, blessed, worldly. Not despairing of God’s mercy after sin is a wonderful thing: God has mercy on a sinner who tries to avoid sin and, however, is often possessed by the devil, if the sinner does not despair of God’s mercy, but trusts in it. The devil uses everything to bring a person into despair. Glory to You, Lord, who has mercy on me! And conciliar service is a stumbling block for me. It is necessary that the starting point of prayer always be the consciousness of one’s wretchedness, one’s poverty, misery and blindness. Our flesh is always ready to say: I am rich and demand nothing; I am rich and have become rich and demand nothing [Rev. 3.17]. She is always proud. How to recognize the actions of the evil spirit in a person? By their fruits you will recognize them [Matt. 7:16], said the Savior. If you grumble and blaspheme, then you certainly have a demon. We attract the Spirit to a substance in all our rituals, whether it be, for example, water or oil, or some other liquid, or, for example, bread, etc. Receive, interview and see off sincerely and willingly. It is necessary that the heart before prayer, as during prayer, be completely imbued with love for God and for people, so that enmity towards God or people is not hidden in it under any guise, for example, under the guise of discontent, grumbling, love for the world, hatred, malice, stinginess - in a word, so that it is clean from the painful scabs of sin and from the aphids of passions. If, before prayer, you feel that your heart hurts, aches, that there seems to be some kind of weight on it that is preventing it from rising up to God, immediately try to introduce into it sincere love for God - and it will heal. In prayer, the life of the heart is most important. He will not rise to God if some kind of passion oppresses him. The saying is true, that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also [Matt. 6.21]. Remember that you are something more, like a product of expired moisture - and humble yourself. In order to appear with a loving heart before the face of God in the church, one must gradually temper it in love at home and in dealing with people. Destroy the worm of pride: it greatly undermines the life of the soul. Have an immaculate conscience and keep a good heart. Lady Theotokos! Consolation of those who mourn, glory to You, thanksgiving to You! You transform the torments of our hearts into sweet calm, the storm of passions into the silence of God’s grace! A wicked, fickle heart! May you never dare to deny the obvious mercies of the Queen of Heaven! Do not speak much with your lips - more with your heart. If the heart is on fire, then it is good for the lips to speak. But if it is crushed, pinched by any kind of sin and the tongue hangs lonely, then it is better for it not to hang out for sin. This is the only thing you have to do (I mean services and requirements): why should you rush, why should you rush? Do it as calmly and evenly as possible: that’s why you will have peace and joy in your heart. Remember this, you stupid head! Until you learn to overcome your passions with God’s help, you will not overcome the feeling of embarrassment that happens to you, because the property of passions is to confuse our spirit. Just as God, seeing our faith and zeal for prayer, delights our soul and strengthens it in the holy work with His grace, so the devil, seeing our weakness or weak effort in prayer, oppresses, strikes our heart with melancholy and completely weakens it for prayer. There is a fire in one place or another; not in me, but in the members of my family the evil one fans the flames of passions. The spirit of malice is tirelessly active. I had a wonderful time on Wednesday (September 3): I was cheerful, calm, and cheerful all day. Why? – From unfailing service, from inactivity of passions, from labors for God and, finally, from fasting. Fasting is important! Save me, God, continue to do so. Holy Virgin Mary! By the Body and Blood of Your Son, which I so often partake of, I dare to call You akin to me! O Lady! After all, the Son of God received this Body and this Blood from You, because both that Body and that Blood of my Lord, of which I partake, are one with the Body of the Lord who is in heaven. How can I not love You, more than Your Son, Your God and mine! O Most Pure Lady! Grant me to become in saving affinity with You not only through Body and Blood, which I often accept unworthily, but also through faith, hope and love; grant me to become in saving intimacy with You in thoughts and feelings. O Most Pure Lady! I need, I desperately need a pure heart! You can do everything, O All-Powerful One: You can, with Your omnipotent prayers, ask me from Your Son and Your God for the grace of a pure heart, so that faith, hope and love may live in it - ask, O Most Immaculate One! After communion of the Divine Mysteries, I change in a wonderful way. Before communion, I usually fear myself like a monster, because I see inside me the abyss of all evil, barely restrained, suppressed by tension towards the opposite virtues; and after communion I become a pure, meek angel, which in itself is impossible for me; The hundred-headed monster of sin subsides and freezes within me; I am no longer afraid of myself, but completely satisfied with myself: there is such peace in me, such wonderful calmness! Glory, glory, glory to the Divine Mysteries! What a miracle! What's the news? What kind of strangeness is this? I stumbled during the service, and not once, not twice, but five or six - and I’m calm; hellish fear and embarrassment did not penetrate my bones, my soul. Doesn't God always remain just? Understand. It was precisely by His justice that He did not allow the evil one to upset and sadden me. How so? Today is the day of my wife’s Angel, a day of joy, not sorrow. (In order not to stumble, you need to look around, and the fear will pass.) The devil wanted to plunge me into sadness and despondency today, but God did not allow it; the evil one could only darken my mind so that I would stumble in the darkness, but by the grace of God he could not give me over to despondency. God drove him away. You have heard that it is not just you who stumbles during service, but also many others, that it is ridiculous and sinful to be embarrassed and despondent from this, that you should not take every stumbling block to heart, that you should think about it as little as possible. The more tangible the trace of the Lord in communion, the more unpardonable is the most momentary thought of unbelief: it insults the Lord and removes Him from our heart. ABOUT! What a heart I have! To spite me, it goes against everything that is true and holy; it always disagrees with me. ABOUT! Who will give me a source of tears to cry out my sinful heart! In order for prayer or spiritual reading (for example, from the Holy Scriptures) to bring pleasure to the soul, you need to delve deeper in thought and heart into the content of the prayer or reading: without this condition there can be no pleasure. When reading any passage from the Holy Scriptures, you need to take a living, sincere participation in the person being discussed or who appears to be speaking, you need to be for a while one with him, as if one soul, then the reading will achieve its goal. But it will not achieve its goal when the passage being read is, as it were, alien to the soul of the reader, when by faith he does not take part in the person in question, when he does not put himself in his position, or, better, in all his positions. If during prayer you do not bring Christ into your heart by faith, He will not stick to your lips, although you say a hundred times: Lord! God! But you will not receive any benefit from prayer, because in spirit and in truth it is worthy to worship, that is, in the heart, says the Savior [John. 4.24]. Pray - take your time; hold on to the words with thought and heart; do not throw them into the air, the air without you is filled with all sorts of words of idle people, and your words, without a trace, must go into you and water and nourish your soul. Woe to us from inattention of heart during prayer: while we carry prayer and the sweetest name of the Lord, His Most Pure Mother and other saints on our lips, our hearts are sometimes empty, and the abomination of desolation takes root in it; and sometimes it happens that Christ is on the lips, but the devil is in the heart. This happens when a person prays, devoted to some passion during the prayer itself, for example, anger, love of money, envy, hatred, etc. (also unbelief, negligence, coldness regarding faith). My God! How great is the need of faith for the human heart! It grieves and grieves when doubt penetrates the soul, and it stops grieving and grieving when you return faith to it and drive away doubt. It greedily drinks faith, like thirsty earth moisture, and expands and trembles with joy from it. So, Creator, You have arranged for us that without faith it is impossible for us to live, without faith life is not life. God! Plant living faith in our hearts! Let the poisonous, choking dust of sin not touch your heart under any plausible pretext! Passions are deceptive! They certainly assume the appearance of some kind of justice - and catch the poor soul in their nets and torture it, catching it like a careless bird. In me the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness are sharply designated; I see where one ends and another begins. Giving to the poor and taking from your own is hypocrisy. Write a discussion about prayer and good deeds, without which one cannot be saved. You often seek God outside, while He is within you: the Kingdom of God is within you [Lk. 17.21]. Christ is the peace of our heart, our soul, not only after death, but also during life: I will give you rest [Matt. 11.28]. Sweet experiences in this life testify to the same thing. God tests hearts and wombs. This truth is not only based on faith, but also proven by experience. We know from experience that not a single thought, not a single desire, not a single thought can be hidden from our God - whether they are good or bad; when we are kind, we have peace in our hearts, open-mindedness; and with the unkind, with the bad, there is torment of the heart, shamefulness. We clearly notice either the blessing or the curse of God on our soul. And this means that God tests our hearts and bellies: God is greater than our hearts and knows everything [1 John. 3.20]. God! Make me a worthy performer of the Sacraments - sincere, firm, God-fearing. Without You, darkness of thoughts surrounds me: powerlessness, sorrow, tightness in my heart. How the devil strives to establish his dominion in us! He managed to persuade you to sin once in something - he already defends our involuntary inclination towards sin and tries in every possible way to keep us in captivity. He acts all through thoughts, quickly, instantly, craftily; Therefore, it is difficult to defeat him, you can only guess where his ambush will be, but the method of attack is unimaginably fast and dexterous: he suddenly tries to attack the heart and mind. But glory be to God, who sustains us amidst the temptations of the enemy. It means a lot that after the temptation, which we could not withstand, but fell, we do not give in to despondency and despair, do not torment ourselves uselessly and do not deprive ourselves of strength and vigor to do the works of our ministry. In order to bring us into confusion and despair regarding our weakness to complete a certain task in which we once stumbled, the devil keeps us in fear and confusion before starting the same task another time. But with prayer and the sign of the cross in the heart, this fear is driven away, and the former peace and tranquility is restored in the soul. This has been proven by experience. Almost wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly in the saints of God, especially in the Mother of God, what you yourself do not have: purity, holiness, humility, greatness of soul - after all, you yourself are unclean, sinful, low, pitiful in your spiritual state. Approach their shrine with prayer and faith, so that a ray from the abundance of their spiritual light may fall on you and illuminate the dead darkness of your soul. They say: why are the prophecies about the Savior in the Old Testament unclear, but hidden and scattered imperceptibly throughout the Holy Scriptures? Because if they were clear, then everyone would recognize the Savior at His coming, and therefore everyone would honor Him and would not dare to cause any harm to Him - then our redemption would not be accomplished through His suffering and death. It was necessary that the precious bead, Christ, should not be recognized and dishonorably thrown into the ground for our salvation; so that the stone that was at the head of the corner [Ps. 117.22], was neglected by those who built it. And besides, where would the obedience of faith be in such a case? Now you need to diligently practice reading the word of God, in prayer and in eradicating your passions, and then, after the renewal of your soul, engage in preaching the word of God. Doctor! heal yourself [Lk. 4.23]. When they were full, their hearts were lifted up, and therefore they forgot Me [Hos. 13.6]. This is why we forget God: we are full of the gifts of God and are exalted in our hearts. Let the former time of boldness and cheerfulness in service come; Let not my heart make me afraid. The future blessings are great and priceless, therefore, if it were necessary to buy them with the greatest sufferings of a lifetime, one should not refuse them, but willingly endure everything, like martyrs. But after all the suffering, after all the work, it will be pleasant to say: We entered fire and water [glory: we walked through fire and water], and You brought us to freedom [Ps. 65.12]. Haste and confusion when reading occur because you suddenly want to embrace and pronounce everything that is said in the prayer; to avoid this, you need to take words little by little and read them in order, with rest, otherwise you can choke on the multitude of words suddenly taken in, just as you choke on water taken in large quantities into your mouth. During worship, for the sake of humility, remember what you were and what God made you. Remember your childhood, remember your misfortune, remember your youth. Doubt or disrespect for a holy cause must be suppressed at the very beginning and not allowed to grow in the soul. The blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God cleanses us from all sin. This truth is not only based on faith, but also on experience. I, a sinner, was cleansed from sins many times and found evidence in my conscience and in my heart of this saving, joyful cleansing. Let us not put our trust in ourselves [Russian: in ourselves], but in the Living God [2 Cor. 1.9]. Root it in your thoughts and heart. He who is angry is proud. Give up your pride, arrogance, self-esteem. Hasty reading out of pride, out of disdain. The world and everything in the world is nothing; I am also nothing. One God is the Being and the Completeness of all being. Like babies without a mother, so we are without a Savior. God knows that you are working like a spider. Always have God before your eyes and never lose sight of Him. You will always be a winner. Remember how you gradually gained the ability to think and language. How happy your parents were when you began to pronounce your first words, how happy they considered it! And now you forget yourself, you value your ability to think and speak at nothing, because the Lord has given you the ease of thinking and speaking well. For this, the Lord punished you and is punishing you. Be grateful to God for His mercies. Today (September 24th) I received complete, complete joy in the Lord. There was not the slightest heaviness on the heart: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 5.3; OK. 6.20]. The Lord entered into me precisely for the sake of my humility. Look upon the humility of Your servant, O Lord! Teach me humility. 25th and 26th, 28th and 29th the same. Do not doubt whether or not the Lord will be your Provider, Helper and Patron tomorrow. If you see tomorrow that the sun has risen over the earth and over your sinful head, then this means that the spiritual Sun, God, is walking over you; If He provides for the world, then He certainly provides for you. The deepest humility, humiliation of oneself, devotion to the will of God is the most effective means of serving Divine services and communing worthily, life-giving, sweetly life-giving Mysteries. If the devil tries to steal faith and devotion to the will of God from your heart during worship or performing religious services, tell the Lord: see, Lord! I serve Your service - do not leave me; and before communion, when the devil tries to steal your faith and spread darkness in your mind and heart, say: see, Lord, my faith is weakening, becoming darkened; look at me with your compassionate eye in these great and terrible moments; These are Your Secrets, from You may I be given living faith. So, in serving the Mysteries, never rely on yourself, on your efforts, on your own arguments of the mind, do not even quote texts from the Holy Scriptures, but rely on God: faith is His gift; Moreover, before accepting the Mysteries, you should not be afraid that the devil is about to steal your faith: isn’t the one in you stronger, the sicker than the one in the world [1 Jn. 4.4 ], that is, the devil? Such timidity comes from lack of faith or lack of faith. If God is able to create Body and Blood from bread and wine, then He is able to give living, undoubted faith. Remember often the wonderful consequences of communion for the soul - and believe that just as God works such miracles in you through the Holy Mysteries, so in all those who receive communion worthily. The devil nests comfortably in a full stomach. Avoid mental turmoil; Try in every possible way to be calm, cheerful, even. Before any good deed, inwardly pray to the Lord God, so that He will help you, for the benefit of your soul, or at the same time of your body, to accomplish it. This is necessary in order to rely not on ourselves, but on God as we live [2 Cor. 1.9]. And do not begin the smallest task without an inner heartfelt prayer to the Lord; trust in the Lord in everything and in yourself in nothing; all of you are not yours, but God’s. When the evil spirit, through the confusion and fear it causes to your soul, deprives you of your saving, peaceful hope in the Lord, tell the evil one: God has surprised me with His mercies throughout my entire life continuously, and this strengthens my good hope in Him, that even now, when you want to frighten me with hopelessness and despair, He will certainly surprise you with His mercy, if only I would turn the intelligent eyes of my heart to Him; and you, who do nothing to me except confusion, darkness and all evil, get away from the servant of God: may my Lord marry you, as He drove away your dark power during His earthly life. You want to deprive me of faith in the Lord, but why don’t you deprive me of faith in yourself? Why do I feel your poisonous, soul-dead excuses? Do you really think that I feel your traces in myself, but I don’t feel the sweetest, life-giving, joyful traces of my Lord? Away, insignificant creature that destroys all goodness! My God spreads goodness and joy everywhere, and even in me when I cling to Him by faith. If the evil one frightens you with the length of prayers for any need and takes away your hope for even, calm reading of them, tell him: why am I not afraid of the duration of home, solitary prayers and say them calmly, evenly, unhurriedly? Answer me this. Why are you embarrassing me? The presence of many people? But if I am doing a holy thing, why should I be embarrassed by the people? Isn't this reckless? Or are you acting here with my own, hidden illness within me, I mean, man-pleasing, urging me to speed up my prayers for the sake of lazy people who have little or no understanding of the holy work I am doing, or to skip words that seem dissonant to you or them to the corrupted ear? ABOUT! If so, it’s all my fault; I myself carry within myself, in my soul, a spiritual dagger that is killing my soul, I am destroying myself! If so, then I am an insanely proud and fool, because I apply the truth of God to the corrupted feelings of man, exchanging God for people; being ashamed of people, I am not afraid of God! May my heart suffer in this case the suffering of hell, and may it learn through this to always be faithful to the truth of God in the face of an fickle, sinful light, an adulterous and sinful race. May I always remember the words of the Savior: For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy Angels [Mk. 8.38]. Without faith and hope in God, I drag out a miserable existence, but with faith and hope in Him, especially when my heart is right, I am blissful and rejoice. A person who does not tolerate needs, sorrows and misfortunes in life can rarely pray to God with the fervor of his heart; prayer, burning with faith, hope and love for God, ascends from a soul that has realized its wretchedness, its poverty, blindness and nakedness without God and therefore begs Him to remind us of its glaring shortcomings. I have heard from some weak-minded people: why should we pray to God when we lack nothing, when we have everything in abundance and, moreover, we are healthy and cheerful? This is the voice of the flesh, which is always proud and thinks that all the benefits it enjoys are obtained through its prudence and efforts. That is why, in order to force a person to pray with fervor, with strong faith and living trust in God, it is necessary to deprive him of those benefits that he considers his own and which puff up him; In order for him to learn what need is, what he is, how insignificant he is - in the proper sense, without God's blessing and help, it is sometimes necessary to deprive him of either property, or health, or a member of some bodily body, for example, an arm, a leg, an eye, hearing, or the ability to speak, the gift of sound action of the mind, or to crush his heart with heavy, hellish suffering, harbingers of real hellish suffering. Then he will pray to God, the Giver of all good things, then he will recognize His power, kingdom, power and glory over himself - then he will recognize streams of tears. If your lips say: Lord, have mercy, but your heart does not know why God should have mercy on you, then your prayer is sinful, verbal, and not heartfelt; During prayer, the heart must always be imbued with sorrow for sins. In the same way, if you give thanks with your lips, but your heart remains insensitive to what your lips say, then again your prayer is unworthy of God: you need to give thanks with your heart first of all; the mouth is the servant of the heart. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks [Matt. 12.34; OK. 6.45]. It is a wonderful and God-loving thing to imagine through what series of incidents in life we ​​have reached our present position, because often imagining the living connection of the incidents that make up our life, we come to the thought of our insignificance and humble ourselves before God, and to Him, the Creator, we must describe 43 all the interconnection of the diverse paths or events by which He led us to our present position. So, I will imagine the events [of my life]. At first I was the seed of my father, then this seed fell into the earth of my mother, in which I was conceived or, what is the same, in which God laid the beginning, the foundation of my present existence; then, by God’s providence, I began to grow in my mother’s womb and was an alien animal, like a worm, feeding on my mother’s juices; after I was formed in my mother’s artistic church, I was brought into the world as a finished artistic work of my Creator; my life separated from the life of my mother, and I entered the society of people; I was numbered among them and gave me the name of a person who was accomplished here on earth and passed into another life, so that I would know later that my transformations have not yet ended and that after my mother’s womb, after this light and the dark depths of the grave, I will dwell for endless centuries in the bright abodes of heaven - where my Creator is, at whose glory I will then look with a frank face, and not fortune-telling, as now. How great was the weakness of my infancy! How many tears did I shed then, as if as a sign that my subsequent life would also be mournful and full of tears and sobs! What work it took my mother to feed me and raise me! How many worries about me crushed the hearts of my parents! Will I be healthy? How will I study, will I finish the course? What will I be later: will I be their helper in old age or a dissolute, ungrateful son? And what, O Lord, have You done to me, insignificant? Thy right hand, O Lord, is glorified in strength [Exod. 15.6]. Who could have imagined then that I would be what I am now? The right hand of the Lord has exalted me, the right hand of the Lord has created strength [Ps. 117.16 ]! I thank You, Lord, with all my heart and I pray to You: grant me to constantly remember my emergence from insignificance, the weakness of my childhood, the difficulty of my upbringing, the ignorance of my origin, so that I can always humble myself and revere You. When reading the Holy Scriptures or the works of the holy fathers, renounce your own knowledge, your own wisdom and read both like an ignoramus, like an unlearned person, like a child beginning to learn. It is an excellent, prudent thing not to be indignant from thoughts when reading prayers or some sacred book. Thoughts are the work of the devil: that this is true is easy to guess from the fact that empty, not edifying, but witty, funny readings are always easy and thoughts do not enter your head with them. When you stand in prayer and your heart turns out to be proud, not in need of prayer or the benefits sought by the prayer pronounced, then remember the days of bitter temptations in your life, the moments of tears and sobs, and with this memory humble your heart: then it will rise up to prayer and it will need it, like a mother who tenderly loves her child and does not let her enemies hurt him. The powerful and rich of this age, living in magnificent, gilded palaces, are vain about them and do not want to think about the multitude of simple materials their palaces are made of: they see only the shiny finish or shiny appearance. But what are the magnificent palaces of the strong and rich of this age, so are their bodies for most people; They are often proud of the beauty, the grace of the forms of their body and do not want to think about what simple, rough principles their beautiful bodies are composed of by the Creator, and if nature’s daily reminder of this gives them the thought of the roughness of the bodily composition, then they rather try to forget about it and transfer their thoughts back to their beauty. Let us not forget, let us not turn the reason for humility into pretexts of pride. This is where you show your courage, where the enemy frightens you - without this you will not be a courageous Christian. God! Grant me, when I am hanging on the cross of illness or some kind of sorrow, to say to You, like the thief hanging on the cross: remember me, Lord, when You come into Your Kingdom, and You tell me then in my soul, as You said to him: today you will be with Me in Paradise [Lk. 23:42–43]. In the last time, before the terrible and glorious coming of Christ, the devil will intensify his cunning and malice over people to the last possible degree of strength that he can muster in his dark kingdom - so that he will almost destroy faith in Christ on earth. When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? [ OK. 18.8]. Forget to think that you can do anything good on your own: without Me you can do nothing [Jn. 15.5], says the Savior, and His words are the truth. Therefore, save yourself the trouble of worrying about how you can perform this or that service without stumbling, for the glory of God, and rely in everything on God; tell Him to beg Him to come to your aid in His own words: Behold, You Yourself, Lord, have said that without You we cannot do anything [Jn. 15.5 ]; By my faith, the volume in my heart that You have spoken to me, I pray to You: be with me as I perform Your services and drive away from me the always outrageous and evil spirit that creates confusion in my spirit and spreads its hellish darkness in my mind and heart at the time when I perform Your holy services, and weighs heavily on my soul with heavy doubt. Grant me living faith and firm trust in You, my God, so that with these two strongholds I can turn all the machinations of my cunning enemy into nothing. Faith and hope are from You, Your gifts are the mark of Your servants; and unbelief, or doubt and despair, or hopelessness is from the devil and marks his servants, or at least people who are inexperienced in repelling his attacks and, therefore, inexperienced in faith and hope in God. Tell the evil spirit when it troubles your soul: Jesus Christ drives you away. Make a firm determination to read all prayers word by word, calmly. Who, having tasted the sweet, wants the bitter? You have tasted the sweetness of being in the love of the Lord, and you have also tasted the bitterness of the devil’s excuses: run to the Lord, into the arms of His sweetest, life-giving love, whenever you feel in yourself the poison of the remorse of an evil spirit: It is good for me to cleave to God, to place the hope of my salvation in the Lord [Ps. 72.28]. If you rely in everything on God, the all-powerful Helper, then you will not be afraid of the hour of death, because the Lord, as a child-loving Father, will surely prepare you for death as it should, and will give you a very Christian death, painless, shameless and peaceful. He is wise and all-good: He knows how best to arrange the circumstances of your life, and wants to arrange them as best as possible so that you can please Him more. It is impossible to constantly engage in the same thing, for example reading or something else, it is contrary to nature, which certainly requires rest. The Holy Fathers diversified their ascetic works. Saint Gregory the Theologian says about himself that he devoted his free time from his labors to walking and quiet contemplation. So behave yourself: diversify your activities, and don’t sit on just reading; Such a routine will give you energy in your work and, with variety, will impart pleasure and cheerfulness to your soul. And without it, you will waste your work on trifles, because attention to the same thing naturally weakens if it is constantly before your eyes. You have great, valiant mentors in piety: John Chrysostom, Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Ephraim the Syrian, John Climacus and others. Therefore, if you neglect your teaching, you will be tortured at the Last Judgment much more severely than your brothers who did not have such teachers. Leave it to the Lord to build the building of your salvation and do not complain when, apparently, He does not lay the stones in your building in the way that should be according to your calculations. Whatever good deed you do in gratitude to the Lord for His countless and greatest blessings to you, tell yourself: this is a drop from the ocean, that is, my most insignificant donation of the Lord’s countless gifts to me. From the Lord I have my being, and with being all my powers, abilities and everything that I have, except sin. The existence of the invisible God and evil spirits and from this, by the way, I understand that these latter are trying by all means to prevent me from serving God worthily, causing in my soul a darkening of the mind and confusion of the heart and my very lips, as if squeezing, which never happens outside of divine services. To bring yourself into the deepest sense of humility in prayer and at all other times, mentally turn yourself into the insignificant seed from which you grew, and into the earthly dust into which you will one day disintegrate. I know from experience that You are an omniscient and righteous Judge. And why am I so weak in the fight against sin, when I should be strengthened by the thought of Your omniscience and justice and not succumb to sin? Why am I [falling]? From lack of faith, despair. Faith and hope in the Lord overcomes everything. Do not let the Lord out of your thoughts, imagine Him always with you, ready to help you according to your word, according to your sincere desire - and you will always triumph. What to do? This is the law of the Lord, that all things are possible to him that believeth [Mk. 9:23], but nothing can be done for an unbeliever or a doubter. When I was an innocent child, then I was happy with the love of my mother, but now I am happy only with the love of God. It’s bad for me when I fall away from God’s love. Prayer, said calmly, with heartfelt attention, has an amazing power to calm the indignant soul. When standing in prayer, do not think that you are the only one praying: at the same time, millions are kneeling before the Creator with you. Do you demand perfection from yourself? This is foolish pride. Remember who you are: you are the fruit of a not very fruitful fig tree, a not very healthy tree. Could this tree give you something that it itself did not have? Only the grace of God can miraculously transform you into a renewed, holy person, through your own labors of self-abasement and self-compulsion to goodness. You definitely need to pray with all your heart, otherwise prayer will leave only heaviness and languor in your heart. You should not be surprised at the strange, sinful incidents that happen to you, or be embarrassed and faint-hearted by them (this is pride), but humbly pray to God, without whose will nothing happens, and always have a courageous spirit. Thoughts of Saint Abba Dorotheos. Endure temptations and sorrows: they never last long. Do not forget that prayer cleanses sins: this also shows lightness in the heart after prayer. This night, the Holy Guardian taught me to resist the evil spirit of haste and confusion when reading prayers, and although with difficulty, I read the prayers at the wedding firmly and with my heart. God forbid! The dream came true. In the prayer of the person praying, the following must follow: first faith, then thought, then words, and whoever begins with words and continues his prayer with words alone with a constricted thought and heart will not receive any benefit from prayer. It is amazing how close God is to the believer: you have not yet had time to call on Him, but only by faith you wished to have Him with you, and He is already here and gives you His heavenly peace. If the weakness of the flesh requires a visual representation of the omnipresence of God, then imagine for it this omnipresence under the image of an intelligent, boundless ocean (a thin voice of cold [1 Kings. 19.12 ]), the subtlest ether; but do not take the image for the Object itself, which is everywhere and penetrates everything and at the same time is not limited by anything, in which all worlds, all creatures (and you) live and move, and without which no life can be imagined; Who is always with you, but often being with you, it is as if he was not with you, because you are blocking His access to you through unbelief, lack of faith or other sins; Which every minute, like a stream of air surrounding you, is ready, if you are ready, to pour into you, into your soul and pour sweetness into your insides, as indeed it often pours in and suddenly, instantly pours life-giving warmth, light, sweetness, peace, joy into your soul; to Whom, whenever you call with faith, you will always call into His very ears, and never by; Which incomprehensibly, but truly and significantly affects the minds and hearts of all earthly beings; Who, by His omnipresence throughout the entire universe, offers Himself as food on the altars of Christian churches and through the visible Mysteries, invisibly, but tangibly for the soul, pours into the souls of the faith of Christians who receive communion; Who is everywhere, in every place, but to Whom without the key of faith one cannot get and unite with Him; Who gives everything to the believer, but takes away from the one who does not have faith even what he thinks he has [Lk. 8.18 ]; Who always stands at the door of every person’s heart and pushes into it, waiting for their opening with the key of faith, hope and love. A strong and cunning ethereal enemy always tries to oppose faith - disbelief, hope - despair, love - hatred, and in a strange way confuse, mix these virtues with their opposites - disbelief, despair and hatred. How often am I alternately a believer and then, as it were, an unbeliever, although I try to retain the faith that is stolen from me; sometimes hoping, sometimes despairing, and more despairing than hopeful; sometimes loving, sometimes hating, and more arousing love in themselves than actually possessing it. My God! What is this mystery about me? Do not run from humiliation for the sake of God, but seek it: say your prayers deliberately slowly in front of the people, so that people will condemn you and God will praise you. Thank God that my Savior becomes the need of my heart, that I cannot live without Him, that I chase after Him like a child after its mother who abandons him. It hurts a child when his mother deliberately leaves him for some misdeed, and it hurts me when the Savior leaves me, offended by some impurity in my heart. Faith calls out to God loudly, relentlessly, like the blind man of Jericho, but unbelief is silent or, during prayer itself, is double-minded, deceitful, stumbles, [interferes]. Glory to Thee, O God, who miraculously changes me through prayer and especially through communion with the life-giving Mysteries! What a wonderful calm! What heavenly joy! Sunday, October 12. When serving with living faith and love, embrace God and the people - remember that you are an intercessor for the people before God. The priest must be a conductor of God’s mercies to the people, received from them through the prayer of living faith, and must especially be like God in goodness, so that, being himself good, he can with undoubted faith ask the all-good God for all good things for the people entrusted to him. Is it not because we ourselves are unkind, and in our blindness, in our malice, we imagine God as unkind, and we do not believe that He, as a Father, is ready to give us everything, according to our faith and prayer, and only expects from us, as from good children, this faith and prayer? Make yourself good - then you will believe that God will give you everything through your prayer. That is faith when a person hopes to receive everything from God through prayer. Always carry Christ in your heart, especially during services. He is life, the sweetness of our heart. When you have this sweetness in your heart, then you will easily and calmly perform any service, even if it is long; and when this sweetness, Christ, is not in the heart or when the devil has taken His place (and he happens in the heart of a person obsessed with passion), then it will be difficult for you to perform even the shortest service, and you will be confused, you will rush, hesitate, neglect the service, and during and after the service you will have a heaviness on your heart, mortal melancholy; You won't be happy with yourself. What is to an animal that chews the cud, so is Christ to my soul. When an animal loses its cud, then it is sad and hurts; So too, when I lose Christ through sin, my soul yearns and hurts. The servant of Christ should never be indignant at anything, because his Lord is peace, which surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4.7 ], and joy unspeakable; and He lives in His faithful servant; This means that both peace and His joy live in him. Confusion means losing Christ, letting Him out of sight: look at Him steadily - and you will never be embarrassed. When you are called to pray for the repose of the soul of another, pray for it as if it were your own, with the most sincere feeling, with the most living faith. Imagine at this time the infinite goodness of the One who suffered and was resurrected for us - and implore it. When the spirit of laziness and haste overcomes you in prayer, look, have the patience to resist, be slow at this time: haste here spoils the matter. The holy martyrs, looking with mind and faith to the Lord and burning with love for Him, were firm and motionless, like an anvil, against all temptations, and stood courageously against all the horrors of the tyrants’ malice; and I, a sinner, looking with my mind and faith to the Lord, at least become calm when the spirit of confusion and fear overcomes me during the performance of services. Be faithful (to Me) until death, says the Savior, and I will give you the crown of life [Rev. 2:10]. Grant me, Lord, to be faithful to You in all circumstances of my life, in all cases, even seemingly unimportant ones. Often our faith is tempted, and often we find ourselves unfaithful to the Savior. But be faithful to Him until death. It is necessary to consume food and drink with extreme caution and discernment. The evil one sets snares in both food and drink. It is not without reason that the Savior warns us against temptations of this kind: take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness [Lk. 21.34]. Today my heart became extremely heavy from drinking beer after Vespers and a pickled apple, and then, in the evening, milk. Be attentive to everything. Everywhere the unwary can be caught by the evil one. And he besieged me so much today that I could hardly pray and could not freely raise my mind and heart to grief. The enemy overthrows you at the final prayer of the morning because you do not place your trust in the Lord, but you yourself manage, as you say. Rely completely on the Lord - and you will speak it calmly and evenly. When reading prayers, do not lose your temper, but come into yourself. Understand what is said: there is someone you can trust in when performing services, so that you will never stumble. Jesus Christ is the Mountain on which you can always rest your thoughts and heart. He is eternal and omnipotent. What do the miraculous icons of the Mother of God and their appearances mean? What this means is that the Lady and Mother of our Deliverer always hears prayers offered to Her in a humble heart with faith before Her icons, and on some of them she shows visible signs of Her gracious presence. How revered the images of the Mother of God should be in the eyes of those praying! Her invisible grace is inherent in Her images, especially if they are painted by the hand of a pious person. As in a war with a strong enemy, the king himself is with the army and with his presence encourages the soldiers to courageously attack the enemies and, as it were, says: fight bravely, courageously, you are fighting for the faith, me and for the Fatherland, I am your reward! - and warriors bravely, with disregard for their lives, rush at the enemy and often overthrow him with a bold onslaught - so the Heavenly King, leading His faithful servants into the fight against strong enemies - disembodied spirits of evil, He Himself is with them and, encouraging them, says: fight courageously, looking with the eyes of faith at Me, the omnipotent Helper - and those who have before their eyes Gentlemen always defeat their enemies. And those who lose sight of Him and remain only with their weakness are overcome; but there is no need to despair in this case either: a cunning and strong enemy, such as the devil, cannot be defeated suddenly. Yes, and the Savior knows our weakness, therefore He gradually leads us into battle with the enemy, allowing us to be defeated, in order to thus teach us through falls or defeats to place our trust in Him, the all-powerful Intercessor. I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me [Phil. 4.13]. He is my invisible wall, which is stronger than any visible wall; I rest my faith and hope in Him, and my feet are corrected and do not falter, as happens when, through my blindness, I let Him out of sight and lose hope in Him. I feel that I walk with Him in breadth, in the saving freedom of spirit. Everything is easy for me with Him. Dwell your thoughts more often on two great revolutions in the moral world: the fall of the former immortal man and the death that followed the fall - and his restoration and the granting of eternal life to him through the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. Think about it. Brethren! This very soul, which sometimes suffers so terribly here, tormented by conscience for its sins, will certainly exist after death and suffer even more terrible, even more terrible. From present torments, know the future ones. If in nature nothing actually dies, that is, is not destroyed, then are your souls and your deeds destroyed all the more? The grace of God dwells in me when I humble myself to the extreme, when I recognize myself as damned, insignificant. Where our insignificance begins, there begins the majesty of God in us. Be extremely careful not to offend the Lord after communion by any sin, especially by haste in correcting the needs. Although it takes a long time, read the word of the prayer. How faithfully the Lord achieves His goal - the renewal of our corrupted nature through His most pure, life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood. If I worthily receive communion, I am apparently renewed, I come to life after the death of sin: in my mind there is light, in my heart there is peace, joy in the Holy Spirit; I know by experience the good yoke and light burden of my Lord, who life-givingly touches my soul, deadened by sin. And how magnificently the Lord always reveals Himself in the life-giving Mysteries: in order to partake of them worthily, a person must always, if possible, approach God through faith, humility, simplicity and sincerity. Communicating His Mysteries, I see that He is always unchanged; His greatness in the Mysteries is always the same: my soul is put to shame by receiving communion unworthily, but it triumphs and rejoices worthily. His dominion, kingdom, and power over our souls are always the same; the supreme Lord in His most pure Mysteries is always equal to Himself. During the premium state of faith and after the worthy, life-giving reception of the most pure Mysteries, whom do I fear as an enemy who deprives me of this state? Disbelief. This means that unbelief exposes itself: it is painful for the soul. Should we be afraid of unbelief while believing? We must have so much hope in God that we do not fear unbelief in our hope in Him, with our faith in Him. But if hope has not yet grown in us to such an extent, then we need to be afraid of unbelief only as a precaution, so that, through our carelessness, thoughts of unbelief do not creep in and deprive our souls of the premium state of faith. Fear is always necessary for a person who is not established in faith and hope. ABOUT! What sweetness, what peace, the communion of the life-giving Mysteries spilled into me! I prayed to God that He would grant me, before my death, to partake of them just as worthily, just as life-giving, so that if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death [Ps. 22:4], I fear no evil with my Lord. Always imagine the Lord at your right hand as omnipresent, especially during services: He is with you and does everything through you, as He Himself knows. Do not test the way of His actions, trust Him completely, like a working instrument. When you seek the Lord while reading prayers, do not look far for Him: He is here, in the very words of the prayer. Just listen to them with your heart - and the Lord will move into your heart. The Spirit of God breathes in the words of prayer. It is better to say five words with reason than ten thousand words with a tongue chattering without reason. When praying according to ready-made prayers, you must certainly pray for peace of mind and successful prayer in your spirit, and not just with your tongue, and you must not lose sight of the Lord. There is no doubt that the Lord leaves me when I leave Him while reading my prayers in Him with faith and reverence, and that is why my tongue sometimes betrays me, like a zealous, unbridled horse, and my spirit is struck with shame and confusion. Living faith has such power during prayer that even a body that is heavy from food or fatigue can, so to speak, inspire, revive, lighten and make it an obedient servant of the soul. What if, with faith, the body is also light from moderation in food? Then the life-giving warmth of faith will completely penetrate into all his bones and make prayer a most pleasant activity. When praying through a book, it is not necessary to pronounce each word first, but to embrace it with your mind and place it on your heart. I serve amazingly calmly, evenly and firmly when I look with my mind to God. Hope [Russian: hope] will not put you to shame [Rom. 5.5], assures the apostle; hope will not be put to shame - you have known it through your own experience; Believe that in the future she will not put her to shame. Once again you have experienced how painful hopelessness and despair are; Don’t be foolish enough to despair in advance. When unexpected circumstances pave the way to hopelessness, one must submit to them. He who despairs of God’s help forgets the sovereignty, omnipotence and goodness of God. God tests hearts and wombs. How often do I notice God’s trials in myself. He tests strictly, precisely, down to the slightest impurity. His judgment is carried out in us daily, the judgment is righteous, unwashed, pleasing or punishing. How strong is the invisible God in us, Invisible in the invisible, that is, in the soul. The wonderful power of the Honest and Life-giving Cross! With cross-shaped movements of my hand, I soon drive away the torment of my sinful heart. Invincible, incomprehensible (but effective), Divine power of the Honest and Life-giving Cross, do not abandon us, sinners! God sent you such an easy test of your hope - and you could not stand it and fell. How you insult the Creator God, by whom you live, move and have your being! What if He had demanded of you the feat of martyrdom: would you not have completely despaired then, would there have been a measure then for your cowardice and timidity? In little things you have not been faithful [Matt. 25.21], - how would you endure many things? But look how merciful the Lord is, how He strengthens those who have even faint hope in Him, how He forgives our base cowardice for the sake of His Body and Blood! You took communion - and after communion your mind and your heart were strengthened: you found hope, and out of hope you successfully completed the unsuccessfully begun and continued service. The Lord even took away fear and torment from your hopeless heart! It’s scary and strange how hope and hopelessness change in me! Why is there such blindness in me, such inconstancy? Apparently, only living faith and hope in God make us constant, courageous, as can be seen in the saints, martyrs, saints and righteous people. October 19. Look, soon the arrows of God's wrath will reach you too. The Savior casts out demons through the Spirit of God because the Holy Spirit is one being with the Son and with the Father, and it cannot be otherwise; therefore, the Holy Spirit himself participates in our sanctification and salvation - everything is done with the participation of the Three Persons. I am so small and insignificant in the circle of all God’s creatures that I should only be amazed at God’s wisdom and goodness, which deigned to give me existence, and with the deepest humility and submission read my destiny in the word of God, as well as seek there rules for my life, so that it flows correctly, measuredly towards the indicated end. ABOUT! How many creatures You have, O God! Have you heard what happened to Father Jerome and the Most Reverend Iliodor. Should you be cowardly? So, as the Right Reverend Iliodor said to Father Jerome, have God in your soul and heart and imagine that there is no one in the church. Have the zeal of God: without zeal a priest is nothing, because without zeal he has no faith. Fear only the judgment of God, and not the judgment of man, even if the judgment of man applied to your weaknesses while serving. Remember what the people said about the Savior. And you are not without sins - you are not the Savior. You rely on the deacon’s help during worship more than on God: look at what a grave sin you are committing without noticing it. Take a good look at your actions. Trying to live godly, but falling! Why do you despair of mercy at the Last Judgment of God? Believe that, just as the enemy opposes many temptations, temptations and falls to your salvation, so the Lord, on His part, much more, as a most merciful Father, whose goodness is infinitely greater than the malice of the devil, opposed the devil’s slander and your falls with many guarantees for your pardon at the Judgment in the circumstances and deeds of your life. Just wish sincerely and try not to fall, and when you fall, try to get up. Just as the devil tries in every possible way to destroy you, so the Heavenly Father wants to save you in every possible way. This is what Christian faith and hope inspires in me. Even if you fell in such a way that it would ring in everyone’s ears and spread throughout the whole world, then you should not despair. The Savior took upon Himself all the sins of the world, no matter what they were and no matter how great they were. His mercy is immeasurable, as the Church says, and His love for mankind is unsearchable: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, receiving justification freely, by His grace [Rom. 3.23–24]. Just try to love Him more, and all your sins will be forgiven, like the harlot who anointed the Lord’s feet with ointment and wiped her head with her hair. Do not think about your fear, but delve deeper into the greatness of the Sacrament that you will perform. It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man [Ps. 117.8]. When you drown spiritually, say to the Lord: Lord, save me. In the name of the Lord, be sure to fight against all sin and passion. The actions of passions within us are like a flame engulfing the inner walls of a building, or like inflammation in some part of the body. They burn destructively to the soul and body. And the fire of the grace of the Holy Spirit pleasantly, life-givingly warms the soul and burns away its sins. Glory to Thee, my Lady, Most Holy Theotokos! Through Your prayers, By Your mercy I am now content; my soul is free and light, peace and tranquility are in my heart. Glory to Thee, Most Holy Lady Theotokos! You stood up for me, the most wretched sinner, before the justice of Your Son and our God and made Him merciful to me, the worst of all. How obvious is Your grace for my soul from the song glorification of Your Kazan icon! October 21st, 1858. Sorrow and anguish of the heart, arising from the devil's pretext and bringing despondency and fear into the soul, pass from calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and from reflecting on His redemptive merits. Also from the memory of His Most Pure Mother, and the holy martyrs, crowned with blood, and of the Kingdom of Heaven, to which He calls everyone. The Word of God, recorded in the Holy Scriptures, was originally spoken in a certain place by the Lord through the prophets in the Old Testament; By the Lord Himself directly or through the apostles in the New Testament; but then, having been written down, it spread throughout the universe by millions of believers, nourished and nourishes millions of believers, as the true, effective life-giving word of God, and will nourish and delight them until the end of time. Do you notice that in the likeness of this the all-good, miraculous, omnipotent Lord did with His most pure Mysteries of the Body and Blood. The Lord Himself in His most pure Flesh was initially only in a small corner of the universe, just as His word also spoke to a very small space, namely in Jerusalem and in places near Jerusalem, where He deigned to walk and teach; but then, after the resurrection from the dead and the ascension of the Lord into heaven, by the almighty power and goodness of the Lord, His Body and Blood, through the performers of the holy Sacraments, spread throughout the entire universe and every day, to this day, are offered on the altars of Christian churches, wherever they are, feeding and delighting the souls of pious Christians and having to nourish them until the end of the age. Glory to the merciful, almighty Lord! He Himself is omnipresent, therefore His holy word and His Body and Blood are also performed everywhere - throughout the entire earth. How wise this is! How blessed this is! If a grain of wheat falls into the ground and does not die, then only one will remain; and if he dies, he will bear much fruit [Jn. 12.24]. ABOUT! How now the Body and Blood of the Lord has multiplied and is constantly multiplying! The evil one instills doubt and fear in the soul, but one must not believe him for a moment: the tongue must do its job. When the mind is turned to the fullness of all truth - God, then it is easy for the tongue, the instrument of thought and words, to pronounce everything. So, looking with my mind to God, I drove the darkness out of my head and, with difficulty, I forced my rotating tongue to turn freely (I performed the Holy Sacrament of Baptism). What are the number of all who are now living compared to those who have died since the world began? What an insignificant part they make up! But they are all reserved for Judgment; they all anxiously await the Last Judgment from the great universal Judge - God. And we will soon join them. You definitely need to pray with your heart, you need to bring your heart closer to God, otherwise it will be difficult to pray; When you pray from the heart, with love, you always pray easily and pleasantly. And in general, any task is done easily if it is done from the heart, with love for it. When you are troubled in spirit, remember the heavenly peace that you receive after communion - and hope to receive it now. End of the word: Keep God in mind and read the word, rarely, calmly, with arrangements. When dark thoughts come upon your soul, lie around and, as it were, spin it, not allowing it to be established by faith on the immovable truth, and you feel internally bad, and everything that is around you or to which your thought is attached also seems bad to you - do not have the madness to think that when you are spinning, and everything is spinning with you, when you have changed in a bad direction, that’s all. has changed; Do not impose your weakness on foreign objects that are not you. For example, God, for example, and His saints, as well as all the holy truths of faith, prayers, chants, various institutions of the Church are always the same, always life-giving, bright: they are motionless, unchanging, indestructible strongholds; You sometimes stumble over them through your own foolishness, and not they over you. You are changeable, impermanent, but they are constant, eternal. God is eternal light, and you are more darkness than light, because in you there is a dark element - sin; sin, darkness are your ordinary state, and holiness and light penetrate your soul as much as you, by faith and good will, cling to the first, inaccurate Holiness, or to the first Light - God. That is the mercy of God, that is your happiness, when there is light in your head, when you feel in yourself the most perfect agreement with God and with everything that is from Him. We glorify the Lord on earth, the Creator of all creation, yet we cannot help but realize that we are unworthy singers of the glory of God, but we know from experience that our bliss lies in the worthy glorification of the Lord. From this we undoubtedly conclude that there are worthy singers of the glory of God, eternally glorifying Him, just as we, successively and through the succession of centuries, glorify Him, and in His glorification, drawing eternal bliss for ourselves. Otherwise, God would not be infinitely good: infinite Goodness makes others partakers of His goodness, His bliss. And we are more sufferers on earth: heavenly bliss only at times revives our soul, killed by sin, makes it happy when we lament our sins, cleanse ourselves with tears of repentance. Hence, another undoubted conclusion is that for people who take into themselves the soul-cleansing coal of the Body and Blood of the Lord, who cleanse their souls from the aphids of sin here, eternal bliss is prepared in another world, in the life of the next century. Indeed, the eternal goodness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, having destroyed the mediastinum between God and people - sin and curse, which did not allow one to approach God, the Source of bliss, and find bliss in Him - now cleanses and nourishes people spiritually through the holy Sacraments and prepares them for the inheritance of eternal bliss. The saving suffering of the Son of God for us, the Church created by Him, the Church Sacraments are a guarantee of this for souls seeking purification. How can saints hear our prayers? How do I know, for example, about the glaring need of a member? I am a member in the body of the Church; the saints are the noblest parts of the body, and Christ is the Head; they sympathize with the sick member of the body of Christ and rush to help like hands to a foot. The thought of the Church as one body of Christ undoubtedly assures me that the saints will certainly hear our prayers. Why is repentance called the conversion of a person? Because a sinner, having broken the law, turns, that is, goes back, as it were, to his previous line. What rotates: the earth or the sun? The earth turns, but the sun stands still. Are you the earth? - Earth; Patriarch Abraham says: I am earth and ashes [Gen. 18.27]. But God is the smart Sun, isn’t he? Yes, smart Sun. So, you are spinning, spinning spiritually, but God and His truths are eternal, motionless. It is sooner that heaven and earth pass away than one tittle of the law disappears [Lk. 16,17]. You are impermanent, changeable, so that the eternal - motionless, immutable truths sometimes seem to swirl and change in your mind and in your heart. But when they seem to you to be spinning, cry out to the Lord: Lord! I am the earth, spinning, spinning, and Your sun, Your eternal truths stand motionless, unchangeable; stop my whirling and establish my heart on the rock of faith. Human! You are grass, a tree, an animal, that is, in your body you live according to exactly the same laws as them: you are conceived, formed, grow, reach the prime of life, grow stronger, grow old, die. Let this be a reason for your humility. The Savior often likens a person to a tree that bears good or bad fruit, or to an animal, such as a sheep and other animals. I have no doubt at all that living faith and love for God can, during prayer, not only delight the soul with grief, but also lift the body itself from the earth, as happened with one saint. When what is akin to what is akin is elevated by the power of faith and love, that is, the soul to God, then the body becomes the most obedient instrument of the soul. Someone told me: it was amazingly sweet and easy for me yesterday during evening prayer, imbued with living faith and love for God! I felt that my spirit was walking along the mountain and in its procession was pouring out amazing sweetness and wonderful calmness in my heart, as if lifting up my very body with grief to God. When you compose or rewrite a sermon, you are doing God’s work and therefore must do it carefully, as if for God Himself. In the name of the Lord, through faith and trust in God, I conquered myself after many concessions and falls. Have hope, don’t rush, be calm. Learn not to lose heart under any circumstances and always maintain presence and greatness of spirit. Prepare yourself for the worthy celebration of the Sacrament by reading the Gospel and prayer. Glory to Thee, Lady, glory to Thee, Forerunner of the Savior John! I am already performing my second marriage worthily through the power of your prayers, your intercession, and your help. Don't leave me and go ahead. Glory to You, Lord, my peace, my victory! Conduct yourself in such a way that the prince of this world has nothing wrong with you, so that he does not have a place in which he could hurt you. And he usually wounds us in places that are sick with sin. And you still have many vulnerable places. God! You declared in Your holy word: the prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me [Jn. 14.30]. Oh! If only I could ever dare to say this! Introduce Christ into your heart by faith, and nothing will ever trouble you. But, having brought Him into your heart, keep Him there: He is so good that He allows Him to be held. Let Him live in you and say to you: I am, do not be afraid. Fearless, firm conviction of the people of their sins is a sign of the great holiness of the one who exposes - John the Baptist, the Savior Himself. We usually flatter people more and are ashamed to tell the whole truth. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one: the Son speaks the doctrine and does the works of the Father who sent Him; After the ascension of the Son into heaven, the Holy Spirit remembers to the apostles everything that the Son said and instructs them in all truth. The brave, they say, are owned by God. Do not be embarrassed, do not fear any person during prayers performed publicly; hear the words of the Lord: For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words... the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him [Mk. 8.38]. Remember that after a hasty reading, tears from heartache will always be inevitable. When someone is called to serve before the king, he serves before him with constant thought about him, with reverence, carefully. You are often invited to serve not before the king of the earth, but before the king of kings of the earth, moreover, so that you ask those who invite you from the King of Heaven for spiritual and physical gifts. What kind of person should you be while serving the Heavenly King, with what reverence, with what diligence should you offer Him the service of the spirit, with what attention and zeal should you pronounce all the words of prayers and proclamations? Oh, always have faith in God when praying and remember what you are doing! During prayers, our faith is often tempted, and we can often [be put to shame] without rekindling it within ourselves. If you endure punishment, says the apostle, then God deals with you as with sons. For is there any son whom his father does not punish? If you remain without punishment, which is common to all, then you are illegitimate children and not sons [Heb. 12.7–8]. So, rejoice that for your sins God punishes you with spiritual sorrows. If you fall without wanting to fall, if you are overcome by your evil habit or by the spirits of evil, do not be discouraged, but be patient, and especially do not despair and try to improve. Having been judged, we are punished by the Lord, so as not to be condemned with the world [1 Cor. 11.32]. So, do not weaken, we are rebuked by the Lord. If during the priestly service the presence of the noble and powerful confuses you, tell your thoughts: before the face of my God all earthly nobility and power disappears - and with faith and boldness pray to Almighty God for the nobles themselves who stand in God’s church: at this time you are greater than all of them, you are their intercessor before God. After the miraculous feeding of the people, the Savior said: gather up the remaining pieces [glory: surplus ukrukh] so that nothing is lost [John. 6.12]. You see how the Lord protects the very crumbs of bread. If He so protects an ordinary, soulless thing, then how does He protect human souls? If He did not want the remnants of the bread to perish, then even more so He does not want any of the people to perish. And wasn’t it for this reason that the Savior said that the remnants of the bread should be collected, so that nothing would be lost, in order to lead the people of that time and us to think about how the lover of souls the Lord protects human souls! When tempted during the saying of prayers and litanies during services, the devil tries to frighten you with the imaginary, unforgivable gravity of sin in order to plunge you into despair; but do not be afraid of his false fear, but, having occupied your mind and heart with the name of the Lord Jesus, speak slowly what needs to be said. If a strong tempter tempts you, immediately run to the Savior and ask Him for forgiveness and mercy: that is why He is the Savior, to save you every time you turn to Him with a prayer of faith and love for the forgiveness of your sins. There is no sin that is greater than His mercy. Be careful not to listen to him, the liar, the monster. When your soul becomes confused, tell him: I understand you, my enemy, I see you, but I am not afraid of you, your false fear: My Lord is with me. There is nothing more reckless than to despair of God’s mercy after committing a sin: the Savior is the abyss of mercy: all sinners with the greatest sins plunged into this abyss and were saved in it; The Savior received them with love. His blood cleanses us from all sin. You yourself have seen many times the experiences of His ineffable mercy over you. And today, wounded by the devil, as soon as you turned to His mercy, He accepted you humanely, resolved mortal illnesses, fierce sorrow of the heart - and again peace settled in your heart. Do you hear what the Savior says in the Apocalypse: But the fearful and unfaithful [glory: fearful and unfaithful] ... have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, but he who overcomes will inherit all [Rev. 21.7–8]. Win too... and avoid fearfulness and unbelief with all your might. The Lord most obviously appears every spring and summer with His creative omnipotence and goodness. In winter there is nothing of earthly vegetation: the trees stand naked, there are no grasses or flowers; and in spring and summer - the most beautiful greenery of tree leaves and herbs, various, most delicate flowers, incense - where everything comes from, as if from complete insignificance. Wonderful are Your works, O Lord! Glory to Thy wisdom and omnipotence, O Lord! Have faith and love for Christ in your heart, and you will never be embarrassed. Never be stingy in feeding the poor: God will always repay you tenfold for them. You have already learned this through countless experiments. I have strong inner impulses to philosophize beyond what is written and devoted. Disgusting. This is spiritual pride. It must be eradicated by all means. Imagine how you would stand before the queen: with what reverence, with what cordiality you would ask her to fulfill your desires. But she is in every way a person similar to you with human infirmities. How should you stand before the Queen of heaven and earth, the Mother of the Most High God; with what reverence, with what sincerity of heart! She is unspeakably great in Her inner perfections (all glory to the daughter of the King within [Ps. 44:14]) and in Her approach to God. See, pray to Her with appropriate reverence, sincerely, in humility of heart. The devil either strikes our soul with confusion and fear at a time when we need [to be] cheerful, sober, or relaxes the soul with impulses to laugh; but in both cases there is grief for the soul: it dies from sin and inner melancholy or heartache. Today you did not stand the test of your faith: without heartfelt attention, reluctantly and even with some impudence in pronunciation, as well as with haste, after the liturgy, you read the akathist to the Mother of God at the prayer service for the sailors. There was no need to indulge in laziness and negligence when reading: if it seemed like a lot to read the entire akathist, then I would have read half of it with attention and with due reverence - and that would have been enough, and it would have been excusable to not read the entire akathist for the sake of the previous one. Also, note once and for all: whether a rich or poor person asks to serve a prayer service, serve with the same zeal and willingness, as if for yourself. In the next conversation about the incarnation, place the words of the song: Heaven and earth were horrified at this and were surprised at the end... When illness comes to you like a cruel, inhuman executioner, arm yourself with patience and faith in the Lord Savior. If we endure illness with gratitude, faith and patience, then we are awarded the honor of martyrdom and cleanse our sins through illness. The ancient Sodomites, Ninevites, Tyrians and Sidonians, the Queen of South, who came to listen to Solomon, still exist today for God, although for us they have long disappeared from the face of the earth, and on the last day of the world, at the terrible coming of the Lord, they will judge the unbelieving Jews - the contemporaries of the Savior. The Lord in the Gospel says that the Sodomites, Tyrians and Sidonians, of course, and the Ninevites will be happier at the Judgment than the cities that did not accept the Savior’s preaching. So, brothers, everyone is alive to the Lord. How certain it is that our souls live after death! Look, the four-day-old Lazarus emerges from the tomb at the word of the Savior: after all, it is, brethren, his own Lazarus soul that has returned from the place where all human souls go, and has again taken its place in the body; or in the Gospel in many places it is said about those resurrected according to the word of the Savior or through the prayer of the apostles that his or her spirit will return. You see, brethren, that we will certainly live after death in soul. When you begin to perform a prayer, or a service, or a demand, take care of your heart in every possible way so that reluctance and disdain for the task do not sink into it; try in every possible way to create in him love or sympathy for the prayer, service or service being performed. To the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father, who abides in the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, works works or miracles and teaches people the truths of heaven; The Holy Spirit, who rested beyond measure on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, casts out demons through Him. He creates the soul and pure flesh of Jesus Christ; The Holy Spirit transforms both the bread and wine of the Eucharist into the Body and Blood of the Lord - the Father does everything through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Look, you are doing God’s work: prepare yourself every time you approach it, bring both your thoughts and heart into a calm state; let your head be bright and your heart pure. Remember that every time you perform a task improperly and receive payment for it, you are a parasite, receiving payment for nothing, for no reason; I’m not saying that you, in addition, are subject to heavenly damnation for negligence, for haste in the matter. The more freedom and, therefore, peace in prayer, faith, sincerity of the heart, the higher and more effective it is. Do not worry, says the Savior, how or what to say [glory: do not worry about how or what you will say], and do not worry about how you will speak, for in that hour it will be given to you what to say [Matt. 10.19]. (God’s favor passed from the Jews to Christians, who are mostly pagans; and among Christians themselves, God’s favor passes from one people, from one kingdom to another, as, for example, from the Greek to the Russian people: Greece has fallen, but Russia is prospering, just as the Jewish people are scattered across the face of the earth, and Christianity is prospering everywhere.) Make sure that your prayer is always sincere, from the heart, and never pray without sincerity, otherwise your prayer will be false. Therefore, when you notice during prayer that it is not sincere, immediately overcome yourself, your evil heart, your evil flesh and force your heart to be sincere. Avaritia 45 manifests itself in different, often specious ways: destroy it in all its forms. Sometimes you want to give yourself some relief and take a walk and spend money - at this time stinginess sticks out its head and whispers: oh, this walk costs a lot of money - it would be better to spend it on something more necessary and useful! Don't listen to her: she is deceiving you. Passions always deceive us. Moreover, if you allow it to whisper in your heart, you will lose the pleasure of walking. You are marvelous, O Lord, in Your providence for those who give alms; You indulge them in a Divine way. You said: Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, shaken together, pressed and running over, will be poured into your bosom [Lk. 6.38]. And Your word is fulfilled: to the giver, exactly, he himself is given by others, at Your inspiration, a good, generous reward. The law of the existence of cities on earth: if the powers that were manifested in you (in Tire or Sidon) had been manifested in Sodom, then it would have remained to this day [Matt. 11.23]. The glory and majesty of God is insulted by unbelief: the unbeliever creates God by lying. Strange thing! In our powerlessness, we make God powerless; with our lies we create Him - a terrible thing! - lie! ABOUT! Damage to human nature! But You, Lord, destroy all those who speak lies [Ps. 5.7]. The Savior often compares homogeneous objects: about the Church made by hand and not made by hand; about the bread of manna and the bread of His flesh; about ordinary bread (miraculous satiation) and about food that endures to eternal life [Jn. 6.27 ]; about ordinary water and living water; about the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the world or about the terrible and second coming. Here the wisdom, omnipotence and omniscience of God are revealed. How wisely the Savior always began to teach anyone the truths of faith! If you want to know that the Son of God is the Creator of vegetation, remember the fig tree that He cursed, or Aaron’s rod that froze. You want to know whether the Son of God really created the sea - look, He tells it to stop from excitement - and it stops; If you want to know that the Creator of the air is the Son of God, look, He commands the wind to subside - and the wind subsided [Mk. 4.39 ]; if you want to be convinced that the Creator of light is the Son of God, look at the Transfiguration of Tabor. If you want to know who created the invisible world, look at the Lord, how He deals with spirits, how good Angels serve Him, and the evil ones tremble and confess Him as the Son of God. If you want to be convinced that the Creator of fish is the Son of God, read the 5th chapter of Luke and the 21st chapter of John... Four-legged - He is... How He, with the power of God, took a young donkey. If you want to know that life is given by the Son of God or God in the Trinity, read Luke chapter 7 and about Lazarus. I can foresee wet weather during dry weather by painful scrofulous attacks exactly 24 hours in advance. In the forces of nature, see the Creator: He fulfills the universe and acts in everything and through everything. Therefore, be reverent when thunder roars and lightning flashes. Have so much faith and trust in God that you will not be disturbed by any troubles. By allowing various displeasures in your heart, you discover in yourself the poverty of faith and hope. Remember that love is patient... covers all things [1 Cor. 13.4–7]. Let the Lord God freely and wisely dispose of His kingdom. Do not interfere in the affairs of His world government. If during the Liturgy, during the celebration of the Holy Gifts, or before communion, or after, thoughts of doubt arise in you, demanding, so to speak, proof from you, do not pay attention to these thoughts and do not honor them by bringing evidence, but just say: I believe the word of my Lord, who out of love for me became a man and shed His most pure blood for me. Observe the same during prayers. When you have thoughts of unbelief, mentally hold on to the Cross - and they will leave you. Also say: I am a small, insignificant person, while millions of great people wholeheartedly believed in what their thoughts were directed towards. Also say: with my Lord everything is wonderful. During Petrov's Fast of 1858, I drank goat's milk for health and sometimes ate eggs, but I didn't get enough health: that means I don't need to eat fasting foods during Lent, but I need to keep a fast table - things will be better. If the Lord could not do something, then He would not be omnipotent; but for Him absolutely nothing is impossible, of course, except for what is contrary to His essential properties: for example, He cannot do any evil. The corruption and depravity of man are so great that communion of the life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ is absolutely necessary for the gradual liberation of a person from internal evil: this evil breaks through, so to speak, even when the life-giving Mysteries have already been accepted inside, and you must constantly be vigilant over yourself after communion, so as not to think or do evil. Glory to Your wisdom, goodness and omnipotence, Lord, save us sinners! So it was not with joy that I received communion of the life-giving Mysteries today, because I received communion unworthily. It seems that I ate the same Body and drank the same Blood, but not as before, there was no joy in my heart after communion, but sorrow and heartache; and because my heart was not free from sin and was constrained by it, I could not calmly pronounce the royal name at the liturgy and did not finish it. Guard your heart above all else [Prov. 4:23], says the Holy Scripture. ABOUT! How necessary it is to keep your heart pure and pure. It's sickening if it stares. Serve the sick as Jesus Christ Himself, and do not deny them anything. ABOUT! Never rush while serving with your tongue, no matter who or what. In your confusion and haste, the devil's despair operates. Drive him away always and have living trust in God the Helper. A bad heart, an unclean heart! Now I see that the all-good, righteous and wise Lord deservedly allowed you to suffer for a considerable time. If you are still wicked, unclean, stinking, then what would you be like if you had not experienced cruel suffering for your wickedness, for your unfaithfulness to God? Oh, I see that you should be tortured in order to squeeze the evil out of you! How hard the devil works in me: sometimes he inflames passions in me, sometimes he weakens my soul with wickedness, sometimes with despair and fear. He attacks her from all sides. My internal illness is my temptation - and oh! what a strong temptation - when it is combined with sorrow for sin! And for the most part it happens that the painful state of my insides is the cause of sin! ABOUT! My God! Is this not a dirty trick of the flesh, given to me for humility? Be that as it may, endure generously: God does not abandon you even in sorrow. Don't leave Him either. Listen to the apostle what he says: Whoever separates us from the love of God is tribulation or distress [Rom. 8.35] and so on, meaning inner tightness? Great virtue is patience and trust in the mercy of the Lord, and despair is a grave sin. The devil tries with all his might to plunge the sinner into despair, but the sinner must be strengthened by hope and not give in to despair: fall and rise. Prayer offered from the heart can always only be beneficial for the soul and body and can never be harmful, for example, to the body, even if the person praying is in poor health (I mean the standing position of the body). This is experience. Prayer miraculously calms the soul, and peace of mind makes the body calm. We recognize an abnormal, painful state of the body mostly by pain in it; in the same way, we recognize the painful, incorrect state of the soul by the unpleasant languor of the soul: it is worried and cannot rest from sins; she feels sad and feels cramped. When I am engaged in preaching, then I am happy and my soul is joyful. In order not to get confused, not to rush into words, you need to put your heart into them. If you get confused and rush, stop and apply your heart again. Spiritual enemies are attacking you - you need spiritual helpers, combatants, intercessors. Pray then. God Himself, the Mother of God, Angels and saints are ready. Do not spare your heart for prayer: take your heart out from under attachments and passions, and raise it to God, and sanctify it with a bright mind - otherwise it is dark, and all sorts of reptiles nest in it. In prayer, strike directly at the sinful heart, at its special shortcomings, squeeze them out of it, do not spare it; shed tears for them: they will come out with tears. But if you spare your heart and don’t touch it, all the rubbish will remain - and prayer will do you no good. I don’t have that bright activity of thought to always rejoice and thank the Lord for my condition. I revere the church words: Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit always, now and ever and unto ages of ages, and before others of this kind: here is glory to God and eternal prophecy. These words are great. Let the heart speak in prayer - the lips will speak. What a gratifying assurance that there is a Being who loves me most sincerely, most ardently, more than anyone else in the world, to the point that He gives me daily to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood! My God! And this is reality: wondrous peace and rapturous joy assure me that this is so; the truth of Your words too. From now on, everyone will please Me [Lk. 1.48]. Yes, until now You were unknown, a simple Virgin, and from now on - oh, greatness! You are the Ever-Virgin Mother of God the Word; from now on, all the tribes of the earth will please you, sing to you, and glorify you at all times until the end of the age. Oh, most blessed Mother of Light! Create, and one day we will be called blessed! A contrite heart, they say, God will not despise [Ps. 50.19]. Why? Because it is crushed, [softened] and, therefore, all uncleanness has flowed out of it, as from a broken vessel filled with various dirt. That’s the trouble if our heart, unclean, bad by nature, from its negligence and from its depravity remains so: in this case, impurities upon impurities constantly flow within it, and woe to that person who does not crush his heart through self-introduction, self-contemplation, self-reflection. What is the sign of a broken heart? What is the sign that a vessel filled with liquid has broken? That one, when it flows, liquid leaks out. Likewise, the sign of a broken heart is when tears flow from the eyes. With these tears comes the impurity of the heart. That is why tears in the matter of our salvation are valued very dearly, as a sign of the recovery of the soul. That is why in her prayers to God the Church asks her children for tears that cleanse the filthiness of the heart. Sin inevitably entails torment; to get rid of torment, you need to cleanse sin with tears of sincere repentance. God is great and righteous. We are insignificant; His hand is always over us. Strive in prayer and purify your heart. God looks upon your labors and will crown them according to their worth in due time. You are small, insignificant, and it seems to you that you are not worth God’s providence for you? But weren’t almost all the saints so small and insignificant at first, and yet then, for their zeal for God, for their exploits in purifying themselves, God glorified them. (For example, Zosima and Savvaty Solovetsky; Anthony of Siysky and many others.) And they also considered themselves insignificant. Oh! How certain it is that for God we are all equal; He watches over everyone equally and evaluates everyone with His single gaze! They think that sin is nothing; but sin is the most terrible, most painful, truly existing evil, from which God will deliver every person. I have sinned, but my hope is the Father, my refuge is the Son, my protection is the Holy Spirit. During every service, look with your intelligent eyes towards God and do not think at all about people. What are they to you? Sheep following your voice. Oh, timidity! Oh, incomprehensible cowardice! The main thing is not to despair, always hope for God’s mercy. Say: great are human weaknesses! Do not offend the Lord by unbelief and coldness when performing the Sacraments and any other requirements, and try your best to instill faith in your heart. When you go to fulfill any requirement, you certainly carry faith with you. Without faith, do not perform a single task. You are dealing with the Lord, but you do not see Him, therefore it is easy for our nature, accustomed to the sensual, to forget and instead of the invisible but present Lord, to deal with a shadow, with nothing. This is why prayers said without faith are sometimes so difficult. In addition to faith in the Lord, have sincerity of heart during prayers: in them the Church, with all her sincere, holy, loving heart, wishes those who receive the Sacrament or any demand for spiritual or physical benefits. And you whole-heartedly, sincerely wish, together with the Church, these blessings. God! You Yourself grant me this faith and this sincerity in prayer! God! Grant me not to say a single prayer without faith in You, without sincerity of heart. Freedom, independent activity of the mind and heart in prayer are necessary, as in reading books. Prayer, said with faith, drives confusion and fear of Satan out of the soul. When praying, you need to exhaust with your mind and heart all the power of prayers, all the power of their words. Sometimes false shame, vanity, pride, and self-love act in me. Therefore, your anger is stupid and sinful: it is the fruit of false shame or vanity. Prayer is good when the one praying, along with the prayer, indulges in calm contemplation. It is easy to get rid of the confusion and fear that we have from the devil during public prayers by focusing our hearts on the subject of prayer and a sense of humility before God. With home prayer you can conveniently drive away confusion from your heart. Why not public? Deepen your heart into the truths of faith, experience them with your heart - and your heart will be established on the rock of faith. Be afraid of the surface in reading and in prayer: trouble comes from it. Then, no matter how much you care to penetrate deeply with the saving consciousness that cleanses your heart, the devil sows his tares in it and corrupts it. When the soul leaves the body, it becomes lifeless, cold, ugly; the circulation and creation of water of various liquids ceases: a dead, lifeless block of earth remains. The same thing will happen to the earth if the life-giving Spirit of God is taken away from it: all life in it and on it will disappear; it will be cold, lifeless, it will not have this life-giving movement of liquids in different bodies of nature […]. Comfort yourself with the thought of correctly fulfilling all other requirements, by the grace of the Lord, and hope, do not despair. Make [Russian: establish], O Lord, my feet in Thy paths, so that my feet do not move [Ps. 16.5]. (The reason for confusion during prayer is lack of concentration in prayer.) Prayer is spiritual food. Just as bodily food turns out to be almost tasteless when we consume it very hastily, with greed, so spiritual food loses its taste for our soul when we pronounce its words very hastily, with the intention of finishing quickly. In ordinary taste, the tongue decomposes food into its constituent principles and in this decomposition finds taste for itself; so in spiritual taste, the soul breaks down prayer into its beginnings, that is, into words or concepts, and finds a taste for itself in this. Without decomposing prayer, without internalizing it, one cannot find sweetness in prayer. From the infinite multitude of existing things, dwell most often on the Three in a single Being - from Whom all essence is, and with all your being reverence Them. In the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the center of all existence. Enlighten me, enlighten me, instruct me, my Lord, Lord, that I may not sin against You... Enough... but even if not... peace is better than contentment. Passions drive Christ and the Holy Spirit out of the heart. ABOUT! How necessary it is not to let them into your heart! Just as bedbugs, lice and fleas, as well as internal reptiles - worms and worms, are distributed by nature to people so that they suck out their excess blood and excess juices - so parasites among some, not poor people, have a similar purpose in relation to these: to suck out their excess wealth, so that it does not serve to damage the person who has it. This is the benefit of parasites! In nature, water fills the earth and plants, and the sun's heat absorbs the moisture and current of the earth's particles to the plants. Thus, the grace of Jesus Christ waters the hearts of Christians like water (rivers of living water will flow from their bellies [John 7:38]), and the Holy Spirit, like life-giving warmth, assimilates it to their hearts. A person needs little, as long as he is not greedy. Greed is our problem! Stinginess is our blindness! Often, under the guise of voluntary alms, a person hides, without noticing it, stinginess and covetousness. Try it and you will see. Demand from him suddenly and in a row several great sacrifices - and you will notice how shallow and superficial his virtue of voluntary alms is. He will refuse these donations or, if inevitably necessary to bring them, will do so with a murmur. Apparently, God wants three brothers-in-law to live with me for a certain price, and not for more. O most beneficial current of tears! After you, the most painful, desperate disease of the heart caused by sin ceases, the evil one leaves the heart and runs far away. Grant me, Lord, always bitter tears after every sin! God, it is said, tempted Abraham [Gen. 22.1]. Do you hear? So He tempts everyone who tries to live virtuously, in order to place him in proper form before the face of Himself and thereby cleanse him, like gold, from every combustible, impure impurity. How important and significant in the moral order is the life of our heart, its purity or impurity, its passionate or calm, dispassionate state! When it is unclean, subject to passion, then - alas! do not expect any good deeds from a person who has such a heart: he is not himself; and if he is dispassionate, calm, then everything goes smoothly for him. The heart usually carries the mind along with it: this one usually, for the most part, echoes the heart. Therefore, it often happens that if a person’s heart is heavy, if it is not at all inclined towards any task, even if it is very necessary to do it, then at this time the mind also refuses to serve: it becomes darkened, and therefore sometimes the very lips are involuntarily blocked. And therefore it is necessary in every possible way to keep your heart in peace, in dispassion. Look more often into your heart, go down into the depths of it: bring into clarity of consciousness everything that is bad in it, and [spot] in sighs of regret or in bitter tears of repentance every evil hiding in the depths of your heart. Oh! How many remain careless in relation to their heart: they do not want to look into it and carefully examine what bad things have accumulated in it. Such people lose a lot to save themselves! Brethren! I was at a grave that had just been dug for a deceased person, and I saw on the surface of the dug grave sand many human heads, completely naked of flesh, with only bones and holes of former feelings. There were jaws with teeth sticking out here; the dark depths of the eyes, holes from the nostrils and ears were visible; these skulls were trampled upon by people. I turned one skull with my foot and thought: these are our skulls; after all, my skull will, perhaps soon, be the same, and my pride, my greatness will soon, as Job says, be like ashes. Oh! Vain people! Come, look at these skulls and think about what will happen to you - and discard in your life that which is only food for decay. When passions are found, what usually happens first, or at least what happens most of the time (among people who do not yield victory to the first onslaught of the enemy), is a struggle between passionate, outrageous, supposedly just thoughts and good, opposite, Christian thoughts. We must stand firm and courageous in this struggle and not yield victory to the enemy. Good thoughts must triumph over those that are contrary to them, even if it costs the person donations, apparently those that, according to his carnal calculations, should not have been made. These donations are usually more carnal, sensual: in anger - a concession of some of one’s rights; in debauchery - denial of sensuality; in stinginess - denying yourself money, which should not be done for carnal reasons, and so on. But the trouble is that they usually have little or no resistance to attacks of passion, and that is why they, having gained power over people, tyrannize them. Contentment with everything and everyone and peace of mind - this is what should constantly be the subject of your concerns and efforts, this is what makes a person happy in life; This is the state in which you should always be, constantly. Why was the Savior surprised by the centurion’s faith? Because this faith was the property of the centurion’s pure, kind, simple heart and was rare among the people of that time. Although faith is a gift of God, this gift is given only to people with a heart capable of containing such a gift. You do not have Christian humility - try by all means to acquire it. Without it, you will never have a living, fruitful faith in your heart. I will turn your holidays into lamentation [Am. 8:10], says the Lord. And the Lord did this to me in His anger against me. O faith! O hope! Don't leave me! My God! Don't move away from me! Doubt, cowardice, embarrassment - from disbelief, from hopelessness: I am in a constant, spiritual struggle: for almost a minute I have no peace. Now passions, now different thoughts fight me. You pray, but you don’t know whether your prayer reaches God. It certainly comes, brethren, if you pray not only with your body, but also with your soul and heart, and the more sincere and zealous your prayer is, the sooner God will hear you. Look, Jesus Christ prayed to His Father - and how quickly He received answers to His prayer. Likewise, God certainly hears your prayers, although you do not know how this happens. God, brothers, is not far from each of us [Acts. 17.27]: He is at our right hand. Just pray in spirit, just put the words of prayer on your heart - and He will hear you. Sweetness in the heart and light in the mind will tell you this. First cleanse your heart, and then try to instill faith, hope and love in it. Tell yourself more often: I am a wanderer and a stranger on earth. My Savior and His disciples had no place to lay their heads and lived with them through voluntary offerings. And I have reliable and constant shelter, a faithful piece of bread. What can I wish for? Nothing. You just need to thank God and do your deeds of service. My Savior is my example. With all his teaching, all his life, all his deeds, he showed that there is no need to become attached to real life and its blessings, that first of all you need to seek the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. So you, too, prove your faith in the future life with your deeds, show your disdain for the present, for its blessings. You are a priest: you must set an example for others with your life. And how far we go in our attachment to real life with its blessings, how we oppress and torment our hearts with this attachment! Oh, the devil's snares! The virtue of selflessness, non-covetousness! Settle in our hearts! There are so many passionate attachments and so many devilish snares. Use the blessings of the Lord for your pleasure or for your needs: that is why God gave them to you. Say this to the thought of stinginess. You need to choose the lesser of two evils. If the heart grieves for some reason, gives in to despondency or severe melancholy, then you can cheer yourself up with something, for example, some song, or even some sensual pleasure, for example, wine or something else. Give, it is said, wine to the sorrowful soul [Prov. 31.6]. If there are remnants of any passion in your heart, Christ cannot be in it. That is why sometimes after communion you do not feel peace and joy in your heart, but rather languor. Do you notice that the devil is trying to instill fear and despair in you in every almost good deed? And try to add hope to hope. God! I confess my sin before You: I have died in my abundance [Russian: in prosperity]: I will not move forever [Ps. 29.7], that I have established myself on a good path and it is difficult for me to stray from it. I forgot to tell you: Lord! By Your will, give strength to my kindness (good dispositions, good deeds), because all our kindness means nothing if You Yourself do not direct it, do not give it Your strength and purity. So what? Thou didst turn away Thy face, and was troubled [Ps. 29.8]. And how embarrassed? A strong, long-lasting embarrassment. God! Confirm me again in my former kindness and, by Your will, give my kindness strength! God! Heal the confusion of my soul and restore saving silence in it. God! You came to destroy the works of the devil - destroy these works of the devil in me too. I believe that you will destroy: the devil is not only my worst enemy, but also yours. You will take revenge on him for yourself, not only for me, in due time. But even now, Lord, take revenge on him for me, who is fleeting, and do not let him curse at me. Know firmly and always remember that you 1) have not made any good start in your life and 2) that you are, without any exaggeration, worse than all people. And therefore, 1) always pray to God to help you begin a virtuous life and 2) try, with God’s help, to repent of your sins. When the darkness of passions comes over you, then look at the wonderful world of God, at this triumph of life, visible everywhere in nature; Look at the sky, dotted with stars, imagine what treasures God has prepared there for those who love Him - and do not be blinded by the passions of life, do not fetter your immortal spirit with them. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I will endure crafty, cunning glances (the evil eye), and verbal insults, and ridicule, and barbs, and, even if necessary, strangling and spitting, and the plunder of my property, knowing for myself the property that abides and is best, lasting in heaven. Jesus Christ endured all this for me and told me to endure. If I endure for Christ’s sake, it will be easy for me to endure, Christ will strengthen me, and my heart will not be heavy, I will not suffer internally; and if I do not endure for the sake of Christ, but become irritated by everyone, then another, hellish, most painful patience will be required from me: internally I will be torn with anger and vexation, the devil will increase my anger tenfold; goodbye then peace of mind, goodbye love for others and other people, peaceful, friendly conversation with them; farewell to the lightness of the head or thought: hellish darkness will cover the soul, and then it will be as if the luminous world of God for man will disappear, and it will be as if he is alone with his inner torment, with his home hell. Whoever harbors envy, hatred, stinginess or other passions in his soul, his heart is filled by Satan: do not look for Christ or the Spirit of God in that heart; in this state man is the son of perdition. He who has no patience has no love: for love is patient [1 Cor. 13.4]. The evil one deceives you: he closely connects your property with yourself. But you notice his intrigues, and when he begins to confuse you with thoughts about this subject, tell him: it is not me, but I - be calm. It is necessary that in prayer a direct ray must pass from our soul to God, connecting the soul with God; the mind and heart must always be directed towards Him. Do not think about human glory and do not seek it, but think only about the glory of God and seek it alone. You are truly ridiculous in your passion, and therefore forgive me if others laugh at you and do not fully respect you. You humiliated yourself. So, whoever wants to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God [Jas. 4.4]. And you want to be a friend to the world. This is evident from your actions. Beware! Avoid vanity with home furnishings: try to please God with good deeds. Rise with an immortal spirit above corruption. I have enough of everything, and everything is fine with me. Doesn’t it only mean angering God when I dare to indulge in melancholy and sadness? Remember the Savior’s commandment: love your neighbor as yourself [Mk. 12:31], and try to observe it in all its strength: love each neighbor as yourself: what you wish for yourself, wish for him, what you do for yourself, do for him, and what you do not wish for yourself and do not do, do not wish for him and do not do. The presence of the spirit of darkness in a person is revealed by darkness, darkness in the head, confusion, fear, despondency, and heavy languor in the heart. But its presence is more noticeable in the heart: it spirals, tightens it with hellish rivets. He begins his actions from the heart and from there extends them to the mind, imagination and memory, extremely constricting the circle of their actions through darkening them. A person exposed to its action is usually blind in broad daylight, like a bat: with open eyes he sees nothing except the object of his passion; for him it is as if nothing exists. The darkness of thoughts and the rebellion of thoughts brought upon a person by the devil is mentioned in the prayer of water blessing at the Sacrament of Baptism. Confusion and fear from the devil are mentioned in the prayer of Basil the Great at Great Compline. It is driven out of the soul by fervent prayer and the sign of the cross, placed with faith on the toes and belly. In this case, it is easy to notice the moment of his exit. A person who allows passions, the offspring of the devil, to live in his heart, little by little becomes infected with satanic pride, which makes it difficult for a person to turn to virtue, because such a person does not easily admit that he is a great sinner, but that he does not do anything particularly reprehensible, that he is right even in the so-called passions. Look, brethren, who you are who are called: not many of you are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble... so that no flesh should boast before God... let him who boasts boast in the Lord [1 Cor. 1.26–31]. This passage comes to me perfectly: God called me, too, like these Corinthians, not from the wise, strong and noble of this age, but from the weak, low-born and humiliated, so that I could not boast about anything supposedly my own, but so that I could boast only in God. Remember your rank! How different your life is from the life of the apostles: how calm it is, not even alien to tenderness, not filled with sincere, unceasing worries! They are 46 about Christ - you imagine yourself to be wise; they are weak, and you imagine yourself to be strong; they are dishonest, but you are glorious and seek human glory. They hunger, and thirst, and are hungry, and suffer, and wander, and toil, working with their own hands: they curse us, we bless; they persecute us, we endure; they blaspheme us [1 Cor. 4:12–13] – pray for detractors; They are like the rabble of the world, trampled underfoot by all. And you are fed and clothed, and you do not suffer from anyone, and you live peacefully in one place, spending almost most of your time in idleness. They do not reproach you, do not persecute you, do not blaspheme you, but, on the contrary, they praise you, you are held in high esteem; before you many bow their heads; You don’t even think of being the scum of the world - so what?.. With all that, you often want better, more. What punishment do you deserve for this? What kind of torment? Oh, blindness! Oh, ingratitude! Oh, human depravity! You often insult Me with unbelief, but I, according to your countless experiences, am your peace, your joy. Without Me you are a captive of the devil, a slave of passions; there is neither peace nor joy in your heart, but the confusion and heaviness are most painful. When during the liturgy or at other times you awaken your faith, but it does not awaken, you call it, but it does not respond to your voice - then know that the devil is in your heart, and he has driven out your faith. Cry and pray for him to come out, then faith will come. For a whole week the demon [avaritia 47] tormented me and plunged me into despair. But the Sunday liturgy, that is, the reception of the Holy Gifts, healed my soul. You insulted Christ: you gave the beggar a small two-kopeck coin and said: your happiness. Is this mockery? Did you submit a lot? With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7.2]. By the grace of the most pure Mysteries, I stand upright and will not be seduced by evil if I remain vigilant over myself: it is so good to receive communion. But without accepting the life-giving Mysteries for a significant time, I am receptive to evil, and the devil easily takes possession of me. What a deception! What tyranny! I sin, and even then involuntarily, for a minute, but I suffer for hours and days! God! When will victory be on my side? Despite the heaviness caused by demonic obsession during prayer, one should not weaken during it, but continue it patiently and with as much calm as possible. Your weakness, cowardice, timidity are a consequence […] of your youth. In prayer, imagine the Judge and yourself as a sinner before the eyes of God. There was no duty at which he did not stumble, and - alas! against my own will; while I was stumbling, I was a captive. In order not to stumble, you need courage and slowness. If you complain to God about failures that are the result of your own weaknesses, then you are proud and self-loving. Humble yourself before God in every failure. If you sin greatly in something, do not despair and do not grieve inconsolably: God, in His mercy, will give you the opportunity to earn His mercy again (as it happened to you often, and it happened today). If before the Liturgy you hurt your conscience with some sin, then do not hesitate to cry it out, otherwise you will receive communion unworthily. This is why your heart sometimes feels heavy after communion itself. The Jews ask for a sign and the Greeks seek wisdom [1 Cor. 1.22] from those who preach the faith of Christ, and the faith of Christ is to her and amen [2 Cor. 1:20], that is, completely true, requiring our infantile trust. So, asking for a sign and seeking wisdom in faith is a sign of a proud soul, unworthy to accept such a faith as ours. God! Grant me to surrender to faith like a baby. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force [Matt. 11,12]. This means that life by faith does not come for nothing, but one must work in order to have internal signs of the Kingdom of God within oneself. Don't be discouraged by failures. This is sinful. Before the powerful and noble of this world, it is especially necessary to tell the glory of God, as if to sound a trumpet. And you lose heart before them. Is our faith only for the common people? Is she not wiser than human wisdom, revered by the wise of this age with violence 48? Man is more wise than God [1 Cor. 1.25]. In confirmation of Christian hope. When you stumble in worship, do not despair at all, not for a minute, but get better right away; and if you do not recover properly, and your conscience torments you, and punishment befalls your soul, do not despair either, especially if it is during mass and the Gifts of the Lord have not yet been consumed: eat the Body and Blood and at the same time from the heart ask the Lord to forgive you your sin, so that the Mysteries will be joy and joy for you, and it will certainly be according to your desire. This happened today (August 16). I stumbled at the prayer service, and it was painful for me, especially because I have been trying for a long time not to stumble, not to rush - and yet I rush and stumble; but I did not despair, but with hope began to ask from my heart for forgiveness of my sin, and - oh, miracle! - The Merciful forgave my sin and brought me joy. But I still thought that I would have to suffer all day. On the night of August 16, in a vision I was (as a visitor) in a place of spirits rejected from God. Their situation was terrible, their torment in which they languished. The impression I got from there was so deeply scary and amazing that I never for any reason decided to go there again. When some passion begins to take possession of you, begin to sing: To You the morning... and the Pillar of Malice... 49 The soul is involuntarily touched by these songs sung during the Passion of the Lord. When necessary, the Omnipresent One thunders in a certain place with His voice, as, for example, God the Father thundered, testifying to His Son; or the Son of God Jesus Christ also thundered from heaven to Saul; in the Old Testament He appeared on earth, either in the bush where He called Himself, or at Sinai, where he had a long talk with Moses; so, out of condescension towards our weakness, God, from His omnipresence, seems to limit Himself, becoming, as it were, existing only in a certain place. So He is now, according to His promise, present where two or three are gathered in His name [Matt. 18.20]. Church prayers and praises (of course, and the Holy Scriptures) have passed through centuries and passed through millions of lips. How revered they should be in our eyes! With what reverence should we read or listen to them! In addition, they are worth all our respect because they were compiled by saints, great men, inspired from above. God! Glorified throughout all ages by our mortal race! Accept from us, those of little faith, unworthy to raise our sinful voices to You, prayers and praises, and strengthen us in serving You. The dark force only acts in the darkness: the light is not its domain, but God’s; in the light, in a bright state of mind, heart and imagination, she cannot act. During prayer, one must have complete calm and not in the least rush in thought and heart to the end of the prayer. And the wicked heart, if it feels reluctance towards it, carries the thought along with it, forcing it to unforgivable haste. Therefore, it is necessary to keep an eye on your heart and mind during prayer, or, better, by the power of faith, hope and love, force them to devote themselves to prayer with zeal. What a corruption in my nature! Sin and passion always deceive me: they are plausible at first, but are always bitter in their fruits - and yet I am easily drawn into them; goodness, virtue is always right, always true, always soothing, beneficial in its consequences - and I have difficulty achieving them. Do not give in to despondency when they hate, blaspheme, and slander you. Remember often how you hated and slandered the Lord. Be patient and be calm. God! Grant me to place myself below everything that is actually above me, equal to me and even below me: in fact, I am often worse than and senseless brutes. God! Grant me to value money, food and clothing at nothing. Oh, the damned flattery of wealth! Take your wife as an example: she loves you and her family with selflessness, and you love with selflessness. How long have you had this greed? How long will this stinginess last? I look at the grass, flowers, trees, birds, fish, animals and all sorts of reptiles - and I see that everywhere there is an exact fulfillment of creative laws, and therefore everything is beautiful. I look at people, and - alas! there is little, infinitesimal fulfillment of the laws of the Almighty, and that is why there is so much unrest, so much ugliness, so much suffering in their lives! How much the most inanimate nature lifts weights for the sake of people: the sky above our heads is copper, and the earth is iron; everything has dried up and decayed. Evil demons try in every possible way to seduce a person in a dream with various species that can feed our passions, and good Angels try to occupy the mind and heart with sacred prayers and chants, making the mouth a psalter. I see, Lord, that You are leading me like a hand with my conscience. You are invisible, but how you are felt every minute of my life! The invisible hand gives us food, drink, delicacies, and toys - like a father to children; and we, like unkind children, are ungrateful to Her, even as if we don’t want to know Her. And this is God. God! Look upon my weakness. So I want to write a word - but I don’t have a word, it’s dark in my head, my thoughts are tied, my imagination is dead; the heart is weak, without life. I expect help from You, the Source of reason and wisdom, but I don’t see it. How long, Lord, do you not hear me?.. Enlighten my mind with the light of reason of Your holy Gospel... Behold, You have heard: my thought has become free and clear; now it flowed in a measured stream; so the heart came to life. Glory to Thee, Lord! O heart! Heart! Heart! You are causing yourself to suffer! When the flesh and the devil begin to tempt you with concerns about obtaining more money to purchase food, drink, and clothing, contrast them with the words of the Savior: do not worry about your soul, what you will eat and what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will wear. Is not the life more than food, and the body than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your Father in heaven feeds them. Aren't you much better than them? [Matt. 6.25–26]. When you speak, you want people to believe you, and you are offended when they don’t believe you. How dare you not believe when the Truth Himself speaks? How do you insult Her, son of Satan? What do the Law and Prophets want from us? Not much: in everything, as you want people to do to you, do so to them (Matthew 7:12). The Savior's commandments, selected from the Gospel. Everyone must produce the fruits of repentance, and even the ax lies at the root of the tree, that is, at the root of our life: every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire [Matt. 3.10]. The Beatitudes. We are the salt of the earth and must try not to become overwhelmed, not to lose our inner strength. We are the light of the world and should not hide our talents, our virtues. Our truth must be higher than the truth of the scribes and Pharisees. Do not be angry in vain; bring gifts to God with a pure, loving heart. Do not look at women with lust, not only do not have connections with them. Close your feelings from temptations. Don't divorce your wives. Do not swear by anything, but only say: she, her and neither, nor [James. 5.12]. Do not avenge an insult, but endure everything and even surrender to the will of those who offend. Do not refuse those who ask; love enemies too; Do not give alms so that people will praise you for it. Pray without hypocrisy, sincerely, inwardly; avoid verbosity in prayer. Read more Our Father. Allow others to make mistakes. During fasting, do not be a hypocrite, do not show yourself as complaining. Do not hide treasures and riches on earth, but hide them in heaven through almsgiving. Keeping the mind bright is for the well-being of our spiritual life (so as not to stumble and fall), just as we keep our eyesight for the well-being of the body. Do not divide your soul between God and mammon, but surrender everything to God. (And how unworthily we pray!) Not caring about food, drink, clothing... the soul is above all this, but to seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness: the rest will certainly be given. You don't even need to worry about tomorrow. Don't judge others; do not preach the holy word, do not teach the Holy Mysteries to dogs and pigs, that is, to those living in incurable wickedness, without hope of correction, living incontinently. Ask God for your needs, seek and push, that is, keep up with God. Doing to others what we want from others. Walk the narrow path to the Kingdom of Heaven. Know people by their fruits. Do the will of the Heavenly Father, and not just say: Lord! God! - and those who practice iniquity, even if they were prophets, even if they cast out demons and performed many miracles, will go into eternal punishment. All these commandments must be fulfilled, and not just listened to. We must have the most sincere, living faith in God (the centurion), which believes without a doubt that God, in His goodness and omnipotence, will fulfill every request of ours that tends to our good. We must follow Jesus and leave the dead to bury their dead [Matt. 8.22]. This means: to serve the Liturgy calmly and decorously, without rushing when we are asked to hurry to the funeral service of the deceased in the cemetery. Do not be afraid from lack of faith, but be cheerful from faith. Strange distrust of oneself, of the ability, of the use of language! When the singers or the sexton are silent while reading the prayer to Christ, the True Light... I get lost in my tongue after reading a few words, embarrassed in spirit, and when they immediately start singing, I speak calmly, without stumbling! O sinful flesh! How much sorrow you bring me! How stupid you are! God! Grant me to remember more often that You brought me into the world from nothing and gave everything that I have through Your great mercy. The body of a person, an animal, the body of a fruit, for example a watermelon, a melon - one Creator, one Wisdom, from one earth; man is a fruit; animal - fruit and watermelon - fruit. Oh God! Grant me to see You, the One Wisdom, everywhere, in every fruit of the earth. The human body, the animal body and the fetal body are the goal, the triumph of physical nature: all organic nature strives to reproduce itself. I notice that the devil is cruelly swearing at me due to my lack of prudence. God! Let this not happen from now on. Oh! May my heart never rise against God and my wife! Just as it seems to a drunken person that the earth on which he stands is spinning under him, so to a person in a fit of grief and spiritual sorrow it sometimes seems that it is not he who has changed, but God who has changed towards him. Have you not fought against sin until you bled? Wait until you bleed. Our forefather Adam gave us over to the devil, and through him we rightfully belong to him, which is why he disputes us with God as property. But we must resist him in every possible way. From those minutes when I prayed from my heart to the Lady of the world, my soul became easy. Do not leave me, Lady, for the future. He who cleaves to the devil through passion is one spirit with the devil, while he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with the Lord [1 Cor. 6.17]. Church prayer then has its dignity when it becomes completely the disposition of our soul. Resist every bad thought, every feeling of enmity or hostility towards others, and God will help you - good thoughts, feelings of love will prevail in you; otherwise, opposite thoughts and feelings will overcome you. Everything comes with victory. Every step in moral life, as in political life, is acquired with blood. Do you not notice how in the political world it is difficult for a well-known state, which has reached the highest degree of power and glory, to expand its possessions again? Neighboring powers vigilantly watch his every step and as soon as they see his attempt to step forward, they immediately try to stop him by all means, and if that state has a decisive intention to expand its borders, they declare war on him. So it is here – in spiritual life. How long do you inspire me? Always honor man above the material benefits of life, i.e. […]. Your heaviness in your heart is impurity of the heart; it must be washed off without delay. And then she overpowers you and does not allow you to do anything properly. Glorify the Lady, do not forget the Benefactor; do not forget to write 52 to the chosen Voivode victorious... as if you got rid of the evil ones, thanksgiving. Don’t be discouraged by anything and always be cheerful. With tears of heartfelt contrition for sins, a sensually spiritual phenomenon occurs, similar to vomiting. Just as during vomiting, the impurities of the stomach are ejected out by a worm-like movement of the stomach and intestines, so when weeping, the impurities of the heart are ejected out by a similar movement of the intestines. That’s why my heart always feels lighter after tears. Sometimes a person does not cry for a long time. But some great loss or trouble - and he cries bitterly and for a long time for Bose. This is the mercy of God. Through tears, all sinful impurities that previously accumulated in it come out of the heart. In order to receive communion worthily, it is necessary, if possible, through prayer and contrition of the heart to cleanse it from every taint of sin, even the slightest, and through living faith to bring it as deeply as possible into the heart of Christ. But if the free impurity of sin remains in the heart, then Christ cannot dwell in the heart: What does light have in common with darkness? What agreement is there between Christ and Belial? [ 2 Cor. 6,14–15]. I thank my God, who cleanses all my iniquities [Ps. 102.3]. What if He didn't cleanse them? They would eat me like the dogs of hell. The devil will turn you away from God with unbelief, hopelessness or despair, dryness of heart, darkness of mind; will tempt you, inclining your heart to the passions that still remain in you, but you stand firm, calling on the Lord Jesus for help. Do not be proud in any way - the word of the Lord is eternal: everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted [Lk. 18.14]. Don’t put your heart into money: let it run its course. Let decay, dust remain what it is. Let the eternal soul occupy itself with the eternal. While reading, focus all your attention on what you are reading, focus your mind and heart on what you are reading, and do not listen to the whisperings of an evil spirit that instills in you doubts, unbelief, contradiction or proud competition with the one whose creation or words you are reading. From the fruit of it (the evil spirit) you will know it. Is it prudent and in accordance with what reason, having just begun a path, to think about standing at the end of it or, in order to pass it more quickly, to start galloping along it? And you do something similar. Things that take time are the same as a road. People! You live forgetting the Supreme Lord, insulting His holiness with various lawless deeds; but He bears with you only for a time. Woe to you when His justice is revealed. When His justice is revealed here on earth, in the voice of conscience - and then His judgment is heavy; but it will be a hundred times more painful after death, at the Judgment. How small and insignificant I am! I have sinned and I cannot evade in any way, and God forbid I evade the invisible, punishing hand that will weigh down on me with the full weight of the unwashed Judgment; I please God - and God’s servant feels good: peace and joy in his soul. So, every minute I feel on myself the traces of the dominion of my invisible God - while in the darkness of my mind the evil one whispers to me that the Most High has turned His face away from me and does not see it to the end. The Holy Spirit overshadows the Virgin Mary, and She conceives from His influx; From this we see that the Holy Spirit also raises infants in their mother’s womb and gives them life. Everything is yours and I am yours. May God grant that we all may always be one, and that we may all say that we are our own [Russian: and no one called anything... his own] [Acts. 4.32]. And when you sow, you do not sow the future body, but naked grain... [1 Cor. 15.37]. God gives him a body. You wonder how a body that has crumbled into the ground will be resurrected. And by what power does a seed, for example, wheat, watermelon, cucumber or something else, rise from the ground? This seed also dies in the ground - how is it resurrected, comes to life - and with such abundance? God gives him, you say, a body. Likewise, God will give you a body blooming with immortality. If you begin to be overcome by a feeling of embarrassment and fear, read with intense attention a particularly comforting chapter from the Gospel or an apostolic epistle, for example, the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians (the penultimate or last, or some other); be inspired by it - and embarrassment will run away from you; the joy of faith will penetrate your heart. The devil strives to humiliate us in the eyes of ourselves and often reaches with his dark influences on our soul to the point that a person trembles at everyone, even the lowest person, over whom he should always rise in spirit, which he should have commanded. Meanwhile, reading the Gospels and the Apostolic Epistles, on the contrary, elevates us in our own eyes, imparts majestic importance and tranquility to our spirit, drives away passions and improves all our affairs. It is necessary that the holy truths of faith live in our mind and heart; It is necessary that in the head and heart there be a saving fermentation of this spiritual fragrant wine, cheering and revitalizing our hearts, in contrast to the pernicious, fetid fermentation of passions. What exalted the Mother of God above all creatures? Humility. God has regard for the humility of His Servant [Lk. 1.48 ]; rewarded humility pleases all generations. Try your best to be humble. God gives grace to the humble, but opposes the proud. God grant! O invisible, but sweetly felt by the soul, grace of God! I am blessed by you. O wonderful power of heartfelt prayer! Transform me, transform me from a sinner, groaning under the burden of his own iniquities, into a justified person, into a child of God, peacefully, joyfully resting in the arms of the Father! O saints of God, our intercessors, especially the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the great saint John the Baptist of Christ! Your intercession for us sinners is strong! Through our prayer, you bend God to our mercy and delight our hearts with your invisible, but nevertheless real influence on our souls! Good God! Save me, a sinner, for Your name's sake! Don’t look at my untruths that I commit every day, but look at those moments in my life when I completely, completely belong to You, when tears of tenderness flow from my eyes, when I wish with all my soul, like a bird to the mountains, to fly to You from the sinful world, from myself, from my sins, so as not to sin again, not to anger You, my all-good God and my righteous Judge! The Lord is on earth: it is preached to everyone that He has come, that faith in Him saves, and many are saved. But who preaches about Him in hell? What does Providence arrange? Herod feasts; the girl dances, pleases everyone, and Herod promises her anything. Zeal for God of the Baptist, who denounced Herodias, culminates in martyrdom, and John is in hell. For what? He preaches Christ there. Continued reading from the Psalter Psalm 77. How wonderful God is in His works! Here He (vv. 13 ff.) opens the sea and leads His sons through on dry land: He made the waters a wall [glory: imagine the waters like a fur]: the waves rose and fell, and meanwhile, like a wall, thickened both floors of water (like a fur). Instructs them: during the day he led them with a cloud, and all night long with the light of fire (he guides them). He opened a stone in the desert and gave them drink as from a great abyss [glory: and I gave them drink as from the depths of the ocean (in the ocean)]; He brought streams out of the rock, and the waters flowed out like rivers (also). 19th century and further. They spoke against God and said, “Can God prepare a meal in the desert?” Behold, He struck the stone, and waters flowed out and streams flowed. “Can He also give bread and prepare meat for His people?” And now many are slandering God in a similar way, saying with doubt: since He did this and that, this and that for us, will He not also do this? But about spiritual bread, or about the most holy Body and Blood, some, indeed, think questioningly: can He give bread as the true Body and Blood? He commanded the clouds from above and opened the doors of heaven, and rained manna on them for food, and gave them the bread of heaven. 27. He rained meat on them like dust, and feathered birds like the sand of the sea. But like spoiled children, despite all these miracles, the Jews sinned and did not believe in His miracles. This still exists today. People soon forget the blessings of God. 33, 34 and 35. And he destroyed their days in vanity and their years in confusion [glory: and his days disappeared in vanity, and their years with haste (with haste)]. When He killed them, they sought Him and turned, and from early morning they ran to God, and remembered that God is their refuge, and God the Most High is their Savior. 36[-37]. And they flattered Him with their lips and lied to Him with their tongues; but their heart was not right with Him, and they were not faithful to His covenant. The same can be said about Christians today. God does not kindle all of His anger against us because He knows our insignificance: He remembered that people are flesh, a breath that leaves and does not return. Here is a magnificent picture: the almighty Lord led His people like sheep (just like sheep) out of Egypt, and led them like a flock through the wilderness. The same Psalm, 70, 71 and 72. He chose David His servant, and took him from the sheepfolds, and from the milking men brought him to feed His people Jacob, and His inheritance Israel. And he shepherded them in the purity of his heart and led them with wise hands. Our God is marvelous in His chosen ones; He chooses them not from the nobles and greats of this world, but almost always from a simple state - because here most often lives humble simplicity and gentleness, rare in noble people. And in almost the same way the Lord brought me from the sheepfolds to feed His people. But I’m not ashamed of it; in the sight of God all states are good and honorable. Psalm 78. The disasters of war are beautifully described. The prophet complains that the pagans turned Jerusalem into ruins: they gave the corpses of God’s servants to be eaten by the birds of the air, and the bodies of Your saints to the beasts of the earth; They shed their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them [vv.1-3]. God sometimes punishes His people so terribly in His anger. The same thing happened to us recently. Next [Art. 10–12] - asks for vengeance on God’s enemies: Let the vengeance for the shed blood of Your servants become known among the pagans before our eyes. Let the groaning of the prisoner come before You; By the might of Your arm save those doomed to death. Return to our neighbors seven times the reproach with which they, O Lord, reproached You, into their bosom. Then he humbly casts his people into the power of God, saying: We, Your people and the sheep of Your pasture, will forever glorify You and proclaim Your praise to generation and generation [v. 13]. Psalm 79. The Prophet turns to God, calling Him the Shepherd of Israel: Shepherd of Israel! listen; leading Joseph like sheep; then, presenting His greatness as the Creator of spirits themselves, he says: sitting on the Cherubim, reveal Yourself. 4 tbsp. God, turn us, and enlighten Your face, and we will be saved! For our life to be pleasing to God, God Himself must turn us to Himself and illuminate His face on us. 6 tbsp. You fed them with the bread of tears, and gave them tears to drink in great measure. The goodness of God sometimes feeds us with tearful bread, turning our thoughts and hearts to Himself, removed by contentment and happiness. 9, 10 and onwards. You brought the vine (the people of Israel) out of Egypt, drove out the nations and planted it; He cleared a place for it, and established its roots, and it filled the earth. The mountains were covered with its shadow, and its branches were like the cedars of God; she sent out her branches to the sea and her branches to the river. Why have You destroyed its fences, so that all who pass along the way tear it down? The boar of the forest undermines it, and the beast of the field devours it (an uneducated, barbaric people). God of strength! turn, look down from heaven, and behold, and visit these grapes; guard what Your right hand has planted... It is burned with fire, it is cut off... (Sevastopol). What a wonderful allegory! How the subject of speech is well depicted in the imagination! It is good to apply this allegory to us, the Russian people. Psalm 80, v. 12 ff. But My people did not listen to My voice, and Israel did not submit to Me; therefore I have left them to the stubbornness of their hearts, let them walk according to their own thoughts [glory: according to the intentions of their hearts]. And now one can see very many examples that people who want to follow whims and passions in everything are allowed by God to walk according to the intentions of their hearts - because they did not listen to the repeated suggestions of God - to leave their way of life and choose a better one. 14 ff art. Oh that My people would listen to Me and Israel would walk in My ways! I would quickly subdue their enemies and turn My hand against their oppressors. God's chosen ones! Have you not noticed more than once in your life how quickly and easily God humbled your enemies and laid His strong hand on those who insulted you? They disappeared like dust, but you all remain. Psalm 81. How long will you judge unrighteously and show partiality to the wicked [glory: and the faces of sinners (look at the face)]? Give justice to the poor and the orphan; Give justice to the oppressed and the poor; deliver the poor and needy; pluck him out of the hand of the wicked. O golden truth! When will you be among people? When can I get enough of you? Sometimes 53 the glory of God will appear to us. Ps.82, v.11. Against human pride: people are sometimes like earthly pus. 14–19. My God! Let them be like dust in a whirlwind, like straw before the wind [glory: I put it like a stake, like a reed in the face of the wind (colo and cane are synonyms)]. As fire burns a forest, and as a flame scorches mountains, so chase them (our enemies) with Thy storm and Thy whirlwind, bring them into confusion; Fill their faces with dishonor, so that they may seek Your name, O Lord (yes, sometimes it is necessary to fill us with dishonor so that we begin to seek God!), so that they may know that You, whose only name is Lord, are the Most High over all the earth. Ps.83. How beloved is Your village, O Lord of hosts! The end of all the desires of my soul is the house of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. I, like a bird, found shelter in Your church, or, like a turtledove, I laid my nest in the church - my favorite thoughts, feelings and hopes: this is what Your altars serve for me, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God! Blessed are those who dwell in Your house: they will praise You forever and ever. In this verse, the prophet predicted the future: now, or, better yet, from ancient times, the New Testament priests praise the Lord in His house and forever and ever will praise Him - until the end of the age. Psalm 84, 7 v. and further. Will You not revive us again, so that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us, O Lord, Thy mercy, and grant us Thy salvation. I will listen to what the Lord God says. He will speak peace to His people and His chosen ones, but let them not fall into folly again. Thus, His salvation is near to those who fear Him. God is the Source of life: if He turns His face away from us, we will rebel and turn to our own dust; if He turns His face, we will live and rejoice. In general, when God is with us, we feel good and happy; and when He is not with us, then it is boring, and sad, and difficult. But for God to be with us, we must have a pure heart and a clear conscience; a corrupt heart can never feel holy joy: but there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord [Isa. 48.22]. That is why God speaks peace only to His people and His chosen ones. Psalm 85. 8 tbsp. and further. Among the gods there is no one like You, O Lord, and there are no works like Yours [about creation]. All the nations created by You will come and bow before You, O Lord, and glorify Your name, for You are great and work wonders - You, O God, are the only One. Our God is visible in His deeds. 11th century Guide me, O Lord, in Thy path, and I will walk in Thy truth; establish my heart in the fear of Your name. On my own, I am only capable of deluding: You Yourself, Lord, guide me on the right path, and I will walk in Your truth, as Your law commands; let my heart beat with joyful trembling again, childishly fearing You. Psalm 87. O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried before You by day and by night: Let my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my prayer. For my soul is filled with evil, and my belly is drawing near to hell. When your soul is filled with evil, read this psalm. Psalm 88. 6–7. The heavens will glorify Your wonderful works, O Lord... For who in heaven can compare with the Lord? 9[-10]. Lord, God of strength! Who is strong like You, O Lord? And Your truth surrounds You. You have dominion over the fury of the sea: when its waves rise, You calm them (Jesus Christ calming the storm at sea). 12[-13]. Your heavens and Your earth; You founded the universe and what fills it. You created the north and the south; Tabor and Hermon rejoice in Your name (prophecy). Sublime and powerful image of the greatness of God! 22ff. My hand will be with him, and My arm will strengthen him. The enemy will not prevail against him, and the son of iniquity will not oppress him. I will crush his enemies before him and smite those who hate him. And My truth and My mercy will be with him, and his horn will be exalted in My name. And I will lay his hand on the sea, and his right hand on the rivers. He will call Me: You are my father, my God and the rock of my salvation. And I will make him the firstborn, above the kings of the earth; I will preserve My mercy for him forever, and My covenant with him will be faithful. And I will continue his seed forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. 37[-38] Art. His seed will endure forever, and his throne will be like the sun before Me, firm as the moon forever, and a faithful witness in heaven. Promises to righteous people. But He does not do this to the wicked: You turned back the edge of his sword and did not strengthen him in battle... you threw his throne to the ground; shortened the days of his youth and covered him with shame [v. 44–46]. 48[-49] art. Remember what my age is like: for what vanity did You create all the sons of men? Which people lived and did not see death? Yes, my composition is perishable and easily destructible. Psalm. 89. God! You are a refuge for us throughout generation and generation (from generation to generation). Before, when there were no mountains and the earth and the universe were not created, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. A thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday, which has just passed, and like the watch of the night. Their summers are like nothing. Like grass, the morning of our life blooms, and in the evening it dries up, becomes hard and falls away. How we disappear in Thy anger and are troubled by Thy wrath!.. 14[-15 v.] Satiate us early with Thy mercy, and we will rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for the days... in which we saw disaster (as a reward for unhappy days)... The Lord both saddens us for our own good and makes us happy. Psalm 90, 14 v. [and further] “Because he loved Me, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he has known My name. He will call to Me, and I will hear him; I am with him in sorrow; I will deliver him and glorify him, I will satisfy him with long days, and I will show him My salvation.” About whom does the Lord express such favor? About a person who trusts in the Lord, about living in the help of the Most High God. Yes, it is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes. [Ps. 117.8–9]. God is an omnipotent Helper: He can easily deliver us from all misfortune and sorrow and, as the Lord of life and death, prolong our days in peace. Psalm 91. It is good to confess to the Lord and sing to Your name, O Most High: to proclaim Your mercy in the morning and Your truth every night [v. 1–2]. How, Lord, this is not good! It is pleasant for a person who has been blessed by someone from head to toe to express his gratitude to his benefactor in some way. Shouldn't we be pleased to proclaim Your mercy every morning over us sinners, ungrateful and malicious; Should we not confess Your great and holy name and sing Him with heart and lips? We do not have a hair of our own: everything is Yours; even every breath of air taken in by our lips is Your gift. How can we not thank You, not praise You, not proclaim Your mercy in the morning and Your truth every night! 5[-7] art. For You have made me glad, O Lord, with Your creation: I admire the works of Your hands. How great are Your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are wonderfully deep! A foolish person does not know, and an ignorant person (not willing to think) does not understand this. Yes, just look attentively at the sun, the moon, the stars, or even one blade of grass, and you will be glad that your Creator is so infinitely wise and good; you will enjoy the works of His hands. You have looked closely at everything in this beautiful world, and that is why it seems to you that everything is ordinary, not worth looking at and reverently surprised. But look at everything without previously received thoughts and look at everything as if it were new, analyze everything down to the details: a sea of ​​miracles will open before your eyes and all your senses. To understand how wonderfully deep the thoughts of the Lord are in the structure of His creatures, in their lives and in His providence for them, one must delve deeper into reflection on the affairs of God. A foolish man [glory: the husband is mad] does not know, and the ignorant does not understand this. Don't be so crazy. Psalm 92, v. [1–2]. God established the universe, even if it does not move. Thy throne is ready from thence: from everlasting art thou art. Yes, more than seven thousand years have already passed since creation, and the universe stands motionless, because it is confirmed by the power of the Creator God, who carries everything with His powerful word. Ps.93, 2 [-11] art. Arise, Judge of the earth, give vengeance to the proud. How long, Lord, will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph? They... trample down Your people, O Lord, oppress Your inheritance; the widow and the stranger are killed, and the orphans are put to death, and they say: “The Lord will not see, and the God of Jacob will not know.” Come to your senses, senseless people! When will you be smart, ignoramuses? The one who plugs the ear will not hear (at least understand this)? and the eye that formed will not see? He who admonishes the nations [glory: chasten the tongues (teaching people)] will not reprove - He who teaches man understanding? The Lord knows the thoughts of men that they are vain. Just as David complained about the proud wicked, who allow themselves everything, so we are often forced to cry out against them in the ears of God Himself. Every passion blinds a person, and these proud people are blind, therefore in their blindness they represent God Himself as blind: the Lord will not see. How beautifully David says to such people: He who fills the ear will not hear? and the eye that formed will not see? Is it possible that He who gave the eye to see and the ear to hear, Himself did not see or hear? This is absurd. 17. If the Lord had not been my helper, my soul would soon have entered the land of silence. Yes, if it weren’t for God helping us in our sorrows and illnesses, we would melt like wax, wither like grass. 18th century When I said, “My foot falters,” Thy mercy, O Lord, supported me. Just tell God that you are weak and may soon fall - He will help you now. 19th century When my sorrows multiply in my heart, Your consolations delight my soul. If we suffer for the sake of righteousness, God will certainly shed His unspeakable consolations into our soul. The martyrs endured the most inhuman torture with a cheerful face. Psalm 94, [v.] 3 ff. The Lord is the great God and the great King over all gods. The depths of the earth are in His hand, and the tops of the mountains are His. The kings of the earth possess only the most insignificant part of the earth in comparison with the whole earth, and, moreover, like people, they cannot suddenly be in all the places of their possessions at the same time. In this respect they are as limited as other people. On the contrary, God is the great King of the whole earth: as the Almighty, He holds in His hands all the ends of the earth, as a man holds a small ball in his hand, and He is at one time in all places of the earth: no one can hide from Him anywhere, either in the sea or on land: For He is the sea, and He created the dry land, and with His hand you created the dry land. The sea belongs to Him: He created it, and His hands made the dry land. 6[-7]. Come, let us worship and fall down, let us kneel before the face of the Lord, our Creator (glory: come, let us worship and fall down before Him, and let us weep before the Lord who created us); for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. You are a sinner, you are guilty before Him: come, bow down and fall down to Him and cry before the Lord who created you. Do not be afraid: you are His property, you graze in His pasture, like a sheep that has received life from Him. You disarm Him if you repent of your sins. What should He take from you, His weak creature? Judge you? But if He sees iniquity, who will stand? [Ps. 129.3]. What's more? He does not need your goods: He Himself gave you everything and does not need anything of yours. Bring Him a guilty head - that’s all: That’s all He wants [from you]. Psalm 95, 9 [-13 v.] Worship the Lord in the splendor of the sanctuary. Tremble before His face, all the earth [glory: let the whole earth move at His presence (no wonder the psalmist exclaims: at His presence, indeed, the whole earth can move)]. Tell the nations: The Lord reigns! Therefore the universe is solid and will not be shaken. He will judge the nations with justice. Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar and fill it; let the field rejoice and all that is in it, and let all the trees of the grove rejoice before the face of the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world according to righteousness, and the nations according to His truth. Probably, the fields and everything in them, as well as the oak trees, rejoiced with their joy, that is, they had some kind of instinct that the Creator of the universe lived on earth with people. Psalm 96, 4 [-5 v.] His lightning illuminates the universe; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax from the presence of the Lord, from the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. You speak worthy of the greatness of God, prophet of God! 10. You who love the Lord, hate evil: the Lord preserves the souls of His saints (that is, He preserves His saints). 11. Light shines on the righteous, and joy on the upright in heart. The righteous taste heavenly peace and sublime, holy joy. Psalm 97, 3 [-4 v.] All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout to the Lord, all the earth; rejoice, rejoice and sing. 7[-9 v.] Let the sea roar and what fills it, the universe and those who live in it; let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains rejoice together before the face of the Lord... How the prophet rejoiced at the future salvation of the world, accomplished by Jesus Christ! It seemed to him that even all inanimate nature sympathized with the Lord who appeared on earth in the flesh. Psalm 98, 5 art. Exalt the Lord our God... About the Cross. 6. Moses and Aaron among the priests, and Samuel among those who called on His name, cried to the Lord, and He listened to them. If the Lord listened to them, will He not listen and listen to us? He listens if we call on Him with faith and a pure heart. He Himself appointed us for this purpose, to listen to us. Tell Him: You have appointed me to offer gifts and sacrifices for my sins and for human ignorance 54; deign to listen to me when I pray, when I offer You a bloodless sacrifice. Say: Lord our God! You listened to them; You were for them a God who forgives and punishes for their deeds [glory: You listened to them: God, You were merciful to them, and took vengeance on all their undertakings] [8 v.]. Listen to me, be merciful to me too. Psalm. 99, 2. Serve the Lord with joy; go before Him with an exclamation [glory: come before Him with joy]! When you come to the church of God to work for the Lord, then work for Him in joy and enter the church in joy. 3 tbsp. Know that the Lord is God, that He created us (and people sometimes do not want to know their Creator and think that they are the masters of their lives), but we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Humble yourself, pride, and recognize yourself as a creation of Almighty God, a sheep of His pasture: in fact, you graze on earth, rich in the gifts of nature, and the earth is His common pasture for both people and all animals. 100 psalms. I will sing to You of mercy and judgment, O Lord—daily mercy, endless mercy, and judgment dissolved in mercy. Psalm 101. God! Hear my prayer, and let my cry come to You. Hide not Your face from me; in the day of my tribulation, incline Your ear to me; on the day [when] I call [to You], quickly hear me [v. 2–3]. Shouldn’t you often, like David, cry out to God? Yes, sometimes a cry is heard in your soul, like the cry of a child abandoned in an empty and impassable place by his mother: how you then feel the need for God to hear the cry of our soul, painfully groaning about its sins, about its loneliness in this world! 4 tbsp. For my days have vanished like smoke, and my bones are burned like a brand [glory: my bones have dried up like dryness]. 12 tbsp. My days are like a retreating shadow, and I am withered like grass. Yes, I am insignificant and fleeting; I am like smoke on the land of my coming. 24[-25] art. He exhausted my strength along the way, He shortened my days. I said: My God! do not take me away in half my days. Your summers in childbirth. Tell me, remind me, Lord, how few are the number of my days. Do not take me from this life halfway through my days: I still want to enjoy here the contemplation of Your deeds. Your world is so beautiful. Here you are, Lord, not like me, eternal: You live in the generations of generations. Generations after generations will pass, new generations will appear in their place, and so on almost to infinity, and You still live without aging. In the beginning You [Lord,] founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands; they will perish, but You still remain: and they will all wear out like a robe, and You will change them like a garment, and they will be changed; yet You are the same, and Your years will not fail [vv. 26–28]. Psalm 102, 11 [-12]. For as high is the heaven above the earth, so great is the mercy [of the Lord] towards those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our iniquities from us. So great is the mercy of God to those who fear Him, and He leaves us so much (removes from us - despises, forgets) our iniquities. As a father has mercy on his sons, so the Lord has mercy on those who fear Him [glory: just as a father shows mercy on his sons, the Lord has mercy on those who fear Him]. For He knows our composition, He remembers that we are dust. Man's days are like grass; like the flower of the field, so it blooms. The wind passes over him, and he is no more, and his place no longer recognizes him. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to those who fear Him, and His righteousness is upon the sons of sons, who keep His covenant and remember His commandments to do them [v. 13–18]. So, man in himself is nothing: he is like dust or earth, like grass, like a flower of the field that soon fades: the spirit left him - and there was no man and no traces of him remained. But he is great and blessed if he fears God and keeps His commandments: the Lord rewards him with His blessings, just as a father rewards his children; The mercy of the Lord is with him from everlasting to everlasting, and His righteousness is even shown to the sons of His sons, who keep His covenant. Psalm 103, 4–5 ff. You create Your angels as spirits, Your servants as blazing fire. You have set the earth on firm foundations: it will not be shaken forever and ever. You have covered it with the abyss like a garment, and there are waters on the mountains. Marvelous to rational creatures is the omnipotence and wisdom of the Lord. 14–15. You grow grass for the livestock, and greens for the benefit of man, to produce from the earth food (cereals), and wine, which gladdens the heart of man, and oil, which makes his face shine, and bread, which strengthens the heart (insides) of man. What wisdom in all this! The earth on which we live and in which we are buried provides us with everything: food, drink, and clothing. And besides, grass for livestock. How expedient this is! Yes, the trees of the field, receiving juices from the earth through the roots, are nourished and grow, and the cedars of Lebanon, planted by God, making up the beauty and splendor of plants, are nourished from the same earth. Birds nest there, and there - on the high mountains - fir trees run merrily; in another place the stone serves as a refuge for hares that are fast on the run. You created the moon to tell time; the sun knows daily to hasten to its west. So He spread out the darkness - and it became night, in which all the animals of the oak forest walk, roaring in order to seek and grab food for themselves from God. But then the sun rose: they gathered again and lay down in their beds; a man goes out until evening to do his work. How great are Thy works, O Lord: Thou hast created all things in wisdom: the earth is full of Thy creatures. Here is a great and vast sea: there are various reptiles there, of which there is no number, animals small and great. Ships sail here too. All expectations are turned to You: everyone expects that You will give them food in due time. When you give, they will collect; when You open Your handful, then everyone will be filled with the gifts of Your goodness. But when you turn away your face, then all creatures will be disturbed (they will be in confusion): you will take away their spirit - and they will disappear and turn into their dust, from which they were created. You will send Your Spirit, and they will be built again, they will come to life, and the face of the earth will be renewed. 32. He looks at the earth, and it shakes; touches the mountains and smokes. What terrible greatness! I will sing to the Lord during my life, as long as I exist: everything excites me to sing the wonders of the wisdom and goodness of God. Psalm. 104, 16 art. And he called famine upon the land; every stalk of grain was destroyed. 28. He sent darkness and made darkness [glory: sent darkness and darkened (day)]… 29. He turned their water into blood, and killed their fish. 32. Instead of rain, he sent hail upon them... 33. And he struck down their grapes and their fig trees, and broke down the trees within their borders. Look how, according to His omnipotent will, the Lord does on earth whatever He pleases: he will say, for example, that there should be no bread on it, and there will not be: the earth will immediately obey its Creator. Psalm 105, 19 et seq. They made a calf at Horeb and worshiped the image; and they exchanged their glory for the image of an ox eating grass. They forgot God, their Savior... The same can be said about the people of our time with some modification of the text. How many people make Taurus out of their passions and habits! Psalm 106, 23[-30] v. Those who go on ships to the sea, doing business on the great waters, see the works of the Lord and His miracles in the abyss: He says, and a stormy wind arises and lifts its waves high (of creation): they ascend to the heavens, they descend to the abyss; their (sailors) soul melts away in disaster; they spin and stagger like drunken people, and all their wisdom disappears (where did everything go). But they cried out to the Lord in their sorrow, and He brought them out of their distress. He turns the storm into silence and the waves become silent. And the sailors rejoice that they have calmed down... At sea, a person most vividly feels his insignificance, as well as the greatness and omnipotence of the Lord... Describing the omnipotence of the Lord Almighty, David depicts as if our Lord, Who did the same thing, namely: tamed the sea - and it listened to Him. 33–38 art. About the omnipotent actions of God on earth: he turns rivers into a deserted, waterless place and fertile land into barren, because of the wickedness of those living on it. He turns the waterless desert into places abundant in water; settles the hungry there and creates inhabited cities: here fields are sown, vineyards are planted, so that the earth begins to boil with honey and milk; people themselves multiply by His blessing, as well as their livestock. Psalm. 107, 13. Give us help from sorrow: and human salvation is in vain. You, Lord, are the best and most faithful Helper in sorrow, because our sorrows are the work of Your goodness. Psalm. 108, 17 [-19 st.]. He loved the curse, and it will come to him; did not want the blessing, it will move away from him; let him be clothed with the curse as with a robe, and let it enter like water into his bowels and like oil into his bones; let it be to him like a garment in which he dresses, and like a girdle with which he always girds himself. The same must be said about some people of our time. 21 [-23] art. But with me, Lord, Lord, do for the sake of Your name, for Your mercy is good; save me, for I am poor and needy [glory: I am poor and wretched], and my heart is wounded within me. I disappear like a retreating shadow. 26. Help me, O Lord my God, and save me according to Your mercy. When you turn to God in prayer, first recognize your poverty and insignificance. Psalm. 111. About a man who fears the Lord; about his deeds; about God's blessing on him and his descendants. 5 tbsp. He lavished, gave to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn will rise in glory. The wicked will see this and be vexed, gnashing his teeth and fainting [v. 9–10]. No one giving alms was ever put to shame. Psalm 112, [v. 3–8]. From the rising of the sun to the west, let the name of the Lord be glorified. The Lord is high above all nations; above the heavens is His glory. Who is like the Lord our God, Who, dwelling on high, bows down to look down upon heaven and earth; He raises the poor from the dust, and raises the needy from the dirt to seat him with princes, with the princes of his people... Isn’t it God’s work and yours to be elevated to the degree of priesthood? Obviously. Psalm 114, art. 5. The Lord protects the simple-minded: I was exhausted, and He helped me [glory: the Lord protect the infants: humble yourself and save me]. If you want to be under the protection of the Lord, be like a child, meek and humble. Psalm 117, 5 [-9 v.] Out of trouble I cried out to the Lord, and he heard me, and the Lord brought me out to a wide place. The Lord is for me - I will not be afraid: what will man do to me? The Lord is my helper: I will look upon my enemies. It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes. Psalm. 118, [Art. 1]. Blessed are those who are blameless in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. People who walk in the law of the Lord know this bliss by experience. 4[-5]. You have commanded that Your commandments be kept firmly. Oh, that my ways (my life, Thou hast commanded) would be directed to the observance of Thy statutes! 9. How can a young man keep his path pure [glory: in what way will the youngest correct his path]? - By keeping yourself according to Your word. Keep the commandments of God, and by this you will correct your path. 11. I have hidden Your word in my heart, so as not to sin against You. What a wonderful remedy against sin! Try to hide the words of the Lord more deeply in your heart. 14. In the path of Your revelations I rejoice, as in any wealth. Do you feel the sweetness of learning in the law of God? If you feel it, it’s a good sign. 19. I am a wanderer on earth; do not hide Your commandments from me. 24[-25]. Your testimonies are my comfort, [and Your statutes] are my counselors. My soul is cast into the dust; quicken me according to Your word. 28. My soul faints with sorrow: strengthen me according to Your word. 29. Remove from me the path of lies, and grant me Your law. 32[-33]. I will flow in the path of Your commandments when You enlarge my heart. Show me, O Lord, the path of Your statutes, and I will adhere to it to the end. 34. Give me understanding, and I will keep Your law and keep it with all my heart. 38. Establish Your word to Your servant, for the sake of reverence before You. 41. Let Your mercies, O Lord, come to me, Your salvation according to Your word. 45. I will walk freely, for I have sought Your commandments. 49. Remember [Your] word to Your servant, in which You commanded me to trust. 50. This is a consolation in my distress, that Your word gives me life. How beautifully this is said! 53. Horror takes possession of me at the sight of the wicked who forsake Thy law. Yes, it is hard for a righteous person to see wicked people forgetting God! 55. At night I remembered Your name, O Lord, and kept Your law. And even at night, remember God. 58. I prayed to You with all my heart: have mercy on me according to Your word. 59. I meditated on my ways and turned my steps to Thy revelations [glory: in Thy testimonies]. And think more often about how you live: if it’s not good, immediately return your nose to the testimonies (commandments) of God. 62. At midnight I got up to praise You for Your righteous judgments. Imitate the Godfather. You see with what love he burned for God. 63. I am a companion to all those who fear You and keep Your commandments. 64. The earth is full of Your mercy, O Lord. 67[-71]. First, let us not even humble ourselves, since we have sinned (how true is this): for this reason I have preserved Your word. You are good and beneficial, [Lord]; teach me Your statutes. The proud weave lies against me; I will keep Your commandments with all my heart. Their heart became fat like fat; I am comforted by Your law. It is good for me that I suffered in order to learn Your statutes. 72. The law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver. Rich! Do not be proud of your wealth: there is wealth better than yours even among poor people - the law of God. 74[-75]. Those who fear You will see me and will rejoice that I trust in Your word. I know, Lord, that Your judgments are righteous and You punished me with justice. 78. Let the proud be put to shame, for they innocently oppress me; I meditate on Your commandments. 81. My soul melts for Your salvation; I trust in Your word. 90. You set the earth, and it stands. 91. According to Your decrees, everything stands to this day, for everything serves You. 92[-93]. If Thy law had not been my consolation, I would have perished in my misfortune. I will never forget Your commandments [glory: I will never forget Your justifications], for through them You revive me. You yourself have experienced the life-giving power of the Lord’s justifications: do not forget them throughout your life. 94. I am yours, save me; for I have sought Your commandments. 101. I keep my feet from every evil way, to keep Your word. 103. How sweet are Your words to my throat! better than honey to my lips. 105. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. 125. I am Your servant: give me understanding, and I will understand Your revelations. 136. Streams of water flow from my eyes because they do not keep Your law. 143. Sorrow and sorrow befell me; Your commandments are my comfort [glory: Your commandments are my teaching]. Let the Lord’s commandments be a lesson for you in sorrows and needs. 148[-149]. My eyes anticipate the morning watch, so that I may delve deeper into Your word. Hear my voice according to Thy mercy, O Lord; according to Your judgment, revive me. 155. Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek Your statutes. 162. I rejoice in Your word, as one who has received great profit. 163. I hate lies and abhor them; I love Your law. 169. Let my cry come near before Thy face, O Lord; give me understanding according to Your word. 171. My lips will utter praise when You teach me Your statutes. 175. May my soul live and glorify You, and may Your judgments help me. 176. I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek Thy servant, for I have not forgotten Thy commandments. Psalm 119, [v. 1]. I cried out to the Lord in my sorrow, and He heard me. 6. My soul lived long with those who hated the world [glory: my soul came many times: with those who hated the world I was at peace]. 5. Woe to me, that I dwell at Mosoch, I dwell at the tents of Kedar [glory: alas for me, for my coming shall continue]. So, we must sigh that our guest on earth is long. And for sure, no matter how long you live, the time will come to appear before the face of God and from Him to receive either a crown of kindness or eternal destruction. Living a lot is almost the same as sinning a lot. Be at peace with those who hate the world. Imitate the forefather David in meekness and gentleness. Psalm 120, [vv.1-3]. I lift up my eyes to the mountains (mountains), from where my help will come. My help comes from the Lord, who created heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be shaken [glory: do not let your foot fall into confusion (just don’t be tempted), He who guards you will not slumber (and He who guards you will not slumber). It is not for nothing that one exapostilary says: those who trust in the Lord are a terrible enemy and marvel at everyone: for they see woe. Like David, the righteous see grief and receive all-powerful help from there. Psalm 121, [v. 1]. I rejoiced when they said to me: “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” Try also to acquire the zeal and fervor of David for the church of the Lord. Psalm. 122, [v.1–2]. I lift up my eyes to You, O One who dwells in heaven! Behold, just as the eyes of slaves are turned to the hand of their masters, as the eyes of a slave are turned to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes are turned to the Lord our God, until He has mercy on us [glory: until he shows mercy to us]. How well said! So we should always hope for all the best from God and not rely on our power or wealth, fame, health, etc. We have everything from God. Psalm 123, [v. 1–3]. If the Lord had not been with us, let Israel say, if the Lord had not been with us when people rebelled against us, they would have swallowed us up alive. Place this beautiful thought in a conversation about Providence. 6[-8] art. Blessed be the Lord, Who did not give us as prey to their teeth! Our soul (we) has escaped like a bird from the net of those who catch it: the net is broken and we are delivered. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who created heaven and earth. Psalm 124, [vv.1-2]. He who trusts in the Lord is like Mount Zion... The mountains are around Jerusalem, and the Lord is around His people from now on and forever. What a wonderful juxtaposition: there are mountains near the people of Jerusalem and the Lord is near them. [Article 3]. For [the Lord] will not leave the rod of the wicked over the lot of the righteous, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to iniquity (about Providence). The rod is a symbol of power; This means that it will not subject the righteous to the power of sinners for a long time, so that the righteous, looking at their bad example, do not themselves become lawless. Psalm 125 About the joy after the captivity of the children of Israel. Psalm 126, [v.1]. If the Lord does not build the house, those who build it labor in vain; If the Lord does not guard the city, the watchman watches in vain. The Lord's power and help are over everything. 3 tbsp. This is the inheritance from the Lord: children [glory: the son's heritage of the Lord]; the reward from Him is the fruit of the womb. Children are God's property, not ours. Psalm. 127. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord and walks in His ways! You will eat from the labor of your hands: blessed are you, and good to you! Your wife is like a fruitful vine in your house; Your sons are like olive branches around your table: so will the man who fears the Lord be blessed! The Lord will bless you from Zion, and you will see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life; You will see your sons' sons. Peace on Israel! How well this can be applied to some of our pious families! Psalm 128, [v. 3–4]. On my ridge the Oratai were plowing and drawing their long furrows. But the Lord is righteous: He cut the bonds of the wicked [glories: on my ridge the deeds of sinners continued their iniquity. The Lord is righteous and cuts off the necks of sinners]. Like worthless trees, the Lord often cuts down the wicked in the early stages of their lives. Psalm. 129, [Art. 1–2]. From the depths I cried to You, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my prayer (the same as in the first verse). And you must pray from the depths of your soul if you want the Lord to hear you, and not superficially, absent-mindedly. Psalm. 130, [Art. 1–2]. God! My heart was not lifted up and my eyes were not lifted up... Did I not humble and calm my soul, like a child weaned from its mother’s breast? my soul was in me like a weaned child [glory: if I did not humble myself, but lifted up my soul, as it was given to my mother, so reward my soul (as a fruit, the offspring of my soul, reward me with my pride for torment)]. 3 tbsp. Let Israel (Christian) trust in the Lord from now on and forever. No one wavered in hope: hope to the end. Psalm 131, [v. 11–12]. The Lord swore to David in the truth, and will not deny it: “I will place the fruit of your body on your throne. If your sons keep My covenant and My revelations (commandments), which I will teach them, then their sons will sit on your throne forever” (on a highly solemn day in the word). [Art. 15–16]. Blessing his food, I will bless him; I will satisfy his poor with bread; I will clothe his priests with salvation, and his saints will rejoice with joy. It is good for us to be, if the Lord blesses us, then there is peace and joy in our soul. Psalm. 132, [Article 1]. How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together! Great is the virtue of brotherly love. Psalm. 133, [Article 1]. Bless the Lord now, all you servants of the Lord who stand in the house of the Lord. Standing in the church, we will remember that we are servants of the Heavenly King, obliged from birth to serve Him, and we will bless Him for His countless mercies towards us sinners. Even in our nights we will raise our hands in holiness and bless the Lord. [Article 3]. The Lord... who made heaven and earth bless you. What a high blessing - from the Lord, Creator of heaven and earth. Psalm. 134, [Art. 1]. Praise the name of the Lord, praise ye servants of the Lord. Take this to yourselves, you who stand in the church: you are the servants of the Lord, you praise the name of the Lord. 6. The Lord does whatever He wants, in heaven and on earth, on the seas and in all the abysses (and in the abysses of the sky). 7. Raises clouds from the ends of the earth, creates lightning in the rain, brings out the wind from His storehouses. Children's concepts! 13th century God! Your name endures forever; God! memory of You to generation and generation. Generations after generations pass, even nations after nations, as if they never existed, and the memory of God passes from generation to generation, from people to people. Psalm. 135. Praise the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever... Him who alone does great wonders... Who created the heavens in wisdom... established the earth on the waters... created the great lights... the sun to rule the day... the moon and stars to rule the night... smote Egypt among its firstborn... and brought Israel out from among them... with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm... parted the Red Sea... and brought Israel through the midst him... and cast down Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea... led his people through the wilderness... defeated the great kings... and gave their land for an inheritance... to Israel his servant... remembered us in our humiliation... and delivered us from our enemies... gives food to all flesh... Praise the God of heaven, for His mercy endures forever. What wonderful poems! It is not without reason that a Christian exclaims to peoples who do not know the true God: Who is the great God as our God? You are God, do miracles [Ps. 76:14–15]. Our God is truly infinitely great. Psalm. 137, [Art. 1]. Before the Angels I sing to You... Faith in Angels is very ancient, contemporary with the fall of man. Cherubim with flaming weapons were assigned to guard the way of the tree of life... 2. I worship before Your holy church and glorify Your name for Your mercy and for Your truth, for You have magnified Your word above every Your name... 4-8. All the kings of the earth will glorify You, O Lord, when they hear the words of Your mouth and sing about the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. The Lord is high: he sees the humble and recognizes the proud from afar. If I walk in the midst of adversity, You will revive me... The Lord will do it for me! Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever: do not forsake the work of Your hands. Truly, every day a person would have to worship in the church of God and confess the mercy and truth of God to himself; The king is not exempt from this duty. Psalm 138, [vv.1-6]. God! You have tested me and you know. You know when I sit down and when I get up; You understand my thoughts from afar... all my ways are known to You... You embrace me behind and in front, and put Your hand (Thy power) on me. Wonderful to me is [Your] knowledge, high, I cannot comprehend it [glory: Your mind was amazed at Me, established itself, I cannot reach it]! I am amazed at Your mind: it is strong, I cannot control it... [Version. 7–18]. Where can I go from Your Spirit?.. You formed my inward parts and knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works... Your eyes have seen my embryo; in Thy book are written all the days appointed for me... How lofty are Thy thoughts for me, O God... Should I begin to count them, but they are more numerous than the sand [glory: I have been greatly honored by Thy friends, O God, having greatly established their dominion: I will count them, and they will multiply more than the sand]; when I awaken, I am still with You. Yes, the number of saints of God is great. 21 [-22] art. Should I not hate those who hate You, O Lord, and not be disgusted by those who rebel against You? I hate them with complete hatred: they are my enemies. Such is the love of the prophet king for God that those who hated God were enemies to him because of their hatred of God. 23[-24] art. Test me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts; and see if I am on a dangerous path, and guide me on the eternal path. It would be good if you cried out to God more often with these words of David and had his zeal for advancement in virtue. Psalm. 139, [Art. 2–4]. Deliver me, Lord, from the evil man; save me from the oppressor: they... sharpen their tongue like a snake; the poison of the asp is under their lips. And you have a need to pray in this way. Psalm. 140, [Art. 1]. Lord, I have called to You, hear me: listen to the voice of My prayer, sometimes I will cry to You. Ps. 141.2. I poured out my prayer before Him; I revealed my sorrow to Him. 6. Hearken to my cry, for I am very weak; deliver me from my persecutors. The only reliable refuge in sorrow is the Lord God. Ps.142.5ff. I remember the days of old, I meditate on all Your works, I reason about the works of Your hands. I stretch out my hands to You; my soul is to You, like a thirsty land [glor.: my soul is like a waterless land to You]. When you pray, do not think of yourself as anything other than a waterless and barren land, and therefore worthless. 10[-12]. Teach me to do Your will, because You are my God... For the sake of Your name, Lord, quicken me; For the sake of Your righteousness, lead my soul out of adversity... for I am Your servant. Psalm. 143, 3 art. God! What is man, that you know about him, and the son of man, that you pay attention to him [glory: or the son of man, as if you consider him]? Yes, if we take into account the unparalleled greatness of God and the frailty of human nature, then indeed one must be surprised how the Almighty deigned to reveal himself to him or how He imputes 55 him to something! 4. Man is like a breath; his days are like a retreating shadow. Such an insignificant person! 5[-8] art. God! Bow down Your heavens and come down; touch the mountains and they will rise; flash lightning and scatter them; Let your arrows fly and destroy them (that is, the sons of foreigners, whose lips speak vain things and whose right hand is the right hand of lies). What a solemn, majestic appeal to God! It is good to place these words in their proper place in the sermon. Psalm. 144, 13. Your kingdom is the kingdom of all ages, and Your dominion is for all generations. God reigns in all ages and before all ages. The Lord is faithful in all His words and holy in all His deeds. Let no one criticize the Lord’s loyalty to Himself. 15[-16]. The eyes of all trust in You, and You give them their food in due season; You open Your hand and satisfy every living thing with Your good pleasure. In a conversation about Providence, develop this idea. 18[-20]. The Lord is close to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them. The Lord protects all those who love Him, but He will destroy all the wicked. Blessed are those who fear God: how many comforting promises they have, how many blessings from the Lord in this present age! [Art. 21]. My mouth shall utter the praises of the Lord, and let all flesh bless His holy name forever and ever. Let your lips also praise the Lord more often, Whom all creation will bless, glorifying forever. Psalm. 145, [Art. 2]. I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing to my God as long as I exist. Remember your duty. [Art.3-4]. Do not trust in princes, in the son of man, in whom there is no salvation. His spirit (the son of man) comes out, and he (the son of man) returns to his land from which he was taken. And how true it is that man was taken from the earth. Just as a plant grows from the earth, absorbing from it the juices and the finest elements of the earth, so the baby in the mother’s womb borrows juices from the mother for itself, for the formation of its members, and the mother consumes foodstuffs from the products of the earth. 6[-9] art. God created the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them. He preserves the truth forever, brings justice to the offended, and gives food to the hungry. The Lord decides the bound: the Lord makes wise the blind: the Lord raises up the downtrodden: the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord protects strangers, He will accept the orphan and the widow, and He will destroy the way of sinners. Psalm. 146, [4-]6 art. God counts many stars and gives names to them all... clothes the sky with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, grows grass and grain (grass and others) on the mountains for the benefit of man, gives food to livestock and raven chicks calling to Him. About God as Creator and Provider. But these words can be addressed to the equestrian troops: He does not look at the strength of the horse, nor does He favor the speed of human feet; the Lord favors those who fear Him, those who trust in His mercy. [Art. 10–11]. Inspire them to rely not on horses and not on their own strength, but on God, on His mercy. Psalm 147, [vv.1-3]. Praise, O Jerusalem, the Lord; Praise, O Zion, your God, for He strengthens the ropes of your gates, He blesses your sons in your midst; establishes peace within your borders; satisfies you with the fatness of wheat. (About creation and Providence.) Psalm. 148. The psalmist calls all creation—heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material—to praise the Creator. Ps.149, [v.2]. Let Israel rejoice in Him who created them... Let the Orthodox people also rejoice in their Creator... Psalm. 150. Calls for praising the Lord on various instruments. The end of the Psalter and glory to God. February 13th 1857. Chapter 1. About Ezekiel's vision of the glory of the Lord. The prophet of God was at the river Chebar in Babylon. The heavens opened before him, and in them he saw visions of God. Something moving appeared from the north side: it was a spirit; a large cloud moved with him; there was light and a brilliant fire near him. Among the fire is the likeness of an ilectra and the light in the ilectra; also in the middle are the likenesses of four animals, and in them is the likeness, the image of a man. Each has four faces and four wings; their legs were straight, their legs were feathered and sparks were like shiny copper; their wings were light, and on their four sides, under the wings of each animal, a human hand was visible. The faces and wings of the four animals held each other, so that their faces did not turn when they walked: each animal walked straight into the faces of the other. These faces were similar: one was like a human face, the face of a lion on the right side of the four animals, the face of a calf on the left, and finally the face of an eagle. The wings were stretched out on top of the four animals, each with two connected to each other; two covered the top of the body and each went straight to its face. When the spirit walked, they walked and did not turn back. Among the animals one could see the likeness of a coal of a burning fire, like the appearance of candles gathering among the animals, and the light of the fire, and from the fire came out like lightning: the animals walked and turned like a brilliance. Under each animal was a four-part wheel; the wheels moved in four directions; when they moved, they did not turn, nor did their ridges; their surface was full of eyes. When the animals walked, the wheels also walked, holding on to them; and when the animals were raised from the earth, the wheels were also raised. Where there was a cloud, there was a spirit; when he walked, the animals also walked, and the wheels began to move along with them, because the wheels had the spirit of life. Above the heads of the animals there was a semblance of the firmament, like the appearance of a crystal; this resemblance extended from above over the wings of animals. Under the firmament were stretched out the wings of animals, hovering towards each other, each connected by two and covering their bodies. The sound of their wings as they flew was like the sound of many waters, like the voice of God Shaddai 56: when they walked, a voice was heard like the voice of a regiment; when they stood, their wings rested. A voice was heard above the firmament above their heads; on the same firmament there is the likeness of a throne and in the likeness of the throne the appearance of a man; there was light all around him, he himself was fire-like. There was light all around, just like there is a rainbow on the clouds when it rains. Chapter 3, 17[-21] art. Son of man! I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel, and you will hear the word from My mouth, and you will admonish them from Me. When I say to the wicked, “You will surely die!”, and you do not admonish him and speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way so that he may live, then that wicked will die in his iniquity, and I will require his blood at your hands. But if you admonished the wicked, and he did not turn from his iniquity and from his lawless way, then he will die in his iniquity, and you saved your soul. And if a righteous man departs from his righteousness and acts lawlessly, when I place a stumbling block before him, and he dies, then, if you did not admonish him, he will die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he did will not be remembered to him; and I will require his blood at your hands. If you admonish the righteous, so that the righteous does not sin, and he does not sin, then he will live, because he was admonished, and you saved your soul. Apply this to yourself: this is also said to you, as well as to the prophet, who was also a priest. Never dare to rely on your virtues: they are forgotten by God when you sin. Moreover, your virtues are nothing before God: you do a good deed by His power. Trust only in the Sacrifice made for you by the Justice of God - in the Son of God, Who is the propitiation for our sins [1 John. 2.2]. Chapter 4, [vv.4-6]. God says to the prophet: Lie down on your left side and put on it the iniquity of the house of Israel; according to the number of days that you lie on it, you will bear their iniquity. And I have determined for you the years of iniquity by the number of days: three hundred and ninety days you will bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when you have accomplished this, then lie down again on your right side, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days, a day for a year, a day for a year, I have determined for you. A strange way of cleansing the sins of the children of Israel!.. But the Supreme Judge of the nations is wiser and more just than all earthly judges: therefore, in the seeming strangeness of His judgment, one must see God’s wisdom, truth and goodness. Chapter 5, [Article 6]. God complains about Jerusalem that it has changed His justifications into iniquity more wicked than the heathen, and His laws worse than the lands around it (justifications are the same as laws): for, He says, they have rejected My statutes and do not walk according to My statutes. Punishment [Art. 17]: And I will send famine and fierce beasts against you, and they will make you unhappy; and plague and blood will pass through you, and I will bring a sword against you; I, the Lord, have spoken this. People abuse God's forbearance, but if He wants to sue them, they, like grass, will soon dry up and, like a herb, they will soon fall away. Chapter 6, [vv.2–4]. Son of man! turn your face to the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them, and say: mountains of Israel! listen to the word of the Lord God. Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and hills, valleys and dells: Behold, I will bring a sword against you, and will destroy your high places; and your altars will be laid waste, your pillars in honor of the sun will be broken, and I will cast your slain before your idols. How dare you, mountains, the creation of the Living God, tolerate on your heights the worship of rational creatures to soulless idols? - We have no life, movement and will: people dared to create their dirty tricks on our heights. Why is it that people are so easily inclined to idolatry? From the predominance of sensuality over the spirit: sensuality seeks the sensual, figurative, and a spiritual person seeks the spiritual, bows to God in spirit and truth. Chapter 7, 15 and 16 art. Outside the house there is a sword, but in the house there is pestilence and famine. He who is in the field will die by the sword; and whoever is in the city will be devoured by famine and pestilence. And the survivors of them will run away and will be on the mountains, like doves of the valleys; they will all groan, each for his own iniquity. The omnipotent and righteous Lord is terrible in His anger: then all dumb nature becomes the enemy of man: everything arms itself against him in order to punish him, the daring transgressor of Divine laws. What a sad picture: those who survived the sword and famine will wander on the mountains like mourning doves, mourning their loneliness, because everyone was beaten for their iniquities... 19[-21]. They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be neglected. Their silver and their gold will not save them much in the day of the wrath of the Lord. They will not satisfy their souls with them and fill their bellies; for it was the reason for their iniquity [glory: beforehand the execution of their iniquities came (the time had come for their execution for their iniquities)]. And in their red outfits they turned him into pride... therefore I will make him unclean to them; And I will give it into the hands of strangers as a spoil, and to the wicked of the land as a spoil, and they will defile it. 24. I will bring the wickedest of the nations, and they will take possession of their houses. And I will put an end to the arrogance of the mighty, and their holy things will be profaned. The Lord can make the peoples of the earth at any time instruments of His wrath against a criminal people, without restricting their freedom. The Lord acts in the world as the sovereign and omnipotent Ruler of His creatures. Chapter 8. The prophet sees a vision, namely: when he was sitting in his house and the elders of the Jews were sitting before him, he saw the likeness of a man: from his loins and below, or to his feet, there was fire, and from his loins and above, like the appearance of dawn, or like the appearance of electricity. So this human likeness stretched out its hand to the prophet, took Him by the top of His head, and the spirit lifted him between heaven and earth and led him to Jerusalem in God’s vision on the threshold of the inner gates facing the north. Here he again saw the glory of the Lord God of Israel in the same form as it was at the Chebar River. The Lord shows the prophet in a vision all the iniquities of His people; first he tells him to look at the northern side of the church, then he leads him to the entrance of the courtyard, where the prophet saw one hole in the wall, which he dug up at the command of God and then found a door. At the command of God, the prophet entered the door and saw: on the walls all around were written all sorts of reptiles and beasts, all sorts of vile things and all sorts of idols of the Israeli people... The Lord turns to the prophet with the words: have you seen, son of man, what the elders of Israel are doing here, each of them on his secret bed, since they said: the Lord does not see, the Lord has forsaken the land. Then the Lord shows even greater iniquities of the Israelis, leads him into the threshold of the church gates facing north - and what does the prophet see here? Jewish wives sitting and crying over the idol Tammuz. After that he shows even greater abominations: he leads him into the inner courtyard of the house of the Lord. What does the prophet see here? About twenty-five men turned their backs to the church of God and stood facing the east: they worshiped the sun. This is the vision of the prophet of God. How clearly the Omniscient presented all iniquities to His prophet! How great and offensive to the Benefactor and Creator are such iniquities of the creatures He has blessed to infinity: they have abandoned Him and instead of Him they worship soulless idols or His creatures; They even say directly with impudence: the Lord sees nothing, the Lord has left the earth. And what if even now, in the same way, the Lord presented in abbreviation, as if in the palm of your hand, all the iniquities of the people of the present time or of just one Russian people! Oh, then we would see many things like what the prophet of God saw in the vision! They would have heard from Christians the same thing that the elders of Israel said: the Lord does not see, the Lord has forsaken the land. Christians! The Lord sees all your deeds, thoughts and intentions and will reward everyone according to their deeds. He has not left and will never leave the earth: He always provides for it as His creature, which without His Providence could not exist, like a soulless and meaningless, inert creature! Chapter 9. About God's judgment on a lawless people. The prophet hears a voice and words: let the punishers of the city approach. Each of the creatures that appeared to the prophet in a vision had in his hand a vessel of destruction (for destruction). Here, from the high gate facing north, come six men, each with an ax of destruction in his hand; in the midst of them was a husband, clothed in a podir (white linen robe) and girded around the loins with a sapphire belt. They all entered the church and stood near the copper altar. The glory of the God of Israel moved from the top of the Cherubim into the uncovered part of the church: God calls a man clothed in a garment, who had a belt around his waist, and says to him: go through Jerusalem and make signs on the faces of the people who are groaning and suffering because of all the iniquities that are happening among them. And He said to the other five men, as I heard: go into the city after him, cut off the wicked, do not spare anyone because of partiality, and do not have mercy. Beat the old man and the young man, the virgins and the children, and the women; but do not touch with your murderous ax any of those who have the sign on them. Begin with My sanctified ones (we are at the head). And so they began with the old men who were inside the church. The Lord said: desecrate my house (with the blood of the wicked) and, leaving it, fill the paths with the dead and cut off those in the city. When they cut the people like grass, I remained and fell on my face, and began to cry out loudly, saying: Woe, woe, hard, scary for me, Adonai 57 Lord! Are You destroying the remnants of Israel, pouring out Your wrath on Jerusalem? The Lord says: the iniquities of the houses of Israel and Judah have become exceedingly great: just as the earth is full of people, so the city is full of iniquities and uncleanness; Those living in it even dared to say: The Lord has left the earth and the Lord does not see. But I live and see everything; I will not spare them or have mercy on them, and behold, I have brought their iniquities upon their own heads. At this time, the man, dressed in a robe and girded with a belt around his loins, answered the Lord, saying: I have done as You commanded me. Wonderful visions and deeds! Glory to Your justice, O Lord! Chapter 10. The Prophet sees at the top of the firmament, located above the head of the Cherubim, the likeness of a sapphire throne. He who sat on it said to the man clothed in the robe, “Go into the midst of the wheels that are under the Cherubim, and fill your handfuls with coals of fire from among the Cherubim, and scatter them over the city.” And so he entered before my eyes, and the Cherubim stood on the right side of the house of God while this man entered; the cloud filled the inner court, and the glory of God rose from the Cherubim into the uncovered part of the house; the house was filled with clouds, and the radiance of the glory of the Lord poured over it. The noise from the seraphim's wings was heard all the way to the outer courtyard, like the voice of God Shaddai speaking. When He gave His command to the man clothed in clothing to take fire from the middle of the wheels, which is under the Cherubim, he entered and stood near the wheels. And so one Cherub stretched out his hand into the middle of the fire that was among the Cherubim, and took the fire from there and gave it into the hands of the one clothed in holy clothing, and this one took it and went out. I saw Cherubim and under their wings the likeness of human hands. Four wheels stood adhering to the Cherubim: one wheel held to one Cherub, and the other wheel to another, and the gaze of the wheels was like the appearance of anphrax stones 58 . All four had the same look and their appearance was as if there were a wheel within a wheel. When they walked, they walked in four directions and did not turn around during their procession, so that where one wheel was facing, the others were facing there too. Everything: their bodies, and their ridges, and their arms, and their wings - were full of eyes around the four wheels. It was said to these wheels: Gelgel 59, as I heard. The Cherubim had four different faces: one had the face of a Cherub, the other had the face of a man, the third had the face of a lion, and the fourth had the face of an eagle. So they rose up, and their wheels followed them, holding on to them; when the Cherubim began to flap their wings to rise from the ground, the wheels did not turn around, holding on to them. When they stood, they stood; when they rose, they also rose with them - since the spirit of life was in them. The glory of the Lord rose from the uncovered part of the house and again ascended upon the Cherubim: The Cherubim lifted up their wings and rose from the earth in my sight and soon stood at the threshold of the gate of the house of the Lord, facing the east, and the glory of the Lord God of Israel was above them (the Cherubim). Such is the magnificent vision of the prophet of God: what a joyful thrill runs through your entire being when reading about this wonderful vision, as if you yourself clearly see it. Chapter 11. The prophet again takes the spirit and leads him up (heightwise) to the gates of the house of the Lord, facing directly east: at the threshold of the gate he sees about twenty-five men and between them Jehoiachin the son of Jazer, and Phaltiah Vaneov - the elders of the people. The Lord says to the prophet: Son of man! These people think about vanity and create evil counsel in this city, saying: Are the houses in it built again? He is like a cauldron, and we are like meat in a cauldron. Therefore the prophets are upon them, the prophets, son of man. The Spirit of the Lord suddenly fell upon the prophet and said to him: Say: this is what the Lord says: Thus have you said, O Israelites, and I know your very thoughts. You have multiplied the dead in this city and filled its paths with the beaten. Therefore thus says the Lord Adonai: Your dead men whom you killed in it are like meat, and the city is like a cauldron for them, but I will bring you out of it. You fear the sword, and I will bring the sword on you, says the Lord Adonai. I will take you out of it (even though you boast: the houses have been built again, and we are like meat in this city; we will not fall out of it, we will not fail), I will deliver you into the hands of others, and I will bring judgment between you. You will fall by the sword; on the mountains of Israel I will judge you, and you will know that I am the Lord. It will not be a cauldron for you, and you will not be meat in it; I will execute My judgment on you on your mountains (and not in the middle of the city I will strike you, so that the fools will not have a new excuse to say: the city is a cauldron, and we are meat in it). And you will know that I am the Lord, that you did not walk in My commandments and did not do My judgments, but walked according to the customs of the nations in your neighborhood. And when I (prophesied) said what the Spirit inspired me, Phaltia, the son of Vane, died (in my eyes): I fell on my face and cried out with a strong voice, saying: Woe is me, it’s hard for me, Adonai Lord! Do you really want to destroy the remnants of Israel? No king of the earth can speak so majestically and powerfully, because every word of the Lord is both a deed, as well as so menacing and terrible: the Lord speaks, and at the same time the victims of His wrath fall like sheaves. The prophet himself was afraid to see the processions of his God. 19–20. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My commandments, and keep My statutes, and do them; and they will be My people, and I will be their God. Our nature is so corrupted by sin that if the Lord does not renew us with His grace, we cannot fulfill His commandments. Therefore, grace is necessary in order for a person to please God. 23–25. And the glory of the Lord rose up from the midst of the city and stood over the mountain that was on the east of the city. And the spirit lifted me up and carried me to Chaldea, to the immigrants, in a vision, by the Spirit of God. And the vision that I saw departed from me (that is, he ran along with the vision). And I told the immigrants all the words of the Lord that He had revealed to me. At the present time, or in general - in New Testament times, these majestic processions of the glory of the Lord no longer exist, just as there are no prophets and prophecies in the proper sense: there was a time for this - precisely in the Old Testament, during the canopy 60, fortune telling and visions. No, precisely because the omnipresent Lord, who lives in the unapproachable light, deigned to descend from the impregnable throne of the Divine, without leaving it, to the earth, to sincerely partake of our flesh and blood and to live among us, as between His brothers. And just as children partake of flesh and blood, He also received them... [Heb. 2.14]. He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: I will proclaim Your name (the Father) to My brethren; in the midst of the church I will sing Your praises [Heb. 2.11–12]. And we, without any doubt, are happier not only than the people of Israel in general, but also the prophets themselves, because the prophets of God only prophesied about our grace. Chapter 12. The word of the Lord came to me (says the prophet), saying: Son of man! You live among the iniquities of these people who have eyes to see but do not see, have ears to hear but do not hear, because they are a people inclined only to grieve Me. Make for yourself, son of man, vessels of captivity (people are likened to vessels) and be captive during the day in their sight, and move from your place to another place in their sight, so that they may see, because this is a people who provoke wrath. And you shall bring out your vessels like a vessel of captivity in the daytime before their eyes: and in the evening you yourself shall go out in their sight, as a captive goes out. Dig a hole for yourself in the wall and come out through it before their eyes. You will be taken up on shoulders and come out covered (cover your face) so that you will not see the land, since I have made you a miracle for the house of Israel. And I did everything as the Lord commanded me: I carried the vessels out of the city during the day, as vessels of captivity (captives), and in the evening I dug through the wall for myself and went out secretly, and in sight of them I was taken on their shoulders (by an invisible hand). And in the morning the word of the Lord came to me: Son of man! Didn’t the Israelites, this people who anger you, tell you that you are doing this? Tell them: This is what the Lord God says (to the prince and elders of Jerusalem and to all the people living among them, say that): I do miracles; the same thing that I did will be done to them: they will leave the city captive and deported, and their prince will be taken on his shoulders; they will secretly go out through the wall, having dug through it (to get out), and will cover their face so that no one sees him, and he himself will not see the land. And I will spread My net over him, and he will be caught in My net (in My detention). And I will bring him into Babylon, into the land of the Chaldeans; he will not see her, and he will die there. And I will scatter all his helpers - his neighbors and all his intercessors - to all four directions (to all the winds) and send a sword after them. And they will know that I, the Lord, will scatter them (like ashes) among the nations and scatter them on all sides. However, I will save several of them from sword, famine and death, so that they will tell about all their iniquities to those nations to whom they come: then they will know that I am the Lord. And the word of the Lord came again, saying: Son of man! Eat your bread with pain and sorrow, and drink your water with pain and sorrow. And tell the people of the land: this is what the Lord says to those who live in Jerusalem in the land of Israel: they will eat their bread insufficiently, and they will drink water at the risk of their lives: the land will perish with its fullness (with its products), because all those living on it live in wickedness. And their inhabited cities will be desolate, and their very land will be destroyed: then you will know that I am the Lord (if you did not want to know with contentment). And the word of the Lord came, saying: Son of man! What kind of saying do you have in the land of Israel: the days are long, all vision is lost (that is, nothing will come true) (Hab. 2:3; Jer. 17:15). Therefore tell them: Thus says the Lord Adonai: I will turn away this parable, and then the Israelites will no longer speak it, since you will tell them: the days and the word of every vision have come (that is, for everything to come true). There will no longer be any false vision (4 Moses 23:19), nor will there be a sorcerer who spells what is pleasing to the children of Israel. I, the Lord, will speak My words, I will say and do, and I will not delay any longer; But at your time, O house that provokes wrath, I will speak the word and do it, says the Lord Adonai. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Behold, the house of Israel, which constantly grieves Me, says that the vision that this man sees does not concern us, and will not come true for a long time. Our houses have just recently been rebuilt: we will live there for a while. Therefore say to them: This is what the Lord God says: My words will no longer last in their fulfillment: I have spoken the word, and I will do it. What grandeur, what greatness in the whole speech! Only the almighty, living, true God can speak like that. Blessed is he who reads and listens with attention and understanding of the speech of the prophets! Chapter 13, art. 18. Thus says the Lord God: Woe to those who sew magic bags under their arms and make coverings for heads of all sizes to catch souls! Is it possible that by catching the souls of My people you will save your souls? 20[-22]. Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: Behold, I am on your magic bags with which you catch souls there so that they fly, and I will tear them out from under your muscles, and I will set free the souls that you catch so that they fly to you. And I will tear away your veils (to cover shortcomings, vices), and I will deliver My people out of your hands, and they will no longer be prey in your hands, and you will know that I am the Lord. Because with lies you sadden the heart of the righteous, which I did not want to sadden, and you support the hands of the wicked, so that he does not turn from his wicked way and save his life... Shepherds of the flock of Christ! This applies to you: you yourself, perhaps without noticing it, sew magical bags under the armpits of human hands and veils for heads of all heights, of all ages: you do not proclaim to your parishioners the strictness of the rules of Christian life; you gently lay it on them to earn their love, money and rewards. But woe to you... souls are corrupted, sinners perish, and the Lord will require their blood at your hands... Behold, the Lord is against your magic bags... and I will tear them out from under your arms... And I will tear off your veils, and I will deliver My people from your hands. Chapter 14, Art. 13 ff. And the word of the Lord came to me: Son of man! if some land had sinned against Me, treacherously departing from Me, and I stretched out My hand against it, and destroyed the grain support in it, and sent famine to it, and began to destroy people and cattle in it... What is the power and greatness of the living, true God. Only the Lord of His creatures, the King of all the earth, can speak like this. So the earthly king promises in his anger to destroy his violent, rebellious subjects and take away their property: their land, money and all movable property that he may have as the supreme owner of his people. God! Your Word, spoken by the prophets, is equally strong, equally majestic, like You: it is equal to You. And this for me is the best proof that the prophets spoke not their own, but Your word. 14[-20] art. And if these three men had been found in her: Noah, Daniel and Job, then by their righteousness they would have saved only their own souls, says the Lord God. Or, if I had sent fierce beasts to this land that would have orphaned it, and because of the beasts it had become empty and impassable, then these three men in the midst of it—I live, says the Lord God—would not have saved either sons or daughters, but they, only they would have been saved, and the land would have become a desert. Or, if I had pointed a sword at that land and said: “Sword, go through the land!”, and began to destroy people and cattle in it, then these three men in the midst of it, as I live, says the Lord God, would not have saved either sons or daughters, but they would only have been saved. Or, if I had sent a pestilence to that land and poured out My wrath on it in bloodshed to destroy people and cattle in it: then Noah, Daniel and Job in the midst of it, as I live, says the Lord God, would not have saved either sons or daughters; by their righteousness they would save only their own souls. What an inexorable truth! What creative power and strength! Chapter 15, [6-]8 art. Therefore thus says the Lord God: As I have given the vine among the trees of the forest to the fire to be devoured, so will I give it the inhabitants of Jerusalem also. And I will set My face against them; They will come out of one fire, and another fire will devour them, and you will know that I am the Lord when I set My face against them. And I will make this land desolate because they have acted treacherously, says the Lord God. The Israelites are likened to a pruned vine thrown to be burned as worthless (2 Samuel 23:6). God! Grant me to always remember that before You I am like grain, or, better yet, like nothing. Grant me extreme humility in my thoughts. Chapter 16, art. 2 ff. The Lord says through the prophet to the inhabitants (daughter) of Jerusalem: Son of man! tell Jerusalem her abominations and say... your root and your homeland are in the land of Canaan; your father is an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite (1 Moses 10:16 and 1 Moses 27:46), that is, your very root is bad, corrupt: at your birth, on the day you were born, your navel was not cut off, and you were not washed with water to cleanse, and you were not salted with salt, […] and you were not wrapped in swaddling clothes. No one's eye took pity on you, to do you any of this out of mercy; but you were thrown out into the field (that is, you led a field, nomadic life), out of contempt for your life, on your birthday. How nice it would be to say this to people who are proud of their origins. It often happens that the roots of such people are very spoiled or, at least, heterogeneous: the father is French or some other nationality, and the mother is God knows what. 6[-22] art. And so I passed through you, and saw you mixed in your blood, and said to you: be alive by your blood, and added: in your blood is your life. Multiply (you see what the same God says here who said: increase and multiply [Gen. 1:22]), be like the vegetation of the field; and you multiplied and became great, and became the head of cities; your breasts have grown, your hair has become lighter, but before you were naked and without beauty. So I passed through you again (providence, God's supervision) and saw you: your time is short, like the time of birds, and I spread My wings over you, covered your shame and swore to you, having entered into an agreement with you (says the Lord Adonai), and you became Mine. I washed you with water, rinsed off your blood, and anointed you with oil. Then he dressed you in colorful, rich clothes and put on beautiful sandals; He girded you with fine linen, and put a headdress on your head, and adorned you with all your utensils: he put a bracelet on your hands and a coin on your neck; put earrings on your nostrils and rings on your ears, and a crown of praise on your head. You were adorned with gold and silver; your garments were of fine linen; you were wearing colorful clothes and a headdress. You ate wheat, honey and butter, and everything was very, very good and ready for the kingdom. Your name spread among the nations as a glorious name, because you were truly perfect in the beauty and beauty that I gave you, says the Lord Adonai. And you relied on your kindness... and committed fornication... You took your clothes and made sewn idols out of them, and committed fornication with them. Then she took her glorious vessels from My silver and the gold that I gave you, and made of them images of men, and committed fornication with them; She took My speckled garments and dressed herself in them; and you placed My oil and My incense and My bread which I gave you before the images. I fed you with wheat, oil and honey - and you laid them before them for a fragrant aroma. For all this, says the Lord Adonai, you took your sons and daughters whom you gave birth to and slaughtered them to the same idols: have you committed any more fornication?.. And with all your abominations and your fornications, you did not remember the days of your youth [glory: your infancy], when you were naked and uncovered and thrown in your blood to be trampled under foot. And you need to remember the days of your infancy more often... 42 Art. Behold, I will send My wrath upon you, and My zeal will be taken away from you: I will calm down and will no longer worry about you... 44. Like a mother, like a daughter. Like the mother, like the daughter. 49[-50]. This was the iniquity of Sodom... pride, satiety and idleness, and it did not support the hands of the poor and needy. And they became proud... How proud many are even now in the abundance of bread and the abundance of wine, voluptuous and hard-hearted! Chapter 17. The Lord commands the prophet to speak a parable against the house of Israel - about the two eagles. One of them had orders to fly into Lebanon, take selected cedars from it, plan their soft tops, bring them to the land of Canaan (allegorical meaning) and lay them in a walled city. He took the seed of the earth, threw it into a fruitful field, so that it would take root among many waters, making it visible to everyone. The seed withered and became a sluggish grape, small in size, so that there were few vines in it; under it, however, were its roots: it became grapes, gave rods and spread out its branches. These grapes entwined themselves around another eagle and turned their roots towards him, sending out their vines towards him in order to water themselves with the plants of their garden. It feeds on a good field and on abundant water, so that it can grow and bear fruit and become a great grape. This meant that the king of Babylon would come to Jerusalem and take its king and its prince, and take them to Babylon... and take the elders of Israel... Chapter 18, 5[-8]. If someone is righteous and does justice and truth... he does not oppress anyone, he returns his pledge to the debtor, he does not steal, he gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with clothing, he does not lend at interest and does not take interest, he keeps his hand from unrighteousness... 19[-20]. You say: “Why does not the son bear the guilt of his father?” Because the son acts lawfully and righteously, keeps all My statutes and fulfills them; he will be alive. The soul that sins, it will die; the son will not bear the guilt of the father, and the father will not bear the guilt of the son; the righteousness of the righteous remains with him, and the iniquity of the wicked remains with him. 21 [-23]. And the wicked man, if he turns... and keeps all My statutes... he will live and will not die. All his crimes that he committed will not be remembered to him: in the righteousness that he will do, he will live. Do I want the death of the wicked? says the Lord God. Is it not that he should turn from his ways and live? 24. And a righteous man, if he departs from his righteousness and does unrighteousness, does all the abominations that the wicked does, will he live? all his good deeds that he did will not be remembered; for the iniquity that he commits, and for the sins that he commits, he will die. Do not remember my first iniquities, my Lord, and forgive my present ones according to Your great mercy. 31[-32]. Cast away from yourself all the sins that you have committed, and create for yourself a new heart and a new spirit; and why should you die, O house of Israel? For I do not want the death of the dying, says the Lord God; but turn and live! Daring freethinkers! Stop, or you will perish forever. [Coshar, sheep...] Chapter 19. A wonderful allegory - about a lion cub and grapes. Against the mighty and great of this age. Chapter 20, 32[-33]. And what comes to your mind will not come true at all. You say: “Let us, like pagans, like foreign tribes, serve wood and stone.” As I live, says the Lord God, I will rule over you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with a pouring out of wrath. People often plan a lot in their wickedness, but God endures until the time comes and will not allow all the plans of the wicked to be fulfilled. Chapter 21, [vv.3–17]. This is a terrible word for the land of Israel: behold, I am against you, and I will draw my sword from its sheath and destroy from you the righteous and the wicked. And in order to destroy from you the righteous and the wicked, My sword will go from its scabbard against all flesh from south to north. And all flesh (man) will know that I, the Lord, have drawn My sword from its sheath, and it will not return. But you, son of man, groan, breaking your thighs, and groan in sorrow before their eyes. And when they say to you: “Why are you groaning?”, say: “Because of the hearing that is coming,” - and every heart will melt, and every hand will give up, and every spirit will faint... Behold, this will come and will come true, says the Lord God. And the word of the Lord came to me: Son of man! prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord God: say: the sword, the sword is sharpened and cleaned; sharpened in order to stab more; cleaned to sparkle like lightning. Shall we rejoice because the rod of My son despises every tree? I gave it (the sword) to be cleaned so that I could take it in my hand; This sword has already been sharpened and cleaned to give it into the hand of the killer. (Whose sword is this sharpened? - God: how terrible it is!) Wail and howl, son of man, for he is against my people, against all the princes of Israel; They will be given under the sword with My people; therefore strike your thighs. For he has already been tested. And what if he despises the rod? This one will not stand, says the Lord God. But you, son of man, prophesy and strike hand to hand; and the sword will double and triple, a sword against the slain, a sword to slay the great, piercing into the interior of their dwellings. So that hearts will melt and there will be more fallen, I will place a formidable sword at all their gates, alas! sparkling like lightning, sharpened for slaughter [glory: fortunately sharp for cutting, fortunately quick for shining (cuts well, shines well: how picturesque and strong it is!)]. Pull yourself together and go to the right or go to the left, wherever your face turns. And I will applaud and satisfy My wrath; I, the Lord, have spoken. Can a human word be so powerful and beautiful? Truly the height of perfection and the example of perfection is the word of God! So you see that this is said by the Creator of the word Himself, with Whom word is action. 25 Art. and further. And you, unworthy, criminal leader of Israel, whose day has come now when his wickedness will be put to an end! Thus says the Lord God: take off your diadem and put on your crown; this will no longer happen; the lowly will be exalted and the high will be humbled [glory: take off the turban 61 and put aside the crown, this (elder) will not be like this, you have humbled the high and exalted the humble]. I will overthrow, I will overthrow, I will overthrow, and it will not exist until He comes to Whom it belongs, and I will give Him (the authority of the elder). And you, son of man, prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord God about the sons of Ammon and about their reproach; and say: the sword, the sword is drawn for slaughter, cleansed for destruction, so that it flashes like lightning, so that, while empty visions are presented to you and false fortunes are told to you, you too may be placed among the beheaded wicked ones, whose day has come when their wickedness will be put to an end. Should I return it to its scabbard? - in the place where you were created, in the land of your origin, I will judge you: and I will pour out My indignation on you, I will breathe on you the fire of My wrath, and I will deliver you into the hands of fierce people, experienced in murder. You will be food for the fire, your blood will remain on the earth [glory: and I will deliver you into the hands of barbarian men who create destruction: you will be food for the fire, your blood will be in the midst of your land]; they will not even remember you; for I the Lord have spoken it. Glory to Thy justice, greatness and omnipotence, Lord! Well, if the Lord blows the fire of His wrath upon us, then the barbarians or enemy nations will take us into their hands, then we too will be food for the fire, and our blood will spill in streams among our land. Chapter 22, 3[-9]. Thus says the Lord God: O city that sheds blood in its midst, so that your time may come... By the blood that you shed, you made yourself guilty... and hastened your days and reached your time. For this I will give you over to the ridicule of the nations, to the reproach of all lands. Those near and far from you will curse you, who have defiled your name, who have become famous for your violence... Your father and mother are slandered, the stranger is insulted among you, the orphan and the widow are oppressed among you. You do not respect My holy things and you violate My Sabbaths. The slanderers are in you. 12. You take interest and interest and extort gain from your neighbor by violence, but you have forgotten Me, says the Lord God [glory: I have taken interest and excess in you: and you have put an end to the end of your malice even in violence, but you have forgotten Me, says Adonai the Lord]. Lawlessness shortens the lifespan not only of individuals, but also of entire cities and states. 13[-16] art. And so, I clasped My hands about your greed, which is revealed in you, and about the bloodshed that is taking place among you. Will your heart stand... I, the Lord, have spoken and will do. And I will scatter you among the nations, and scatter you throughout the lands, and put an end to your abominations among you. And you will make yourself despised in the eyes of the nations, and you will know that I am the Lord. What splendor and grandeur in speech! 17th century and further. And the word of the Lord came to me: Son of man! the house of Israel has become dross to me; all of them - tin, copper and iron and lead in the furnace, became like the dross of silver (the house of Israel). Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have all become dross, therefore, behold, I will gather you to Jerusalem. As silver, and copper, and iron, and lead, and tin are put together in a furnace to fan the fire and melt them; so in My anger and in My wrath I will gather you, and lay you down, and melt you. I will gather you and breathe on you the fire of My indignation, and melt in the midst of it. As silver melts in a furnace, so melt you in the midst of it, and you will know that I, the Lord, have poured out My wrath on you [glory: just as silver and copper and iron and lead and pure tin are accepted into the middle of the furnace, if you blow fire on it, let them merge, so I will accept you in My anger and in My wrath, and I will gather and merge you, and I will blow upon you the fires of My wrath, and you will be poured out in the midst of it: as silver is poured out in the midst of a furnace, so you will be merged in the midst of it and you will know that the Lord has poured out My wrath on you]. How does the human body differ significantly from earth, from ore, from metal? Isn't every person the same earth? But people forget about their frailty and, dreaming of living long, want to perpetuate their vices with them on earth. How majestically the Lord reminds me of their nature, their insignificance! What power and authority is imbued with the speech of Adonai the Lord! As silver, copper, iron and lead, and pure tin are taken and thrown into the furnace so that the fire will embrace them and melt them together, so will I take you in My wrath. I will gather and salt you; I will blow the fire of My wrath upon you, and you will be merged in the midst of it. As silver is poured out in a furnace, so you will be poured out in My wrath and you will know that I, the Lord, have poured out My wrath on you. How divine this is! 30[-31] Art. I looked among them for a man who would build a wall and stand before Me in the gap for this land, so that I would not destroy it, but I did not find him. So I will pour out My indignation on them, I will destroy them (the inhabitants of Jerusalem) with the fire of My wrath... What terrible corruption was in the chosen people! Borrow these and similar passages in a sermon when you need to talk about the insignificance of sinner man and the omnipotence of a just God. Chapter 23. About the wandering of Samaria and Jerusalem. Chapter 24, [vv.3-11]. And speak a parable to the rebellious house, and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Set up a pot, set it up and pour water into it; put pieces of meat into it, all the best pieces, thighs and shoulders, and fill it with choice bones; Take choice sheep, and light the bones under it, and boil it until the bones are boiled in it. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Woe to the city of blood! woe to the cauldron in which there is scale (the cauldron means the city of Jerusalem) and from which the scale does not come off! throw it out piece by piece, without choosing by lot. For his blood is in his midst; he left her on the bare rock; he did not spill it on the ground, where it might become covered with dust. To arouse anger for revenge, I left his blood on the bare rock so that it would not hide. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Woe to the city of blood! and I will build a great fire. Add wood, build a fire, boil the meat [glory: I will... multiply the wood and light the fire, so that the meat (people) will dry out, and yukha (abundance in everything) will become scarce]; let everything thicken and the bones burn out. And when the cauldron is empty, place it on the coals so that it flares up, and so that its copper heats up, and its (human) uncleanness melts in it, and all its scum disappears. Divine speech is strong, majestic and unusually amazing because when reading or hearing it now you see the immeasurable distance between the Creator and the Judge, the omnipotent and righteous, and between man - an insignificant but criminal creature. So you expect that the word of the Almighty will wipe people and their homes like dust from the face of the earth, or boil them like meat, or spill their blood like water, and mark out the components of the mortal body like sand. Wonderful is the speech of God. Not a single person is ever able to imitate the speech of God, not a single created spirit, even Seraphim, because no one lacks so much inner strength and greatness, no one can even fully imagine them. Chapter 25, 6[-7]. Thus says the Lord God: Because you applauded and stamped your feet, and with all contempt for the land of Israel rejoiced in your soul, - therefore, behold, I will stretch out My hand against you and give you to be a prey for the nations, and I will destroy you from among the nations, and I will blot you out from among the lands... and you will know that I am the Lord. If the Lord punishes someone, do not rejoice over the misfortune of another. You will pay dearly for gloating. Providence for pagan peoples is also visible here. Place... Pay attention to this chapter. 13th century I will stretch out My hand against Edom and destroy its people and cattle, and make it a desolation. So even the land and livestock are struck for sins. 16. I will stretch out my hand against the Philistines, and will destroy the Cretans, and destroy the remnant of them on the seashore. Glory to Your providence, Lord! Chapter 26. Son of man! Because the people of Sora said to Jerusalem: Wow! the city was crushed, the people perished, they turned to me; full of all wealth, is empty, then this is what the Lord says: Behold, I am against you, Sora, and I will bring numerous nations against you, just as the sea raises its waves. And they will bring down the walls of Sora and destroy your pillars, and I will scatter the ashes of Sora and make them a smooth stone (like a smooth stone). In the midst of the sea (where you live) the nets will dry out: I am the Lord, said (says the Lord Adonai), and he will be captured by foreign nations... (This is what the Lord Adonai says): behold, I will bring against you, Sora, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon from the north: in terms of his power in comparison with other kings, he is the king of kings; I will bring him with horses and chariots and mounted warriors, and with a large congregation of nations. He will kill all your daughters in the field with a sword and will put a guard over you, make a fence around you, and a ditch, and a fort; He will surround you with weapons and put his spears directly against you. He will destroy your walls and your towers with his weapons. From the multitude of his horses their dust will cover you; from their neighing and from the sound of the wheels of his chariots your walls will shake when he enters your gates, as if entering a city from the field. With the hooves of their horses they will trample all your streets; He will cut off your people with the sword and throw all your strength to the ground; He will take your strength captive, he will take your wealth... he will destroy your beautiful houses, and he will throw down trees, stones and your land in the midst of the sea. He will destroy all your musical instruments, and you will no longer be able to hear them played. And I will make you a smooth stone (probably Sor stood on a rock in the middle of the sea), you will become a place for drying nets, you will no longer be restored, as I, the Lord, have said, says the Lord Adonai. This is what the Lord says to Adonai: Will not the islands shake at the sound of your fall, when those slain within you groan when the sword is drawn from your midst? All the rulers of the nations living on the islands of the sea will come down from their thrones, cast off the crowns from their heads and take off their speckled garments; They will be horrified, sit on the ground and fear their destruction, groaning and weeping for you, saying: how is it that you, the vaunted city, perished and were scattered into the sea, while you were strong in the sea and were terrible to everyone living around you? From the day of your fall all the islands will fear. This is what the Lord God says: when I make you an empty city, as if cities had never been inhabited, when I raise the deep upon you, a great deal of water will cover you. And I will bring you down to those who go down to hell, to the people who lived before; and I will settle you in the depths of the earth like an eternal desert; I will make you with those who go down into the abyss, so that you no longer inhabit the earth and appear in the land of the belly. I will give you to destruction: you will be no more; They will look for you and never find you, says the Lord to Adonai. What a magnificent, divine, formidable speech! What details in predicting future fate! Our Lord and Savior spoke in such detail and clearly about the destruction of Jerusalem! Glory to Thy justice and omniscience, O Lord! Chapter 27. [Next comes a gap to half the author's page. – Ed. ]. Glory to the Lord, the Lover of Mankind, who graciously touches our sinful, serpent-stricken heart during prayer and calms it with His life-giving, delightful power! But we must not forget to protect him again from the devil’s wound: the slightest mistake - and we will be wounded again, and again our insides will be tormented by the tempter. The Lord leaves us with His grace in order to see our own struggle with the evil one, so that there is something to crown us for. Do everything properly in due time, so that later you do not have to correct previous mistakes made due to thoughtlessness or haste. I am yours, save me [Ps. 118.94]. I am Your servant, and You are my Lord; do not leave me, do not destroy me with my iniquities, but save me through your own destinies. Even in grief and sorrow, a proud person has a reluctance to engage in prayer and an attempt to do without it. This is an abomination to the Lord. It is imperative to turn to God in sorrows, putting aside every shadow of pride. When reading prayers, you must certainly have a point of support for thought and language - living faith in the Lord - so that thought and, along with it, the acting tongue, inclined to haste, do not carry you away with their desire, against your will, and do not leave you ashamed without any thought or word. The priest’s soul is light and cheerful when he conscientiously performs God’s service or fulfills a demand: he returns home with the blessing and peace of God. Remember the proverb: the eyes scare, but the hands do. So let it be with you: although the mind of the flesh frightens you with many words when you pray, let your tongue speak. Wanting to avoid the unkind opinion of people, you fall into God's disfavor, which, in comparison with human disfavor, is infinitely heavier. Isn’t it better, disregarding human opinion, to think only about the glory of God when performing any service? You are embarrassed in spirit during the service, and this embarrassment is difficult for you. But hear the gentle voice of the Spirit of God, admonishing You: you think a lot. Don't think - and you will be calm. It's about suspiciousness. Why are you so fearful [glory: fearful], you of little faith? [Matt. 8.26]. Ah, Lord, grant You this living faith to us, so that we will not be afraid and, in hope of You, go forth cheerfully and joyfully to every good deed. How often, in fact, are we afraid because of our lack of faith in something that we should never be afraid of? People with faith and hope in God go out against the enemy with terrible strength and skill and become winners, but we - what a shame! We are afraid to enter the field of a known, memorized, ingrained word in our memory and, being forced by duty to speak out on it, we are lost from embarrassment to the point that the word freezes on our lips. Where is faith and hope in God here? Just as, Lord, you transformed the cowardice of Your apostles into courage by Your Holy Spirit, so transform my cowardice into courage by the same Life-giving Spirit. Hosts of prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, saints, righteous people and all the saints loudly, wholeheartedly, sometimes with the shedding of their own blood, testify to you that Jesus Christ is the God-man, who suffered for us and gave us His Body and Blood as food and drink for us, and you allow thoughts into your head that He is not God, that bread and wine are not the true Body and Blood of the Lord, and for this your heart suffers, because without Christ there is no life for the heart, there is no joy. He alone is our joy, our peace. Be ashamed of such a council of saints: they are amazed at your madness. The Lord Jesus is God, who alone has the power to forgive sins. We also learn this from experience when, in spiritual distress about sins, we run to Him with prayer and receive within ourselves a testimony of the forgiveness of sins. Prayer is a life-giving bandage for the soul. Love, forgiving weaknesses. Believe with all your heart that sin is [extremely] offensive to the All-Holy God. One day Satan approached the Savior and said to Him: Let me sow Your disciples like wheat. Soon after this, the Savior said to Peter: And the Lord said: Simon! Simon! Behold, Satan asked to sow you like wheat, but I prayed for you, so that your faith would not fail; and you, once converted, strengthen your brothers [Lk. 22,31–32]. Our envious person sometimes indulges in some temptations: he tries, as if through the air, to scatter our holy and good thoughts, sometimes collected with great difficulty; tear faith out of the heart and scatter it on all four sides, so that, having believed, we will not be saved. And how noticeable in us is often the trace of a dark force that is intensifying to destroy all good in us: in the most important, decisive moments of faith, this holy child of heaven sometimes breaks out of our heart; We are looking for him and - to our shame - we do not find him. Sometimes an incomprehensible mistrust of oneself during worship or when performing religious services and the feeling of embarrassment and fear felt at the same time unusually constrain the soul, stopping the correct action of the mind and causing the heart to tremble - to the point that the words freeze on the lips. This is also a trace of Satan. God is a God of peace and tranquility. Who will pray for me, so that my faith does not become weak under such temptations? Divine Savior! Just as You prayed for Peter, so that his faith would not fail, so in me, Lord, kindle Your faith according to Your unconditional goodness and confirm, establish it in me too, so that I will not always be put to shame from Your presence, so that I will not bring temptation to Your people and may I not destroy some from them with my lack of firmness in faith. You are used to grasping everything with just one quick glance of your mind and do not apply your heart to what you encounter or what you want to do, for example, to beautiful prayers; and that’s why you, like the wind, want to grab the entire prayer at once, completely forgetting the law of sequence. Apply your heart to what you read, and the words of the prayer will not be carried away, as if by the wind, and your thought and tongue will not be left without concept or word. God! If satanic confusion and fear leave me forever during holy services and in general in my life, if You grant me living faith and zeal for the glory of Your name, like Elijah or John, and grant me cheerfully, in simplicity and joy of heart to serve You all the time of my life, then I undertake to make an increase to Your church by twelve silver rubles. You want a big gift from God, but you give a very small one from yourself. It is better to do it without conditions with God, and God Himself already knows what and how much to give you. If the instrument of the mind, the brain, is damaged, it is bad to act with the mind; and if the heart and entrails, especially the stomach, suffer from some kind of blockage or seizures, it is doubly bad for the soul, for its moral functions. Diseases of the insides make a person feel very melancholy, greatly weaken the faith that lives in the heart, and generally make him feel blue, difficult for himself and for other people. The All-Good Lord first gave me to feel the life-giving, sweetness of faith in God and His Sacraments, especially the life-giving of holy communion, despite my lack of faith, solely by His goodness. But over time, my lack of faith did not turn into a living and simple-hearted faith in the Lord and His holy word, full of truth and omnipotence, and He, for my ingratitude and inattention to His gifts, for my lack of faith, deigned to punish me with complete distrust of myself - so that I would be convinced by bitter experience how life-giving is faith and how disastrous is unbelief. It is easier to lift a high mountain with a needle than to remove pride from the human heart. It lurks deeply and is more inconspicuous than the traces of a fly walking on a stone in the dark night. It’s as if two completely different spirits sometimes live in me at different times: then the spirit of anger, blasphemy, impatience, an overwhelming spirit, deadening the soul with terrible melancholy, despondency; then the spirit of meekness, humility, tenderness, peace, quiet joy. The first is the evil spirit, and the last is the [Life-giving] Spirit. I have experienced in myself the dominion of the devil and the dominion of God; Just as the first is unbearable, so the last is life-giving, easy and pleasant. The power of our God over human hearts is revealed by heavenly peace in the heart when we do what is pleasing to Him, and by unbearable languor, melancholy, when we do something contrary to Him. And that God knows hearts is clear from the fact that every thought, good and bad, is accompanied by its corresponding consequences in the soul: either peace or an unpleasant sensation. If during the service you notice that you are overcome by a feeling of embarrassment and that your thoughts are too quickly drawing you to the end of the prayer or exclamation, stop for two moments and begin to pronounce the words gradually, with placements, and in no case do not succumb cowardly to the feeling of embarrassment. When you see the ancient sacred writings, institutions and rituals, imagine how many centuries they have passed, how many people - who have lived successively in different centuries - have survived, how much reverence they have had in all centuries, and tell yourself at the same time: they reached me, like the flower of a fading person, before my insignificance - so that for my own good, for the sake of eternal salvation, I would use them with reverence. A person, they say, is like a candle: it burns, it burns, and it goes out. Okay, that's a comparison. And with this comparison, this is what comes to my mind: looking at the countless number of lit candles in the church - in front of the icons or in the hands of those standing and praying, I imagine a fiery, constantly existing element, distributed everywhere on the globe - both in the air and on the ground - and in places, due to the action of known causes, visible, but mostly invisible; I recognize this element as the source of those visible lights that are lit in the church, and I compare it with people. What are people if not individual lights - let’s just call these lights spiritual (as the Savior says in the parable: I came to bring down fire to the earth [Luke 12:49], meaning by it the grace of the Holy Spirit)? All these lights burn almost each in their own way: some are stronger and brighter, others are weaker and dimmer. Just as the lights noticed in different places have a source - an element, or an inexhaustible source of fire, so people, as private lights or lamps, have a Single, Eternal, Boundless, spiritual Fire or Light, the Source of all indivisible lights visible on earth. Just as ordinary fire strives upward, so spiritual fire—the soul—also strives toward God, the mountain. And how wonderful it is to hold candles at certain times in church or place them in front of images: they beautifully depict human life or the flame of their souls, the flame of faith and love! About a big but crooked tree. The gardener planted a tree seed in his garden; the seed began to grow, grow, formed into a barely noticeable tree, finally came out of the ground into the light of God and began to unfold and rise upward more and more. The gardener loved and took care of this tree, watered it and carefully looked after it, making sure that it did not get a crooked direction. While it grew and grew and, probably due to the natural depravity of the seed, showed a tendency towards curvature, the Vertogradar made efforts to give it, as much as possible, a straight direction; These efforts often came with pain for the tree, because it had to be cut off and supported with hard supports that tore off its skin, and sometimes left to the mercy of the winds (temptations) so that it could test its strength in the fight against them - and excess moisture should be taken away from it so that it would not produce in it harmful fullness, accompanied by diseases, etc. The tree rose higher and higher, and thanks to the gentle and wise care of the Vertogradar, it grew into a great tree, which also produced fruits, quite sweet. (The heli-grader began to feed his intelligent sheep with these fruits and quench their thirst with juice from them.) But despite all the care of the heli-grader, there was still a lot of thinness left in the tree; it especially intensified after, when it had completely grown and bore fruit, and when the Vertogradar increased its nutrition and watering, so that it would bear more fruit. Instead of producing more and more fruits, in proportion to the nutrition and water produced by the Vertogradar, the tree soon became thicker, thicker and wider from the abundance of juicy and nutritious food [Russian: fattened, thickened and fattened] [Deut. 32.15], did not turn its juices to produce fruits, but began to hold it in itself and therefore rot. The gardener still kept up with the tree, which he had returned with such care, and tried to fix it - either by cutting off its wide branches, or by tying up its wounds or sore spots, or by extracting excess and bad juices from its soil - but the tree did not improve: it began to rot and deteriorate more and more, to smolder and dry out. Finally, the Vertogradar said to the gardener: the seedlings are a dry tree, on which I spent so much work in vain: why does it take up space? And they cut down the tree. What kind of tree is this? This is us. Just as in monasteries, newcomers to spiritual life elect elders experienced in it as leaders, so you, a newcomer to it, in the absence of living elders around you who are experienced in spiritual exploits, choose holy men who have moved to heaven and have been glorified by the Church, for example, especially St. Nicholas. You are a sinner. Let the saints always be the mediator between you and God. Lord, I have an unpeaceful soul, and that’s why all my troubles. You don’t have great respect for people, because you see that all of them, without excluding anyone, have weaknesses, and you behave rather arrogantly and proudly. But remember God, look: He is not like a man. God is not like a man [Num. 23.19]. Imagine His formidable face for sinners and merciful for the righteous... Oh my God! What a terrible incident: a Chukhonka woman, to whom her Chukhonian husband entrusted money of two hundred rubles, returning across the sea from Kronstadt on a horse, fell through the ice with both the horse and the sleigh; everything disappeared: the chukhonka, the horse, the sleigh, and the money. And the poor Chukhonian, who tried the ice ahead with a pole, had to turn back and, after crying for a long time, was taken to spend the night by the police... What is our life? What are our acquisitions? Everything is ashes or a soap bubble. April 11, 1858. When will you feel all the need for the Life-giving Spirit of God, when will you sigh for Him? And how He, the All-Holy Spirit, is necessary for us. What are we without Him? A cane shaken by the wind. Why are you silent? Why don’t you glorify God, who benefits you and saves you? You were first a believer; Quite successfully, with the help of God, you fought against thoughts of unbelief, and you felt good: your heart rejoiced, your mind was bright. Despite the sweet fruits of faith, over time you weakened in faith, in the struggle with the thoughts of unbelief, you became a person of little faith or even an unbeliever, and it became hard for you, so hard that you, like a gift, wished for death in order to stop from the torment of your heart; you have lost faith even in yourself and have had the misfortune of repeatedly experiencing a humiliating distrust of the ability of speech during church services and when performing rituals; disappeared, trembled from stupid timidity and cowardice at a time when he should have had holy boldness, and was a most unhappy person. Nothing could console you in this state: not your wife’s caresses, not good friends, not your own - nothing, nothing. But now you showed zeal in prayer to God, began to seek faith from Him, began to lament your lack of faith and your previous lack of attention, became attentive to the shrine - and look: God again surprised 62 His mercy on you; you suddenly became calm and cheerful, you again had boldness towards God, humiliating cowardice left you, because whoever cleaves to God is tall, without pride, and trusting in his own strength. Remember, for the glory of God, these opposites in your life and be more attentive to yourself in the future. To the extent that thoughts of wickedness and unbelief intensify in us, we must arouse in ourselves the thoughts and feelings that are opposite to them - simple, sincere, thoughts of living faith, hope and love, so as not to allow the damaged nature, or flesh, to triumph in us over the spirit; also the devil, acting through our corrupt being to our harm, to blaspheme against God and His holiness. Sin no more, lest anything worse happen to you [glory: let it not be worse] [Jn. 5.14]. The more often you repeat the same weaknesses, that is, mental disturbances, the more bitter their consequences will be for you. How everything is connected by consequences: one sin, one error is almost always the germ, the seed of another sin, another error! Always remember that you are a weak person. See how you disappear in spiritual sorrows, when God, in justice, but at the same time in His goodness and wisdom, takes His Spirit from you and allows the spirit of malice to work against you. And - oh, misfortune! When God allows the devil to mock us with his unbearable actions on the soul, the latter makes it blaspheme, murmur, and add wounds to wounds. What a blessing in this case is a sincere, heartfelt prayer to God! According to the action of the evil spirit, it is often heavy at first, but then it takes its effect; according to the action of the Angel, it is peaceful - the Guardian of our souls and bodies, and by the mercy of God. All this is taken from fresh experience. Remember that you are an insignificant, weak person and that the Lord God is not at all the same in every respect as you. Remember His boundless omnipotence, infinite wisdom, goodness. With Him everything is endless. The Lord punished me severely, but did not put me to death [Ps. 117.18]. Glory to Him! April 12, 1858. Do not forget to sigh more often about your lack of faith and love for God and pray as often as possible for the gift of faith and love to be sent down to you from above. Imagine more often that you have nothing of your own, neither in your soul, nor in your body, nor around you, but only have what God gives; also imagine more often that you yourself are damned, and poor, and poor, and blind, and naked [Rev. 3:17], - and ask yourself for God’s mercies. Be wise as serpents [Matt. 10:16], said the Savior. When a snake sees its enemy, then it skillfully hides its head so that the enemy does not bite it, and curls up into a ring. In a similar way, a person must take care from his spiritual enemy, the devil: he must hide his head, that is, his mind, in his heart and, thus concentrating his entire life in one point, resist the more strongly the spirit of malice, which very quickly overthrows the distracted powers of the soul. That’s why it costs him nothing to knock over and break distracted people. Glory to Your life-giving Mysteries, Lord! You again made me glad in joining them after a long absence. In order to have joy in your heart more often from communion, in order to receive communion worthily, you must completely crush your sinful, unclean heart with humility and surrender yourself to the will of God; it is necessary to completely drive out from him every shadow of unbelief, every evil thought; it is necessary for it to completely fall silent, freeze, or die (it is necessary for a new heart to come to life, which God Himself gives - humble, full of holy feelings). You are wise on earth, but you must be wise on earth. Be wise above all, think more often about the above, seek the above. Do you want to have peace of mind in your life? Do more work. Have you been called to the service? Correct it with complete calmness, without any haste, and here is peace of mind for you while you are doing it, and peace after it. Know that this is your duty, and by performing it properly, you will please God and achieve the goal of your life. Do you need to write a sermon? Compose it with pleasure, without being burdened by preaching; even look for opportunities and not in line to prepare and deliver teachings in order to tell your parishioners the whole will of God. And here you have the sweetness of labor again. When any proud thought comes to you, cry. Do not forget to take upon yourself the work of intensifying, straining your attention when reading prayers or some kind of proclamation, every time when the lazy flesh and at the same time the active devil will burden your insides and your tongue with desperate laziness and frighten your thought with many words ahead, which also need to be pronounced. Oh, carnal cunning and meanness! The devil is evil and cunning to the highest degree: what you try to achieve, he tries in every possible way to take away from you, and the Lord, according to His wise and good plans, allows him to intrigue over a person, defeat him and thereby torment, torment him in order to teach a person patience and art, and hope. Prevent the slightest distraction of thought during worship; especially forget to think about inappropriate timidity or false shame that comes from spiritual pride. Devote yourself to the service with all your soul and experience with your mind and heart everything that is contained in prayers, litanies or exclamations. Now I know, Lord, that my weakness in faith, my absent-mindedness and false shame, which comes from spiritual pride, are to blame for the fact that the devil so conveniently tempts me with my weaknesses almost during every service. So, I must certainly correct myself so that the devil does not approach me anymore from this side. Sin is an evil seed; at first, during human infancy, it manifests itself weakly; grows with age; As a person’s moral powers develop, it develops more and more - so that finally it seems like some kind of fast, muddy river, which, flowing from ourselves, becomes muddy and noisy within us, and only through prayer ceases from its indignation. Please do not let go of your head the bright thought of God as our Creator, Supreme Lawgiver and Father. Oh, how much we sin just because we forget about God or imagine Him somehow imperfectly, too human-like, too dark! The Holy Scripture is the greatest miracle in the judgment of those who miraculously wrote it. Isn’t it a miracle for an illiterate, unbookish, simple man, who previously knew only fishing, to write such beautiful, sweet Scriptures that you can never get enough of? write down such truths that a simple person cannot even think of on their own; write so simply and so cleverly? Notice how the Lord strictly, constantly and urgently demands from you that you read prayers during services and demands with attention, slowly, articulately: mental anguish after a quick, indistinct, timid reading is His righteous, convicting voice. Look more often to the sky and see there with faith the Lord of glory, constantly sung by the heavenly Powers - and stand in faith, take courage, be established. God! Make me glad in Your service. Make me glad with Your face! With your prayer, do not lag behind God, the Most Pure Mother of God, or other saints: they will certainly fulfill your desire related to the glory of God and your salvation. Remember the Canaanite woman and the Lord’s conversation with her. There is nothing truer and holier than the Lord God; there is nothing truer, more certain and holy than His Sacraments and their saving actions. Word of God: to her and amen. Pray to God that He will establish your heart on the rock of faith and on the rock of His commandments: trouble comes from instability, inconstancy of the heart in faith; the devil has room for temptation. When you feel that the life-giving warmth of the Spirit has left your heart, then hasten quickly to bring it into yourself again with warm prayer and deep sighs to God or the Most Holy Theotokos. Do not put off from day to day your intention to return her, or, better yet, your very efforts to return her. Before my suffering I was mistaken; and now I keep Your word [glory: first we did not even humble ourselves, I have sinned: for this reason I have kept Your word] [Ps. 118.67]. Oh! How necessary is humility before God in all thoughts, feelings and actions! Without it, a person will soon go astray. You are in a hurry when reading prayers out of servility to people, imperceptible to you; try to please only God and read word by word. God admonishes me with life, and death, or peace, and spiritual joy, and terrible melancholy, and indignation of the spirit. I have foreseen the Lord before me, says the God-father David, and let me not move [Ps. 15.8]. I must also certainly see the Lord always before me, so as not to sin, because He is always at my right hand. I must especially see with the eyes of faith and never lose sight of the Lord in the church, in which He is certainly present, when there are two or three people gathered in His name. Speak to the Apostle Paul: I can do all things through Jesus who strengthens me [Phil. 4:13], - and be strong in the Lord and in the power of His strength - in all temptations. My God! Did I think that I would enter into such a fierce struggle with my tongue, which refuses to serve me in worship, and encounter so much grief and tears from it? ABOUT! Sinful flesh! Oh, righteous God. When you think about God the Father, then, to confirm your sensory nature about Him, imagine how the heavens opened at the time when the Son of God, having clothed ourselves in our flesh, walked on the earth and God the Father thundered from there with His voice, testifying about His beloved Son; when you think about the Son of God, then imagine the miracles He did during the Old Testament, for example, the ten plagues of Egypt, turning fire into dew for the youths, etc.; His appearance and stay on earth in the New Testament, His Divine speeches, His miracles and prophecies, His resurrection and ascension. When you think about the Spirit of God, remember how He spoke in the prophets, imagine how on the feast of the Jewish Pentecost, with numerous witnesses flocking to Jerusalem for the Jewish feast from different countries, suddenly a sound came from heaven, as if from a rushing strong wind, and filled the whole house where they were - the apostles and other believers. And cloven tongues as of fire appeared to them, and one rested on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance [Acts. 2.2–4]. The noise from heaven was so strong that, despite the early part of the day, all the people came running and were confused by the incomprehensible spectacle of tongues of fire descending from the sky and because they heard the apostles and their disciples, who were ignorant of foreign languages, speaking different languages. Let fasting never be blasphemed. He is the mother of health and chastity. On Holy Pentecost I learned this by experience. Errors caused by fasting actually come from ourselves, from our soul. What does joy mean with a living, heartfelt faith in God and what does heavy languor, heart disease mean with every thought of unbelief? This means that faith is life and joy for the soul, and unbelief is death for the soul. Go around all the countries of the earthly world - you will find everywhere that people often have their hearts in grief, they raise their intelligent eyes there and say: there lives our God, our Creator. What does it mean? This means that one God has imparted to all people the feeling of His existence. When the knife becomes dull or crooked on one side, then it is corrected on a beam or on a whetstone, and when our soul becomes dull for good and holy thoughts and feelings and for virtue, or when our heart deviates into words or thoughts of evil, then the most beautiful touchstone for sharpening or correcting it is the Holy Scripture, the Body and Blood of Christ, also prayer and reading the scriptures holy fathers. I must certainly thank His Eminence Varlaam for his mercy towards my mother and me. Do not be embarrassed while visiting [Sir. 2.2], that is, during temptation. Be strong, don’t rush: all the trouble comes from haste. How necessary is faith, not saying God’s, but faith even in yourself! Without faith, a person is confused, distrustful of himself, even in the case when every other person does not consider it necessary to think about trust in himself, because he has it and does not think about not having it. Such strange things happen to a person who is suspicious and doubts everything, that he does not even trust himself to correctly read long-known prayers from a book. Like a simple-minded person, seeing the Lord in the flesh written on an icon, or His Most Pure Mother, or an Angel, or any saint, he does not discern what colors and how the icon is painted, artistically or not, whether the saint depicted was like that in reality or not, but without any reasoning, he directly approaches him in prayer with faith and a proper blessing, as if seeing before him that true saint to whom prays, - this is how every Christian should behave in faith: what kind of faith in what is appropriate, what kind of respect is due for what, such faith and such respect he should have, without any reasoning, whether he should believe so, whether this is really what I am told to believe in, and whether such respect should I give to that object in which the Lord Himself or people who had the Spirit of God within themselves commanded me to believe. Holy simplicity! Come to us and live with us, in our hearts and in [our] minds. (Soul-destructive cunning and deceit overcome me and destroy me.) Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your holy Spirit from Me [Ps. 50.13]. Life is hard and unbearable for me without You, my Belly, my joy. There was an unhappy time when You turned Your face away from me for my inattention to myself and lack of faith - and then - oh! how confused I was: both at home and in church, both day and night, both in dreams and in reality! God! Do not remember my former untruths and grant me the rest of my life to walk before You in Your truth, with full attention to myself. So, Lord, I, an unbeliever, learned through bitter experience that without You, without faith in You, I can do nothing [John. 15.5]. Oh, Lord, help my unbelief! Be with me and never leave me, so that I do not fall into severe despondency and so that despair does not eat me, like fire eats things. He who is confident in himself will walk the perch, but he who doubts himself will not walk the board. Let the syllables and words flow in a continuous and even stream when reading: then not a single one of them will be lost. How close it is to each of us [Acts. 17.27] Lord God: the thought of living, heartfelt faith - and He is with us, rejoicing and cheering us; a ray of undoubted hope - and He is with us, delighting us with things we hope for, as if real; a work of love - and He, as all-embracing Love and containing everything in His love, is again with us and in our conscience, in its world, testifies to us His life-giving goodwill for the soul. Unfalse God! Thou art the mouth of Thy prophet: Call upon Me in the day of thy tribulation, and destroy thee, and glorify Me [Ps. 49.15]. Deliver me, O Lord, from the sorrow that has befallen me, overwhelming me: deliver me from the confusion and fear that comes to me from the devil, for my heart is right with You, Lord, the joy of my heart, and grant me other faith that is not shameful, love that is unfeigned, and hope that is known. Listen to yourself. The Lord God Himself acts through everything natural, because everything natural is from the Lord God. And so that impudent unbelief does not even find an excuse to take away anything that happens naturally from the Lord God, it is necessary to ascribe what naturally happens to the Lord God Himself, for example, a good thought, a good desire, etc. There is a fair proverb: the quieter you drive, the further you will go; If you hurry, you will make people laugh. Remember it and never rush into anything unless absolutely necessary. I have not yet caressed my brothers-in-law; From now on, I will begin to caress them at all times, especially [treating] them with bread and salt. Keep yourself in the freedom of dispassion - and you will always feel good. Glory to the grace-filled liturgy: how it soothes the soul! Ah, Lord, how good is Your yoke, how light is Your burden! But how heavy is the yoke of the world, the flesh, the devil! How it oppresses, crushes the poor soul! Always remember the words of the Lord’s prayer: give us our daily bread today - and, having your daily piece of bread, be satisfied with it. (God will not especially forget you with His gifts, because you have orphans.) Look, behave with simplicity and love everywhere: the Lord God looks at you everywhere - at home, on the street, in church, and in the houses of other people. Haven't you learned patience yet? Are you still stupid enough to become bitter? Are you still so unreasonable that you leave wounds upon wounds for yourself? And to be hardened by spiritual temptations precisely means adding wounds to wounds. Learn patience and complete devotion to the will of God. Always remember the need for humility. Say to yourself in every spiritual cramp, whenever it happens: because of my sins, I am not worth this, but much more. If you have prayed and apparently are not heard, do not despair, but humbly surrender to the will of God. Patience and humility are extremely necessary at every step: patience - because unexpected and incomprehensible troubles often happen to us, which we tried in every possible way to remove; humility - in order to endure the troubles that happen with submission to the higher will. The Lord, apparently, rejects you: be His holy will; apparently, it is not without reason that he rejects - what will help you in this case, except humility? You cannot enter into His mercy by force. Humble yourself and be patient: this is your rule for your whole life. And how few of these virtues you have! Or even none at all. The devil knows your weaknesses - and attacks them. Lack of faith, cowardice, impatience, pride! Try to deepen your faith in your heart and do not get excited when you fail. You need patience [Heb. 10:36], says the word of God. Through the tightness in your heart, the Lord tests your love for Him. And in fact, it becomes obvious in this case that your love is very unstable. You grumble, blaspheme, become bitter. Do you see what you're missing? – Buy something you don’t have. Remember that a sincere friend is recognized under difficult circumstances. What does it matter when these circumstances happen: whether when you do not expect them at all or try to eliminate them with all your might, or when you foresaw them and knew before that they would happen. If they were provided for earlier, then it would be easier to avoid them and you would be patient. But the Lord wants to withstand you in difficult cases in order to give you a brilliant crown for a difficult struggle. At the Last Supper, after this piece, Satan entered him (Judas) [Jn. 13.27], it is said. Thus, for good people the Holy Mysteries serve as a means of strengthening them in virtue, but for evil people they do not bring any benefit; on the contrary, they bring condemnation. After the communion itself, Satan entered Judas. Christians, look: immediately after communion, from your carelessness, impatience or evil disposition of your soul, Satan can enter you. My God! What rapid transitions from sanctification to complete defilement and condemnation! Look, and be patient and humble yourself in every possible way after communion, when, instead of joy, you feel a tightness in your heart from a mistake that happened during the liturgy or from a lack of faith. My God! The slightest doubt about the Mysteries deprives the heart of sweetness and peace after accepting them, but produces tension in the heart. When will I have living faith? Unless you humble yourself and become like children, says the Savior, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 18.3]. Oh, how necessary it is for us to be humble, like those. Without humility there cannot be simple, sincere faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God. My God, Lord Jesus Christ! Grant me to be a child of faith - simple, trusting. Most people have a deceitful eye. What kind of corruption is it in us that even when we look at a good, even holy object, we rather imagine something bad than good, unclean than pure, so that holy, pure and sublime ideas cannot dwell in us without their cultivation in our heart and mind. Why is the eye evil? From an unclean heart. For from the heart come, says the Savior, evil thoughts [Matt. 15.19], evil eye, blasphemy, pride. Oh, how you need to guard your heart with every care, as the wise one says. So if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him [Matt. 7.11]. Do you hear what the Savior says; Always firmly believe that, at your request, the Holy Spirit always descends on the Holy Gifts during the Liturgy. Pride is secretly hidden in unbelief: the unbeliever does not want to acknowledge with all his heart the highest, most superior in all respects, most powerful Being above himself, Who is infinitely far from being the same as man. God! Teach me complete devotion to Your will - in happiness and misfortune, after sin, when a heavy feeling torments me, and when I do not indulge in sin. Let me be like a child who loves his parents, who, rightly or wrongly, always surrenders to their will, knowing for sure that he will always be dealt with in a fatherly way - with love. God! Teach me to adequately thank You for all the good deeds that You have done throughout my life and are now doing to me. I remember how, having entered the School completely illiterate and helpless, I wanted, first of all, for You to enlighten me in the teaching, and You Yourself gave me the thought and desire to pray to You for the sending of this gift. And I vividly remember how You suddenly opened my mind to understand the scriptures or writings, so that it was surprising both for me and for my comrades. After this, from a boy of little sense and illiteracy, I became quite intelligent and literate: soon the first letter (letter), written in my own hand, notified my parents about my success in reading and writing. Then, under Your guidance, I became more and more enlightened; my steps on the path of learning were corrected; I was among the first to move from class to class. The mentors loved me, and I loved to study especially those subjects for which You instilled in me a special love. That's what was wonderful about this time. I looked with special respect, when I was still in the second grade, at the students of the highest class, and how I dreamed (I certainly considered it a dream then) to be in this class - the greatness of its students amazed and blinded me. And that’s what I dreamed of, you, my God, fulfilled for me with your very deed. What were you in the beginning, how small and insignificant you were at first, and how the Lord gradually added gifts to gifts to you, so that you would not be forgotten ahead, burdened, so to speak, with the multitude of the Lord’s gifts. Having received what he wanted, a person usually desires more and higher things - so it was with me: having moved to the upper class, I began to look at the seminary - at rhetoricians, at philosophers, at theologians; The first were respectable in my eyes, the others attracted the gaze of surprise; I involuntarily bowed before the greatness and wisdom of the latter. And - oh, all-merciful God! I myself gradually became a rhetorician, a philosopher, a theologian! And - oh, the blindness of human pride! As I became enlightened and elevated, everything lower became low in my eyes; I indifferently looked around the steps I had traversed and was little grateful to You, Creator, for Your mercies! While the entire horizon of the scientific (provincial) world visible to me had been passed and I did not think of crossing it, You, O Most Merciful Lord, opened for me a new, higher circle of knowledge - in the sanctuary of the Academy, admonishing me there that the path that I walked was not made by me, but only by Your all-merciful right hand. And so, having completed the course here, I am now, by Your will, Your priest: this is the goal of my education, here is the golden turban 63 on the head of the high priest - a sixteen-year education, which was all the work of Your goodness and should have been dedicated solely to You. Teach me, O All-Merciful One, to worthily thank You for all Your good deeds that You have always done and are doing to me. Countless Blessings! Do not stop now, for my sins, for my ingratitude, to do good to me, but until the end of my short life, extend Your benefits to me. Try with all your might to eradicate the disobedience of unbelief in yourself. And this disobedience manifests itself almost every time you read or listen to something that requires faith and is wonderful in itself. Disobedience of unbelief usually tries to explain even miracles in a natural way. Be attentive to your thoughts. Always consider miracles miracles, just as prophecies are prophecies. Don’t you dare explain them in a natural way: this is the devil’s disobedience. And how much sweetness there is for the heart from obedience to simple and sincere faith, and how much sorrow and heaviness from the proud, crafty disobedience of unbelief. Oh my God! When You grant me to acquire this simplicity of faith! When you see the most pure Mysteries, instantly, without any intermediary conclusions, imagine that this is the most pure Body and the most pure Blood of the Lord, as if they had the ordinary appearance and taste of body and blood. Remember that faith directly believes, but does not infer; sees directly, but does not seek, so to speak, optical glasses for his vision. These optical glasses are the actions of rational thinking. Reason with its complex, formal thinking has its own area. Faith is not his area, not his business. Take yourself a lesson - never dilute the Blood too much to avoid the danger of spilling it. Have you no houses to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God?.. [1 Cor. 11.22]. Words of the Apostle Paul. How grave is the sin against the Mysteries! I have been suffering mortally all day and cannot wait for the suffering to end. The sin was that from my shaking the Holy Chalice also shook, and the Honest Blood splashed onto the floor or carpet. I then washed it off and squeezed it out of the carpet into a basin and poured the water into the oven. My God! What terrible temptation, and when? On Holy Saturday, when I was concerned about how to maintain peace of conscience and peace of mind! God! Cast me not away from Thy presence [Ps. 50.13]. We often, when we see a brother sinning, if not in words, then in our hearts, we say: how is it that God will not punish him? We are amazed that he sins so much, and we would be ready to strike him ourselves. Oh, pride and human blindness! We do not notice our sins and do not want to know that it is only by God’s mercy towards us, unworthy, that we do not do the same, because God helps us to live impeccably. But God forbid us, and we ourselves will commit all sorts of sins, and often the same ones that our brother did. (God allowed me to experience this myself when His righteous judgment finally befell my brother, who had previously, in my opinion, sinned unforgivably.) The Lord put your love for Him to the test on the brightest holiday. You had to glorify Him, the Risen One, under fire. Why didn't you pass this test? Apparently, your love for Him is not strong, but weak. How crowded it was that day! What an unbearable heat from the multitude of lit lamps in the hands of those praying, and in front of the icons, and from the breath of the people gathered in an inordinate multitude. The body burned without burning, sweat flowed in streams throughout the service. Forgive me, Life-Giving Christ God, my haste and my cowardly timidity, and therefore the negligence that occurred during the divine service on Your blessed holiday. Instead of blessing and joy, on this day, with my sins, I deserved an oath, and mental anguish, and grief. So that you never rush when reading your prayers, look steadily to God to whom you pray, say every word firmly, without any haste. The Psalms belong to David without a doubt, and were not composed by any stranger; they contain many expressions borrowed from shepherd life, and David was taken to the kingdom from a shepherd state. God is God because He is omnipotent: absolutely nothing is impossible for Him. That Jesus Christ is God is proven by the Divine miracles and prophecies accompanying Him, as well as by His words breathing Divine truth. Read the Evangelist John the Theologian. Try to have the obedience of faith, about which the apostle speaks: (By Jesus Christ) we have received grace and apostleship, so that in His name we might subject all nations to faith [Rom. 1.5]. There can be no faith without obedience, and there can be no obedience without humility. Therefore, humility is necessary for faith as its foundation. But you had no obedience of faith before, and even now there is very little: that is why you were such a little faith. Obedience of faith is needed at every step, especially because the devil is trying in every possible way to destroy it. From the depths I cried to You, O Lord [Ps. 129.1], said David, that is, from the depths of his heart. The Lord accepts the prayers only of those who call upon Him with all their hearts. Therefore, you must certainly try to call upon Him only with all your heart. Our heart is almost always covered by a malignant, thick shell of passions and attachment to earthly things; Try to break it in prayer and let the words of prayer, like burning coals, hit your very heart. To read prayers slowly, stops when reading after each comma are necessary. Walk in simplicity and humility both at home and outside the home. Do not forget to call upon St. Mitrophanius and St. Sergius in your home prayers. Glory to the Sweetest Lord Jesus and His Most Pure Mother! How quickly They will heed our sincere prayer and shed heavenly consolation in a heart filled with sorrow! Glory to Thee, Lord! Glory to Thee, Lady. How good it is to read the canons of the Sweetest Jesus and the Mother of God with a heart filled with humility, faith and hope! What peace, what sweetness in the heart after reading them! Original sin is so strong that relatives do evil to their relatives, for example, envy, etc. The Savior perfectly expressed its actions in relatives when he said: Brother will betray brother to death, and father will betray son; and the children will rise up against their parents and kill them [Matt. 10.21]. Lord, my Creator and Benefactor! I am the most ungrateful of Your servants, unworthy of Your gifts. What have You not given me, O All-Merciful One? What spiritual and physical gifts have I not received from You? You have enlightened my mind and enriched me with the most precious gifts of knowledge of many different things; You have often filled my heart with a feeling of the highest bliss from the knowledge of Your truth. You constantly lead me to goodness. As for external gifts, which ones do I not have from God’s goodness now and which ones did I have before? Before, I had no idea about many things, but now I have quite a lot that I never expected to have before and about which I had no idea. Whatever my eyes desired, I did not refuse them [glory: and everything that my eyes desired, I did not withhold from them] [Eccl. 2.10); and not only my eyes are now filled with everything, but also my lips, and hearing, and touch, and smell - Your goodness has not deprived me of anything: almost everything that I could only dream of before, I now have in practice. Taste and see that the Lord is good [Ps. 33.9], but I also see how I, unfortunate one, am ungrateful before my Benefactor. In order to be safe from enemy attacks when reading prayers during services, call on God for help, the Angel of Peace, the mentor, guardian of our souls and bodies, and some saint, for example, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Call on them to help in the simplicity of your heart, bring them an offering from a pure heart - a candle on a holiday. Ask persistently and do not weaken in faith. Advice from a spiritual father. Do not attribute any good deed to yourself and do not selfishly enjoy it, but attribute it solely to God and thank Him with all your heart for allowing you to do it; and for every sin committed during the day, pray that God will cleanse it. In no case do not neglect any church liturgical action: prayer, litany, exclamation, word, but be constantly attentive to all this, knowing that without sin and torment in the soul you cannot carelessly read hastily or with omissions a single prayer, a single exclamation, a litany, a single word. Neglecting a few can lead to neglecting everything. It is impossible for God to lie [Heb. 6.18]. The Lord God is Truth and cannot lie; His adversary, the devil, is a lie and the father of lies. The Lord God is disgusted by all lies, and He punishes them; and the devil loves lies as his own child and slanderes and lies to man against God Himself and to God against man. Notice the suggestions of the lying spirit and resist them. Just as he lied to Adam and Eve, so he lies to us about God. Who speaks and inspires the truth? He who is the Truth, and those who are from this Truth, that is, holy people, for example, prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, saints and righteous people and all who hold to God. Who speaks and whispers lies? He who is a lie and the father of lies, that is, the devil and his slanderers - unclean spirits and those sons of disobedience among people in whom he acts. Therefore, without any doubt, accept as truth everything that the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the patristic people say, and the writings of well-intentioned people; Without any doubt, recognize as lies everything that the devil suggests or says in your thoughts, that he slanders God and His saints, or that his slanderers - evil people - say. Christian philosophy requires that the states of mind and virtues required by the Christian faith: peace, love, etc. - should never be placed below any material benefits. Look, as God increases your external and internal well-being, the devil will attack you more and more, tempt you. He will certainly present your blessings to God and say to Him: Is such and such a God-fearing for nothing? Words of the devil to the Lord about Job. Haven't you surrounded him and his house and all that he has? You have blessed the work of his hands... but stretch out Your hand and touch everything that he has - will he bless You? [Job. 1.9–11]. Remember this example. What happened to Job happens to all people blessed by God. The devil is always the same devil, the same envious person, the same slanderer. You came naked and weak in soul and body from your mother’s womb. Where do you get all this from now - your property, your mental strength, and your physical health? You yourself cannot make one hair white or black. As for possessions, there are people who remain poor all their lives despite every desire to have everything they need, not just surpluses - where did you get all this from? Remember the hand of your Heavenly Father that benefits you every minute. He gave you everything, down to the last breath. Jesus Christ is our hope: lift up your eyes to Him more often with hope and ask for His all-powerful help in everything. My God! How easy it is to inherit God's blessing and oath, and, moreover, it is much easier to inherit an oath than a blessing. Just as quickly is the transition from a state of grace to a state of sin, so easy is the transition from blessing to oath. But how hard it is to bear an oath! My God! March 14. Today I experienced both the sweetness of prayer during the liturgy, and all the hellish weight of sin - a disorderly, unfinished (from the confusion of the incomprehensible spirit) reading of the prayer of permission. This weight pressed my soul all day in the cruelest way, so that I could not find a place for myself anywhere. God! Grant me the saving grace of remembering the terrible day of sorrow, March 13 (Quenterday, 6th Sunday of Lent), and never in future succumb to embarrassment when reading sacred prayers. Neglecting prayers, hastily reading them or not finishing them out of embarrassment, what shrine will you not neglect? Look, God is giving you time to notice this, so that you can feel it and correct yourself. Go deeper into prayers, read when required. You have fairly organized your home prayers; organize your reading of the prayers of the Breviary. Conquer evil with good. Conquer all evil with good. If some passion burns you, conquer it with love, because all passions come from a lack of love for God or neighbor and from great pride. If an evil person rebels against you, overcome his anger with goodness by doing good to him. Little one! why did you doubt? [Matt. 14.31]. During the service, you must always have self-confidence or, better yet, faith in God and hope for His help. Try to constantly have a peaceful mood of soul. Calmly and as slowly as possible, read both the Gospel and the prayers contained in the Service Book or in the Breviary: then both faith and tenderness will be born in you. The God of peace will then visit you and pacify your soul. Health is God’s most precious gift to you, and moreover, it is needed for the glory of God - that is, so that you, with your health, glorify God, for your wife, for your mother, and for yourself. But passions take away health. For this alone, do not indulge in them, resist them with all your might. The devil is strong, but the Lord is stronger. Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world [1 Jn. 4.4]. Call upon the Lord more often for help. February 26. God! You are so good, so good to me, unworthy, Your mercies to me are so countless and great that I only need to always rejoice, remembering them, but also grieve and cry when I do not remember them or when I anger You with my sins. The Holy Mysteries have this seal: truth, peace, joy, life. And the devil and his slander have the following seal: lies, slander, abuse, sadness, death. Glory to the life-giving Mysteries, which rejoiced me with heavenly joy after receiving them (March 2, the 4th Sunday of Lent). Once and for all, notice that living and active faith is the gift of God and that it cannot in any way be subject to your art of acquiring it: the Lord Himself knows when to give it. […] Every moment or thought of living faith is peace, joy, life for the soul; just as every moment or thought of unbelief is anxiety, torment, death for her. Constant experience has taught me to think this way. Grant me, Lord, to have living faith in You and in all that faith requires of me. March 2, 1858. The slightest sinful movement or the movement of any passion binds the heart, and the movement of a holy feeling expands and delights it. How wonderfully the Lord God has arranged this! “Two, indeed, two minds in me,” says St. Gregory the Theologian about original sin. This sin arises with every holy deed and feeling, even word and thought, if a person has not gone deep enough into the contemplation of good. Glory to the irresistible power of Your Cross, Lord! I pressed the lower end of the saving sign on my womb, and the demon that tormented me came out. March 3, 1858. Never exchange the heavenly treasure of love for earthly dust. Understand. Achieve love [glory: hold on to love] [1 Cor. 14.1], says the holy apostle; I will add: hold on to love for God and for people even when because of it poverty, sorrow, illness, persecution befall you. Remember that God is Love, and whoever strives for love, struggles for God Himself. All passions are closely related to each other: hatred with stinginess, pride, envy and others! Just let one passion take control of you, and others will take control of you too. If you had to fight against sin or any passion until you bled, then you shouldn’t give up the fight. Sin is the greatest enmity against God and the greatest evil for ourselves; the soul knows this experimentally - from its torment after sin, and sometimes during sin: how can one not fight sin to the last possible opportunity? The multitude of those who believed, says the Acts of the Apostles, had one heart and one soul; and no one called anything of his property his own, but they had everything in common [Acts. 4.32]. At least you showed such an example in your family: it would be good if at least such order was established in your home. Make arrangements for the satisfaction of the needs of your household, like the apostles and those chosen by them. That would be good. Let love, if possible, bring everything into balance. God is eternally unchanging, but you are changeable. You may believe or not believe His Mysteries, but His Mysteries are always the same: they do not lose anything because of your infidelity. Your mother is like an ordinary person, with flaws, with imperfections, and you love and honor her from the heart. How should you love and honor the Mother of the Lord God Himself, adorned with Divine splendors, chosen among the wives of the whole world? Infinitely many. When you do not have peace and joy after receiving the most pure Mysteries, take this circumstance as a temptation to your faith, or, better, see in this a reason for the deepest humility and contrition for your sins. You have very little humility, and therefore you are ready to immediately murmur against God, and not lay the blame on yourself. I was calm for two weeks (the second and third), and there were no temptations with me; the enemy did not attack me, at least with special force; there was more faith in my heart than before, and I was noticeably closer to God. But on Saturday after the third Week, the enemy again approached me with force and began to try to steal my faith. And how hard it is when you feel that faith, the life of our heart, our soul, is leaving us, when someone is trying to steal it completely. And one minute without faith is death for the soul. This is the secret of my heaviness of heart: from the physical premonition of bad, damp weather. Therefore, never despair if during or after the liturgy you do not feel peace and joy in your heart: they often do not happen not because of moral, but because of physical, internal illness. After all, you are internally scrofulous. February 22, 1858. Oh! What wet weather today! And in the morning it was dry. From this state of heaviness, one must distinguish the heaviness that comes from unbelief and lack of faith, when the Lord is pleased to deprive me of the gift of faith and test me with patience. Never eat a satisfying meal: an extra piece means extra heaviness, extra smoldering. When praying, do not forget to fall into the depths of your insignificance. Remember constantly the words of the Savior: blessed are the poor in spirit [Matt. 5.3; OK. 6.20]. Two little ones, Vasily and Pelagia, who were in severe epilepsy, first from the action of prayer singing and reading, and then finally from the action of the life-giving Mysteries, completely recovered and became cheerful and cheerful. Glory to God, His life-giving Mysteries and glory to the Most Merciful Lady, the Joy of all who mourn. That healing did not result from the action of drugs, but from the action of prayer and the Holy Mysteries, this is proven by the fact that the children, who were severely beaten before the prayer service began, became quiet during the prayer service itself and prayed to God themselves, and after that they were completely calm until the evening. And in the evening there was only a slight seizure. After communion everything went away completely. February 25, 1858. When tempted, say more often: blessed be the name of the Lord from now on and forever [Ps. 112.2]. You are capricious and wayward in relation to God: see, do not hesitate to correct yourself. By the power of the life-giving Mysteries, your scrofula with its burning attacks inside has almost completely passed: now you don’t have this burning sensation in any weather. Thank the Lord God. Look, beware of the slightest sin: the devil catches you at every step, so that, having caught you, he will rub himself on you. Look at yourself with all your eyes. Remember the vigilance of your invisible enemy: during the day, and in the evening, and at night, and in the morning he always follows you. Pray more often internally to the Lord God. It seems that the toxicity of sin should reason with a person not to indulge in sins and passions anymore: this is how they kill the soul. But this requires a lot of self-care, faith and love for God. The devil is constantly laying snares. Where does the mind go when there are passions? Oh darkness, oh hellish darkness! It has always been and now everything is like this: there is nothing superfluous. How are you, evil one, disturbing my soul? Reason! Why do you take your place in vain in the face of temptation? A minute of disbelief in the Lord and His word is death for the soul. What kind of actor is he who is embarrassed on stage? Moreover, what kind of priest is he who is embarrassed in church while serving? The very greatness of the Being to whom he stands and serves in the church should elevate his spirit and encourage him to speak and act boldly and importantly in the church or elsewhere during the performance of sacred rites. Why be cowardly here? Why not trust yourself, not rely on yourself? God! Grant me unshakable courage while serving You, or, better yet, give me a living faith that is not ashamed or afraid of anyone when it comes to it. With our eyes closed, we do not ask for anything or anyone. How do we often pray to God with the eyes of our souls closed? First we need to open the apple of our soul, clearly imagine Who we want to pray to, and then pray. If you pronounce the words of prayer carelessly, then it means that you have little or no faith: faith dearly values ​​every word of such beautiful prayers as the Church puts into our mouths; it means you don’t have love: love values ​​dearly words addressed to the God of love and peace; It means you don’t have humility, but you have pride: humility quietly, with deep feeling, almost in a chant, pronounces the words of the prayer, giving it time to respond to it in the depths of your heart, in the whole being of your soul. Don’t you dare neglect the words of your prayers or rush into pronouncing them. Try, the main thing, to pray with a loving heart. Every Christian believer, trying to live by faith, piously, cutting off his passions, must expect, among other things, that terrible attack of the devil, the object of which will be the theft of faith from the heart of such a person, so that he, [not] believing, will not be saved (so that they will not believe and will not be saved [Luke 8:12]). If, with God's help, a person has managed to cut off many passions and addictions, with which the devil tempts us, as the most available, convenient means, then he rushes into the very depths of our being, settles in the heart and there, like a skilled master of destruction or a mason, undermines the very foundation of our life - faith. It is difficult to fight when faith, so to speak, is torn out of the heart - then the very support of the struggle is lost, all moral strength is taken away. Our faith has overcome the world, as the apostle says: this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith [1 John. 5.4]. So what is victory without faith? How we must stand in faith, take courage, and strengthen ourselves! O You, endless in space, our Russian poet sings, Alive in the movement of matter, Eternal with the passage of time, Without faces in the Three Faces of the Divine! The Spirit is everywhere Existing and One, For whom there is no place and no reason, Whom no one could comprehend Encompasses, builds, preserves, Whom we call: God! 64 How sublime! But where does such sublimity come from for a secular poet? This sublimity is taken from Revelation. Only a Christian poet can so sing the greatness and infinity of the Divine! And how beautiful is the expression: “Alive in the movement of matter!” In fact, we do not see the Living God Himself, but instead we see Him alive in the movement of heavenly and earthly matter. What did you know before, ten or fifteen years ago, and what do you know now? How much God has revealed to you at this time. Thank the Lord God for the treasures of knowledge. It’s already been a week since I have had no serious internal temptations, and I enjoy peace of mind with physical health and cheerfully look at the face of God - at the sky and at the home images of the Lord God, His Most Pure Mother and His saints. I now have holy boldness. To the glory of the Presanctified Gifts. Just as life and death, health and illness are certain, so was the effect on my soul and body of the Presanctified Honest Gifts on the 12th of February. I almost died from internal weakness and exhaustion before communion. And he came to life, was encouraged, and rejoiced after communion. Glory to Your life-giving Mysteries! But alas for me! My Savior endures the most terrible suffering on the cross because I am proud, impatient, murmuring, and unfaithful! God! When will You establish me on the rock of unshakable faith? How long will darkness cover my soul? Holy Light, the quiet light of the holy glory of our immortal Father, who is in heaven, enlighten me! Calm and slow pronunciation of the words of prayer is necessary, because the time of prayer should primarily be a time of faith and contemplation of the soul; but faith and contemplation cannot exist with vague and hasty pronunciation of prayers: they certainly love calm and slowness. Slowness in order to fill the intervals of utterances or words with contemplation, which naturally requires time; calmness - for the fact that without calmness there can be no order in thoughts and feelings; and, moreover, the devil uses a restless state as an excellent means of destroying all the benefits of prayer - and for the most part he produces a restless, confused state during prayer. You pray to God, by the way, for your mother and your sisters, who are one and a half thousand miles away from you. Pray always: God, without any doubt, hears your prayers and grants them what you ask for; just as they pray for you, and He grants them what they ask for: before Him we, earth-born, are all in full view. Look, the sun sees you and them at the same time; and the sun is a material creature of God: how much more does the Lord see. The psalmist said: I will not tolerate the proud of the eyes and the arrogant of the heart [glory: with a proud eye and an unsatisfied heart, I do not eat with this] [Ps. 100.5]. And there are people who, during the table, have a proud eye and an insatiable heart. Be careful not to count yourself among them. This flaw is disgusting. Like Abraham, if it is not too high to say so, God commanded me in my youth to leave home, parents and fatherland and go to the land or to the place that He Himself showed me. This is St. Petersburg and the Theological Academy. In fact, what would I be like if, after completing the seminary course, I entered a village as a priest? I would hardly be far from the state of a fool: everything good in me would die out and disappear. But now the Lord has given me the opportunity and motivation to develop all that is good in me. And why is the Lord so merciful to me? What did He find in me? I don’t dare think that I was better than my other seminary comrades. Is it because even in my youth, with all my weaknesses, there was some beginning of a living and sincere faith in my heart; that with the weaknesses of my youth I sighed deeply and grieved over them; and even more - isn’t it because the Lord tested me with some patience in my earliest youth and then rewarded me with this patience a hundredfold? In any case, I must bless the Lord at all times, and His praise must continually be in my mouth [Ps. 33.2]. To remember the repose of Theodore Shulgin. Marvelous is the power of the name of the Lord and the Life-giving Cross! Whether there is any passion in your heart, or a heavy incomprehensible longing - make the saving name of Jesus Christ from the fingers of your right hand, strike the belly with it - and the passion or longing will immediately pass. Both Christ the Lord and the devil make us feel their presence in us in the most tangible way: One with peace and pleasure, the other with anxiety and mortal heaviness. People are born from a corrupted root and appear into the moral world, or into the world of the human race, which is also corrupt. For this reason alone, no one, no matter who he is, can boast of himself, raise his head high and reason in his own way about the institutions and actions of the Church, tending towards the correction and purification of corrupt humanity. In this regard, people themselves are often blind and do not know at all what should be done with them in order to weaken their internal corruption. That is why everyone must unquestioningly submit to the leadership of the Church, knowing for sure that whatever she does to us, she does rightly for our good and salvation. Since you do not teach your spiritual children at home, then instead, during confession, try not only to learn in detail about his spiritual state, but also to teach him faith, hope and love, even in the shortest words. When Moses raised his hands during prayer, then Israel won, and when he lowered them, then Amalek won. Prayer is so powerful. It’s no wonder that when you pray for yourself and for your entire family, everything happens well with you, but when you don’t pray or things go wrong, then things don’t go well in your family either. Remember the barren fig tree. In the persons mentioned in the Gospel and the Apostolic Epistles, in their weaknesses or perfections, the entire subsequent Christian world is represented: and now the same thing is repeated that happened to the people of that time. But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever [Heb. 13:8], - this means that He is with us now, as He was with the apostles and with the people of that time; only instead of the apostles, now place people who are close to God by special election or calling into communion with Him and pious life, and instead of the people - the current people with their passions or virtues. When you want to pray to the Lady, first look at Her immeasurable greatness or the immeasurable distance that separates Her, the Most Holy Cherub, from you, the most sinful of all, and then pray to Her with the deepest humility. Slow reading is easy and calming for the reader, but hasty reading is difficult and restless. Human infancy and youth are a path of weaknesses, difficulties and imperfections, as well as all subsequent times. For what? In order to teach a person humility. Do you now consider yourself smart, educated, knowledgeable? Do not be proud, but remember your infancy and your youth: what were you then? Give glory to the one God, do not make an idol of yourself. I am a short-lived creature, but I see that in the visible world there are creatures that are not short-lived, but long-lasting, for example: stones, the sea, rivers, mountains, valleys, the whole earth in general, the whole sky. (All this, I see, did not come into existence from itself, but from an omnipotent, intelligent Being - God.) From here I conclude: if the creature exists for so long, for so many centuries, even millennia, then the Creator must be eternal. From the short-term, ephemeral, I naturally move to the durable, since I actually see it, and from the durable - to the eternal actually or infinite, because the Infinite deigned to devote an insignificant particle of His infinity in time and space to His finite, temporary creature: time is nothing more than an insignificant child of infinity, as well as space. February 11th, 1858. Glory to the wonderful Power of Your Life-giving Cross, Lord! In the evening a passion of envy and strong indignation at NN took possession of my heart, and the demon, having received a reason to tyranny my soul, weighed heavily on it. But I, with faith depicting the sign of the cross during evening prayer, deliberately pressed the lower end of the sign of the cross on my womb - and all the heaviness instantly disappeared, and joy settled in my soul. The passion also instantly passed. February 6, 1858. Draw the sign of the cross during every passion. Wherever you feel heaviness, place it especially as a sign of salvation. Remember also that it is not in vain that the Church speaks about the power of the Cross and in her prayers asks the Lord to grant us various spiritual benefits through the power of the Cross. The Church says this from experience. Home prayers are like an introduction, a preparation for church prayers. Therefore, anyone who is not accustomed to praying heartily at home can rarely pray earnestly in church. Great and significant is the Lord’s prayer: Our Father! How she hugs so many things and how much she teaches! For example, from the third petition you can see and know that there are holy beings in heaven who unquestioningly and constantly fulfill the will of the Heavenly Father. With the fourth petition, she teaches us to ask God only for this day’s daily bread! From here, people with wealth should take a lesson for themselves - sincere gratitude to God for the surplus. When you pray, try to let the prayer pass through your heart, that is, so that your heart certainly feels what you are talking about in prayer, so that it desires the good you ask for. I am the trumpet of the glory of God, and therefore, like a true trumpet, I must always raise my voice before the people, in the church and in homes. It is impossible for men to see God, because they would not tolerate His impregnable light; The ranks of the Angels, even those closest to the throne of Jehovah, the Cherubim and Seraphim, do not dare to look at Him. But Whom it was impossible to see in His pure, unapproachable Divinity, He was seen in the clothing of human flesh: through the Most Pure Mother of God the Word of God, all-effective and all-creating, appeared to men in the flesh. By magnifying Him with the Heavenly armies, we also please You, Lady. Don't you see, man, that your thoughts often take you beyond the boundaries of this world? Learn from this that your purpose is not limited to life on the globe, but goes far beyond its borders. My God! Until now, I have not learned not to rush and not to be confused in thought when reading prayers and when pronouncing litanies and exclamations, despite the difficult admonitions God gave me through grief and tightness in my heart in these cases. Let me finally come to my senses! The word of the apostle is true: Tribulation and distress to every soul of a person who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Greek [Rom. 2.9]. Give peace to me, the fallen, Lover of Mankind! God! You are the life of my heart! Constant experience assures me of this. Doubt about You or about Your most pure Mysteries is always accompanied by strong sorrow and oppression of my heart, while, on the contrary, faith always revives, delights and expands my heart! In general, all my sins (arising from lack of faith or from spiritual weakness in faith) are accompanied by a murderous heaviness in my insides, in my bones, as the Psalmist says, while the sacraments or rites of faith, performed with faith in the heart, are always soothing for me. What else can I say after this? I will always lively believe in everything that requires faith from me! But I cannot vouch for the firmness of my faith in the future: I need constant, never-ending attention, vigilance of the soul, in order to keep it in my heart. Someone just rips it out of my soul at the slightest mistake of mine. With tears in my eyes from sad experience I say these words. February 8th day, 1858. Participants. Funeral service at the club. Faith is necessary everywhere in life: I mean not only ordinary faith, but also the faith of God. It is especially necessary when performing divine services, the Sacraments and rites of faith. Without faith it is extremely difficult to perform services, sacraments and rituals, but with faith it is surprisingly easy and pleasant. Then work becomes life-giving and soothing for the soul. When thoughts of unbelief attack you, remember the time when you were a baby, that is, when you were so insignificant both in soul and in body, and when the Lord had just opened for you the door of existence and the door of this magnificent, luminous world, numbering you among the countless hosts of His creatures. This amazingly humbles the soul and introduces into it the life-giving warmth of faith. Faith is the life of my heart, the sweetness of my soul; unbelief is death, heaviness, murderous for the soul. The first is a child of God, the other is a child of the devil. Ink falling from a pen, or a drop of water or any other liquid falling from a vessel, or rain from clouds, forms a regular circle on the ground or at the place where it falls. What does it mean? Could this analogy be extended to the celestial worlds? In the Gospel, from the words and actions of the Savior, we see that He was the Creator, the Lord of the invisible world, the Angelic world, the visible world, the material world and the human race. He commands the spirits - and they obey unquestioningly, although it was difficult for them to obey; commands material nature - and it, like a most obedient slave, obeys His one word, one mania; teaches people - and they, like the sheep of His pasture, flock to His sweetest voice, recognizing in Him their Creator and Lord; His word had irresistible power over simple, unspoiled minds and hearts. My sheep listen to My voice... [Jn. 10.27]. What a marvelous dispensation of the Lord in relation to people faithful and unbelieving, good and vicious! If we approach Him by faith, then He enters our soul and brings with Him wonderful peace or silence and tenderness, combined with quiet life-giving joy; if we move away from Him through unbelief, then He also moves away from us with His silence or peace and joy, and then in our heart there is the heaviest languor, melancholy, sadness and deadening emptiness. Then the soul loudly cries out to us that we have abandoned the fountain of living water [Jer. 2:13], and that is why there is no life in us. One thought of unbelief or desire for evil removes the Lord from us, just as one sincere, heartfelt thought of faith and striving for good attracts the Lord, His peace and life-giving joy to us. Your sin of unbelief during worship greatly angers God, just as Moses’ sin of unbelief once brought water out of a stone. Yes, you take the place of Moses: you, too, are in the middle between God and people. Be careful that you do not die prematurely for your sin, as Moses died. During mass, refrain in every possible way from the slightest outburst of anger, try in every possible way to maintain peace in your soul, try in every possible way so that your heart does not look down on you; at the slightest glimpse of the heart, faith will leave it. People at first are helpless babies, completely weak, so that when they grow up, they pay attention to the state of infancy - and do not forget, do not dream too much about themselves, especially so that they do not become wiser than they should be [Rom. 12.3]. By sending me various temptations, God tells me to be wise. Are you being bullied? – Tell yourself: for the sake of the Lord I will endure offense. Correct yourself from your shortcomings through these trials. If there were no tests, you would not even notice your weaknesses. I preach, I teach, but if my words do not contain apostolic love for the flock, apostolic zeal for their salvation, that teaching is of little use to me. You must, brethren, demand from us that we teach you little, preach you little about the Kingdom of Heaven for the righteous and about Gehenna prepared for sinners. In this case, we are your greatest enemies: we are closing the doors of the Kingdom of Christ from you. The apostles and holy fathers, preaching the Word of God to people, seem to want to resettle everyone into the Kingdom of Heaven, and therefore they beg them to stop sinning, threaten them with future torment if they do not correct themselves, etc. Do you see in us this desire, this zeal for your salvation? You must, brethren, exact from us for this, if you do not see this in us: in this case, we are your greatest enemies. But perhaps we ourselves have little faith in the future Kingdom of Christ, and therefore you see little or no desire in us for you to inherit this Kingdom? Perhaps we didn’t want it enough for ourselves? We are in trouble in both cases. We are cramped everywhere. What little trifles are sometimes lacking for a person’s happiness, for his peace with himself and with God! There are many people who are unhappy in appearance and inwardly; but if you analyze their misfortune, it turns out that it is due to their stupidity, from their addictions to one or another earthly thing. God! Enlighten our minds! It did not cost You anything, Lord, to initially form the composition of man from the earth or to compose, to put together this beautiful world from complete insignificance. It also means nothing for You to form Your most pure Body from bread and wine, perforated for our sake, and Your most pure Blood, shed for our sake, so that, tasting them, we would be alive through You, who through Your suffering and death renewed our nature corrupted by sin. January 30th day, 1857. The Savior commands us love everywhere. He says, for example: By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another [Jn. 13.35]. The apostles also talk about love everywhere; for example, the Apostle John: we have from Him (from the Lord) this commandment, that he who loves God should also love his brother [1 John. 4.21 ]; Apostle Paul: pursue love [1 Cor. 14.1], and: let everything be done with you with love [1 Cor. 16.14]. All the apostles tell us to hold on to love. How necessary, then, is love for people! Let us keep pace with each other in love. How is love expressed? Love is long-suffering, merciful, love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, is not proud, does not act outrageously, does not seek its own [glories: its own], it is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything... Love never fails [glory: never falls away] [1 Cor. 13.4–8]. Measure with these words of the Apostle the degree of your love: are you doing everything that, according to the Apostle, love should do, or only partly. Let us suppose that you, for example, are merciful. Okay that's it. But aren't you proud? Aren't you jealous? Aren't you just looking for your si? Aren't you annoyed? Are you tolerating everything? Do you believe everything that is said in the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers? Don't you fall away during adversity? Look: love never falls away. Look carefully and succeed more and more in love. God! Life of my heart, Life of my soul, have mercy on me! When others take something from you, do not resist, but be wise according to the commandment of the Savior: and whoever wants to sue you and take your shirt, give him your outer garment too [Matt. 5.40]. Believe that the one who takes from you will lose much more and will give you the opportunity to gain three times what he took from you. In general, do not lose peace of mind because of what is perishable. Think also this way: the Lord has given me countless blessings! But He now demands from me a sacrifice for Himself - a sacrifice of an insignificant part of these blessings and a sacrifice of patience for the truth. Sacrifice, be patient. God will not leave you, have no doubt. You will have everything you need. How many blessings you can ask from the Lord with living faith in Him! How can one not bow to the Lord for such beautiful prayers put into the mouths of the faithful of the Church, if they are pronounced with faith and love? The Lord, apparently, is delaying His second coming in order, among other things, so that more sons of the Kingdom of Heaven will be born. What a blessing from the Lord for me that He gave me, unworthy, time to be born before His glorious coming, after which there will be no more to be born! And as I reason, so will everyone; everyone wants to enjoy the priceless gift of life. The saints or reverend fathers did not pray as we do: their prayer was a flame of love. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him [Jn. 6.56]. How is this simply explained: God is omnipresent, but He moves away from sinful souls that remove themselves from Him, but He approaches righteous souls that seek Him. When I am God’s, then I feel good, and when I am my own, it is bad, that is, when you are close to God in faith and deeds, then you have peace and joy in your soul, and when through unbelief or doubt, as well as bad thoughts, desires and deeds, you move away from Him, then there is sorrow and oppression in your poor soul. How could you not still learn the most living faith in God and complete devotion to Him and not be convinced every minute that faith and virtue are life-giving for [you], and unbelief and sin are disastrous? In me, someone or something in the most careful way constantly strives to destroy all goodness, as soon as I create it, and weighs me down with some kind of hellish force every time my thought wavers in faith or virtue. Do not judge others: if you judge, you will disgrace the image of God, and sin will crush your being. Judge yourself. God judges others. When you ask some kind, merciful person who does good for something, you think during the request itself: he will certainly do what I ask him to do, because he is so merciful and kind. Do the same, be sure to do the same when you ask the Lord God in prayer, unless, however, your prayer is worthy. Will God not fulfill our just requests? Ask, says the Savior, and it will be given to you [Matt. 7.7; OK. 11.9]. Human mercy is only a weak shadow of God's mercy: So if you, being evil... [Matt. 7.11]. Speaking about the damage to human nature by sin, do not forget how people have many excuses or excuses for human weakness, often very unfair. Talk about the toxicity of sin in general for the soul, its torment, and the unpleasant consequences of passions. How wisely the Lord God arranged that evil, sin punishes itself, and virtue rewards itself. What if sin were not painful for the soul in itself and in its consequences! Wouldn't people have exterminated each other long ago? Wouldn't they destroy themselves? A grass or a tree arises from nothingness, grows, blooms, grows old and dies. This, man, is an example of you, your life; the same thing happens to you: you arise from insignificance, grow, bloom, then grow old and die in the same way in body. It is not without reason that it is said that a man, like the grass of his days, like the flower of the field, will fade away [Ps. 102.15]. Remember this and learn. For some, the stumbling block is human death. A person, they say, lives like grass and dies like grass, that there is no other life for him. But I'll tell you this, man who thinks this way. What dies in the grass: is it beautiful, artistic grass or just the substance of the grass, subject, like all material things in general, to decay and destruction? No, what you call beautiful grass, full of life, does not die, because the same beautiful grass in the same form appears the next year, and then again the next, and so on, but only the clothing, the shell of the grass dies: the strength, the soul, or, if you like, the form of the grass that makes up its soul does not die. Think about man in the same way: what is essential in a man, his soul, does not die, but only his clothing, his shell, dies. She is the same plant. You are in error because you consider rough, earthly feelings to be the touchstone of existence. But for this there is common sense and faith. How can you not cleave to God with all your soul more and more! Look: this brings peace and joy to your soul, and, moreover, everyone honors you for this! Poor, sinful soul! It is difficult for you to even rise to the idea of ​​perfect purity! You impose your impurities on everyone, you look at everything with unclean eyes! How you need to take care of acquiring purity of heart! You are tormented by impurity of heart! Brethren! Now we will solve an important question: why are we so prone to sin and slow to do good? We will talk about the damage to a godlike person by sin. You receive communion to receive an infinitely great gift - connection with the Source of life, the Lord Savior, and to receive eternal life: who remains obligated here if not you? What do you oblige the Lord with? One unconditional faith in the Mysteries, which, however, is His gift. The Savior suffered unjustly from people throughout his life; then He became glorified in His resurrection and ascension into heaven. And you, like Him, do not run away from unjust or just suffering: and you will also be glorified in your resurrection and ascension to heaven. Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, so that we would follow in His steps [1 Pet. 2.21]. For as long as we suffer with Him, let us also be glorified with Him [Rom. 8.17]. How hard and painful is unbelief and how sweet and soothing is faith! Before receiving the most pure Mysteries (January 16), unbelief weighed on my heart. But glory to the Lord's love for mankind; we are unfaithful, but He remains always faithful: for He cannot deny Himself [2 Tim. 2.13]. How vividly He makes us feel that our unbelief will never abolish the faith of God! Having accepted with contrition of heart and strong faith the most pure Mysteries, I rejoiced with indescribable joy and through this I learned that my unbelief for the Lord in relation to transubstantiation means nothing; there is only slyness here - my distrust of God is recognized. The gift to you from the parishioners is directly a gift from the Lord: why did they dress you so richly? For the fact that you tried your best to serve God sincerely and with love. This pleased the God-loving souls, and they expressed their pleasure to you in action. But God works in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure [Phil. 2.13]. And it’s wonderful that you were given clothes as a gift almost at the same time as they also made silver clothes for the Lord of Glory. When they dressed His most pure face, He seemed to say to the sacrificer: You have clothed Me from your excesses; clothe this shepherd who serves me and whom I have given to you, and here he, along with others, clothed me. If, before the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts, thoughts of unbelief come upon you, then say to yourself: I myself am a creature of God; I myself am a miracle of God’s omnipotence! If God gave me existence, if He created me, and besides, the whole human race and the whole world, then will He not create bread with the Body, and wine with the Blood of His Son? Moreover, from receiving the Holy Mysteries there is such peace, such joy in the soul. Always remember without fail that you are a creature, that you are almost nothing. When God speaks, then there is no time to speculate. I want to make you blissful, I give you happiness, says the Lord God, but you yourself push away My gift with your passions, your discontent. Why are you, foolish one, going against your own good? Look brightly. The mercies and bounties of the Lord are so great to me that from these bounties I can give abundantly to my relatives, and to those who are now with me; there will be enough without scarcity for me. What do I need more? Happiness is within you, man! How easy it is for a prudent, kind, simple person to be happy! But how hard it is for a person possessed of passions! This latter constantly carries his enemy within himself. What should you care more about: the health of the body or the health of the soul, about mental or physical benefits? Of course - sincere. How can you, with the loss of your peace of mind, care so much about bodily health, and in general about bodily benefits? Unreasonable. Moreover, can the Lord God be the God of our heart, dwell in it with strong concern for health, and in general for the benefits of the body? Where do you have even the slightest self-sacrifice for the Lord God? Remember the need for self-sacrifice. A strongly carnal person gravitates toward the earth: he constantly has thoughts and worries about worldly things, so that when he wakes up in the morning, during the day while he is awake, and in the evening until he goes to sleep, his thoughts and heart are occupied with this tiresome and painful concern. God! Our life and hope! How little we think and care to gain and keep You! How little You live in our thoughts and hearts! How quickly we turn from thinking about You to thinking about the things of life! God! Sanctify our souls, correct our thoughts, purify our thoughts, strengthen our faith, ignite love in our hearts. In your wife’s love for yourself, recognize God’s love for you: she is His creature. From numerous experiences I have learned that damp weather has a very unfavorable effect not only on the body, but also on the soul: the body relaxes physically, and the soul morally. Accept this and be careful and patient in the future. The Savior rises from the dead and then ascends to heaven. It’s the same as if we are resurrected and ascended: He is ours and predicted for us in Himself, in His life, what will happen to us in the last days. He is our life and resurrection. Christ has risen from the dead [Rom. 6.4]. A person soon becomes satiated with both the blessings of this life and the blessings of faith, although these latter blessings are such in nature that they should never produce satiety, but, on the contrary, arouse hunger in the soul more and more. Being satiated with them comes from our lack of attention to ourselves, because we get used to them and become arrogant from habit. We become arrogant even with the Lord God Himself from the same habit and little attention to ourselves. What about our faith? Doesn’t it often fail in us? God! We are the work of Your hands. Grant us to vividly imagine this more often, so that our feet may flow in the right direction, so that we may always have due reverence before You as Your creatures. Your life is a series of sacred service to God: go through this series without laziness, knowing for sure that it will soon end, and someone else will take your place, in the same series. Millions of people, having fulfilled their turn, left their field for eternity, and you will come down - remember this. Call upon Me in the day of your sorrow, and destroy you, and glorify Me [Ps. 49.15]. I grieved during the morning service from the painful thoughts of unbelief that held my sinful and nasty soul, and I cried out to the Lord so that He would establish me on the rock of faith, and He would hear me and remove me from my sorrowful situation. My soul felt peaceful and light, and I glorified my Benefactor. Oh Lord! How many times have I experienced that without You I can do nothing. When you have thoughts of unbelief, first of all believe that you are a great sinner; then you will believe what you do not believe. Recognizing yourself as a sinner, you will be humble to the ground, and with humility there can be no unbelief: only pride dares not to believe, arrogance of reason. Glory to Thee, all-powerful Lady and Lady Theotokos! You inclined Your most pure ear to my unworthy prayer: I was distressed in soul from the thoughts of unbelief that impudently carried me away, and I prayed to You that You would strengthen My wavering faith - and You strengthened it, softened and cleansed my cruel and impure heart. It became capable of holding within itself the precious and purest treasure of faith: it became tender, sensitive. And how undoubted is Your help for the soul, Most Pure Mother of God: the soul feels it and glorifies it, thanks You for Your heavenly gift. When faith fades away in your heart, raise your pleading and, if you can, tearful gaze to the Lord and ask Him to look upon Your insignificance and give the gift of faith. Countless hosts of creatures are happy with the Lord God. How comforting it is for a person if he can become the cause of happiness for at least a few people! Under the portrait of one Greek metropolitan, Philaret, I read the inscription: ???????? ??? ??????? ??? ??? ??? ????? ??? ????????? 65. And indeed, it is saving for a person, every minute prone to sin, to remember his last. Grant me, Lord, the grace of remembering death, Judgment and the Kingdom of Heaven or Gehenna, which inevitably have to befall each of us. During worship or during prayer at home, our attention, our mind, for some strange reason, deviates mostly to the side, to other objects, so that sometimes considerable willpower is needed to stop the mind on the content of the prayers. Therefore, everyone should make it a rule: by all means, with all their might, concentrate on the content of the prayers and become imbued with this content. We must not forget that when reading well-known prayers, we are not required to do any of our own thinking, but it is only necessary that the prayer achieve in relation to us the purpose for which it was composed, so that it communicates to us or the believers for whom we pray, the grace that it speaks of. January 7, 1858. You have found a person from a higher circle who fully sympathizes with you in matters of faith, in the experiences of spiritual life. Believe me, there are many such people in that circle, and everywhere. God teaches everyone excellently. My peace, my joy, Lord Jesus! Glory to Your life-giving Mysteries! Again I tasted the wonderful peace and unspeakable joy with tenderness after receiving communion at the cemetery on the 9th of January. All (human) flesh is like grass, and all human glory is like the flower of the grass: the grass withered, and its color fell; but the word of the Lord endures forever; and this is the word that was preached to you [1 Pet. 1.24–25]. Indeed, I am like grass: I grow, bloom, grow old, die, and all my bloom falls off; and the word of the Lord, precisely, abides forever, survives centuries and millennia, leaves people alternately - in a consistent flow, to be born, live and die! Everything convinces me that I am just like grass, but the word of the Lord, and the Gospel, and the truth of the Gospel endures forever. January 11, 1857. For this pleases God if someone, thinking about God, endures sorrows, suffering unjustly. For what is praise if you endure being beaten for your wrongdoings? But if, while doing good and suffering, you endure, this pleases God. For you have been called to this, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, so that we would follow in His footsteps. He committed no sin, and no flattery was in His mouth. Being slandered, He did not slander each other; while suffering, he did not threaten, but handed it over to the Righteous Judge [1 Pet. 2.19–23]. Here is a wonderful lesson for you, here is a wonderful example of patience. Tolerate untruth: this is what you are called to do, you suffer with Christ. Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult; on the contrary, bless, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing [1 Pet. 3.9]. And this should be remembered more often. Even if you suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed [1 Pet. 3.14]. May these words of the apostle comfort you. Proof of the truth of the Christian religion: 2 Pet. 1.12–21. They will give an answer to Him who will soon judge the living and the dead [1 Pet. 4.5]. So inevitable and certain is the judgment of the Lord on the living and the dead that the Lord is, as it were, now ready to carry it out. Prophecy of the Apostle Peter. There were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive heresies and, denying the Lord who bought them, will bring upon themselves quick destruction. And many will follow their depravity, and through them the path of truth will be reproached (Arius, Macedonius, Mohammed, etc.; before and after). And out of covetousness they will entice you with flattering words; their judgment has long been prepared, and their destruction does not sleep [2 Pet. 2.1–3]. So certain is the judgment and destruction of the wicked. When you are outraged by thoughts of unbelief or others, ask yourself: what year are you, and with the thought of your proximity to insignificance, to non-existence, return yourself to the duty of faith. You are a slave: do not forget the Lord. Unbelief comes from a lack of humility, from pride hidden in the depths of the soul and from insufficient concentration of the soul in prayer. As God's benefits to you increase, let your love for the Lord the Benefactor increase. Just as He gives generously to you (and to every person), so be generous to others. How good it is to love God and serve Him! Those who love God and serve Him with faith and love to the best of their ability are loved by those who love God. What a pleasant cycle of love! Man is always sinful and unworthy of the Lord God; when I serve the Liturgy or perform another divine service and tears of tenderness and heartfelt contrition flow in streams from my eyes, and then I am an unworthy servant of the Lord God. Then I only realize more vividly and feel my sins, my untruths more strongly. Let no one think of me then that I am a sincere, zealous, loving worshiper of the Lord: I am only struggling with thoughts of pride, unbelief, wickedness, I am only trying to love the Lord from my heart, but have not yet acquired perfect love. Our earthly parents, or people in general, do not always believe our tears: and indeed, they are often feigned, insincere - will we deceive God our Heavenly Father with them, if they are not sincere, not from the heart, not from love? With eyes that are as dark as the brightest of the sun, God sees us from head to toe, from hidden thoughts to obvious deeds. Anno quindecim rubellorum utebantur in lactem, non plus; at quam multum utilitatis afferat lac! Quam magnum spatium temporis! An pulverem parcet huic utilitati? Stulte! 66 Take everything from me, all my property, but give me only peace of mind. He is the most precious thing to me. Deepest humility and contrition of heart are the most important conditions for prayer. The prayer itself should be in-depth, not superficial. God hears only those who call on Him with all their hearts. An inexplicably sweet peace and joy reigned in my soul during Matins and early mass on the day of Holy Epiphany. And this came from sincere humility, from faith, and contrition of heart. A person's happiness lies in contentment with little things. Passions come from dissatisfaction. Enemy! What I have now has always been with me, and I was content and happy with my situation. How can you tell me that my current situation is unhappy and that I should take care to improve it? I am happy with everything, and I leave the future to God. Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be burdened with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and lest that day come upon you suddenly [Lk. 21.34]. We should often have grief in our hearts, but gluttony and drunkenness, and the sorrows of life prevent a person from ascending in heart and thought to God and chain them to the ground. Woe if the mind and heart drag along only on earth: punishment can befall [suddenly] […]. Our entire inner life and our outer behavior depend on the quality, on the life of the heart. If passions live in the heart, then both the inner and outer life of a person are ugly; at every step he shows himself from an unfavorable side, and he himself suffers from a pang of heart; if the heart is pure from passions, then a person everywhere shows himself in a favorable form, is sweet to everyone (or at least to most people), peace and joy reign in his heart. How much you need to care about the purity of your heart! Honor the great ones on earth, and then you will properly honor the great ones in heaven and the Greatest God Himself. My life, my light, my hope! (Words of the late Metropolitan of Kiev Philaret, when before his death he embraced the Holy Chalice with the Gifts.) Millions of people have lived through the world before me, and most of them have experienced the same thing that I experience, and they passed on their experiences to paper, just as I pass on to the same paper my inner moral experiences. I wish that other people who happen to read about my experiences will believe them just as I believe myself (fidelis 67). Brethren! Do you have firm faith in the future life? Something, I see, you think little about it, little or do not strive for it. Take my humble advice: think more often about the life of the next century, strive for it, do everything because of it. For the immortal God it means nothing to give immortal life to creation, and He promised it more than once in His unfaithful word; only some people, measuring with their limited gaze not only the objects of the present world, but also the future, have difficulty recognizing the endless life for a person in heaven. But how certain it is! Trust completely in the grace brought to you by the revelation of Jesus Christ. What kind of grace is this? Grace for all means to the future life. Before a thaw or before wet weather, I become very irritable. Glory to the power of Your Cross, Lord! The demon of anger and displeasure settled in my heart in the evening (December 29) and, like a worm, painfully sucked my insides and did not let me sleep peacefully the whole night, awakening me with inner pain from a sweet dream. But when I made the sign of the cross and pressed the dark force lurking in my stomach with the lower end of the saving sign, it instantly left me, and I became completely calm. After that, I listened to my soul to see if peace had truly settled in it - and the peace was indeed deep: I felt so good and happy. Let this be a lesson for me for the future: to resort to the power of the Cross more often. The place of spiritual pain was in the place where the navel is. Oh, how cunning and skillful the evil devil is; he uses all the slightest pretexts, moral and physical, to torment our poor soul: if I gave a reason for some passionate movement of the soul - he catches this movement and fans the flame; Whether any illness occurs in the body, through illness he strives to draw the soul into his network. He is always [like a lion] ready to catch, like a skimen who dwells in secret [Russian: in hidden places] [Ps. 16.12]. With his evil intentions, he presents everything to our soul in a false, incorrect form - and through this false presentation of the matter, he wins. If the object were presented in its present form, a person would not be entangled in its nets, would not experience the action of passion within himself. Listen. God! Send me grace to feed and comfort my father-in-law's family with pleasure, not excluding my brothers-in-law. Let me rejoice that I feed them all at half price. If I had fed them at full price, then I would not have done anything special, but now I can at least have the consolation of knowing that they are enjoying my benefit. Never lose sight of the duties of love for everyone, especially for those close to you. Love covers a multitude of sins. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another [Jn. 13.35]. Everywhere a priest must carry with him in his heart ardent love for God and for his neighbors: if he goes to perform a divine service, or a Sacrament, or any request, it is necessary that love is already ready in him, burning with a pure and bright flame. Without love, a priest is not a priest. The Apostle Paul says: if... I do not have love, then I am nothing [1 Cor. 13.2]. Dislike for people or partial love for them, passions in general, dry up a person’s love for God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, with all His Divine miracles, seems to live in the flesh in our time: we see Him being born, being circumcised, being baptized, being greeted by Simeon in the church, and so on. How beneficial and significant the feasts of the Lord and all holidays in general are for Christians! The Lord is the common Savior for all peoples of all times and places, but since people are fleeting creatures, replaced by new people, then, in order to give everyone, so to speak, the pleasure of seeing the Savior inwardly and enjoying His Master’s wanderings on our earth, the Church, as it were, repeats annually His birth, circumcision, etc. How good this is for faith, for strengthening it! Love for God does not come to us freely, or without any work on our part to cleanse our hearts, it will not settle in us. It often happens to see people in church who do not pray in church, but talk or laugh, or boredly wander their eyes around. These are people without love for God, who do not work to acquire love for Him - which means they are unclean in heart. And who are the God-loving souls? Look, here they are: these are those who stand in church with fear and love and do not dare to wander their gaze around, because their gaze is turned inside themselves and towards God. In order not to be tempted to sin, in order to maintain faith in the heart, one must, like David, hide the words of God in the heart. To enjoy the precious peace of mind, one should not indulge in any passion, even if it was apparently just. Virtue then especially has its price when it is performed under the fire of temptation, for example, the temptation of illness or some other misfortune; just as a soldier is not brave when peace and tranquility reign within the borders of his fatherland, but when enemies attack the kingdom, when he fights under fire and sword, then his generosity and courage, his love for the king and the fatherland are recognized. Without war, even if someone was brave, not much would be believed in him. Likewise, there are reasons not to trust very much a person who does good under favorable circumstances and has not yet experienced grief: he may lose his presence of mind in misfortune and change his inclination to do good, even discover his bad sides: cowardice, impatience, murmuring and blasphemy against God. Only a Christian purified in the crucible of troubles is strong and reliable, but one who has not been in trouble is not always reliable. On December 27, after the liturgy, or, better, after communion, I felt especially good, so good that it’s impossible to say: such indescribable peace in my soul, such joy, such sweet tenderness! Oh, if only it were always like this with me. How good the Lord is to those who are brokenhearted and humble in spirit! How generous He is beyond our deserts! Non multo aestima pecuniam, non minus diligenter age numerum illius. 68 If you are a diligent accountant, then finally you will be sorry to lose every ruble, and you will become [too] money-loving. Remember that you need little now, but leave the future to God and don’t listen to people who say that you need to stock up for the future: you don’t have a family. Having food and clothing, we will be content with these [1 Tim. 6.8]. Listen to the apostle, who said that he counted all his skill [Russian: vanity] to be, that he might gain Christ [Phil. 3.8]. How stupid most people are to keep track of their money! How unfair is the proverb, at least for honest people, that money loves money! Judas the traitor probably first diligently counted the money given to him, and then reached the level of love of money and the terrible sin of betraying the Lord! Our Lord Jesus Christ, being infinitely great as God, is also infinitely great as the Benefactor of all mankind: He redeemed the entire human race from eternal death by His suffering and death on the cross. What Fatherly, boundless love He showed for people, having become incarnate for them, Himself taking the trouble to teach them everything necessary for salvation, performing numerous miracles for them, and throughout His entire life He had no place to lay His head on earth, although He Himself was the Creator of heaven and earth! How grateful humanity should be to Him! And he is grateful in his chosen ones, in the Church of God. Songs of thanksgiving and praise have been sung incessantly to the Redeemer for nineteen centuries and will not cease to be sung. The Church triumphs in its salvation in Jesus Christ. She sings especially solemnly of His glorious resurrection, as if it were her own resurrection. The fatherland values ​​dearly the self-sacrifice of any son of the fatherland, who gives himself as a ransom for his freedom and security, rewarding him with grateful memory in posterity and the glory of his name. How dearly people should value the self-sacrifice of the Son of God for them! Everyone wants to live and enjoy peace and happiness in their life! Life is sweet, especially if it is not associated with suffering, and what a person would not regret if it were possible to perpetuate it, especially if it were possible to make it happy forever! And this is what everyone would so strongly desire for themselves, the Son of God did for everyone: He interceded for us eternal and blessed life in heaven. Man was created with the purpose that he should belong to the earth for a time, and to heaven for eternity, but with the condition that he prepares himself for heaven, for which the commandments were given to him. He was told: do this and you will live [Lk. 10.28], therefore, if you do not create, you will not be alive for heaven. How dear it would be for us if some benefactor would help us fulfill the commandments and lead us into eternal life, which is as certain as the diversity of God’s creatures—purely spiritual and both spiritual and fleshly! We have this benefactor - Jesus Christ. December 28, 1857. By the same judgment with which you judge another, you condemn yourself [Rom. 2.1]. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7.2; Mk. 4.24]. One should never condemn others for any weaknesses or vices, because the one who condemns is often punished by God by allowing him to do the same thing that he condemned in others. All people have weaknesses, and you are the same person and can very easily be subject to the same weaknesses, and when you are, you will be judged in the same way as you judged others, even more harshly. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, the Savior said. How quickly the Lord fulfills our good, sincere intentions! While studying at the Academy, I loved to enjoy the contemplation of the wonderful order in the world and its beauty and with all my heart I wished that God would someday lead me to share this pure, sublime pleasure with other people, namely, to talk about creation in church. God alone saw how strong and pure this desire was. So what? A little over a year later, I was appointed catechist, and according to the plan of catechetical conversations, I was supposed to talk specifically about creation. In general, it is remarkable that the Lord fulfills our good intentions urgently, while we often completely forget about them. Whatever is not of faith is sin [Rom. 14.23]. How much we must try to maintain faith or to revive it when it fades away: otherwise we sin. This especially needs to be observed when performing divine services, the Sacraments and rites of faith. Looking at the rotating earth and the heavenly bodies, you can directly conclude from this that the Lord provides for His creation, because such huge balls could not exist without Providence, and in general no creature, even the most insignificant, can exist without Providence. When you look at the rising sun, say: Glory to Your good providence, Lord! When you look at the Son of God, then you also look at the Father: He who has seen Me, says the Savior, has seen the Father [Jn. 14:9], and seeing the Father, you certainly see the Spirit, who eternally emanates from the Father and is consubstantial with Him. The prayer of every person has a different, greater or lesser degree of dignity regarding the purity of heart, faith and love of the person praying. Another brings it from a pure heart with faith and love, so that the entire prayer of such a person is a single, strong flame that embraces the entire being of the soul. Another, on the contrary, does not pray with a pure heart, attached to everyday objects, with weak faith, approaching unbelief, without love in the heart, out of habit, indifference. The third, although he tries to have a pure heart during prayer, is weak, and therefore unsuccessfully struggles with contrary thoughts and either flares up or goes out in his soul. People often deceive themselves and think of deceiving God in prayer. But God sees our hearts. Without Me you can do nothing [Jn. 15.5], said the Savior. And indeed, without Him it is absolutely impossible to do any good deed: only He gives us strength. The justice of this is obvious from the fact that if God leaves us only to ourselves, to our weakness, we become completely internally powerless for any good, we become full of evil. Be always with us, Savior! December 22, 1857. Humility of mind and heart should be the most integral part of prayer. Before you stand for prayer, be humble, destroy yourself morally. God is Love. He listens with love to our every prayer if it is the fruit of faith and love. How fast life goes! How quickly the globe flies! How quickly he brings everyone closer to the tomb. But he himself does not age! When you put a tie on your neck, read the words: Stiff-necked! people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! you always resist the Holy Spirit [Acts. 7:51], so that you may have a reason to correct yourself from your stiffness of neck and uncircumcision of heart and ears. And when wearing boots, read: direct my feet according to Your word [Ps. 118,133 ]… How long, due to my foolishness and ill-will, will stupid passion torment me? How long until I reject her, uproot her from my heart? God! Help me. I am sure that if I took her out of my heart, peace and joy would always fill my heart. This passion entails a lot of evil: a whole retinue. Try most of all to cleanse the heart, in it lies all the strength: from these comes the belly [Prov. 4.23]. The heart is our life. Try to keep your head always clear and light. You have gone far in your judgment of Father Paul: return to that initial judgment that you had about him on your first meeting with him. In general, always judge condescendingly, humbly about his apparently unseemly actions: he is your boss: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7.2; Mk. 4.24]. You are proud and therefore you look too strictly and haughtily at his every action. Try to judge Father Matthew in the same lenient way. When I sin, some kind of deadening heaviness in my heart and chest presses my soul, [shortens] and constrains my being and, as it were, drives my soul out of the body; life is hard, incredibly hard then. In order for this heaviness to leave the soul, one must recognize in the depths of the soul, with sincerity, that sin or those sins that were the cause of mental torment, condemn oneself and henceforth take the intention to beware of stumbling in the same place. Diligent prayer is also needed. (This experience happened to me today. There was an extreme, murderous heaviness in my soul after the sins I had committed, especially the sin of caustic condemnation of Father Paul. But I prayed from my heart, recognized my sin, regretted it, grieved, weighed its weight - and the heaviness of death passed, passed.) December 18, 1857. Passions fight you and because of your inability to fight them, they show you in a bad way. Do not forget that others also struggle with passions and expose them to people in an unfavorable way. Therefore, have mercy for all human weakness, knowing that we all walk among snares. The Lord God, although He is invisible, unknown, incomprehensible, perfectly holds us in His hands, not allowing us to forget: if I become a criminal of His will, an insulter to His greatness, justice and holiness, He returns me to my duty with mental torment, an irresistible consciousness of my guilt before Him, as before His Creator and Lawgiver. This torment of the soul enlightens and corrects better than any reprimands and fines from earthly bosses. Glory to Your mercy and justice, Lord! Glory to the merciful Lord who loves me. The severe temptations have passed, and I again rest in the bosom of His love. Like Peter during temptation, I rejected Him, betrayed Him, even grumbled at Him, but now, having sincerely repented of my cowardice and betrayal, again, by His grace, I can burn with love for Him; again the liturgy and the holy Eucharist serve for me as a source of pure and sublime joys and inexplicably sweet peace in my heart. December 19, 1857. Does it matter if a stream flows in a small stream and waters, albeit a little, the thirsty earth, and if it does not flow at all and leaves it completely dry? Of course it doesn't matter. So it is better to give at least a little alms than not to give at all. Why do you enslave yourself to the earthly and cut off the wings of the spirit, not allowing it to soar to heights? That is why he hurts and is distressed. That this is true is easy to verify: as soon as you realize the folly of your excessive worldly worries and vain pleasures and reject them internally, the illness of the soul passes, and it, so to speak, comes out into the wild. December 20 (served mass at the cemetery). Glory to Your life-giving Mysteries, Lord! Who will worthily tell the miracles from them in our soul and in our whole being after worthy acceptance of them? What kind of wonderful world is this, what wonderful bliss reigns in the soul? What quiet tenderness, what deep humility, what love for God and people, what contempt for everything earthly in the soul! Why don’t we constantly hold such bliss within ourselves? O weakness, o sinful inclination! Prayer must have the necessary conditions inherent in it: faith, hope and love. When reading the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the patrists, there is also humble faith with love. The Lord God does not quickly punish vice and reward virtue, in order to allow both to mature. During prayer, have a bright view of God and yourself, that is, try to vividly imagine who He is and who you are. Starting with your breath, you are all God’s, and starting from a bad thought to a bad deed, you are all yours. Do you blame nature for impermanence and changeability? But she copies you: take a good look at your life. God admonishes you with the book of nature: learn and do not be one thing today and another tomorrow. Learn also to think about the permanent and the abiding. During prayer, try to cling to God or the Most Pure Mother of God with your mind and heart. Imitate the goodness of the Heavenly Father, in whose kingdom there live countless parasites, and yet He tolerates them with love. Believe that the generous Lord will always give you for this. Be kind to everyone, kind in heart. Don’t let the sincerity and love in your heart fade away because of anything. At the slightest inattention to myself, the flame of one passion or another is ready to flare up in me and deprive me of peace of mind. And unbelief bursts into my heart with inexplicable impudence, causing languor to my poor soul. What is this doing to me? What hostile forces are rushing towards me? God of my heart! Fill my heart with You, but cleanse it first. The holy martyrs zealously [honored] the Lord during all their torments, but you, in an insignificant fit of not only illness, but pain, lose heart and cannot be a zealous, loving worshiper of Him. Aren't you ashamed? I can imagine those terrible moments when the soul leaves the body and all movement stops; the lungs, like abandoned wineskins, will shrink; the blood will stop circulating, all the internal valves will close and only one corpse of a whole person will remain - isn’t this scary? When the evil one tempts you with stinginess and covetousness, say to yourself: be glory and thanksgiving for all Your gifts, Lord! You need to acquire loyalty to God, otherwise in happiness you belong to God, but in misfortune you leave Him, even murmur against Him. Evil Judas, sick with love of money, became darkened. Anyone who suffers from the love of money feels this spiritual darkness. Why are you so relaxed in your soul? Be strong. There is God's grace of the Lord, acting in the holy churches of God: he who comes to them with a sincere desire to pray leaves them as if he had caught a glorious catch, with joy and peace in his heart, glorifying God. This is what I have experienced more than once. God often sends the gracious warmth of faith and love into the heart at the very end of prayer. Therefore, one must have patience - not to despair of the power of prayer at the beginning and in the middle, but to calmly continue it until the end. According to the inscrutable fate of God, in the lives of pious people there are severe temptations that kill both soul and body: the soul loses faith, becomes faint-hearted, grumbles, blasphemes, unable to hold on to the anchor of faith, maintain firmness and presence of mind, be humbly obedient and grateful to the will of Providence for the temptations sent. In this case, we must, if possible, strengthen ourselves and fix our gaze on the mountain - with a prayer for help, and be sure that the temptation will not last long, and after the temptation, God will again accept us into His mercy, especially if we happily pass the test. December 18. Glory to Your mercy, Lord! Again You accepted me into Your love after accepting the terrible Mysteries, although I found myself before this traitor to Yours. Take yourself a lesson - to set yourself up for nothing and rely on nothing but God. A double benefit to me from my father-in-law - a well-behaved, beautiful daughter and a place that brings me benefits: how will I repay him for this? What should I regret for him? I will not repay him with anything worthy, and therefore at least I will not spare anything for him, as for my own mother, who gave life to my curse, I will not repay her with anything in equal measure - and therefore I must at least do to her what I can. If your prayer is not nourishing for your soul, then it means that it is unworthy, unorganized prayer; Prayer, like food for the body, should nourish the soul and satisfy the hunger of the soul. Take the courage not to indulge parishioners in their weaknesses, but to reprove and admonish them, even though you take advantage of their material blessings. The will of God, the favor of God must always be higher than the favor of the parishioners. Why is your justified regret about the untruth in relation to your people accompanied by embarrassment and painful anxiety? Because in this case you become lower than the material benefits of life, and these benefits mean a lot to you, so that you place the peace of God or the Spirit of God, who brings this peace (terribile ad dicendum) 69 with Him into your heart, below them. Learn not to value dust too highly and not to subordinate spiritual blessings to dust. The Holy Spirit is called the Comforter - because He pours in heavenly consolation, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4.7], into the soul of a person who has recognized his errors, his sins. This consolation is welcome. Brothers and sisters! In addition to your wealth, your vain pleasures, your beauty, your rich clothes, I see what will inevitably meet each of you in the grave - ugly decay and destruction. Therefore, I am not captivated by anything that interests you so much. What do I have in your pride, in these so-called blessings, which the unreasonable are so diligently pursuing? I see your insignificance and the corruption of everything that seduces you. Ah, if you only knew what position your soul is in and what awaits it with such images of its life! Better enrich, decorate your soul with good deeds that will go with you into eternity and will be there, at the Throne of the Lord of Glory, to protect you. What is more precious than You, Lord? Nothing: You are more valuable than anything. What is more kind than You? Also nothing. Why do such strange things happen to me that after communion itself I am so occupied by other, perishable objects that I seem to fall away from You, my Lord, Lord, as if I cease to love You and instead of You find myself a lover of some dust, as if it constitutes my happiness? Why do such strange contradictions occur in me? If nothing is dearer to me than You, why am I losing You, when, with a little attention to myself, I could keep You? Find out your illness and use medicine against it. God! If I indulge parasites, deliver me from them and instead give me the opportunity to help my poor relatives. You see that, due to my weakness, I often lose peace of mind, not finding a way to reconcile these two circumstances: pandering to parasites (if only they are real parasites) and failure to provide help to close poor relatives. Give me some sense, Creator! You don’t believe in the future life and say: no one has been to the next world or come from there to tell us about it. How was there no one? But didn’t the Son of God come from there; didn’t he assure us of the reality of the afterlife? You believe, for example, that there is America, although you yourself have not been to it, because you see that, for example, ships come from there. Why don’t you believe in exactly the same way that there is another world besides the earthly one - a heavenly one, since from there the Son of God came and, having assured us of its reality with His untrue word, showed it in reality; because having risen from the dead, He ascended into heaven in the sight of His disciples, from where will He come again in the same way? And the apostles tell us: set your mind on things above, and not on earthly things [Col. 3.2], where Christ sits at the right hand of God [Col. 3.1]. Hold on to eternal life [1 Tim. 6.12], they also say. I will not destroy everything that He has given Me from Him (from the Father), but I will raise it up on the last day [Russian: of what He has given Me I will not destroy anything, but will resurrect it all on the last day] [John. 6.39]. No one can come to Me, says the Savior, unless the Father who sent Me draws him [John. 6.44]. That is why it is said: of what He has given Me, that is, all whom My Father brings to me, I will not destroy for Him, but will raise them up on the last day. What a joyful truth: all who believe in the Lord will not perish, but will certainly be resurrected. Those whom You gave Me, I have preserved, and none of them perished, except the son of perdition [Jn. 17.12]. What a bitter truth! And among those who believe in the Lord there are sons of perdition, whom even faith will not save, because they have no works of faith. Just as we slip and fall on the road from our inattention or from darkness, so in moral terms we also slip and fall for the most part from our inattention or from darkness, darkness of mind. Attention is needed everywhere: Be careful how dangerously you walk [Eph. 5.15]. Try most of all for simplicity and kindness: this will save you from countless displeasures in life and will be the cause of everlasting peace and joy. Saint Gregory the Theologian says: I am practicing in acquiring simplicity of heart, on which salvation depends. And to be saved is my only concern. So you see that, in addition to other benefits, simplicity brings eternal salvation. He who is constant in love for earthly friends can and is constant in love for God, and vice versa: he who is grateful to the good deeds of man is also grateful to the good deeds of God, and again vice versa: he who loves his neighbors loves God, and also vice versa: he who does not love his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God, whom he does not see? [ 1Jn. 4.20]. He who diligently honors his parents also diligently honors or is capable of diligently honoring God; he who reveres the person of the king reveres all the more before the Almighty God; He who reveres authority reveres God, and vice versa. Our earthly relationships are the touchstone and measure of our relationship to God. From the former one can rightly conclude about the latter. How, therefore, we must try to establish our earthly, everyday relationships with others with all correctness! Our faith often drowns: we need a saving plank that it can firmly grasp and be saved from drowning. There are many of these life-saving boards floating in the sea of ​​Revelation, reason and nature; you just need to learn the art of catching them. Scientists often sacrifice the artificiality of the word for clarity and brevity of the word. Whatever science you take, you will see the truth of these words everywhere. Therefore, perfect science is rare. The Gospel and the Apostolic Epistles are the most perfect teaching, but this teaching is artless, simple; it should be a model of our word. The saints of God stand high, high in their moral perfection in relation to you: they are adorned with every virtue. But you still need to cleanse your heart and mind and then decorate your soul with virtue; one is incapable of feelings of holy, sublime love, and the other is incapable of pure, high views. The heart is cluttered with the impurities of passions and worldly objects, it has become white and thick; and the mind is not captivated by the beauty of intelligible objects and more willingly deals with visible, sensory things. O saints of God! Help us cleanse our minds and hearts! Let me enjoy the beauty of your soul, so that later I will be able to enjoy the Supreme Beauty. I imagine that I have the Spirit of God [1 Cor. 7:40], and grief always happens to me when I offend Him with something indecent: then there is a burning fire in my bones, which scorches me unbearably. I relax all around and cannot bear this flame. See for the sake of [...] and for the sake of personality, do not insult the shrine. Do not be ashamed, but fear the face of a person when it comes to faith. Sin constrains and compresses a person’s being, his life, but grace expands and spreads his heart, his inner being. For no reason (reasons) do not deprive yourself of peace of mind before the Holy Liturgy. In the name of your spiritual good, I beg you to always observe this rule. All-merciful Lord! Correct my steps to the path of peace! The Lord God has the goal of your life - eternal salvation - always in mind. He leads you to him, the image of the message of destinies. Therefore, if you have to endure troubles in life, endure them generously, knowing that, of course, they are needed in the matter of your salvation. The Lord God is the First Author of the fact that you are now placed in such and not other relationships with people, and with such and not other people, in such and not another place. Throughout your entire life, the Lord God Himself gave direction to it, placed you in one relationship and not another, and He Himself put you in this place. His Fatherly Providence lies in the fact that He gives direction to the rolling ball of our life. The Lord says to you from the cross: look how much injustice I have suffered from people, and you do not want to endure even a small insult. Don't you really want to suffer for Me? There is a weakness in you - not to turn to God out of pride when He sends you troubles; as well as not treating your wife with love in domestic troubles. Speak now with words of love and peace. Try to ensure that your prayer comes from your whole soul, from your whole being. What finally happens from superficiality in prayer is that all your faith is superficial. Prayer should always come from the depths of the soul. And to do this, imagine that you are face to face with God, because in fact the Lord God is with you and listens to you. Be afraid of superficial prayer: it comes from lack of faith or even from unbelief. The more you delve into prayer, the more you will have life-giving faith in your heart, the more virtuous you will be. You yourself are obvious proof of how disastrous superficial reading of prayers is; since sometimes you are very quick and superficial when reading them, when you try not to be distracted, a dumb spirit attacks you and torments your soul with hellish languor. Take your father as an example: he surpasses you many times in his dispassion. Out of love and gratitude for him, do everything that pleases him, and by the way, what he would like from you in relation to his children, if this is not a whim. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. This is visible at every step. The soul is ready for prayer, but the body is often not ready. Theory and practice often diverge at the greatest distance: theory is the spirit, and practice is the flesh. The idea of ​​science and science carried out according to the idea very often also disagree: the idea is high, bright, strong, but science is often far from corresponding to the idea - dark, unclear, difficult, weak. What do you have that you wouldn't get? [ 1 Cor. 4.7]. So, everything we have is God’s and nothing is ours except bad inclinations and sins. And the saints of God completely belonged to God. The less we have of our own, the better! Oh, the weakness of the human being! With one hand I create, because I want to create, and with the other I destroy what I built, although I would not want to. What a task! I must defend almost every good thought, good feeling through struggle, and without struggle there is a danger of losing all goodness. But there is so much badness in the most apparently good thoughts, feelings and actions! So a person is permeated with evil! You are now living in this 19th century. But there were many centuries and many people before you. And after you there will probably also be many centuries and also many people. You – in relation to both past and future generations (of course and the present) – are nothing. Live and remember yourself and prepare for the outcome of your affairs. Unbelief is restless, anxious, painful: I have experienced this and am experiencing it through repeated experiences; on the contrary, faith is calming, peaceful, blessed. The soul itself, without evidence, knows what is right and what is wrong. From the consequences of unbelief and faith, I learn the truth that unbelief is disastrous, but faith is saving. Make sure! My God! How I would like to sincerely love You and the Most Pure Mother of God with all the saints! But sometimes this holy love seems not to be given to me. My heart is unclean: without Your grace it is not capable of loving You, the Most Pure Mother of God and His saints with holy, sublime love. Create in me, Lord, a pure heart! God does not accept our prayer if we are angry with someone. I learned this through bitter experience. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to make peace with everyone before praying. There was a time when I was angry and then made peace. Just as before I made peace, my prayer was unsuccessful, difficult and obviously contrary to God, so after reconciliation (I made peace at the same time) it became easy, successful and pleasing to God. She soon brought me peace of conscience and joy in my heart. Glory to God, who admonished me today to give instruction to the poor, or to give spiritual alms along with physical alms. By the way, I said that there will certainly be another life, in comparison with which this one is the same as the church porch with the church, even incomparably smaller, that they do not need to be burdened by their participation. Glory to Your mercy, glory to Your life-giving power, Lord! I was dead today (November 28) in soul before communion and came to life after it, I was mortally ill and healed, I grieved and rejoiced, I languished painfully and tasted heavenly peace. May these lines, written immediately according to the liturgy by me, Your unworthy servant, be an eternal monument to the glory of Your life-giving Mysteries; and may I always remember them for my spiritual benefit; may I learn to sincerely believe and confess that my King Christ is for me the source of life and bliss. Oh! How clear and obvious it is: I was sick, dead without Christ, and I came to life and rejoiced with Him! Do not be upset when something is not done according to your wishes, but carefully consider the circumstances of the matter, whether it can be done the way you would like. Father Matthew caused us a lot of tears and anxiety. The Lord will reward him. What? Is your corner being taken away from you? Get used to the idea that there is nothing reliable and permanent on earth: everything is uncertain and changeable. Think about what is unfailingly true and eternal. When required, try to read prayers with sincere humility, complete calmness, quietly and somewhat in a sing-song voice: under these conditions you will avoid devilish haste and embarrassment. God severely punishes hasty, inattentive reading. Today, the 29th day of November, after the liturgy, as usual, I was completely pleased with myself, cheerful and calm for the sake of the Sacrament received inside; but soon after mass, while going to give communion to a sick woman, I hurried while reading my prayers due to devilish confusion - so what? I lost peace and joy in my heart. A murderous weight pressed my insides, melancholy and languor oppressed me. Only through prayer and tearful repentance could I return that blissful state that the Lord produced in me with His Mysteries. Oh! How hard sin is on the soul! Remember your insignificance and be humble! Watch yourself to see if the destructive passion of pride is hidden in your soul; look with your intelligent eye at all the movements of your soul. Pay attention to how you behave with people superior to you, equal and inferior: from your address you can now see whether a person is proud or humble. Notice behind yourself when you pray: what thoughts attack you the most. Try especially to maintain purity of heart. You need to work hard to cleanse it: it is filled with uncleanness. It is necessary to go through it completely anew, so to speak - every pious and holy thought has a corresponding unclean thought. My God! What an abyss of evil there is in man! God! Update me! God! How long do you do this for me to please my enemy the devil? How long will he disturb my soul when reading prayers during the Sacrament of Baptism? How long will I be funny during the high Sacrament? How long will the Sacrament itself be a mockery for me, the accursed? God! Command the evil dumb spirit to leave at this time. The devil can take possession of us only when we ourselves give a reason for this by committing some sin. It is a grave sin to serve mass without making peace with the enemy, especially if he serves together. Through this sin, the devil can take possession of a person who has something against another, and during the service itself, unpleasant consequences can arise in the soul and even outside. If sin, despite all its painfulness, is difficult for us to avoid, then what would happen if it were not painful? Indeed, the torment of sin is great. No physical illness equals the torment of sin. You are a wayward and capricious person! You want everything to be your way, and you grumble and become indignant when something doesn’t happen your way. You are a cowardly person: over trifles you become completely lost and seem to humiliate yourself. Try not to be suspicious: suspiciousness helps cowardice a lot. Remember that patience is necessary in life: all the saints endured a lot. If you suffer for sins, your sins are cleansed; but perhaps with patience God tempts you, allows you to notice what weaknesses you have. And you are impatient, grumbling, and lacking in faith. Just as after a painful, purulent abscess breaks out on any part of the body, the whole body feels at ease, so after a malignant, painful, sinful abscess in the heart has passed, the soul also feels very at ease. And heart abscesses are even more painful than external abscesses: they usually go away in tears. Until half of mass on November 19, I was spiritually dead, but in the other half I came to life, especially after communion. Such is the power of liturgy! Rabbi, Yazhd [Jn. 4, 31]. This is what the holy apostles said to the Lord, who went throughout Samaritan for food. What simplicity, alien to any artificiality, in the story of the evangelists! What sincerity, genuineness! This, by the way, most strikingly proves the truth of the story of the holy evangelists. What is sleep and how does it reinforce a person’s strength? Sleep is the confinement of the soul or concentration in one body. The soul is the vital principle for the body, but during the day it is scattered among countless objects, and it is influenced by many objects of the sensory and mental world. During sleep, the soul, so to speak, locks itself into the body and acts in a life-giving way on our body, primarily [inseparably] enters all parts of the body and thus revitalizes and strengthens the whole body with new forces. That is why it often happens that if a person wakes up at night and has not yet strengthened his strength with sufficient sleep, and the reason in the head begins to act with strength and complete clarity, then the vital force, diverted from the internal parts to the upper parts - to the head, produces an upset in the stomach by the very fact that it left it. In what infinite proportions can words be placed! Everyone talks and writes a lot. But hardly anyone speaks in the same words, although about the same subject, as someone else. One should marvel at the human thought or soul, which knows how to put words, this material shell of thought, into such countless relationships. And from this I see its origin from the Infinite and its dominion, and that the Creator is infinite to infinity, because in the same subject, even material, we can never express everything that follows: sometimes it is necessary to spend millions of words on one subject that is understandable to everyone! How limited is man and his instruments of knowledge! Yes, the soul is the breath of the infinite Mind, but only a barely noticeable particle, a drop of this Mind, and That Mind is a boundless ocean! With our knowledge, we rotate more in the same place over the same objects, as in a game of chess or cards. I revere the Infinite Mind! Endure temptation - it will be a reason for God to bless you with new gifts. My Lord visited me with a severe temptation for my weak will, in order to expose the lies and deceit of my colleagues who were oppressing me by depriving me of an apartment; I had to go to St. Petersburg in a severe thaw, when the unreliable ice could collapse under the feet of a horse. Arriving in St. Petersburg and boarding a droshky with my wife to go to spend the night with relatives, I gave myself over to grief to such an extent that my oppressed heart brought out tears, and I sat there sobbing. Having drawn up a request in St. Petersburg, I submitted it to the Reverend Vicar, but at the same time I did not receive a satisfactory answer. Having set out back, I was mostly sad about the road, especially about leaving Peterhof in a cab. At this time, grief squeezed my heart so much that my tears rolled down in four streams, while the rain lashed my face, and an unreliable and even dangerous road lay ahead, not to mention the fact that our pocket was empty because of trifles. Arriving in Rambov, we stopped, after darkness, at a hotel. Here the officer who came across said that it was no longer possible to ride horses on the sea, that tomorrow we could only go on a rescue boat. The next day, when we arrived at the pier, we learned that the sea had parted. Mountains of ice near the shore and a broken pier made it clear that there had been a strong flow of water last night. Somehow they convinced the boatman to walk on the water for 75 silver kopecks per person. It was amazing that the ice broke in one night, whereas the day before we had ridden on a steamboat with heavy weights. One German on the boat said: there is One Who commands over everyone, Who does everything according to His will; People cannot be told that they will certainly be there at such and such a time. I confess that I liked this faith and these reasonings of the good German and somehow enlightened my impatient soul. There is an opportunity for a good deed for everyone - in every rank, and in order to do good deeds there is no need to leave one rank and enter another. Each one, says the apostle, remain in the calling in which you were called [1 Cor. 7:20]: every title is from God, and conscientious fulfillment of its duties is already a good deed. Good deeds are so necessary for the future life that without them it is impossible to be saved: faith without works is dead [Jas. 2.20]. The Lord God has such a law that all people, like plants, who are given the ability to produce fruits from themselves and thereby be useful to living creatures, must also certainly give from themselves the fruits of good deeds; otherwise, He threatens us with whipping, as in the parable one gardener ordered to chop a barren fig tree, or with binding into sheaves designated for burning. The world is God's threshing floor. In this threshing floor there is wheat and tares, that is, virtuous people, pleasing to God and useful to people, and wicked people, unskillful in every good work [Tit. 1.16], disgusting to God, and sometimes of little or no use to people. But the word of God is true that only the wheat will be gathered into the heavenly granary, that is, into the Kingdom of Heaven, and the tares or worthless grass will be burned with unquenchable fire or the fire of eternal torment. This is not a threat, but a terrible truth; there is no lie in heaven, it reigns only on earth; but even here she was not at first, but appeared only later and is something temporary that will pass along with the world. So, brethren, in the worldly affairs of our calling, let us be trained for heaven and train our children; and with worldly education, give children spiritual education. Holy Mother of God! Help us in this important matter and constantly strengthen us in our intention and in our labors of heavenly education. Amen. Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature [Mk. 16.15]. These are the words of my Creator and God Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. See how He solemnly says: He rightfully calls all people creatures, the works of His hands! Majestically! In the human race, as in animals, there is a male and a female gender. People are similar to animals in this respect. What conclusion does this similarity lead me to? To the conclusion about the unity of the Creator. I have a wife, other people also have wives; Children are born from the union of a husband and wife. It's the same with animals. But I did not form a wife for myself; children are born from the seed that Someone put in me. It's the same with animals. Where does this order come from? From the One Mind. Every time you visit parishioners, whether required or not, try to teach them. If someone harms your external well-being (excluding your body and physical health), without in the least harming the well-being of your soul, and if you begin to worry about this, then say to yourself: you are a strange person! Why are you upset in spirit over such trifles? People only touch your bark; they cannot reach the core. Why do you touch your core because of this and cause it pain with your foolishness? Take note of yourself: in the claims that seem fair to you, are your passions at work - pride, stinginess or envy? Passion often hides behind a guise of truth. A frivolous man! Where is the fear of God in your heart? How dare you laugh at the most important rituals? Listen to yourself. I am both funny and tall; in me the extremes change in an amazing way. I am happy with everything and thank God. Let others be dissatisfied with the great and multiply their greatness more and more in a predatory manner - say this to yourself when you see in others a passion for acquisitions, just don’t say it selfishly. Why did God not allow David to build a church? Not only because he was a man of blood, but because there was something to be pardoned for at the trial of Solomon, who was righteous at first, but later became corrupted, and just as Saint David was a man of blood, so Solomon was a lover of women. By His mercy, God gives the opportunity to almost every person here to do something pleasing to Him, in order to have mercy on us at the Judgment. Belial is heavy, but it enters the soul through passions. Great is the mercy of God: Belial is removed by the prayer of a man by God’s command. I look with my mental eye at the holy apostles and saints who were glorified before and after them, in the Old and New Testaments, I also look at the people of the present century, especially the secular and educated in a secular, superficial way, and I see the pitiful difference between one and the other. The first are simple people who love everyone, others are crafty and cunning, knowing only themselves, who care little about others. How far one is from the other! That is why the apostolic word or the gospel word does not fit into their crafty hearts, like a simple, unartificial word, a word of heartfelt love. Apostles and evangelists are alien to the people of this age. Well, what if people of the present world were sent to preach the Gospel (they imagined the impossible)? How far can you move them? Will they get stuck with their arms and legs? We bless you, saints of God, your virgin pure souls and bodies! We now celebrate, brethren, the solemn memory of the Entry into the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos. What does this Introduction mean and why was it made and by whom? Just as the Most Holy Virgin Mary was brought into the church to be raised by the Lord, so each of us, brethren, in the bosom of the Orthodox Church must be raised […] beyond our rank or work in studying and acquiring what is necessary for heaven, for the Lord, except for work in the service: warriors, officials, merchants and farmers; as well as to educate your children, in addition to worldly education, for the Lord. The need for this education for the Lord is obvious to everyone from the fact that the Lord of the world and our life has prepared for us another, endless life, in another world, which does not have the conditions that we are limited to here, where there is no need to defend the future fatherland from the enemy, to maintain or correct the broken order of members of society with the writing hand, to conduct trade and trade accounts, to engage in agriculture - because there we will have another King - omnipotent, another country not subject to attacks enemies; there will be no need for correspondence, because everyone will be together face to face and everyone will know each other well, and because then God will be everything to everyone; Trade and agriculture will not be needed, because from the overflowing treasuries of the Heavenly Father all blessings will be generously poured out for the sons of the Kingdom of Heaven, without any money or exhausting labor; Yes, there we will not need food and drink, clothing and other things, because the Kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14,17]. All this earthly will remain on earth: military art will not go beyond the grave with the warrior and the military leader; the hands that now write will inevitably have to leave pen and paper; the merchant will not take anything with him, and his wealth will not go away with him; The plow, harrow and other agricultural implements serve the farmer only until his death. Everything earthly is impermanent, although on earth all this is necessary; everything will pass, it will end, just as the earth will pass by. And since we have an unearthly soul, which, however, is too much more than necessary, due to long-standing sinful depravity, busy with earthly things - then, brothers, we must hold on to it most of all, look after it most of all, take care so that it does not get carried away completely by worldly worries and pleasures and does not forget about another life; It is necessary in every possible way, with the help of God, to direct it to heaven, to introduce it earlier to the light there and the needs there, to educate it in a heavenly way, to force it in advance to breathe, so to speak, heavenly air. This is what education means for heaven, for the Lord. In order for heaven to accept us in the future, it is necessary here on earth for everyone to put into their soul a beginning native to heaven. The Most Holy Virgin Mary was brought into the church from the age of three and left there until the age of fourteen precisely for this purpose, that is, in order to become akin to Her with heaven, and the church is the best place for this. How would the Heavenly King have accepted Her, moved into Her womb, if She had not been prepared to receive Him by spiritual upbringing, if She had not become akin in soul to the pure inhabitants of heaven, if She had not been pre-purified by the Spirit? In heaven there can only be something akin to heaven. The wicked one is not accepted to God; the wicked will remain lower before His eyes [Ps. 5.5–6]. What is needed for heaven in the spiritual education of each of us? It is necessary: ​​1) to accustom the mind to turn more often to heaven, to God, to eternity, which has been prepared for us and awaits us. Since this is not an entirely easy task for a layman, because what the mind is used to doing is the easiest thing to turn to, then for this you need to go to church more often, talk with people or books of spiritual content compiled by people experienced in spiritual life, and read the Holy Scriptures more often. And we ourselves understand from time to time that everything earthly is too impermanent and passes away extremely quickly, that our soul is eternal and needs to be taken care of. It seems to people that earthly life is quite long and that they can enjoy it enough, although at the same time they cannot help but notice that it flows like a fast river, or spins like a wheel that does not stop for a minute, and therefore they catch pleasure, hurry to have fun before time runs out. But how much misconception there is here! Life here seems quite long due to our limitations, our blindness, myopia; experienced people say that our earthly life is nothing more than a vapor that only appears and disappears. What is your life? - asks the Apostle James, - a vapor that appears for a short time, and then disappears [James. 4.14]. And all people who have lived to old age agree that the entire past life is, as it were, a past dream. If our soul is eternal, and everything earthly soon passes, without satiating it in the least, then present life, of course, is not given for pleasures, pleasures, which are nothing more than the bait of a sinful world, like a snare in which they catch a heavenly bird - the soul, like a bait on the hook, with which our primordial enemy the devil draws our careless soul to his shore. We do not completely reject the pleasures of the innocent, but we must allow time for everything. 2) It is necessary to acquire a heart in the spiritual sense that is pure and tender, humble, soft, which would easily feel the poisonousness of every sin, which would hurt from everything that is disgusting to the Most Holy Lord, and with its pain draws out tears that cleanse the filth of the heart; he must be taught to be sincere and to sincere love for all people, and in particular to compassionate love for the poor and unfortunate. Simplicity and sincerity of heart are dear to God. The apostles were chosen not from the wise and reasonable people of this age, because they are evil, but from infants, that is, from people who, in their concepts, simplicity and innocence, are like infants. Earthly wisdom is sometimes ashamed of the simplicity of the Gospel, but this is the very wisdom that all people must learn if they value eternal happiness. Everyone should learn from the Gospel and the Apostolic Epistles holy simplicity, sincerity, purity and love. If you do not convert and become like children, the Savior said, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 18.3]. Finally, 3) one must acquire love for virtue or for a holy life. There is a lot of evil in the world, and it lies all in evil; Therefore, people who are by nature evil and crafty, according to the Savior, prone to sin, must take care to avoid opportunities for sin and look for opportunities to do a good deed. And to do […] for this purpose was created by the Lord and which freely takes upon itself the labor of educating us for heaven; also talk with people experienced in spiritual life. After communion, carefully preserve the peace of mind you have received. Do not give room to anger, even if there are reasons to be angry, especially do not get angry from random, unforeseen troubles, for which you cannot blame the person who caused the trouble: to be angry in this case is madness. (Well, is it your wife’s fault that a sugar bowl fell on top of her and broke her face? Even if it happened because of her carelessness, but did she think about meeting the blow of this thing, which she had no idea was there?) November 12, 1857. The goodness of God, abundantly revealed in peace and joy after communion, made me, as it were, a selfish mercenary. I certainly expect as a gift, as a reward after each communion of the life-giving Mysteries of the world and holy, sublime joy in my soul - and I consider myself unhappy if my whole being is not imbued with this joy. You become quite close to God in your thoughts and heart after communion, but still you do not cling very closely to Him: you must bring your mind and heart completely closer to God so that nothing separates you from Him. Never use the expression: go to hell. Who are you telling this to? To the man whom Christ delivered from this ancient enemy. Unclean thoughts, like the smoke of bees, drive away from us the fire of the Spirit that has kindled in our hearts. We are burdened, so to speak, with God's blessings, and it all seems to us that we have been blessed much less than others, that we have no special incentive to thank and glorify the beneficent Lord. Reflect more often on the greatness of God’s blessings. Try to acquire constant, unchanging humility. Try to ensure that the prayer pronounced with your lips is not only a matter of the mind, but also of the heart. When illness weighs you down, speak with obedience to the Lord God: Be Your will with me in everything: because of my sins, I am worthy of the most serious illnesses. When an illness weighs me down and I pray not quite well, not enduring pain, then the Lord, in His mercy, does not exact from me for this disorder and without prayer gives what should have been acquired by sincere and earnest prayer. Glory to the Lord! (About communion during illness.) With whom we love, we usually cannot talk enough. Hence the direct conclusion: whoever loves God loves to talk with Him in prayer; and on the contrary, whoever does not love Him is very lazy in prayer. It couldn't be more natural. Apply this to yourself. When you have no desire to pray and you read out well-known prayers only out of habit and, as if out of necessity, then your love for God is very doubtful: you represent yourself only as a mercenary, for pay, that is, for the sake of good deeds, working for your Lord. And when you have a sincere desire to pour out your soul before God in prayer, then we can say that you have love for Him, like a son for a father. Try to love the Lord God with all your soul as the most exalted Being and always pray with peace of mind. November 13, 1857. Drive away carelessness in prayer, so as not to offend the Spirit of grace living in you, and if you offend, it will be hard for your soul from its painful melancholy. A well-organized prayer in the evening gives a good sleep, while an unorganized prayer gives a restless one. In prayer, first of all, try to imagine the Divinity or Angel and saints as living, then as saints and great ones, and then imagine your sinfulness and insignificance: how sinful you are without measure, how small and insignificant in the circle of so many people, how short your life is and how quickly death rushes towards you. You have received life - a great thing: you will no longer die in soul, but will only lay down the shell of your body at a certain time. Pay attention: eternal joys in heaven will be prepared for you if you behave worthy of the great God here. The truth of the teachings, life and deeds of Christ the Savior is attested to by four witnesses - the evangelists. If two witnesses are enough to establish the truth, then even more so – four. Let God be true, but every man is a lie. With the words: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, strive with new strength for good deeds, calling on the all-pervading grace of God to help you. Even at a time when my flesh plays with stimulating drinks, and along with it my soul, sympathizing with it, rejoices in carnal joy, if any sin occurs, then the soul suddenly begins to languish painfully, and along with this the carnal joy disappears. Thus, the honeycombs of joy are suddenly amazed by the news of some sudden loss close to their hearts, and after the joy they suddenly begin to feel emptiness and heavy languor in their souls. What should be said de sublimi nostro mysterio 70. If carnal gaiety means nothing when the soul is burdened by sin, then why does this unspeakable joy happen after Holy Communion? Obviously, from the peace of conscience and from the consciousness of one’s righteousness due to the merits of Christ. Let only our inner man cry out - the spirit will hear, whether it be the spirit of God, the Life-Giving Spirit, or the spirit of Angels, or the spirit of some saint. Through this cry of the inner man, groaning about his sin, I learned from experience that with each of the people who more or less live conscientiously, there is a Guardian Angel. You just need to appeal to him from the heart - and he will hear. He definitely heard me, made me happy, and revived me. I will always ask my Guardian Angel to be my helper against my incorporeal enemy the devil. The Savior, through the Spirit of God, cast out and is casting out demons, therefore demons do not tolerate the Holy Spirit, His power, and they try to lie to people in every possible way against Him, the Spirit of truth. How pitiful is a man without grace: he can dare to do all the atrocities at once! How necessary is grace for us, therefore, to strengthen and restore goodness in us! Soul of grace, do not move away from us, but always be with us. How wisely the Lord achieves His goal, oppressing the heart with deprivation of grace! I mourn; my soul prays with heartfelt contrition - and the mercy of God, expanding my heart, again embraces my whole being! The soul as the image of God, as a principle akin to God, returns to Him after the death of a person, while the soul of animals, which does not have a Divine principle in itself, returns to the total sum of nature or common life. When you ask a person for something, to whom do you address your request: to the visible body or to the invisible soul? I think - to the human soul. Moreover, is it your body or your soul that asks? That's right, soul. So, the (invisible) soul in the petitioner also makes a request to the (invisible) soul of the other; the body is nothing more than an instrument through which the soul acts. Now think like this. I pray to icons: who am I praying to? Of course, not wood, not paints, and one can say that not even an image, but that spiritual Being (I will call the Lord God, Angels and saints) Who is depicted on the icon. But the icons don’t hear, don’t see, don’t listen, and they seem to be bored with praying? But why demand this from them? That is not why they exist, they are given only to help your sensual nature: through them your soul only ascends more conveniently to the One who is depicted on them. Therefore, when praying before an icon, pray to the Invisible, just as when asking a person, you ask not for his body, but for his invisible soul. Vision is a sphere, and the sun, the eye of the world, is a sphere. Is it because vision is spherical because the earth on which we live is spherical, just as the sun is spherical? Guard your heart with every care from self-loving daydreaming about yourself and from proud comparison of yourself with others; Take special care of yourself after you have acquired spiritual peace and joy. And peace... which surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4:7], and joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14:17] the life-giving Mysteries are given to you after prayer and communion. How the word of God is alive and active! It is, indeed, sharper than a two-edged sword and penetrates to the division of soul and spirit, members and brains, and is judged according to the thoughts and thoughts of the heart [Heb. 4.12 ]! I read with attention the two godly messages of the Apostle Peter, and what life-giving sweetness, what life-giving light they shed into my poor soul! I became a different person. How spoiled and soiled my mind, will and heart are! In fact, if they are in good working order, they should freely penetrate into the spiritual world - to God, the purest spirits and our earthly righteous people, talk with them and in this conversation find a source of life-giving joy. But instead, they barely rise to grief due to their depravity and for the most part leave me behind, having themselves become something earthly, earthy, rough, unclean! God! Raise me from aphids! Correct, cleanse my weapons! We are worth all your love because we love you: everywhere our first prayer is for you, at home and in church. We pray not only for you, but also for your dead. For this, let you reward us with the slightest part of your surplus. But do you think that our love for you and for your dead can be bought with money? No, only mercenaries like to serve for money. We do not love like that, because we know that at the second coming of the Lord you will either be our praise and joy before the Lord, or condemnation and grief. Can we forget about the duty of sincere love for you, as for our children in the Lord? You are overcome by doubts and you are looking for truth that is not subject to any doubt. Here it is, this truth: Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Look at the authenticity of His words. He says nothing other than mostly with the addition: Amen, Amen - that is, truly, truly, I say to you. Everything that Jesus Christ said is the most perfect truth. Truth is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Savior Himself said in His prayer to Him before the suffering of the cross: Father... Sanctify them by Thy truth; Your word is truth [Jn. 17.17]. We call the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth. Truth is life-giving, peaceful; on the contrary, lies are restless and murderous; by the very fruits, by the very action in you, it is easy to distinguish truth from lies. Here I mean religious truth, and not natural or any other truth. This latter is not obligatory for us: we may know it, but we may not know it; knowledge will not save her and ignorance will not destroy her; unless we consider it necessary to the extent that it leads us to the Source Truth. Therefore, no one should be surprised by the circumstance in our Holy Books (in the Bible and liturgical books) that their writers sometimes speak incorrectly about natural phenomena or their laws. They were not natural scientists, and if some knew natural history, then not to the same extent as modern natural scientists, who reached their discoveries through centuries-old observations of their predecessors. Ask with undoubted faith what you need, and it will be done for you. Experience. So that your feet may not be shed [Ps. 72, 2–3], peace and well-being of sinners in vain on this earth, remember that no earthly blessings can be compared with heavenly blessings. The most desirable things are the blessings of the heavenly world. Doubt and lies are something accidental, earthly, related to the imperfection of this world. But firm confidence in the truth, unshakable by anything, is something not here, although it very often happens here, but something heavenly. Try to acquire an undisturbed and constant peace of mind and do not be embarrassed before anyone or anything, especially during prayers during the Sacraments. There's no need to rush: you'll have time. You think that in our Book of Prayers there are a lot of prayers during the Sacraments, and you are ready to reproach the author of these prayers for verbosity. But you're wrong. The higher the gift, the more you need to ask God for it, and what could be higher than the gifts communicated to believers in the Sacraments? Therefore, one must have [all] respect for the prayers laid down in the Breviary during the Sacraments. It’s boring to repeat the same thing, but there’s nothing to do: you need to be patient for an hour. And if you are always ready to perform the Sacraments according to your spiritual disposition and mood, then it will not be boring to read the prayers prescribed for this or that Sacrament. It is boring and difficult to read them due to lack of readiness and suspiciousness. Don’t think about people, but with all respect for venerable antiquity, read them, these prayers. October 29, 1857. Remember death, resurrection and the Last Judgment and warm with this memory your heart, which grows cold towards deeds of virtue and prayer. Pisces are creatures of God; fishermen are apostles; The Lord Jesus Christ is their Creator: according to His word, the Apostle Peter and his comrades caught a lot of fish, whereas before, having fished all night, they caught nothing; statir in the mouth of the fish. How obedient the unreasonable creature is to the Creator. Birds are also creatures of God. Some birds were sacrificed. Turtle doves and pigeon chicks. Spirit in the form of a dove. Independence of fish and birds from humans: some live in such an element in which a person cannot live for even a few minutes without artificial means; others are in the air, into which also a person cannot rise without an [artificial] ball. Only through his mind can a person catch them for food or for home decoration and pleasure of hearing. Understand that all real life is night, and day will be when the Lord comes to earth and with His coming eternal life will begin. When you pray, you need the words of your prayer, like the sounds of a drum, to resonate inside you - in your heart, as if in a drum, and not just fly into the air. Remember that the Lord Jesus Christ listens to you in prayer both as God and as a man. If you imagine His Divinity and, together, your human sinfulness and do not rely on your prayer as sinful, then remember His humanity: He, like man, is condescending to our prayers and demands from them no more than what a person would demand from a person - sincere love, simple-hearted trust in God and hope in His fatherly mercy. Drownings happen in different places, fires also: disasters are numerous. People! This is an admonition for you, an appeal to think about eternity and your insignificance in your plans and enterprises. You say: will there really be a Last Judgment? Here are examples of this court. Do you doubt it and don't think so? – these unfortunates didn’t think either, but they died. […]. What should I do if not pray? Therefore, during prayer, I must be completely calm, knowing that prayer is my main business, and not be in a hurry. In all your behavior, and especially in prayer, try to become a completely sincere, kind and simple-hearted son in relation to God. Always look at Him with trust and living faith, as if He were always before you. Drive away the slightest deceit of the heart or pretense from yourself. Let not a single word of prayer fly out of your mouth without your knowledge or without clear consciousness. Filial love and sincerity in prayer and in all life is the greatest, most favorable sacrifice of a person to God. This is what the faith of Christ wants from us, and everything in it is directed towards this. Why does the Lord require us to have living faith in God and why is He surprised at such faith in people? - Because she was a rarity among people, while He was looking for her. Man fell, by the way, through crafty distrust of God; restoration therefore must be through faith or sincere trust. Why does this doubt about the objects of faith have such a poisonous, caustic effect on the soul? Why this mental grief? On the contrary, why is there calm and peace in my soul when I humbly believe and have firm support for faith, and why, when I have thoughts of unbelief, do I try with all my might to get rid of them as a painful state for me and try to return to the path of heartfelt faith as the most soothing state? – Because disbelief is unnatural for me, but faith is natural; because the former is a painful state of the soul, and the latter is a healthy state of the soul. The sorrow of the soul, wavering with doubt in faith, is its voice about its illness and the demand for healing remedies, and the peace of the soul, humbly believing, is the feeling of its well-being. We live together with birds and animals in the environment, and fish also live in the environment. Only one is thinner and more transparent, while the other is far from so. Always be careful that your prayer is not one empty verbiage. Prayer requires a sigh, a tear, contrition for sins and humility before God, with living faith in Him. How many animals, fish and birds are exterminated, and yet how incomparably more remain alive! Most often mourn your infidelity to God: unbelief, ingratitude, insincerity. How my insides expand and tremble joyfully when my prayer is ordered, pronounced with faith, humility, and without haste. Is it not the Spirit of God that overshadows our soul then? The same thing happens after the worthy reception of the Holy Mysteries. For prayer to be life-giving for us, we only need childlike sincerity in prayer and childlike humility with simplicity. Man is a child before God; he has nothing of his own by nature. What do you have that you wouldn't get? [ 1 Cor. 4.7]. Everything is from God, and God is always ready to give us His blessings, only on our part there must be a condition: a sincere desire for heavenly good, childlike, or sincere and simple, love and trust in God; that is, the Lord God does not demand anything more from us in prayer, like what an earthly king would demand from his subject running to him with a request, or a good and well-intentioned master from his slave asking for some kind of mercy from him, or a father from his son. But who does not notice that we do not fulfill these necessary conditions, and therefore we deprive ourselves, like crafty and lazy children, of God’s mercies. But why does this plague happen in prayer or not during prayer, deadening our soul, that is, doubt? Why does the edifice of our faith sometimes waver, and why do we sometimes need to build it again, even if only for a minute, starting from the foundation—starting again from the alphabet? From the poisonous lie of the devil. If people do not sing praises to the Lord, then all His works sing praises to Him - in heaven and on earth. Therefore, the Church often, as if for lack of worthy singers of the glory of God on earth, appeals to the works of God: Bless, all the works of the Lord, the Lord, sing and exalt Him forever [Dan. 3.57]. My Angel's Day. So, I was gone 28 years before this. Out of nothing I am called to life and its joys and hopes, temporary and eternal, and to the enjoyment of the works of God’s hands! Oh, how desirable is existence and how terrible is insignificance, non-existence! Glory to Thee, Benefactor God, who was pleased to give me life solely by His goodness. Teach me to never be forgotten in my life and always remember who I am. I look with disdain at some children's toys, such as dolls, boats and other trinkets made by master merchants. But for You, my God, it meant the same thing, and incomparably easier, to make me, to give me existence, like a toymaker’s toy. I thank You with all my being, my Creator. Food says clay to the one who created it: why did you create me like this? Or not to have the poor power in the land... to create a vessel in honor, but not in honor? [Rom. 9,20–21]. I especially thank You for honoring me with the rank of priesthood and bringing me closer to Your throne. Behave in such a way that you will not regret tomorrow what you did today. Do not do any work for God and yourself in this regard: God - to forgive you daily the same sins or others; yourself - to grieve and grieve for them. Let there be something else to grieve for you every day, that is, change the subject of grieving - but a person has a lot of things to grieve about. When I believe in the life-giving Mysteries and partake of them with living faith, then my soul feels extremely good; I then live in the light of God’s face, in peace and joy, and tears of joy and tenderness stream from my eyes, then I amazingly change for the better; but when my faith wavers, when, during the struggle of thoughts of unbelief, I weaken and my mind cannot reflect them at once, darkened by an evil spirit, then my soul does not feel good. I mourn my unbelief. From this alone it should be concluded that faith is the proper state of my soul, not to mention the fact that the Unfalse God Himself requires faith from us in this Sacrament, and unbelief is an incorrect, sinful state. The very fruits of both states show which of them is good and which is bad. Conscience usually approves the good and condemns the bad. Force the reader to read with heartfelt attention, loudly, separately at each service, especially at matins, the verses of the canon and especially at matins on the feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God; read four or at least three verses before starting; arrange a choir, albeit of three or four vocal people, and show them an example of how to sing. Pain in your side, heat in your back, weakness in your legs and throughout your body come from scrofula - when it suppurates; when it completely festeres and concentrates in one place, then the pain and weakness stop. Hoarseness of voice also occurs from it. They say that the idea of ​​theatrical performances (idea) is good, and you can go to theaters for the benefit of your soul. Let's assume that the idea is good. But who of those sitting in the theater thinks about her? Two, three people, maybe not more. Who, even looking at the world - this most magnificent theater, sees in it the Creator Himself, although He is obvious from every blade of grass? Very few. From habit, we do not penetrate into the depths of an object, into its inner meaning, into its thought, but limit ourselves to appearance. Thus, children-students, not understanding the meaning of the book or article they are learning, limit themselves to only hardening the letter. It was absolutely not up to you to be in this place; You didn’t think, you didn’t guess, but you got it: God Himself showed it to you, and for this reason your father (father-in-law) was struck with a serious illness, in order to force him to give up his place and insert you into his family. There were, of course, other reasons for his illness, but this was perhaps the main one: God wisely achieves several goals suddenly through one particular circumstance. Always thank the Lord God, who provides for you so fatherly. Remember October 5th. The time of the liturgy, and especially the time after communion, was for you the time of the Kingdom of Heaven. Always joyfully sing the miracles of the most pure Body and Blood of Christ. You have sweetened me with love, O Christ, and you have changed me with Your Divine care. Glorify the most pure Mysteries constantly, silently, loudly: the Lord creates marvelous things through them. Let us drink to the Lord, so that we may be glorified [Exod. 15.1] in the Holy Eucharist. Remember also that you yourself cannot do anything good without the grace of God, and it does everything in you. And the grace of God in me was not in vain. It’s not for nothing that you bear the name John: from many deeds I see that you are definitely John. And John the Baptist - what a sea of ​​grace? Patience!!! Remember how unworthy of a person are impatience, anger, and rage! Impatience is mad - that means you are mad! Be smart: don't get excited. This won't fix things. From this Cup I drink peace, joy and bliss. ABOUT! How desirable she is! My life is nothing more than a succession of falls from one to another. What are the lips for? In order, firstly, to praise God and convey to others your thoughts and feelings; and secondly, to drink and eat. This means that whoever uses them for other purposes is sinning. He who speaks idlely, uses foul language, and curses, sins against the purpose of his lips. Whoever, besides eating, does anything else with the mouth (for example, smokes or does something else with them that does not directly serve to support life), sins. What is the sense of smell for? In order for it to show what is useful and what is harmful in the air for health, and thus serve a person as a guardian of his health; therefore, whoever allows himself to enjoy incense to excess, or whoever absorbs cereal dust into the instrument of smell, sins, and greatly, against the very purpose of the nose, which means against God. What are the eyes for? Ears? Hands? Legs? We must try to acquire a constant, calm, contemplative state of mind. The righteous set the goal of their lives precisely in this state: in it lies the bliss of man. From the property of the dominion of sin, find out what it is; Likewise, from the property of the dominion of virtue, find out what it is; and having learned, follow what is obviously better from experience itself. Try to pray with a heart filled with sincere love for God and your neighbors. What does it mean to feel joy when we express something out loud to someone, or even if we only think and feel some lofty truth within ourselves? What does it mean to feel joy after doing good, at the sight of beauty? This means that man is destined to live by truth, goodness and beauty, that is, by God, the Source of truth and beauty. And the moral dignity of your soul should be disgusted that you subordinate its world to the little things of life and are upset by something that does not cause you any mental or physical harm, or even noticeable damage to your external well-being. Support the greatness of your soul: let it taste constant peace and do not make it daily a base slave of passions. Be strong, call on all the power of your mind to help and cut off the enemy’s daring attacks with your sword. First of all, call on the Lord Jesus for help and mark yourself with His cross. Always remember that God accepts you for the sake of His Only Begotten Son - Jesus Christ, for the sake of His grace, and not for your own sake; otherwise He certainly would not have listened to you and would not have fulfilled your prayer, and would even have been angry with you as a sinner. Therefore, never despair of God’s mercy, in the fulfillment of what you ask; even if you asked God for food and drink for the Body and Blood of His Son, He will undoubtedly give this to you, that is, He will create for you the Body and Blood of His Son. Look at yourself during your service: you are surrounded all around by signs, symbols of grace, which let you know that it is not you, a weak and sinful person, who is serving, but the Son of God, the Only Begotten: and you, for sure, imagine His face during the service. Your irritability comes from the fact that you have a lot of pride: eradicate it and do not neglect this matter, otherwise anger will eat you like straw. You have been given [by the Creator] a mind, but there are deeds greater than the mind. Now you have already learned enough from experience that all your happiness lies in Jesus Christ; you cannot say that this is not so, because both you yourself and others who see you after communion see that you are truly happy in the Lord through serving with Him. See that you adhere to the Lord in every possible way and do not offend His mercy and greatness. People put all their worries and efforts in life in achieving happiness, and your happiness has been achieved: you just need to keep it. If the sun is a creature, then the stars also shine, then how bright the Creator must be. This guidance 71 is the most correct and natural, just like this: Who created the ears and eyes of animals, does He not hear and see Himself? How useful animals are in human life! They deliver food and clothing, and often the most exquisite ones at that. No one can go anywhere without the skin of an animal, especially in winter: the villagers have a saying that in winter a villager is covered in sheep, that is, in sheep skin and wool. In the teaching about man, develop the idea of ​​his complete dependence on God both in soul and in body, and cite the text in support of this: you cannot make a single hair white or black [Matt. 5:36], or: which of you, by caring, can add even one cubit to his height? [Matt. 6.27]. In the creation of the fourth day, reveal: what are our days and years? Days and years of plants, animals? How everything soon passes changes! The image of this world is passing away [1 Cor. 7.31]. Due to the transience of the world, there is less need to be attached to the blessings of the world: those who use this world (living in a secular, worldly manner) should be as if they were not using it... and those who buy as if they were not acquiring... those who have wives should be as if they had not [1 Cor. 7,29–31]. Achieving spiritual peace and joy is the main goal of a person’s life on earth and, upon achieving it, his true happiness, which everyone is looking for, but not by the means that they should; but prayer, pronounced with faith and with heartfelt contrition, and communion of the most pure Mysteries bring a person this peace and this joy; This means that prayer and communion (of course, more or less worthy) lead a person to true happiness, and it means that when you have achieved this, you have achieved the goal of your life. And having learned from experience, not only from the Scriptures, that prayer and communion of the life-giving Mysteries lead you to true happiness, love both with all your heart. It is worthy of surprise: we do not see God, but we feel it; We vividly feel Him in His actions on our soul, for example, during prayer, upon receiving the Holy Gifts, so that the evidence of external senses is lower in its reliability than this spiritual sensation. What is the need for me not to see or hear something that by its nature is not subject to rude feelings? The crystal-shaped pupil or auditory organs, as a weak substance and in itself dead, are, of course, very limited in their actions and serve only for the vision of the substance or hearing, and not just everything: there are things that, due to their insignificant volume or distance, are invisible, or some small tremors are inaudible. Much more reliable is the feeling of the soul, which has all external feelings at its service. About the benefits of water communications and the benefits of air or wind with them (about foreign ships flocking like birds to our city). On the fourth day of creation. Knowing that the Heavenly Father commands His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unjust [Matt. 5:45], we ourselves will do good to good and evil people. Speaking on the sixth day about animals, remember the lions in Daniel's den. The verbal world, or the world of thought, is infinite, just like the world of materiality (relatively infinite). No matter how much you talk, you cannot say everything, for example, about God, about the soul, eternity or about the world, etc. That is why in every word there can be something new or the same, but on the other hand and with other shades. There is no need to chase after multitude when studying any science, especially when it is taught to boys who are still undeveloped and not very willing to do their work: here, multitude is often the reason that boys do not retain anything in their heads. You need as little as possible, just as clearly as possible. Heavenly Father! I hope for Your mercy and generosity. You will not leave me even in my everyday needs. Why am I so striving to hold in my hands that which in its very, so to speak, nature is fluid […]. Let Your will be done in everything! I will (give me this) maintain love with everyone and peace with myself, which is most precious. If the blue color of the sky belonged to the air, then the rays of the sun passing through it would also be blue; but this is not the case - therefore, the color of the air is not blue. Blueness is a consequence of the reflection of the sun's rays from the earth into the dark airy space, and since the light of the sun is white, then the white color, combining with black, which is darkness, gives the blue color. Why is the air red at dawn? After the abdication of brother Konstantin Pavlovich, you swore allegiance to me as your legitimate Sovereign, and swore to stand for me and my house to the last drop of blood. Remember, the oath is a great thing. I now demand execution. I know that I have enemies, but God will help me deal with them. Words of the late Sovereign to the Preobrazhensky battalion. Praise Him, heavens of heavens and waters that are above the heavens [Ps. 148.4]. The ancients believed that there was water above the heavens, which descended to the earth by the will of the Lord and irrigated it in the form of rain. When the flood is spoken of, it is also said there that all the sources of the great deep burst open, and the windows of heaven were opened [Gen. 7.11]. David and Moses speak in accordance with the concepts of the people. Their divine inspiration does not suffer here. Every tree is known by its fruit. This is how I recognize my Lord and His holy word and my enemy the devil and his treacherous, false word. When I eat the Body and Blood of the Lord or listen to His word, I feel very good: I am peaceful and cheerful; and when I allow myself, even for a moment, to hear the crafty or blasphemous suggestions of the spirit of malice, I feel unwell and hard. What is more and better evidence for? It is not only faith, but experience itself that confirms to me the truth of everything that I do by faith. Meanwhile, the evil one is trying to shake my faith. Be gone, villain! Wherever there are animals, plants, even stones, there is God: where there is a creature, there is the Creator. Where there is water, air, fire, earth, there is the Creator, or the One who created them. Everywhere, everywhere I see God - therefore, also, where people are, there is God, but especially where people are pious. Develop it. Pastoral theology. This is not true; I must say: theology for the pastor. The sun and moon, especially the sun, illuminate the earth like an anthill. Let’s imagine that we can cover several thousand miles a day: if we cover one thousand, the sun shines everywhere the same; another thousand is also the same sun; third, fourth and so on. No matter how far you go, you can’t run away from him; it, this luminous sun, seems to say to the earth: look, I see you everywhere and warm you like the cocosh of my chick. I illuminate you like some small anthill. How small you are before me; you run day and night, but only in order to expose all your sides for illumination and heating from me. Earthborns! These are the wondrous works of the Wisdom of God. Such an apparently small circle of light from the sky illuminates the entire earthly hemisphere at once, like an anthill: it is obvious that this star is of enormous size, because it sees the earth, to put it humanly, all at once (that is, the entire hemisphere), and, moreover, illuminates it with such dense light that the earth seems to be smoking with the light of the sun - so thick and bright is the light from the sun. And light, no matter how subtle it is, is all matter. What kind of luminary must it be that emits so much light? This is the likeness of the omnipresent Deity. Imagine, brothers, what the Divinity must be like, Who moves such luminaries and our earth across the vault of heaven? Will he who plugs the ear not hear? and the eye that formed will not see? [Ps. 93.9]. Develop it. Conclude from the creature to the Creator: there is such an infinite number of private lives in the world, which means there is One Infinite Life, the Source of private life. There is an infinite number of objects of the wisest, most subtle art in the world - which means that there is One Infinite Wisdom, fragmented into an infinite number of individual creatures, but Itself is always whole and inseparable, one and the same, just as people do not lose their minds, having made many mental works. On the second day of creation. Looking at this sky, remember, brethren, that there - in these vaults of heaven - will appear at the second coming the sign of the Son of Man, His all-honorable Cross, more shining than the sun, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God, in the glory of His Father with all the multitude of holy Angels - to create judgment for the earthly, to put a decisive end and final retribution to evil, as well as to give complete freedom and due reward for good. The fullness of life is there - in heaven. These clouds are taken from the evaporations of the sea, lake, and river and protect from damage to the sea, whose depth is over five hundred fathoms. Why are they high and not low? Why thunder and lightning? […]. When you talk about water and the sea, mention the miracles that happened in both by the will of the Creator. About being turned into blood, about the division of the Red Sea, about the return of the Jordan, about Jonah, etc.; about how the bush burned but was not consumed, how the three youths were not scorched in the oven, etc. How the Savior walked on the waters. Don't forget the ten plagues of Egypt. About Providence. Sinking of the ship. How insignificant is the present life and how important is the future. Death, especially violent death, atones for sins. Where are there no plants? Almost everyone has flowers in their homes. Watch them, examine their structure and... glorify the Creator. Heavenly Truth! Tell the servants of Truth who seek You: it is I; So, if you are looking for Me, leave them, let them go [Jn. 18.8]. Show me Your bright face, which man without truth wants to cover and distort in every possible way. You ask about time: when did what happen? But given the numerousness of the offenses, it is impossible to answer that this happened then, and this then; The better answer is: always, every day, because it’s definitely hardly ever […]. Prove by the flames of the air, the reflection of the sun's rays at sunset and after sunset on the clouds and in the very air around the sky that the earth is spherical; the decline of the water - the same thing, namely: how ships sink into a hole, as it were, the further they move away from us. To explain over time all the irmos, in which there are many of the most beautiful, sublime thoughts and feelings of a Christian; in general, everything that is read and sung in the Church. Speaking about the gradual growth of plants and animals: about how they grow, grow old and die, we can say that the human body is subject to the same law; only the body of the world does not age, but the body of every animal, as a container for a small, private life, certainly ages and dies. If it is difficult for your mind to read morning and evening prayers while standing, in an upright position, then read with your head bowed on a chair: this promotes concentration, freedom and clarity of thoughts. Such joy, such bliss after communion: I would fly to heaven. Glory to Thee, our wonderful God! In order to never forget such a gift, I considered it necessary to write this down to convince myself of the truth of the gift for the future. The reality and evidence of Providence over people is evident from the fact that God sometimes visits people with such illnesses that are very rare and unusual among people and directly point to the finger of God by their very unusualness: for example, when a person suffers for a whole ten years without movement and without a mind. Say more often to the Lord God: God! Be merciful to me, a sinner, an evil one, an unfaithful one, an evil one. That you are all God's - there is no need to convince you of this. The very beginning of your existence - your birth, was the work of God: you were awarded sensual light in order to honor you with intelligent light over time. Everything about the name of God was performed on you: all Christian rituals. Rich! Counting thousands and millions of their money! Have you ever been able to calculate what is the longest human century and how the number of years of your life, let’s say, the largest, relates to the number of your capital? Further, from the enormous numbers of your capital, have you moved on to the thought of the innumerability of shiny metal in all earthly states, not saying: in the bowels of the earth, but in the hands of people like you? And this innumerability - however, only innumerability for us - did not lead you to the thought of another innumerability, for example, the innumerability of years - not here, on earth, but in heaven; and have you thought about acquiring this countless wealth - not money, not these perishable toys - but years of eternal bliss, the Kingdom of Heaven? It's worth thinking about this. And in order to make sure that there will be an infinite continuation of time, or, better to say: there will be eternity, it is easy to be convinced of this: the One who created countless creatures in time - and no one can accurately count them, not even the Angels, because the Angels would be equal to God in this respect - has already limited the very time in which creatures should live, especially when between them there are spiritual ones, soaring above space, as incorporeal, and above time, as again also not subject to its laws, because time is from matter and for matter - and without matter, without flow, without its consistency, there would be no time. Man is created in the image of God - what does this mean? Here's what: for example, you love the truth - God also loves the truth, only to an infinitely higher degree; your heart is inclined to conscious love - God has even more love for His creatures; your thought flies immeasurable distances in an instant - this is also a likeness of the Divine Who is omnipresent. In general, what is good in you is some insignificant resemblance to what is in God. You buy and read books of spiritual content in order to educate yourself in Christian virtues, for example, in charity towards the poor, etc. Be careful not to pervert the order: do not buy books only for themselves, leaving aside their purpose. How joyful it is to pray to the Lady Theotokos: She immediately fulfills the sincere desire of our heart: heavenly joy and peace... which surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4.7], are installed in our hearts. The state can be so beneficial, so different from the previous one, that one cannot help but believe in the mercy of the Lady. Once Zechariah did not believe the words of the heavenly messenger Archangel Gabriel and for this he received punishment from him - muteness. What kind of punishment should those who dare not believe the Lady of Angels, the words of the Lord God, Whose word be: her and amen! I thank You, all-merciful Lord, for the humility that You instill in me, depriving me of the gift of faith. May the faces of the holy apostles, saints, martyrs, saints and righteous people be everlasting teachers of faith and piety for you. Remember them more often - and strengthen yourself in faith and virtue. The greater the sorrows of this life, the greater the reward in heaven. It's natural in a way. This is how it happens on earth: the greater the previous sorrow, the stronger the subsequent joy. Sorrows make us better, or strengthen our virtue. And since God requires some condition on our part to receive great gifts from Him, our correction in sorrow or improvement in virtue becomes this condition. If you are oblivisceris te 72 with a disease that so strikingly reminds you that every person is pus, then what would happen to you if you did not have this disease and were completely healthy? You are completely oblitus esse temetipsum 73. Glorify the goodness and wisdom of God, which teaches you humility through this seeming evil. Quite a lot of people have no concept of life and therefore live haphazardly. Explain this concept. They refer to most people that it lives the same way. But what do the majority care? Before the coming of the Savior, all people lived badly, but it was impossible to refer to this. Imagine to them that the life of the world is still flowing in its own order and is approaching, certainly approaching little by little, to the end and that the universal Last Judgment is also becoming closer and closer, that human life is like fleeting vapor, and eternity is constant. Brethren! Do you know the words: the second and glorious coming of the Lord, the Last Judgment of Christ? If you are not familiar or know little, then let’s get acquainted with them or, better, with the events to which they indicate. And it’s not enough to say this - let’s get to know each other: we will constantly remember them morning, noon and evening. But the memory of them will poison your worldly pleasures, as if with poison? Yes, it will definitely add some bitterness to these unbridled pleasures, and this is wonderful: you will not forget yourself in the pleasures themselves and will not indulge in them madly, like the pagans who do not know better pleasures, who do not have high promises in the future life. Brethren! Believe us that we wish you well with all our hearts, and if we were not completely convinced that your present life would lead you to a bad end, we would not turn you away from your pleasures. We guarantee you with our heads that you will one day bitterly regret every hour of these pleasures, even if you even have to repent of them. Do not keep in mind the example of the prudent robber. He was prudent because he repented at such moments, without having such an example. And you, knowing the example of the prudent thief, deliberately postpone your repentance from day to day. The robber will condemn you, not acquit you. Dwell your thoughts more often on the two boundaries of your existence: birth and death - so that you can deeply humble yourself and revere the immortal and beginningless Creator of your existence. September 1, 1857. Your unbelief will not abolish the work of God. Today, during early mass, you weakened in faith just before the transubstantiation of the Holy Gifts, and this made you feel unwell; you have lost heavenly peace in your soul; but later, having awakened again the faded faith before receiving the Holy Mysteries, you were awarded the gift of faith in the life-giving Mysteries and received them in a life-giving, worthy manner. Heavenly joy and peace in your soul announced to you about the mercy of God and that your unbelief does not abolish the work of God. With God's help, we will now talk about the creation of this wonderfully beautiful world we see, and in order to more clearly, firmly and deeply root this teaching in your memory, we will first present the world more clearly and distinctly to your imagination. In order to better imprint in the minds and memory of students the science of earth description or the science of celestial bodies, teachers in schools usually show them an earthly or celestial globe, which they call a globe, on which almost everything important that is on earth or in the visible horizon is presented in a small size, and students thus clearly and easily confirm these sciences. We do not have a ball to represent earth or sky, nor is it appropriate here; and instead of it, we will take your imagination and with its help we will show you in advance the earth and the sky separately, and then we will begin to say how things became: there was a time when none of this existed - neither the earth, nor the sky, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. In a word, no one and nothing. Let's start with the earth: you see how big it is and how there are a lot of all kinds of creatures on it - living and soulless. Looking at the earth in all directions, you notice that it seems to be flat; in fact, it is round, like a ball: land writers found this out as accurately as possible, and we ourselves can be sure of this. You often visit the sea - look into the distance for departing ships or steam vessels. At first you see the whole ship, but the further it goes, the more the bottom of the ship is hidden from you, so that finally you see only the sails or only smoke from the steam ship, and finally this disappears, as if the ship had sunk into a hole. Why does this happen? Precisely because the earth is spherical. If it seems flat to us at first glance, it is because we are very small in comparison with the earth, and the earth is too large, and given its size, its slope is imperceptible to us, insignificant. So, brothers, the earth is round. All over the earth - in oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and other places - water is spilled, of which there is so much that there is only one third of the land on earth; on land there are many high mountains, the peaks of which are often lost in the clouds and covered with ice, and on other mountains the peaks at times burn terribly and throw out hot stones and burning sulfur. The flat land of the earth, as well as the mountains and valleys, is mostly covered with forests, shrubs and all kinds of small plants. The earth is surrounded on all sides by air - thin, light, liquid and transparent matter. Everywhere you see life and contentment, enjoyment of life; on land you see people, four-legged animals, reptiles; Countless species of fish and other aquatic creatures live in the water; in the air you see birds soaring, insects that, while flying in the air, also live on the ground. The world of God is full of life, so that the human race, in comparison with other creatures, constitutes the smallest part of the earth's population in number - there are so many creatures on earth. But our earth, with its countless heterogeneous inhabitants, the Lord God has only one of the smallest spheres. Looking at the sky during the day or on a clear evening, you see that a round, luminous luminary moves every day, like a wound clock, from east to west. The moon makes the opposite move and always appears to replace the sun in the evening; round, bright stars constantly appear in the evening in a certain place and in the morning in another, although not all of them. And in the sky we see movement everywhere: everything has been moving for a long time before us, before our fathers and great-grandfathers, for thousands of years - and everything is so harmonious, beautiful, for the benefit of us earth-born. The movement of the whole world is like some kind of wonderful game, in which both the earth and the heavenly bodies continuously walk in a harmonious, friendly round dance, never leaving each other, helping each other. We are presented from the earth, as if from the middle point, to consider the splendor of the universe. But in the church pulpit you cannot talk much about the positions and movements of the earth and the heavenly bodies. We only need to say how it all came to be and why, and to show the goodness, omnipotence and wisdom of the One who arranged everything so that your souls would be filled with reverence, and your hearts with gratitude and love for the All-Wise Author of the world. When you pray in church, then you need to keep in mind the verbal flock. And church prayers are composed not from one person, but from many. Read Saint Chrysostom's interpretation of the Lord's Prayer. This is how the Lord established my spoiled belly: I don’t want to reason, but I must believe (about the Sacrament of Communion). Your illness or weakness in the body always happens before the scrofula comes out and not for long. Remember this and be patient with the hope of soon receiving relief and cleansing. My God! Against my will, sincerity and simplicity in prayer flees from my heart! The evil one captivates me. Stretch, O Master, Your high arm and, like Peter, save me, the Steward. God teaches me humility, depriving me of the gift of faith in the life-giving Mysteries. Looking at the grass, artistically and intricately decorated and swept into the cave in the morning [Matt. 6:30], I think: what does it cost the Creator to clothe His loving intelligent creation with glory in the next century, if He dresses insignificant flowers in this way? Isn’t it the same for the Lord as to pour out His flesh and blood in the womb of the Most Pure Virgin - to create Flesh and Blood from bread and wine during the Liturgy? If it happened, believe this too: it is the same thing for God. How true it is that after the priest’s words: “And make this bread the honorable Body of Thy Christ, and in this Chalice the honorable Blood of Thy Christ, translating it by Thy Holy Spirit—immediately there is a transposition into the true Body and true Blood of Christ! Glory to You, who brought me to understanding, Lord! Tell yourself more often: my life is a fleeting vapor. What is your life? - says the apostle, - a vapor that appears for a short time, and then disappears [James. 4.14]. People are so accustomed to the wonderfully beautiful creation of God that they are more willing to look at the imitative creation of man, for example, at the artificial sun, at artificial lights, etc. What is amazing here is that this is the work of man and the mind of man is visible in it, but it is short-lived and cannot last long and is very limited in purpose; and the heavenly bodies are thousands of years old, huge, extraordinarily beautiful and worth marveling at for a lifetime. Isn't this childish, isn't this just children's toys? In prayer, always imagine the immeasurable distance between you and God and His Most Pure Mother, and also imagine the greatness of the Angels and saints, who are also far, far superior to you, in a word: be humble to the extreme. Our corrupted nature has been renewed by the sufferings on the cross and the death of the Savior; then, with His help, the apostles and martyrs redeemed themselves from corruption with the most cruel labors and sufferings, and the saints with asceticism. How expensive this renewal is and how great the future benefits must be! When thoughts of unbelief attack you, immediately hide from them in the depths of humility, in the depths of your insignificance. Love the Blessed Virgin Mary with all your heart, sincerely: She is worth all your love. To make the word strong, try to live piously: all the pious are strong in the word. You drink and eat - and do not thank God: think how necessary it is, what do you eat and drink? You are breathing freely. Are you grateful for this? There are people who have difficulty breathing. You sleep peacefully - are you grateful for that? There are people who cannot sleep. You have excellent eyesight and hearing, and you get a lot of pleasure from them. Are you grateful for this? Are you grateful for everything? If you decompose space, then inevitably, as a necessary consequence, the thought of eternity will appear; flow mentally into the distance: you will not find the end, and therefore, time. Movement is time multiplied by space. Include the following sin in your confession: you seduced others, you destroyed the commandment of God and taught people this way (about fasting and remembrance of the dead). There are things on earth that teach you to rise above grief: these are fire and smoke. Nature is a silent witness of Divine omnipotence and wisdom and at the same time a teacher of man. If its witnesses and teachers remain in vain for a person due to the fossilization of his heart, then God instructs him about Himself by other means. Countless numbers of living, animate, irrational creatures die. But do they disappear? No, their life only merges with the general life of nature. We do not see, we do not notice this replacement of some living creatures by others, but if we did, we would be presented with the most amazing spectacle. How can we not believe in the invisible world when we know about countless animate creatures, which the soul, life leaves and enters, of course, into the general economy of life? Life is precisely some kind of spiritual force. A magnificent scene of the life and death of creatures, worthy of the pen of a most gifted writer! Imagine these mines of life, so huge and inexhaustible that every year countless animal creatures with various properties come out of them! And this life is in the Spirit of God. During mass and during any service, for the sake of humility, often say to yourself: I am earth and ashes; I, Lord, am a barely noticeable stream of life, which very recently began to flow, and You are the whole Ocean, and even incomparably more, because from You all life flowed and flows. I am the instantaneous flash of lightning due to transience, and You are the unsetting eternal Sun. My life in my face has recently flared up and will soon go out, but Your life has neither beginning nor end - it eternally shines and will never go out. The life of all creatures, like the rays of the sun, relates to You; only these rays, each in itself, are fleeting, if you look with the bodily eye: it will shine and then stop, and another will appear in its place. People and all creatures of all ages and all places lived and live by You, because You are the Source of life. Without You there is no life - neither physical nor spiritual. I am nothing before You - and how can this nothingness sometimes dare to reject That which is the Fullness of being? If there is an ocean of material light (the sun) illuminating the earth’s hemisphere, then, without a doubt, there is also an Ocean of spiritual light (God), which is the cause of the first ocean. And in order to create such a luminary that would shine over such a vast distance, the Creator Himself must be omnipresent and all-seeing. August 24. After mass. What indescribable heavenly joy the Holy Mysteries produced in the soul. Be assured forever that he who receives communion worthily is truly united with the God of peace and all comfort [2 Cor. 1.3]. And they did not come to this place of torment [Lk. 16.28]. This means that there is undoubtedly torment for sinners. Imagine, brothers, what the One who moves the luminaries or bright balls across the sky must be like. By their size and by the magnitude of their peals, judge His infinity; by their beneficence, judge the goodness of the Creator; by their expediency, judge His wisdom. You now feel yourself in the body, or you limit your sense of being to the body. But imagine the time when your soul will leave your body, and at the same time the feeling of your being will leave the body and, leaving it as soulless dust, will be limited to one soul and will see a completely different world? Terrible moments! Have all respect for the human word, living or written, even if it is imperfect. Disrespect for him will cause many troubles for your soul. Especially the word of the holy father is worth all respect; but there is nothing to say about God’s word: always listen to it with downcast eyes, humbly. Remember every day that the sun of your life is leaning more and more towards the west every day. Do not be arrogant with God and be humble. The life of every person is like a lamp, which is assigned to burn for a certain period of time, after which it will go out. In every person, even the most beautiful, for the time being or for the occasion, there is a bad side hidden, which is revealed on occasion, sometimes the more so, the nicer the person with whom we were in relations. There is a lot of evil in every person. Brethren! We will not now lay it down for you softly or, as the prophet says, put a head under each of your elbows, so that later you will not have to suffer cruelly and endlessly, but we will speak cruel words about Gehenna, so that you can avoid it while there is time. Let us not flatter you now and indulge your weaknesses, so that in the next century you will not tell us: how come you, shepherds, did not assure us with the word of God that there is such a terrible Gehenna? We thought that she was nothing more than a threat, or if we thought and believed that she existed, we forgot, and you, out of duty, did not want to remind us of her? So, brethren, there is, undoubtedly, future eternal torment. Of this [we are assured] […] by the word of God, the writings of the holy fathers, especially St. Chrysostom. Man, for all his greatness, as a rational being, is so small in this world, so limited, that everything here limits him: air, water, and solid earth; almost every insect lives with it - a fly, a spider, a flea, a bug, a bug; the latter even feed on his flesh. Many animals, or most of them, are scary for him, few are tame. Birds soar in the heights and do not want to know him: they have one supreme Lord - God, they are all born, grow and live independently of us; Heavenly Father feeds them, not us. We ourselves, from breathing to sleep - in all functions of animal nature, are subject to an outside force, an outside order. We will give an answer to God why we did not tell the parishioners the whole will of God. Therefore, in any case, we must reveal to them the will of God regarding them. Agree, brethren, that there, in the heights, must be the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s strange to imagine that life would exist only with us - on earth, which is like a barely noticeable point in the middle of the sky. The sky is limitless - there it is necessary to assume the fullness of life. You go on a steam ship and, with the enormous power of steam, dig through the humid element, or with the same power of steam you force enormous weights to roll along smooth rails, or launch into the upper layers of the air in a balloon - all this cannot but surprise people like you, all these discoveries do honor to the human mind. But even here we should be more surprised not at man, but at the Creator of man. The human mind is a partial similarity to the Mind of God. Moreover, the human mind has found only a means of applying ready-made, long-existing forces of nature to life. Therefore, I look at the works of the human mind and send glory to the Creator, to Whom alone glory is due. With all these inventions, man still crawls on the earth and does not soar to the sky, his true fatherland; It’s even a little pity that with these inventions a person does not manage to find means of salvation. You fly in a hot air balloon, but only for the pleasure and surprise of the short-term spectators, and not for their [substantial] benefit. The stylites who rose on the pillars are far more honorable than you: rising from the ground in body, they also rose in spirit, but you either don’t rise at all and your thoughts still walk on the ground, or you rise, but only when you fly. In the liquid element you make a path for yourself, but in your life you do not worry about making a path to heaven. It's a pity. This mind is only earthly. We are accustomed to nature, and habit closes our eyes. Let us eliminate it, albeit for the time of deliberately examining the wonderful world of God. Some Christians do not like churches or the church of God and generally find themselves cold to prayer. Make them love the church of God. And since they are usually in some darkness in this case in relation to the church, then illuminate their minds with a clear disclosure of the necessity and life-giving nature of dealing with spiritual needs; to bring into view their pitiful position, that they care only about sensual pleasures, about the needs of the (blind) body; that they are heading towards destruction. Every person is proud: turn this universal human weakness to good and say to anyone: you, brother, love yourself; but you don't know how to love yourself. According to my duty, I will teach you how to love yourself - and here I will reveal what true self-love consists of. At St. Chrysostom has the idea that the apostles and saints did and said more than the Lord Himself, because the Lord Himself did and said little, but left more to His apostles and saints. (At the end of the commentary on Romans.) When the evil one manages to tempt a person against his will, then the Lord, after the temptation has passed, takes him under His protection, and it becomes so easy for the person; the devil, having, so to speak, taken his dues from him, seems to withdraw for a while and no longer attacks him with such force and bitterness. I am God incarnate, I suffered for you on the cross, shed My Blood, but you don’t even want to believe that I am God, your Savior, that I gave you My Flesh and Blood for food and drink! What are you worthy of after this according to your own judgment? People are perplexed by the boundless goodness of God, by which He gave us His most pure Body and Blood for food and drink, just as they are perplexed about the Kingdom of Heaven. The gifts are so great that we, limited, and crafty ones at that, are perplexed as to how this can be. But it is easier for God to fulfill this than for us to believe it. It is easier for Him to fulfill His word than to leave it undone; the latter is not even possible. Sometimes, for example, you wonder how the bread and wine will be transformed into the Mysteries, but it is easier for God to transform them than not to transform them. For the humility of man, the invisible, wise, known force in nature works not without our knowledge. For example, I see flowers at a certain time, and then after a while nature gives me fruits. Eliminate the habit and look at these and similar phenomena with the eye of an observer. Likewise, a person is formed in the womb of the mother, invisible to us, but nevertheless reliably and wisely. It's the same with all animals. When darkness covers the earth and the rays of the sun cannot reach it, then it is timely to imagine that when passions surround our soul, then the beneficial influences of God’s grace cannot reach us. The most amazing thing, beyond all hope and aspiration, is that God became a man. And when this happened, everything that followed was both understandable and natural (everything, therefore, is the Mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ). Chrysostom's Word in Interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew, p. 28. Let us believe, he says in another place, Paul that he loved Christ so ardently, when there are people to the same degree (as Paul loved Christ) servile to passions; What’s incredible about Pavlova’s love? That is why our love for Christ is weaker, because all our strength is exhausted by vicious love, and we are predators, lovers of money, slaves of vain glory. How beautifully said! Internally, I am the greatest sinner: an infidel, a blasphemer, a murmurer, a suicide, and a hater, in a word - sometimes there is a whole hell inside me. There is so much evil in me. And how painful it is to endure the internal torment of sin. Anyone who wants to verify the reality of eternal torment and its cruelty can see its similarity in this state of mind. The hellish state of your soul has passed and was with its deadening severity for a short time (4 hours). Afterwards, the Lord again accepted you under His mercy. Learn from this sincerity, simplicity of faith. When the Spirit of God was with you, then you felt good, but when he left you, you felt bad; but he left you because of unbelief or because you succumbed to the thoughts of unbelief that attacked you. Also, do not offend the Holy Spirit by carelessly reading your prayers: and for this He will leave you. It is beyond any doubt that joy in the heart, or, better, in the whole being, after communion of the most pure Mysteries comes precisely from worthy acceptance of them. When you partake of them unworthily, there is no joy, but only sadness about your unworthy acceptance of them. How hard one must try to partake of them with faith and heartfelt contrition for sins. Speak out calmly about the mistakes of family or strangers, without getting angry. Diseases are beyond our precautions and forethought: man is completely dependent on God for the well-being of his body. Reason is the light of God in man; in objects that do not exceed reason, he is the measure of God's truth; his light, his suggestions must be respected by us. When the evil one darkens your thoughts at the name of the Lord Jesus, trying to keep this ever-worshipping and saving name in darkness, you say to him: evil one! - you yourself, during the Lord’s earthly life, confessed Him as the Son of God; How do you now contradict yourself, hiding for my mind in darkness the Divinity of my Sweetest Jesus? Is it possible for you, the spirit of lies, to believe in anything? And tell yourself: the demons also believe in God and tremble [Jas. 2:19], - how do I believe so weakly and not tremble, damned one?! You want to see in nature an example of how God sees everything everywhere. You can see this sample partly in the sun. Although in the shadow the sun does not penetrate us with its rays, it nevertheless shines throughout the earth’s hemisphere and often illuminates the darkest places in nature. But the eyes of the Lord are darker than the rays of the sun. About worshiping God in spirit and truth; the meaning of the heart in prayer - based on Holy Scripture and experience; the meaning of tears based on the legends of the holy fathers and constant experiments. Unbelieving! Faith does not need any new arguments, which, like new pillars, could support its building. This building is an eternal, indestructible stronghold, which even the entire force of hell cannot overcome. Our faith speaks for itself. Her teaching or her word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword: it pierces to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and is a judge of the thoughts and intentions of the heart [Heb. 4.12]. The word of our faith is the word of Truth Itself; For this word the apostles, martyrs, saints, saints and righteous people fought to the contempt of all earthly people. The face of the Divine Leader of our faith shines brighter than the sun with His Divine signs or wonders, which speak for Him irrefutably for any fanatic. He performed direct Divine miracles with His power during His earthly life, and He always does now, so that, according to His words, He is always with us now, never being separated from us. These miracles are known, especially for ascetics in faith and piety. The holiness of the Sacraments of our faith, especially for those who worthily perform or receive them with living faith and love and Christian humility in the simplicity of the heart, is obvious from their life-giving and saving power, especially the Most Holy Sacrament of Communion, which is clearer and louder than any evidence, and by its very consequences in the soul of a worthy communicant speaks for its truth and life-giving. In general, in our faith there are no idle names, no idle rituals without action; with us everything is alive and beneficial, so that if any unbeliever wanted to dispute anything, he can be exposed very easily by pointing out how, for entire millennia, our saints, for example, from the Most Holy Mother of God to Christ for the sake of fools, beneficially, like luminaries, act on the faithful children of the Church of Christ laboring on earth, saving and covering from troubles, comforting in sorrows, admonishing in difficult cases, reinforcing faith, warming the heart, encouraging deeds of piety, etc. Try most of all in life to maintain and increase faith. Through faith we are saved, and faith is the basis of Christian activity; a person without faith does not live like a Christian. Especially often stir up in your heart faith in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead: this, according to the apostle, will save you: if... you... believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you will be saved [Rom. 10.9]. Be sure that God, having raised Jesus Christ, will raise you with Him and make you sit in heaven in Christ if you remain faithful to the Lord until death. What does it mean that you become hardened when the devil manages to take you captive? Do you want to increase the ulcer and not heal it? Use patience and humble prayer. Bitterness is the weapon of the devil. This is all he achieves. He triumphs when you murmur against the all-good God. Be as sincere, kind and affectionate to your family as possible: then all troubles on their part will be destroyed by themselves; then, according to the apostle, you will overcome evil over good, if they have evil against you and express it. Be convinced by bitter experience how painful it is for the soul to hastily read sacred prayers at times of need, how cruelly this sin tyranns the soul. Your haste depends on an incomprehensible embarrassment, which instantly arises from suspiciousness or from the heavy, gloomy idea that you have to continue the work of reading. Try to uproot pride and laziness. Learn to use humble, fervent prayer to run in spiritual sorrow under the protection of the Zealous Intercessor before God, the Mother of God. You prayed to Her - and your grief, painful as hell, passed. How many opportunities there are for the evil one to lead us into sin! The very torment of the thoughts of unbelief for the soul proves very clearly that these thoughts are false; Their falsity is also proven by the fact that they do not arise in a calm state of the soul and not when everything is bright in the mind, but when some kind of darkness is spread out in the mind. A bright mind can now refute them. That is why, when you have thoughts of unbelief, you must immediately take the most calm and important position. Unbelief is very crafty, like any other sin, and the thoughts of unbelief, being false, surely come from the devil, because every lie is from him. Strange thing! Unbelief does not provide a single proof of why something is wrong, untrue, and with almost irresistible force draws the poor soul, which still does not agree with it, to its side - while faith, based on the unfalse assurance of the Self-Existing Truth, is indisputable, and even reason can present a lot of evidence that this should be so, although sometimes in a way incomprehensible to us. Truth never forces people to believe themselves, but lies, unable to force people to believe themselves voluntarily, uses violence and cunning to achieve this. The Father of Lies darkens the mind so that a person does not see the truth that is tangible to him, and in this blinded state drags him to the side of lies. God! Always enlighten our minds. Do not despair of God’s mercy when, during home prayer or public worship, thoughts of unbelief greatly trouble you. Just try to repel them with all the measures that depend on you and do not give in to them, and when you give in, weaken arbitrarily in the struggle, then you will sin. In order for our heart to sincerely and ardently turn to God, for this we need to tear it apart with some kind of grief, but without that it is cunning and cold. Just as a field only grows seeds well when it is fertilized and well dug up, churned up, so our heart only bears the fruit of true prayer when it is fertilized by reading the word of God or the writings of the holy fathers, or by our own soul-saving reflection and torn to pieces by some kind of grief. Why are you afraid to enter the depths of prayer and shake your whole being for it, but you glide only on the outside, only the words rustle on your lips? Move not just your lips, hands and eyes, but your whole being to the deep movements of your mind and heart! For this work you will receive a reward - the sweetness of prayer, peace and joy after it and during its very continuation. The tongue is a very dangerous thing, and the devil, acting on our thoughts and hearts, encourages us to express with our tongue the thoughts and feelings inspired by it, in order either to become confused and lose peace, which he always wants to take away from us, knowing its importance and life-giving value for us, for our spiritual pursuits, or to disturb the world of others, to quarrel with us and thus suddenly cause double evil. Pay attention to your conversation, its progress. There were examples that began [with friendship] and ended with enmity. Love should be the rule everywhere. If you don’t have love in your heart, be afraid to talk too much; Better keep quiet. When the evil one rushes at you with suggestions of unbelief and throws your thoughts into disorder, immediately establish calm in your soul and turn your pleading gaze to God, so that He will drive away this darkness in your soul and help your unbelief. You know from experience what tears, sighs, kneeling, beatings on the chest it takes to get rid of the tyranny of the sin you have committed, which deprives you of peace of mind, boldness before God and produces mortal torment in you. Let this be a science for you - to avoid all sin as an inhuman tormentor. Having again received the mercy of God after sin and boldness before Him, thank Him for this with all your soul and pray to Him that He will give you the strength not to stumble. The Lord, in His infinitely great goodness, poured out on you all the blessings that could be poured out on you in your rank and position. Be grateful for that. Imagine what your parents could have most wanted from you when you were sent to learn to read and write for the first time? Almost just so that you complete the seminary course; they hardly thought about the Academy, although there were people from your family in this higher spiritual educational institution. And you also went through the Academy - the very last limit of spiritual education, and then, having completed your spiritual education, you became a clergyman - a priest. For material, perishable bread that supports only perishable life, you endure great difficulties, but for incorruptible bread, which supports the incorruptible, eternal life of the soul, you do not want to endure even small difficulties, you are too lazy to read the instructions for communion properly. Look at the important contradiction in your affairs. If a carnal person whispers to you: what is the need to repeat the same thing every day (the same prayers and verses) and tire yourself with such repetition, you tell him: every day I fall into the same sins, therefore I should not be lazy to repeat the same prayers that heal these sins; further - although for a carnal person the repetition of the same prayers is, of course, tiresome, but after worthy communion the Lord will reward this work a hundredfold: then, together with the soul, the flesh will leap with joy. Pray in spirit - and it will be easy and pleasant; remember how good it is to receive communion with dignity. Before communion of the holy life-giving Mysteries, never indulge in useless and harmful reasoning, with which the evil one only wants to gain time and steal faith, but believe unquestioningly that the word of the Lord is the truth. The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord [Ps. 32.5]. Do not be afraid of any impoverishment due to frequent and unexpected guests visiting you. In this case, you imitate the Lord, who feeds all flesh from His right hand, and He will not bring you to poverty. Just don’t allow unscrupulous parasites to eat at your meal, and always well-meaning people; be sincere, good-natured, hospitable and affectionate towards them. This is virtue. Remember Abraham. If an evil force begins to shake and confuse your mind with doubts about the objects of faith, you say: by people a thousand times smarter than me, all this has been studied and passed on to the people for undoubted faith, and therefore it would be ridiculous and sinful not to believe everything that was handed down to us by the holy fathers and, above all, by the word of God. If you are hesitant or disturbed by thoughts of disbelief in anything concerning the faith of Christ, look at the cross, at the image of the Savior; and if you are in church - to the whole faces of saints who labored in the faith. Namely: on the faces of the prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, saints and righteous ones; let them, louder than any trumpet, expose your stupid, low, cowardly unbelief, every time you look at them - mental or physical. Sometimes in prayer to God, or to the Most Pure Mother of God and the saints, or just when naming them, you don’t want to pronounce their names properly. How sinful this is! The Savior, for example, endured a cross, a nail, a spear for you, but you are too lazy to pray to Him properly, even to properly name His name; The saints labored for Him in various ways, sometimes as martyrs, and you don’t want to honor their memory by reverently pronouncing their names! Morning and evening prayers are the means to spend the day and night safely. Therefore, speak them with full diligence and love, carefully, slowly. For our prayer to be valid, to calm our soul and make us happy, very little is needed: sincere, simple-hearted faith in God, humility and the desire to have what you pray for. Today you made your first experience of proper, unhurried, word-by-word prayer and were convinced by experience that such prayer is easy and extremely soothing and apparently pleasing to the Lord God; in addition, although, apparently, it is long, because each word is given weight and time for full pronunciation and each word has time to communicate to the soul the concept or feeling associated with it, it does not seem long at all, since the soul does not notice the time, completely immersed in prayer. Meanwhile, before, when you said your prayers hastily, they seemed very long to you, although sometimes you shortened them. After this, learn to always say prayers in the proper order, according to the word. A wicked and unfaithful man! Take away wickedness from your soul, and then faith will live in your heart: otherwise you are worthy of all the wrath of God. Why is there such darkness in your soul that you do not believe the Most Holy, the Most Immutable? Look at yourself, what are you like before communion and what are you like after communion? Before communion you are weak in soul and body, and after communion you are strong in spirit and body; your whole being trembles with joy and indescribable, heavenly peace. What could be more convincing, more tangible than this? Always try to accept the Holy Sacraments with simplicity of faith! Who is it that is trying to completely steal my faith? God knows that I want to have it alive and fiery, I want to warm it up - but [as luck would have it], it completely goes out. What kind of delusion is this? God! When I am tempted, give me relief so that I can bear it [1 Cor. 10.13]. I become an unbeliever. It seems that finally I will not believe in my own existence. When God sends misfortune to a person or when He deliberately rejects his prayer, then the person involuntarily rushes to God and seeks Him with tears, although previously he was a weak believer. The more familiar the prayers are and the more often they are spoken, the more carefully you need to read them, because habit produces in us inattention to what we know. God turned fire into dew for the Jewish youths - what is it worth for Him to turn bread into Body and wine into Blood? Is there anything difficult for the Lord? [ Gen. 18.14]. God! Your people, who apparently reject You, honor You. Look: here is Your most insignificant and most unworthy servant, honored by You with the rank of the priesthood, has the happiness of serving You only somewhat reverently, and the city is filled with praise for him - unworthy of praise (because he did no more than what was commanded to him). No, not to us, Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory [Ps. 113.9]. You alone, Lord, truly, for us it is only shame on our faces. Let this glory be to You, and not to me. When the Lord, during the celebration of the Liturgy, deprives you of the gift of faith, then He teaches you sincerity in prayer, simple-minded, childlike trust in Him. He sees the deceit of your heart, the superficiality of your prayer and wants you to be trusting and simple, like a child, to delve into prayer until you forget everything earthly. One attempt to doubt something sacred and mysterious is already a sin and must certainly be destroyed; and doubt itself, and even more so, is a sin that comes from our pride, insincerity, deceit, and distrust. Whatever is not of faith is sin [Rom. 14.23]. When a feeling of hatred towards someone arises in your soul, then you eradicate it with the following fair remark to yourself: you are worth all the hatred of others for your rude, evil inclinations, and not the person whom you hate; he is worth all the love and indulgence. Why all these griefs, reproaches, judgments about your brother who offended you? Be meek and gentle and leave everything to God, who judges righteously, like Jesus Christ, who, being slandered... did not slander each other; while suffering, he did not threaten, but handed it over to the Righteous Judge [1 Pet. 2.23]. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay [Rom. 12.19]. You sometimes have a tendency to doubt the existence of even the Supreme Being and the trinity of Persons; but think carefully, is it possible not to believe that, the authenticity of which is attested by the Incarnate Son of God Himself, the prophets, the apostles, countless hosts of martyrs, the venerable and righteous and all the saints, and is constantly testified today in the word of God and in nature itself? What has not yet been doubted by man! He sometimes even doubts himself. Believe humbly. This is the fruit of the suggestions of an evil, proud spirit, which with such a chimera wants to destroy your virtue, your service to God. If you notice in your soul a movement of hatred towards the enemy and you want to slander, then remember the words of the Savior: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you [Matt. 5.44], – and be at peace. These words, like lightning, enlighten the soul in the darkness of passion. When you pray, be sure to try to fix your mind on God, and do not pray without this. Otherwise, your prayer will be both difficult for you and ungodly: you will only rush to finish it as quickly as possible, you will do it unwillingly. And because of this, your heart will remain stony, incorrigible, because forced prayer does not soften or correct it. Remember that God always sees you. People would not grumble about their misfortune if they knew that it was very useful for their eternity. Often people, amazed by the art of a human artist, are so captivated by his art that, seeing him as if in his work, they kiss this work. So we, looking at a flower or grass, can kiss them, seeing in them as if their Creator Himself. How seriously you sin against the Lord God, thinking and grumbling against Him that He will rain in nature at the wrong time, because (at the wrong time) you returned late from a walk and got wet. Don’t you reason that God is the Heavenly Father of every creature, and while the rain causes you only some harm, it brings benefit to millions of creatures. Repent sincerely and never think like that in the future. Heavenly Father! Forgive me every sin! Your good clothes have become damp, but the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away [Job. 1.21]. (Although far from completely.) Isn’t that [surviving]? Look at the wanderings of the Jews through the desert to the promised land and learn. Despite the greatest, continuous blessings of God, they grumbled at God at the slightest failure, at the slightest misfortune, as if everything should have been according to their will, and God should have subordinated His will to their will (insolence)! Such is the blindness of passions! Such is human pride! But what happened to them, ungrateful ones? Not entering the promised land, they died in a pitiful manner in the desert. This world, this earth is a desert; heaven is the promised land! You, like a proud Jew, grumble against God at every failure in your journey to the land of promise, despite the fact that at every step you take advantage of His greatest benefits. Lest we too perish miserably outside the promised land! Always remember your sins - and do not forget, do not become arrogant, but humble yourself like a child. We, ungrateful and malicious, do not know how to use God’s mercies, we do not know how and do not want to earn them through devotion to His all-good will, we cannot endure the slightest test, we are surrounded by God’s mercy. The devil looks at us enviously and says to God: this man only blesses You to your face, because You have given him everything; touch only his property, especially his bones, and then it will be obvious that he blesses You only for Your gifts, and in misfortune he will murmur against You, blaspheme You. So what? Oh, misfortune! That's how it happens. When it comes to our self-sacrifice, then it really turns out that we are only capable of thanking God in happiness, but in misfortune we grumble. Our ancient enemy remains in fact right here. If you do not believe the heavenly mysteries of faith indicated in Revelation, and spiritually strive 74 then know that you are a natural person, and not a spiritual one, without any doubt. Pay attention to your situation: it is very unfavorable. Listen to how the holy word of God thunders against you: The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, because he considers them foolishness; and cannot understand, because this must be judged spiritually [glor.: he strives spiritually] [1 Cor. 2.14]. And this spiritual internal competition happens to you, cum sacra peragas 75. Pray to God sincerely and earnestly that He will make you a spiritual man from a spiritual person. Any respect, even if it is the highest, that you give to the shrine is insignificant in comparison with what it deserves; and therefore try to always have greater and greater respect, without limiting yourself and not being lazy in improving it. How sweet are the fruits of good communion: joy and peace permeate your whole soul, and everything around you is so pleasant, good, as if everything is smiling at you! When you are outraged by thoughts of unbelief or blasphemy, then put yourself in the state of your former innocence, when you were seven or eight years old, etc. and when you unquestioningly revered the shrine. This is a powerful weapon against thoughts. Unless you are converted and become like children... [Matt. 18.3]. Every bad thought, the slightest inclination of the flesh towards laziness, every ear of laziness, destroy at the very beginning. The slightest mistake on your part will give her the means to take possession of you. Beware. Where did you get the idea that everything in life should go your way and nothing should happen contrary to your wishes? And your actions say that you think so. This is the greatest misconception. Are you God? Where is the supreme will of the God of spirits and all flesh? Submit to the higher will and always expect temptations in life. Many things will often happen against your will. What is more important to you: the health of a person similar to you in everything, or money, which in any case God can give you, but health, if it is completely lost, nothing will return? Illness is a visitation from God. Do you sometimes think that your sins are preventing the Mystery of the Holy Body and Blood from being accomplished? But what priest or bishop is without sin? The sacrifice of sins is made. Moreover, such is His greatness, such is His mercy [Sir. 2:18]: He is so great that if you repent of your sins, He despises them, forgets them and is ready to do everything for you according to your faith. So, with faith and love, always partake of the most pure Mysteries and do not think that they might not be fulfilled. Remember the liturgy on Saturday, July 13th. How especially good, as if in God’s paradise, you felt after communion. It was from living, sincere faith in the Sacrament and from the consciousness of your sins that you tasted that the Lord is good [Ps. 33.9]. You are stingy and indignant when guests come to you and destroy a very small part of your property. If you had nothing in stock or only very little, then your displeasure would be profound. But if there is a fair margin, it is completely unfounded. Decide what is more valuable: money and the dead things bought with it, or the friendship of rational beings acquired through it? Moreover, remember how others accepted you in your youth, nourished you, warmed you, caressed you. Stop being stingy. She is stupid. You sometimes rejoice at the [falls of] your enemies or the change of [their] happy circumstances to not entirely favorable ones. This is sinful and unreasonable. It is sinful - because it is contrary to love for one’s neighbor; unwise - because this could happen to you, and then they will rejoice at your misfortune. In addition, while you rejoice at the change in the circumstances of another, God sees both you and this other person, sees your gloating, and sees the spiritual qualities of the other, which may be much better than yours, which is why God punishes him, correcting his mistakes. Ascending from the present living society of the hierarchy along the ladder of centuries, we finally reach the first successors of the apostles, and thus - the apostles and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. A consequence must have a beginning. Imagine more often this living, majestic chain of church pastors and teachers. When thoughts of pride arise within you, delighting you with the sight of some virtue, reject them with the thought that we ourselves are not capable of thinking anything good on our own, but all our ability comes from God. When you call upon the Spirit of God in prayer to come and dwell in you, think carefully about His greatness. Remember that your life comes from Him. For what is your life? This is an insignificant particle of the universal life that He poured out throughout the world. You have a twofold life from the Spirit of God: a lower, or physical, and a higher, or spiritual, the improvement of which you must take special care of as having no end, and, moreover, being damaged by sin. Your physical life is common with animals and plants. And your spiritual life must be in common with the life of the Angels. One life is in the body, the other is in the soul. Pray in the silence of your feelings, without rushing. In the part about the fall of man, insert a thought: why are people in general so reluctant to pray to God, read sacred books, calling them dry and not at all interesting? From corruption. You are very close to insignificance and in your being insignificant. In order to be something, tie yourself by faith to the Fullness of all being - and then you will be something. In fact, what does your private life mean as part of this huge, endless life? Pure nothingness. Like steam, it flies away, and another private life takes its place. Reverence the Source of all life and cleave to Him if you want to enjoy the present, abiding life - in heaven. Look, thousands, millions, billions of private lives pass, but the common life - the life of the world, of nature, continues; and soon you will not be among this common life, but it will still be there; for you the world will be the same, the people will be the same. Find out that you are a covetous person and heal yourself from your passion. You don't need to eat a lot of cow's butter - it's bad for scrofula. An excellent conversation can be made about the Providence of God. Imagine vividly how God, although imperceptibly for others, but clearly for those over whom He reveals His fatherly Providence, acts in the world: the sick and various other unfortunate sinners or the pious. But what is especially certain is that God will not allow His creatures to glory in earthly blessings in blind self-forgetfulness: beauty, wealth, health, rank, or even vices. The priest can see God's Providence over people more than anyone else. From the Gospel. Tower of Siloam. Dream: I served mass alone, without a deacon. When the Holy Gifts had already been consecrated and I had received communion, a little boy, rather unkempt, appeared at the altar; starts talking about the Holy Mysteries, speaks unkindly about them, like (oh, horror!) about some kind of syrup, and not about the Body and Blood; he takes the spoon himself and tries them, repeats the same thing again - and leaves. To prove that this is the Blood and Body of the Lord, I pointed out to him the consequence after communion - joy in the soul, which would not have happened if we had received communion of some ordinary syrup. When he left, I cursed him three times for humiliating the Mysteries of the Lord. Soon I met the frightened Deacon Alexander, who said that he had heard about this circumstance. I expressed to him the idea whether the schismatics had sent this daring boy from among themselves? It was a spirit of malice. You have become very pampered in happiness and have become very impatient. But patience is necessary: ​​be sure to get used to it. You sometimes forget yourself and look with disbelief at some obviously true provisions of faith; you are proud from the same delicacy. But if I could look at you in your primitive state: would you become so incredulous; wouldn’t you, on the contrary, be completely trusting of faith in everything, like a child? No matter how tasty the dinner, or the food in general, is, never get carried away with the sensation of taste and do not burden your stomach, and with it your soul, with a lot of food. Dream: a bottle of good caliber, dropped by some merchant and picked up from a square (in the capital), and a customs fine for it of five rubles in silver (the bottle had a half-broken bottom: how severe is the response for an incorrect purchase). Dreams teach us in parables, not directly; they must always be interpreted. Try to always wear clean clothes to church. But even if our outer man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day [2 Cor. 4.16]. When you are overcome by a runny nose and hoarseness and your chest feels heavy, do not be afraid: it is your nature that is intensifying to spew out excess phlegm. Carry with firmness. Eat and drink less: intemperance causes a lot of impurities to accumulate. It is not for nothing that intemperance is considered the cause of disease. If people in this life knew what serves to their peace [glory: hedgehog to your humility], about the circumstances of their death, they would not act as many do. Now, by the wise arrangement of Providence, this is hidden... from their eyes. Did the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who so unheard of mocking the Divine Redeemer and killing Him on the cross, think that they would have to suffer so cruelly for their villainy during the destruction of Jerusalem? Oh, if only the Jews knew what would bring peace to them! But this is now hidden from their eyes. Oh, if even now the evil people who curse the life and deeds of pious people, oppressing them and leading them, perhaps, to the grave, knew even to their own humility: but this is now hidden from their eyes [Lk. 19.42] by the wise destinies of Providence (to give freedom to human actions and not constrain their will). But why does Heavenly Justice not punish the crime now, but mostly after a considerable time: for example, Jerusalem was punished after forty years? Just as now one can notice this: the victim of malice has long been in the grave, and the villain is still alive and prospering, although the hand of the Lord finally weighs down on him with all its strength? Probably because during all this time the measure of God’s long-suffering is still being filled, which infinitely exceeds human patience. Your virtue is not high: you do good only when self-sacrifice is not required on your part. (Dream: a baby, eaten away by scabs, near some building); [L...] and others are better than you. My God! Prophecy! Father Archpriest Nektarevsky, deceased, was graciously accepted by God after his death. God even rewarded him for his care of the church of God: a significant, fortune-telling dream. (An asterisk or cockade on the forehead of a janitor who allegedly died. The deceased said that the janitor would have received this asterisk if he had lived, according to the new schedule of forms for civil and military officials and for persons serving in government buildings. By a janitor we must mean him, because he was a trustee of the house of God; just as a janitor takes care of the cleanliness of an ordinary house, so a trustee of the house of God takes care of its splendor and cleanliness. Face The archpriest was in full health. He had a new, clean kamilavka on his head.) Do not say that the rewards of some monastics go for nothing: they have great work to do. Guidance 76 from the development of plants about the conception and growth of animals to the fact that God first created the world out of nothing. Plants and animals develop from a microscopic seed and become visible over time from the unknown, like the centuries of the world or, better, the world itself. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that what is visible was made out of things that are visible [Heb. 11.3]. The feeding of five thousand people with five loaves: a miracle of nature. The Lord loved Martha, just like Mary, despite the fact that she worried and spoke about the many services [Lk. 10.40], that is, I thought more about everyday things. And He will surely not reject our Marthas, as long as they are simple-hearted and zealous towards the Lord. To live peacefully and healthily, you need to live more in the world of external memory and imagination and pay less attention to your body; destroy unpleasant thoughts and feelings and replace them with better ones; look at everything indifferently and never get excited. In order for your reading of prayers to be unhurried, clear and separate, you need to devote so much time to each word so that the concept of the object expressed in the word has time to be born in your head, or so that an idea of ​​the object is born. Then reading will be both easy and clear, and without this condition the language will experience extraordinary difficulty in handling. Peace of mind is also necessary when reading. God! Because with all our being we belong to You as the Creator, behold, in misfortune we murmur at You, we say insolence to You, if not out loud, then silently. But when we are happy, then we think less about gratitude to You than we murmur in misfortune. Now You have struck my bodily composition with temporary melancholy, and I lose my temper. Some people do not want to know You for a long time as a tender Father in their happiness, but when misfortune visits them, they grumble at You, and not at themselves... And this is because over us, sinners, Your power, Kingdom and power!!! Oh, ungrateful creatures!!! Every time passion overcomes you, kneel before the icon and read with heartfelt attention: Have mercy on me, God! The hireling... leaves the sheep and runs [John. 10.12]. The mercenary can now be seen: he has no sincere love for intelligent sheep. He leaves his sheep, so to speak, at every step with his zeal for their spiritual and physical benefits, with his prayer, with his teaching and edification. If he prays for them, he prays more mechanically, according to well-known, ready-made prayers; if he teaches, it is more in order to show his learning; if he edifies, it is more feignedly, out of duty and out of blatant necessity. Oh, how beautifully the Lord described mercenaries! Indeed, the hireling for the most part leaves the sheep and runs away at the most critical moments for the sheep: when they are in danger of being tempted, straying from the path of truth or from the path of a good life, and even when the sheep is lying on its deathbed. Even then, he rather turns his attention not to the recovery of the flock, but to its death, especially if it is a wavy flock, because part of the wool will go to him in the event of death. The word is true that the only good Shepherd is our Lord Jesus Christ. Here is an example for us, shepherds, how to lay down our souls for the flock, if necessary; This is the way a shepherd behaves before his flock. So the mercenary... leaves the sheep and runs. Be afraid of being a mercenary. Be completely sincere towards your flock, and let not a single evil thought nest in you, like a poisonous snake, dangerous not so much for others as for you. Place yourself in all cases of life before God, who searches hearts and wombs. Try to always have a bright eye of the mind and do not darken it with dark passions. Know what is higher: the spiritual benefit of the flock or yours - material, pocket; salvation of the soul or ringing metal. Brethren! All our lives we will try to assimilate not only our minds, but also our hearts, the truths of the Christian faith, especially the truth about our redemption from eternal death by the Son of God and about the inheritance of eternal life in heaven. Hold on to eternal life, the apostle wrote to Timothy, to which you are called [1 Tim. 6.12]. Without this assimilation, our life, our moral perfection, will either not move forward at all, or will even descend downward - which should not happen in Christianity: we are called to holiness, and not to uncleanness. When you compose conversations for parishioners, look at them as the creatures of the Creator, about whom you will speak, blessed from head to toe: imagine vividly how much God has done for them and is constantly doing, just as He will do. Against the beautiful prayers put into the mouths of Christians by the Church, the carnal, lazy person has a weapon - inattention and absent-mindedness and pretense while reading them. You need to strictly watch yourself so that each prayer is read from the heart, slowly. In a person’s conversation with God, many things sometimes hinder him through the letter, in general, through matter, through which he must make his way to the spiritual Being, and the very inclination of the flesh stops more on what is close to the senses. Before communion of the terrible, pure and life-giving Mysteries, break your self, crush it, destroy it. During prayer and sacred services, be sure to try to be completely calm, without being entertained or indignant in anything. Church books are the richest mine of thoughts, holy and sublime, for the preacher. But this wonderful mine is both little known and of little value in the eyes of the parishioners, because it is not understood. To extract it from this obscurity and present it in a generally understandable form, to express it in a living and generally understandable language. Your life is from the Spirit of God, and therefore everything that is pleasant for you in life, you owe to Him. Thank Him constantly and do not forget. All the parables of the Savior are amazingly like markers: as if they all relate to modern people. About talents. In dealing with God, that is, in public and domestic prayers, have the faith and sincerity of Moses and other prophets. You are a priest and have been appointed by God to intercede for His people, to offer sacrifices for their and your sins, to teach them. Tell God: since You Yourself have deigned to place me, unworthy, in this high service, then deign to listen to me when I pray for Your people or for myself. Do not be afraid, speak to Him as to the One Who is Forthcoming: He listens to you. As if you accepted Abel’s gifts... Brothers! You have all been familiar with these great names for a long time: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - because from your very birth until now the Church very often announces them to us in your homes, in (the church), in the church. Why are the names of Father and Son and Holy Spirit used so often? Because in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit everything lives and is well-ordered: this heaven with all the luminaries, and the earth, and we ourselves live and move and exist through them [Acts. 17.28]. This was not done in a corner [Acts. 26,26]. 77 The Sovereign Trinity should be considered 1) in Its mutual relation, 2) in relation to the spiritual and material world, and 3) primarily in relation to every Christian person. For example, in relation to the world - the Son of God created the world and bears It with His powerful word; in relation to a person - saves him. To the Holy Spirit - every all-saving wine... will soon take up from the earthly, uplift 78, increase... How can you more often express your faith in the Trinity? Prayer to the Most Holy Trinity or do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks through Him to God the Father [Col. 3.17]. About good angels. Who are Cherubim, Seraphim, etc. How great is the dignity of the Mother of God, Whom the Church calls the Most Honest Cherub and the Most Glorious, without comparison, Seraphim. Tibi non est irascendum: et ira tua semper rixa evenit. Attestor. 79 The Epistle to the Hebrews perfectly explains the mystery of the redemption of the whole world by the Blood of Christ. About the creation of the world. After the fire there was a breath of quiet wind, [and the Lord was there] [1 Kings. 19.12]. God created everything, everywhere, and acts through everything: He is on water, in fire, in a stormy spirit. Because He, that is, the Creator of the world, walked on water, ascended through the air, turned a storm into silence, turned fire into dew, etc. About the trinity of Persons in God. One Three Persons – one in essence. They have one will, one desire, equal strength and majesty. And the Lord wants to unite us with love in Himself: I want that these also may be one in us [Jn. 17.21]. You often hear, brethren, in church and in houses the ever-worshipped names of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Church uses them very often, as the name of the king is heard in some important public place. This is her God and the King of the universe. The Church uses these names extremely often and thereby wants to impress upon us that just as she herself lives and exists through Him, so we live through Him, and move and exist [Acts. 17.28]. Just as a son very often uses the name of his father and even adds his name to his name: the favored - the benefactor, the friend - his friend, the slave - the name of his master, so the Church and we, her faithful children, use the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, God our Father, Benefactor, Friend and Lord. You also often hear: Holy Trinity, Heavenly King, Our Father. The First Person of the Holy Trinity - God the Father, is our Father, the only one, according to the word of the Savior: and do not call your father on earth: for one is your Father [Matt. 23.9 ]; Father, by whom every family in heaven and on earth is called, the Father of generous gifts and the God of all joy [2 Cor. 1.3]. The Holy Spirit speaks through the prophets. Introduce Him to His prophecies. That is, they will cover it with precious fabrics. Host - a meeting of people, people (society); crowd, gathering. Balaam is a prophet called by King Balak to curse the Jews. Gog and Magog are the peoples who attacked the Jews from the northeast. Skudel – clay, shard, clay vessel; meager - clay, weak, fragile. ...weep for yourself (Luke 23:28). I am, and it’s as if I’m not. Breath of the quiet wind (Russian) – (1 Kings 19:12.) I will take it out - always, at any time. Cessation is fulfillment. Though your sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; if they are red as crimson, they will be white as wool. An apostle is a heretic, schismatic, apostate. Therefore, your sin exists. More – bigger, higher, better. This people has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they do not see with their eyes, and do not understand with their hearts [glory: neither understand with their hearts], and do not turn, so that I can heal them (John 12:40). This refers to the fallen Angel - the devil. A barker is a slanderer, a scolder, a mischievous person, an insidious person. Thoughts, reasoning (lat.). Inscribe - to reward, send back, express. Avarice, greed (lat.). Buiy - stupid, crazy, senseless, ignorant. “To You in the morning, who has immutably exhausted mercy for Your own sake, and who has dispassionately bowed down to the passions, the Word of God, grant peace to me who have fallen, O Lover of Mankind” (irmos of the 5th canon of the Canon of the Passion of Christ, tone 6). “A pillar of evil against God, the divine youths denounced; against Christ the staggering congregation of lawless people, advises in vain, is taught to kill, the life of the One who holds the hand: he will bless all creation, glorifying forever” (irmos of the 7th song of the three song from the sequence of Good Friday). Reptile is a reptile and a crawling insect. Become overwhelmed - to become stupid, worthless, go crazy. Always - when; while. Human ignorance (ignorance) is moral shortcomings and mistakes arising from ignorance and lack of enlightenment. Responsible - count, know, pay attention. Shaddai – God Almighty (Heb.). Adonai – Lord the Mighty (Heb.). Anfrax stones - topaz stones. Canopy – shadow, darkness, cover. Kidar - from the Hebrew language “bandage”, miter, a symbol of bishop’s grace and power. He surprised with mercy - showed His wondrous mercy. G.R. Derzhavin. Ode "God". Remember your last [days] [glory: your last] and you will never sin (Greek). They spent fifteen rubles a year on milk, no more, and how useful the milk was for so long! Do you really feel sorry for the dust [money] for this benefit? Stupid! (lat.). Value money little, but keep an account of it no less carefully (lat.). About our sublime Sacrament (lat.). While you are doing something holy (lat.). Words from the speech of the Apostle Paul before the governor Festus and King Agrippa, in which he says that the Lord Himself called him to preach the true faith, repentance and the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Festus calls this teaching crazy, to which the apostle objects: No... I am not crazy, but I speak words of truth and common sense. For the king knows about this... I do not at all believe that any of this was hidden from him; for this did not happen in a corner. To inspire - to inspire; in the spiritual sense - to elevate the mind, inspire with hope. You should not be angry: your anger always leads to a quarrel. I testify (lat.). You might be interested in: