Раздел 3

January 1, 1876 I thank the Lord for mercifully responding to my prayers of repentance, who despised me and saved me many times from the hardships and sorrows of sin. During an early mass in the Duma Church, at the end of a fierce temptation due to grief at the sexton who sang incorrectly, the worthy man rejoices in You. But I didn’t need to be embarrassed and upset: we are all human and prone to mistakes. January 3. Saturday evening. With all my heart I thank the Lord for delivering me from tightness and sorrow through the prayer of my repentance. I was angry with the beggars and tore out one of them by the hair, but I was punished by God. I thank the Lord for the sweet moments of peace and spiritual pleasure during the Sunday all-night vigil: the Lord consoled me with abundant peace, great tenderness and spiritual contemplation and spiritual prayer. Glory to the Lord! But I, an ungrateful blind man, almost lost this gift of grace through gluttony and satiety, drinking two glasses of milk in the evening, which made me feel heavy, I began to feel very sleepy, and I could not finish reading the rules! Oh, blindness! Oh, greed! Oh, hope for food, and not for grace! January 4. Science for me: in the evening, do not eat milk with black bread at night - extreme hardness of the heart, accompanied by the machinations of the enemy, tightness, roughness of the voice: trouble, and that’s all. And what grace I was honored with yesterday during the all-night vigil, what tenderness, what silence, what contemplation, what light, what closeness to the Lord and the Lord to me! I thank my Guardian Angel, who instructs me, intercedes for me, touches my heart, enlightens me! Thanks be to the Lord, who, out of unspeakable goodness, assigned me such a bright and good mentor, incorruptible, wise, immortal! I sinned before the Lord and my family after mass on Sunday, that I was angry at the noticed malfunction in my chapel: the spilled wooden oil - I could not stand it, but I had to calmly look at this mess, in order to maintain peace and order in the souls of both myself and my family, I had to cover up this guilt, this misdeed of my wife and children... When I wrote these words, my wife and children came to me and told the children to ask me for forgiveness and herself in lacrimis 133. This humility consoled me. I thank the Lord, who fulfilled my prayer. Give us, Lord, peace in every way. The Holy Angels and other Heavenly Powers are filled with whole, holy life, indestructible peace, indestructible cheerfulness, eternal courage and strength, indescribable beauty, light, high intelligence, the purest love for God and people, mutual friendship, insight and enlightenment. Such are our holy Guardian Angels. Wonderful angelic nature! But Christians who are worthy to reach the future age and the resurrection from the dead will be equal to the Angels, according to the word of the Lord Himself (Luke 20:35-36). Let us diligently strive for that age that has no end, unshakable, serene. God! Grant me to have heartfelt, unfeigned love for the rector of our church, Archpriest Paul and his family, and always think good and not evil about them. Let me see his dignity, his dignity, his intelligence, his meekness, kindness, kindness, condescension, patient nature. Strength is not the imam - give me the strength to love, Lord! Let us not remember his insults. Grant me, Lord, to see my sins, for which I am worthy of all condemnation and punishment, and never to be arrogant about myself, but to behave humbly, for I am filled with iniquity and infirmities. January 5, 1876. On Sundays, go to the prisoners for prayer, when there is a line at the Duma Church. I again sinned gravely before God and people, having embittered the beggars and, in an unrighteous anger, tearing out one of them by the hair; I have offended those who are natural to me and to God Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. I have offended Christ Himself in the person of the poor, for they are His members, His brethren, His children, His birth, the sheep of His pasture, His sheep from His flesh and from His bones, His deification. How do I still not have faith in the word of my Lord, who said: just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did it to Me, or: I was hungry, and you gave Me food and so on (Matthew 25:40, 34-35)? I have sinned gravely and unforgivably before You, Lord, for I sin in the same way without number, after Your tenfold reproofs and punishments, I sin in my mind, out of pride, selfishness, voluptuousness, lack of faith, lack of love for God, out of addiction to the corruptible goods of the earth. I kindle the fire of hell for myself. Do I really love and honor the Lord, who for my sake became poor and came down to earth to lead me to heaven, to immortal life, who was circumcised on the eighth day for my sake, and after thirty years was baptized by John in Herodan to wash away my filth? God! Seventy times the command to leave those who fall into sins (Matthew 18:22), forgive me this sin too, and I will also glorify Your generosity and Your endless mercy. I accuse myself, I denounce myself, I do not cover up my guilt, my malice, my severity, my cruelty, my covetousness, my addiction to temporal things, my ingratitude, my inattention. Am I giving away my own? Isn't it someone else's? Isn't it God's? For what do we have of our own except sins? Bad consequences from anger: crowding, burning fire in the soul and body, confusion, binding, shame, damage, severe damage to the blood! An angry person punishes himself, and punishes himself cruelly. We must feel sorry for him, and not irritate him, love him, and not hate him. The one who gives alms with anger deprives alms of its proper price and may lose its reward. Yes, this is what the devil strives for, trying to destroy the entire edifice of our virtues. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the weeping, the meek, the hungry and thirsty for righteousness, the truly merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers (and I am destroying my own peace and that of others), banishing the truth for the sake of (Matthew 5:3 – 12)... How meek and gentle are the beggars who ask me for alms when I scold them or even push them and pull their hair and nose! And I am like a fierce beast. From the repetition of anger and rage, our love for God and neighbor dries up, our heart hardens (coarsens) and becomes fearful and easily indignant. It is necessary to completely banish anger and malice. It's time to stop offending the Spirit of God. My constant mistake regarding the poor is that, out of habit and some kind of arrogance, I do not look at them as members of Christ and as Christ Himself, but as criminals and enemies and consider myself entitled to be offended, angry with them, scold them, even beat them. Oh, how I err and sin! God! Enlighten my heart, eyes darkened by passions, have mercy, guide me on Your path and save me. Amen. January 6, 1876. The Elits were baptized into Christ... (Gal. 3:27). Have I put on Christ?.. All of us?! I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me His greatest gift - the service of the Liturgy with Matins and the communion of His most pure, most heavenly and life-giving Mysteries, with which I again came to life, was renewed, and was sanctified after the painful machinations of the devil, which acted in me after the death of the spirit. If you want to see the image of the Orthodoxy of our Church in the whole heavenly light, read the entire range of our liturgical books, and you will see this wonderful work, not human, but Divine! In what radiance, in what greatness, in what Divine beauty is presented here the blessed image of Christ, His Most Pure Mother, the holy Angels and all the saints, God’s Divine plans for the salvation of people, all disasters, all the corruption of humanity perishing in sins, all our weakness and sinfulness - and on the other hand, all the faith, hope, deeds, love for God and neighbor of all the saints, their perfection, with the help the grace of God acquired by them, their salvation, their victory over the world and the devil, their effective prayers for us! O wonderful, life-giving, Divine Orthodoxy! I see your bright image! 7th. I thank the Lord for celebrating the Liturgy. Great struggle and anxiety. Towards the end of the liturgy, before communion, the guard brought cold water for connection. Almighty and merciful grace defeated all the evil of the devil in me. He served Vespers kindly and without stumbling. January 8. I thank the Lord for the stumbling-free service of Matins, with tenderness, sweetness, peace and joy. But after Matins, I extremely upset the Lord with my rage at the beggars, who pursued me in large numbers and demanded alms for clothes, boots, a shirt, bread, an apartment, etc. He hit one in the face with a bunch of shirts wrapped in paper, hit him with anger, although it didn’t hurt him, and tore another by the hair. I sinned against the Lord and before people - I grieved the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of goodness, meekness and gentleness, the Spirit of love and unspoken sighs; I grieved my holy Guardian Angel, the holy saints of God, Christ my Lord, of whom the poor are members. I repent, condemn, blame, blame myself for everything and ask the Lord for mercy. From now on, let me endure them in meekness, with love and zeal, and give alms. I thank the Lord, who saved me through the prayer of repentance and tenderness from the great sorrow, oppression, corruption, fire and shame that befell me for my insolence and severity towards the poor. I thank you because the Lord was not completely angry with me because I had not yet kept His words about meekness, humility, gentleness, patience and long-suffering. Lamb of God, take away the sins of the world! I thank you, for you also took away my sins and accepted my illnesses and suffered my illnesses. I thank You, who healed my severity and obstinacy and turned my death into life, illness and confusion of the soul into health and peace. Oh, how terribly the soul is shaken by anger and rage! Deliver from her, O God, forever and ever. January 9. Again, through my bitter experience, I learned how harmful it is physically and mentally to eat meat and thick food in general at night; the soul weakens, extremely weakens in faith, hope, love; the heart becomes coarser, becomes especially unclean, and is easily carried away by the temptations of the evil one, various evil and nasty thoughts. Abstinence produces the opposite consequences: the soul is strengthened in faith, hope and love, the heart is refined and spiritualized, and at the same time it becomes purer and firmer in virtue; clings to God with love, hates sin, strives for virtue, which he heartily respects. Whoever loves game (birds), his heart and mind will carry game, like mine today after yesterday’s game. That's true. Lord, have mercy! Woe to us from sweets: they extremely desecrate the heart through the very pressure and pressure of the vital seeds, which increases as a result of the use of sweets. How will you despise fornication when you do not despise sweet foods and drinks or fat meat and fish food? All fornication comes from food and drink. Discourage the flesh with abstinence, vigil, prayer and labor, and fornication will not chill. I thank the Lord for the strength and consolation given to me in serving the liturgy. But the flesh and Belial were extremely powerful in me for my intemperance and partiality. Thus, the beauty of the bride whom I married yesterday (January 9th) confused me, giving rise to envy and desire in me, and I could not pronounce the church blessing and the final prayer with dismissal to the bride and groom. I also didn’t finish another wedding in the Duma church, and also because I was angry with the bride and groom for being late in coming to church, and the delay was due to reasons beyond their control, as I learned from the mother of the bride Evdokia Gavril. At the very beginning of the wedding, I could not restrain myself and in my hearts I said to the bride and groom: give me your rings, so I myself felt awkward, very awkward. Then I repented before God. The fruit of partiality and infatuation with the beauty of her face was the untruth on my part that when the old woman came up to me for confession, she seemed to me a very unpleasant face, and I did not treat her lovingly and meekly, but contemptuously. Oh, how I have sinned! And the old woman, perhaps, has a more beautiful soul than the bride - in any case, because of the beauty of her face, one should not prefer a person and be carried away by her and disparage him because of his lack of beauty. That is why I am punished by my own sins: I am afraid of my neighbor, of large society during divine services and the Sacraments, during the liturgy, marriage, prayers; I am frightened by uniforms with epaulettes and orders, shiny secular suits, dignitaries or scientists and rich faces, beautiful faces. I feel great only with the simplest people. And the priest must behave equally in front of everyone, including the sovereign himself. For holy, great and impartial is the Lord God, whom the priest serves and of whom he is the organ and voice. Why do you like the theater? Because actors and actresses speak it in everyday language, a language that is understandable to everyone, simple, the language of our passions; because this is living speech and an echo of our everyday thoughts, habits, vanities, passions that we love, that are flattering to us, or that consume and devour us - in a word, it is like our everyday confession. January 10. Saturday. I thank the Lord, who showed me His great help in the service of Matins, in good, stumbling-free, bold service and in the service of the liturgy. I spoke the entire royal house by name. I read the entire prayer after prayer and said the entire dismissal precisely by the grace of the Mysteries of Christ. I praise the Lord. Received life-giving communion. During sacramental singing, I was indignant in my soul at the sexton for singing the same thing about the Doors of Mercy, and not diversifying the singing. I convinced myself that this singing was necessary, like Lord, have mercy. During worship, one must have a philosophical mind or understanding and a sophisticated ear for the heart, in general preparation for serving God. Otherwise, you will receive little or no benefit from worship. During the service of the prayer service at Sizov’s, he vaguely, without uttering many words, served because of the presence (...) of Sizov. Oh, weakness! O impurity of heart! Why? Because of the feast at the wedding, because of drinking wine, eating fast (on Friday) soup and other fasting delicacies! Abstinence strengthens; intemperance relaxes the soul. Our soul, from not thinking about spiritual things, little by little dies for God and for these things, it becomes deaf to them. What is more important, more majestic, more life-giving, holier, more divine, more touching than the liturgy? - but many of the Christians are dead, deaf to her, standing reluctantly, indifferently, coldly, wandering with their thoughts and eyes. Why? From a lack of faith in the Sacrament and especially from a lack of reflection on its greatness, holiness, life-giving and its fruits - renewal and eternal life. Many are deaf from the attachment of their hearts to temporary, perishable wealth, to worldly pleasures, to various carnal lusts. We must be especially attentive to what we hear, so as not to fall away (Heb. 2:1). What is more majestic, more touching, more life-giving on earth than the service of the liturgy? Here the majestic mystery of dissolution, the mixing of God with people, the deification of man, God’s love for the human race, the union of God with people through the incarnation is depicted and performed; teaching of God through suffering, death, burial and resurrection; the sacrament of renewal and deification of humanity, the sacrament of the union of people with God through the eating of His Flesh and Blood. This sacrament amazes the mind with its greatness and involuntarily attracts every intelligent Christian to reverence, thanksgiving, and glorification of God. The work of God performed by the liturgy surpasses in its greatness all the works of God accomplished in the world, and the very creation of the world. This is truly the heavenly ministry of God on earth, in which to be reasonable and worthy is bliss, peace and joy for the soul. It nourishes the mind, cheers the heart, evokes tears of tenderness, reverence, gratitude, urges it to selfless deeds of love, mercy and compassion for all people, unites everyone into one union of brotherhood, unites heaven and earth, Angels and men, into one union, makes everyone happy with the hopes of resurrection and immortality. Why are people so cold towards the liturgy? - From a lack of reasoning, from lack of faith and disbelief, and from worldly passions. Why do they love theater more than church? More ranting and laughing actors than worship? [...] In the theater, ordinary, vain, full of passions, hopes, charms and disappointments, human life is presented with its grief and joy, with its poverty, wealth and comfort, with its patriotism or treason, with its vices and virtues, with its carnal, passionate love or hatred - and here a person, as in a mirror, admires in the theater, amuses himself and often his own vices, applauds them, approves of them and generously rewards their masterful portrayal. And for the liturgy, in most cases, a person is unworthy to live its life, to feel its greatness, its salvific value, to be imbued with it, to be inspired, to be adored: the earthly is attracted to the earth. But there are people for whom the liturgy is everything in the world. I thank the Lord, who has granted me forgiveness of sins many times this day. Priest – Angel of the Lord Almighty. His clothes during the service depict him as an angel, for the phelonion depicts the incorruptible robe and wings of the Angel of God: and indeed, the priest must be like an Angel - soar above the earthly, be above worldly passions, constantly proclaim the greatness and glory of God in the Church of God to His people, proclaim His will, His salvation, be the guardian and herald of the eternal commandments of God, must be distinguished by courage and fearlessness, to be above all partiality and untruth, must be like the angels in his constant abstinence, purity, vigilance for the pledge entrusted to him from the Lord - for the immortal souls of men; a beautiful thought is expressed in the very cut of the phelonion, namely that the priest is, as it were, an Angel of God. This idea is taken from the Apocalypse, where the Lord Himself calls the heads of the Churches Angels (Rev. 1:20). Entering the church during the service or not during it, you enter, as it were, some kind of special world, not similar to the visible one: you see holy icons of persons who once lived on earth and became famous for their wondrous life - holy, insightful, miraculous, deeds of amazing love for God and people, deeds of prayer, abstinence, purity, patience, mercy; you see a particularly outstanding image of the God-man Jesus Christ, with whose glory all the ends of the earth are filled, Christ is a miracle of love for the human race perishing in sins; you see the image of His Most Pure Mother the Virgin - a miracle of purity, love for people, mercy, meekness, humility, patience, devotion to God, you see the faces of the holy Angels, these fiery heavenly ranks, shining with heavenly beauty, holiness, courage and invincible strength, meekness, love; you see the faces of the holy saints of God - the apostles, prophets, saints, martyrs, reverends and all kinds of saints, of every rank and status and of both sexes, who amazed the world and still amaze us with the firmness of their faith, the feats of selflessness, abstinence, purity, patience, meekness and kindness, undying and unfading, ardent love for God and to humanity, who have mortified their passions, who have conquered nature itself and the invisible, most cruel enemies of the human race, who have accomplished every kind of virtue and received crowns of victory, crowns of eternal life from the hand of the Hero, the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to all this, you see in the church the throne of God, on it is the book of the covenant of God - the eternal covenant, bequeathing to us mutual love, holiness and every virtue; you see on the throne and behind the throne the instrument and sign of our salvation, as well as the sign of God’s immeasurable love for the world, the sign of resurrection and immortality - the Cross of the Son of God, on which He accomplished our deliverance from the eternal wrath and punishment of God, which would inevitably befall us without the Sacrifice of the Cross. And standing during worship, what do you hear most often? A brief, often repeated glorification of God’s immeasurable love for mankind, His goodness, mercy and bounty, His eternal power, the everlasting, unshakable Kingdom, His eternal power and glory; often hear the word of resurrection, immortal and eternal life of man; Hear the word about the incarnation and life on earth of the eternal Son of God, His boundless, fatherly love for people; hear His teaching, His life, miracles, commandments, giving eternal life and glory to those who do them; you see in the actions and words of the clergy His wonderful, Divine Supper, at which the greatest Sacrament, the most saving Sacrament of the Communion of His Most Pure Body and Blood was established; as if you see His suffering on the cross in the priest raising his hands crosswise, His death, burial, resurrection and ascension into heaven; you hear about the wonderful feats of faith, hope and love of countless numbers of holy saints of God, who themselves showed all the saving power of faith in Christ, which changed them, purified them, strengthened them in the deeds of virtues, reborn, renewed, sanctified, appropriated them to God and led to eternal life. In the world you see and hear everything earthly, transitory, fragile, perishable, sinful, which does not bring you significant, constant, eternal benefit, eternal pleasure. In the church, on the contrary, you see and hear the heavenly, the imperishable, the eternal, the holy; there your ears are very often filled with words about another world - the eternal, about another Kingdom - the Kingdom of eternal truth, love, peace, the Kingdom of eternal youth, beauty, bliss in God and with God; in the world nothing is able to quench the scorching, painful thirst of your souls, for the soul by nature, like the body, strives for its own kind of incorruptible food and drink: in the Church every hunger and thirst of the soul is quenched in the most perfect way, for in the Church is the source of salvation, there are the purest sources of the saving word of God, quenching every thirst of the soul, here the grace of God is abundantly poured into souls through the Saints Sacraments. Everything in the world is temporary, passing like smoke and steam; in the Church - the eternal, for which man was created; in the world there is vanity and sin - in the Church there is truth and righteousness. Entering the church during worship, you are first of all and most often heard by the word of eternity, and you feel that you have entered from a vain, corruptible, perverse, transitory world into another, new, eternal world. This circumstance should especially elevate our souls and tear them away, at least for this time, from the temporary and perishing, but habit and inattention or lack of reflection on what is being proclaimed and read in the church has caused the thought of eternity to somehow disappear from the mind and from the heart or to visit the soul very briefly, in passing. And these exclamations, by the way, contain the essence of Christian theology: the eternity of the Trinitarian God and the immortality of the soul. The theater makes fun of the vain, sinful life of a person, makes fun of what one should often cry about; he also amuses himself with what is least possible to amuse himself with - human morality, moral feelings, and often tramples on modesty and chastity; the theater inconspicuously subverts the principles of Christian life - the faith and hope of a future life, ridicules Christian customs, generally tries to present life in a funny, caricatured form, contrary to the sober, strict view of the Church on the life of a Christian, which is not a toy, but a feat, and a great, reasonable, constant feat. However, many people in their lives act in such a way that their actions should be exposed to everyone for shame and ridicule, for example, the actions of people who are impatiently irritable, who start a quarrel over everything, overeat, drunkards, hoarders and money lovers, the vain, ambitious, envious, proud, people-pleasing, partiality-loving, thieves and others - if it were possible to correct people with this. But this smoke is more capable of eating the eyes and arousing sinful laughter than of correcting it - and this is not in accordance with love for one’s neighbor, which teaches not to laugh at the shortcomings of one’s neighbor, but to pray for him, to correct him. Instead of mourning my countless sins - my fornication, my wickedness, my anger, malice, envy, pride, self-love, impatience, demonic self-interest, the delusion of partiality, laziness, negligence and other sins, I amuse myself with the pleasure of food and drink, I constantly revive the flesh that mortifies my immortal soul; I revive the flesh, which must be constantly mortified by abstinence, vigil, labor, prayer, contemplation of God, and reading the word of God. Oh madness! January 11th. Resurrection. I thank the Lord for the gift of the liturgy and for the communion of the most pure and life-giving Mysteries into the world, purification, sanctification and confirmation. At the great entrance, out of cowardice and for the sake of [...] standing, I could not say the royal family, I did not say about the empress - in His Kingdom, I named the heir, but did not name the heir and their son. But the girl will be the same as the Old Woman. Fast food is pleasant and very nutritious, but rough and smelly when digested. Therefore, a Christian, whose heart should be the church of God, should avoid such food more often as it is capable of attracting unclean demons and with them all sorts of unclean passions. Oh, that my food consisted of bread and water! I thank the Lord, my Savior, who delivered me yesterday in Silvestrov’s apartment from cramped conditions and sorrow for evading giving alms to the beggar who was following me. I raised my heart’s gaze to the Lord in repentance and prayer, as to the One Existing and Omnipresent, all-good and benevolent, and received salvation: tightness and sorrow passed and peace, space, freedom, joy of the spirit appeared. But I sinned towards the Lord through satiety, eating more than proper cheesecake and black bread with red caviar, and at home also chicken and milk. I thank the Lord, who, after a long struggle, long self-reproach, repentance and long prayer, delivered me from anger towards Father Alexander, a new fellow priest, for his supposedly late arrival at Matins. Oh, what a terrible poison Satan has vomited into my heart, the poison of malice, of disdain for a brother, venerable, like me, with the rank of the priesthood, older than me in years, a meek and humble man, kind, kind, hospitable! But the devil easily overcame me precisely because of my satiation the day before, because of my lust, self-love, and my waywardness and impatience, because of my prodigal and unclean heart. Oh, how I need immediate and comprehensive correction! We must start with food, with abstinence - intemperance and voluptuousness are the cause of all troubles. Again I sinned in severity and severity towards two niches. Alms must be given willingly, with humility and zeal, as to God Himself, for He Himself accepts in the face of the poor, and when you are worthy to give alms in this way, thank the Lord also with humility and a grateful heart that He has deigned to give you alms and to accept it from you, but never be proud or upset at the poor, who come to you in large numbers and often to receive alms, for the need is grave. draws them to you, and for much alms you will receive a great reward from the Lord. Isn't eternal life with its unspeakable blessings enough to reward you for all your alms? Is it not the greatest joy to have as our debtor the Lord, from whom we received life and all blessings and who redeemed us from sin, curse and death? Is it a small reward to behold the Sweetest and Most Illustrious Lord of glory forever? Isn’t it the greatest reward to see the Trinitarian, Tri-radiant Divinity eternally? And to see the Most Holy, Most Pure, Most Blessed, Most Merciful Mother of Christ our God, to cohabit with Angels, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Hierarchs, Martyrs, Venerables and all Saints - is not a great reward? Hearing of the heart is needed when listening to the word of God and the Divine service, especially the Divine Liturgy, and a wise mind. I thank the Lord, who miraculously healed my soul in the gymnasium in the Swiss room (overcoat) from the cramped conditions and sorrow that befell me because of hardness of heart towards the beggar who followed me. – After sorrow I felt joy, after cramped space - space, after confusion - peace. At seven and a half o'clock in the evening the Lord again miraculously had mercy on me for the prayer of faith, hope, repentance and made me alive from the dead. Oh, how often I die in soul - through my sins! And after every time, when I, having sinned, repent, He grants me resurrection from death and life, renews me with grace, and gives me peace! Oh, the abyss of God’s goodness and long-suffering! I thank the Lord for new deliverance from sinful oppression. Jesus Christ God! Glory to Your holy name! Glory to Thee, Lamb of God, take away the sins of the world and continually take away my sins! God! Hasten us well in the matter of caring for Your poor! Wake up! Last night I ate a lot of cucumbers and quite a bit of meat – that’s why my heart is heavy this morning. You should never eat in the evening. I am moving the Kingdom of God away from myself, and this is a huge loss - and for what? Because of perishable food. I thank the Lord, who saved me from the flame of the prodigal in Tsegolev’s apartment on the evening of January 13, and for my repeated salvation everywhere. I don’t eat meat at night, or at all: I also remind myself. Buy ink for school from Rakovsky. January 12, 1876 T. January 14. Wednesday. I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me to celebrate the conciliar liturgy in the Church of the Vladimir Mother of God and to partake of the wonderful, most pure and purifying and all-sanctifying, life-giving Mysteries. With father Deacon Peter Al. Safronov had another seizure: with facial convulsions, screaming and wheezing, he fell to the floor and lay there for a long time; carried out to the altar. 15th. I thank the Lord, who gave me the word in the gymnasium in the fourth grade. We are talking about the first member of the Creed. Why did the Lord create Angels who became evil spirits, when He foresaw that they would become ungrateful, proud and evil and would deceive and drag many people after them into destruction? I thank the Lord for the repeated, merciful hearing of my prayer and for His wonderful, speedy salvation. I have sinned many times - I repented just as many times and received mercy just as many times. I glorify the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, which has mercy on me. A Christian from spiritual communication and mutual love comes to life, becomes morally stronger, is consoled, enlightened, affirmed, and grows spiritually. Therefore, it is necessary to have communication with each other, talking mutually about faith in God, about its saving effects on man, about the expectation of future blessings, about mutual love, about the insignificance of earthly goods and their moment, etc. Today I visited one very pious officer, Lieutenant-Commander Pavel Stepanovich Burachok, and both I was with them and left them in an excellent mood. I sinned gravely again this evening before God and people, but for my deep, sincere, lasting repentance, I was honored with God’s greatest salvation, the remission of grave sins, and the gift of deep peace. I thank the benevolent Lord, who watches over all creatures, including me, who listens graciously, has mercy, cleanses, heals, helps, saves. But again I sinned with the Lord, lying to the beggar that I could not give them all the money I had for their needs, and denying some what they needed (clothing and food) - that is why my soul, guilty before the Lord, was wounded. Yes, I remember my repentance, what I told the Lord about myself, what sins I confessed to Him alone, saying that I really am like this, that is, self-loving, proud, angry, harsh, hard-hearted, money-loving, envious, lustful, lazy, carnal, cowardly, fearful, crafty, partial, intemperate, stingy, impatient, suspicious, suspicious. But what do I feel? So again the Lord has reconciled with me, again there is peace on earth and in me, a man, God’s favor. Glory to Your long-suffering, O Lord! If many Christians do not love the Church and divine services, it is because their souls are not ready, are not disposed to this love due to worldly passions, and because they do not know the Church, its meaning, its spirit, its purpose. - Go to church, listen with deep attention to the services, songs, canons, readings, and you will get used to the church, love it, you will see, be convinced how many inclinations of life, peace, consolation it contains, how much light, strength, shrine, truth it contains. You will hear with your ears and not understand, and you will look with your eyes and not see (Matthew 13:14). We need heartfelt eyes, heartfelt ears to listen to the Scriptures and worship services. If I do not take lessons in the preparatory class and the first grade of the gymnasium, there is no integrity in the students’ study of the entire content of education according to the law of God (prayer, Old Testament history). The priest and deacon, especially the bishop, of course, are entrusted by God to pray for all people, for the king and for everyone who is in power (1 Tim. 2:1). How great is their work! How honorable should be the title of these persons, authorized by God Himself to propitiate Him on behalf of the whole world, on all people. Save, O God, Thy people and bless Thy inheritance, visit Thy world with mercy and bounty 134. Oh, I am unworthy of such a title, such a broad prayer that embraces everyone in mind and heart, having a proud heart, passionate for the flesh and the world, cold, cowardly, fearful, prone to evil, envy, pride, anger, fornication, laziness, negligence, deceit, lies, double-mindedness! But correct me, Lord, by Your grace and give me the grace to worthily pray to You for all people, without amusement and coldness, without fear and cowardice. The question of faith, of the Church, of worship, of its understanding, of obedience is a question of life, purification, sanctification, salvation, healing of soul and body. (Especially for schismatics to put this thought in.) How do we attend, how do we feel about all this? God's bounty increases for you to further condemn your hardness of heart and stinginess and selfishness. Know this and tremble, but do not rejoice in the abundance of your wealth. Look: before your eyes there are hundreds of poor, barefoot, naked, hungry, homeless, and you delight your soul with the abundance of your wealth and throw the poor not money, but contemptuous glances! Tremble, O bloodsucker! Through your stinginess you are killing these unfortunate people. Given my virginal lifestyle (although in body) I should not eat meat at all. It is a burden and an arousal of lust. Yesterday (Saturday) because of carnal thoughts during the Sacrament of Baptism, the disembodied enemy stopped me while reading the litany and the Gospel! Oh, incessant anger! Oh, never-sleeping, undying sin! Oh, flesh, abundantly nourished and fattened with meat, pies and wines, teas! How long is this? How long is resistance to the spirit of grace, the spirit of salvation? Isn't the Lord God endless sweetness, beauty, life, wealth? What kind of sweetness is there for the soul in earthly, perishable sweets, beauties, and riches? We have eyes, but we do not see, ears, but we do not hear. Sin became too persistent in me, like an old, thick and branchy root in the ground: habit strengthened it. Christian! You have copulated with the Angels, Archangels and all the Heavenly Powers! Imitate the Angels, despise the earthly, love the heavenly, eternal, spiritual; Avoid worldly addictions, do not be enslaved to the belly, the demon of the love of money, be kind, meek, quiet, like an Angel, pure, like an Angel, simple, holy, like him. January 19. I thank the Lord, who deigned me to glorify His glorious resurrection at the all-night vigil and early liturgy; I thank the Lord for granting me the communion of the life-giving Mysteries, which have revived and strengthened my soul. At Arkhip Vasiliev’s, I drank two glasses of sherry in the evening before the memorial service and the wedding, and this caused extreme harm to myself, depriving myself of God’s grace and help in the service of the memorial service and especially the wedding: the sherry was strong, and I became intoxicated, excited, feverish, and confused. January 19. I thank You, Lord, for I, having cried out to You in repentance, have had mercy and instead of the fire of sin you have given the dew of grace, instead of confusion, peace, instead of tightness - space, instead of slavery - freedom, instead of powerlessness - strength, instead of darkness - light. I confess Your speedy goodness and power, O Lord! Monday. I thank the Lord, who delivers me from all sorrow through my prayer. Glory to Thee, All-merciful Lord, all-powerful, benevolent, gracious, gracious Lord! I thank the Lord, who sent me strength from His holy heights for the peaceful, solemn, stumbling-free marriage of Jacob and Anna at five and a half o’clock in the evening on January 19th. Where is the enemy who boasts of his invincibility? Theater is the most ungodly vanity, a moth that corrupts souls redeemed by the Blood of Christ; he hides behind the plausible name of instructive and moralizing: yes, he teaches to reject the Church and Christ, he teaches all kinds of passions, he teaches how every age and gender can more easily corrupt morality, so that children who love to attend the theater become young lions who know how to catch prey. What does Christianity teach us? Avoid the vanity of the world and follow the commandments of Christ. What about the theater? Walk into aphids, love aphids, think about aphids, breathe aphids. And after that it is allowed by the government during Lent. I thank the Lord, who also bowed down to mercy on me, unworthy, for the sake of my tearful repentance. Today I offended a beggar, in a rage I tore his hair out for frequent begging and, as I thought, deception. I tormented this poor man like a beast - not with my teeth, but with my hands (by the hair). Oh, cruelty, ferocity, inhumanity! And the poor, like sheep, are meek and gentle, silent. I spanked him, and he came to me again as if nothing had happened. Remember, Lord, their meekness, their poverty and their need in Your Kingdom and make them heirs of Your Kingdom. And have mercy on me, the repentant one, O Lord, have mercy for the sake of Your name, and may my cruelty not be repeated again. Grant me a meek, kind, patient, peaceful, healthy, loving heart. 21st. I thank the Lord, who had mercy on me again and again for the sake of my repentance during Matins, when my heart was moved to hostility towards the abbot who was serving. If you don’t quickly return someone else’s property, who will give you yours? (Luke 16, 11 – 12). I, the accursed one, am unfaithful in the property of others, given to me for distribution to the poor, I do not give willingly and with zeal, but with coercion, vexation and anger, and even beating the poor (by the hair and nose)! Oh beast! O tyrant! Oh, furious! How long will I anger the Lord, until I learn from Him meekness and humility, gentleness and patience, poverty and dispassion? Oh money! Money! How does being partial to you harden a person’s heart and make him alienated from God and his neighbors? Why am I angry with the poor and only hurt myself and anger God with my unrighteous anger and subject myself to spiritual death, introducing the germs of death into my body? Reckless, ridiculous. I thank the Lord, who once again bowed to my mercy for the sake of deep, tearful, Entering the church during a service, you enter, as it were, into another world, for you, as it were, time disappears and eternity begins, you very often hear praise to the eternal Being - God, and the priest secretly in every prayer offers praise to the Eternal. I all took a nap and fell asleep (Matthew 25:5) - Synod, high and low clergy, laity, people, military, civilians, scientists. A terrible sermon! What a deep psychology in our liturgical canons for the days of the week, for every day of the year, for the feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God, for the days of saints! 22nd. God! I send thanks and praise to You, as You granted me help against invisible enemies during the Sacrament of Baptism - without stumbling, with boldness You granted to perform this Sacrament in Shubina’s house. I send thanks and praise to You, for You delivered me from the sting of the prodigal through the prayer of my repentance at ten o’clock in the evening at home. 24th. The Lord Jesus Christ is a wonderful, life-giving stone for me: whether my soul becomes dull from the coarseness of the flesh that surrounds it or from the sweets of life, He will sharpen it; if she falls into distress and sorrow from invisible enemies and from sins that constantly oppress her, she will spread and comfort when I sincerely repent and cry out for help; if he becomes defiled by unclean thoughts and movements of the heart, he will cleanse him; if he becomes darkened, He will enlighten him; if he falls into despondency, he will rejoice; if he becomes exhausted, He will strengthen him; if he is subjected to confusion and fear of the devil, he will pacify and cheer up; if he dies, he will revive; whether she will be crushed by the burden of sorrows, misfortunes, illnesses - He will remove the burden and lay on His good yoke and light burden. Glory to His constant vigor, goodness and mercy! Will she fall into dishonor and shame from internal voluntary and involuntary thoughts of sinful, evil, prodigal, man-hating - after internal repentance, He will dispel these thoughts, burn them with the fire of the grace of the Holy Spirit and impart honor and nobility to her, fill her with pure, sublime, noble, holy thoughts. I thank the Lord, who performed a miracle of salvation in me in the apartment of Father Vasily Dmitrievich, son-in-law of Father Vasily Saltykov, in Golovarev’s house on Saturday evening at nine o’clock on January 24, when I came to visit the sick woman. Tomorrow there is a funeral service at nine o'clock. Answer to questions. Look at the divine principle in a person - the soul, which is in the image and likeness of God, and for the sake of this principle, always respect and love a person from a pure heart, without hypocrisy. 25th. Resurrection. Matins and early mass. I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me to loudly and solemnly glorify His resurrection and begin the canons of repentance (the beginning of the Triodion); I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me to celebrate the Divine Liturgy and peacefully and life-giving communion of His Holy Mysteries. 26th. I thank the Lord, who showed me the greatest mercy and the power of salvation in delivering me from the consequences of anger at the poor, who plagued me with requests everywhere, from sorrow and cramped conditions, and who gave me the grace to pray with feeling to the birthday girl Marya Ivanovna and Trofim Ivanovich Mosharenkov. I thank the Lord, who surrounds me with the joys of deliverance. I thank the Lord, who performed in me the miracle of His salvation from the sorrow and distress that befell me for the anger, shouting and insult of the beggars who chased me to the house of the former Gorshkov, where the quarterly Khodasevich lives. This salvation was accomplished by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ during the internal prayer of repentance in Khodasevich’s apartment at eight o’clock in the evening. After that I was completely peaceful, free, bold. When you hear the constant glorification of the eternal God in the church, remember how insignificant you are before Him, that you are one-day, (yesterday) in comparison with Him - and reverence before your Creator Existence. The Mother of God reflected all the kindness of Her Heavenly Bridegroom and Her Son, all the holiness, beauty, goodness, meekness and humility. January 27. I thank the Lord for granting me the service of the liturgy and communion of the Divine life-giving Mysteries. The fight against opposing forces is scary. Their attack is fierce, extremely violent. It was only by the grace of the Lord that I defeated the age-old invisible enemies and performed the Liturgy without stumbling. In vain I drank coffee three times and ate meat at lunch: there was melancholy in my heart. In view of the extreme impurity of my heart, I must, with God’s help, immediately take active measures to cleanse it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by reading the word of God, unceasing prayer, compiling conversations about the liturgy and words on passages of Scripture. January 28. I thank the Lord, who again called me to serve the heavenly, Divine Liturgy and made me worthy to perform it without stumbling and to partake of the Divine Mysteries without condemnation, peacefully. (second mass from Father Matthew on his mother’s side). 29th. I thank the Lord, who again calls for the same. Drinking milk, especially at night, is extremely harmful to chastity, because it arouses passion. Voluptuous, carnal life little by little and terribly destroys the spiritual, true life of a person, the life of the mind and heart, life according to God, faith, hope, boldness, love, sincere friendship, compassion, mercy, meekness, humility, patience, complacency in sorrows, adversities, illnesses, chastity, fear of God. Therefore, woe to the one who loves to eat and drink a lot and daintyly, to dress elegantly, to gaze at handsome faces, as well as at his own face, who loves money and strives for self-interest everywhere, who chases after honors and rewards, who loves a brilliant environment - he falls away from virtue and from God, and the bodiless enemy curses at him while serving God of such a person, constantly doing dirty tricks and stumbling upon him. But blessed is he who despises the world and everything in the world. January 30. I thank the Lord, who delivered me from a shameful feeling in the apartment of the director of the Real School: when I felt a passionate feeling in myself, in repentance I looked at the image of the Lord and Lady. Oh, my vile heart, my defiled soul! 31st. I thank the Lord, who graciously had mercy on me when I called on His great, holy, all-saving name in repentance, who gave me peace in confusion and space in cramped conditions. On the Sunday of the Prodigal. Let us condemn our prodigal life. Don't get angry because things are lost or broken or blotted out. Love and peace are most precious, as are meekness, kindness, and patience. Again today I was vividly aware and felt the unity of the saints and all believers in Christ, the union, deification, venerability of each member, especially the saints; The opening of the royal doors means the unrestricted entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, opened by Christ the Savior. From January 31st to February 1st. I was extremely embarrassed and afraid from the face of the enemy at the beginning of the all-night vigil, while reading the Gospel and before the dismissal at the all-night vigil and before Christ, the true Light. The reason is that he lost God’s help for gluttony, satiety with meat at dinner. Oh, yes, I fast diligently, not eating for days! At night I felt tightness and aching in the sides of my stomach. Why do I feel embarrassed and embarrassed, lose heart during divine services, during which the rich, noble, and learned of this world are present? I have no faith in myself - the enemy delighted her for my servility to them. I must consider the person of the priest above all others, and behave with faith and dignity befitting a minister of the altar and a consecrated organ of the Church. The wisdom of this world is foolishness before God (1 Cor. 3:19), but the wisdom of the Church, her words, is true wisdom, eternal, unshakable, imperishable. I was extremely embarrassed yesterday at the liturgy at the great entrance and at the prayer service in the (artel) of the Guardianship during the meeting of the public. At the all-night vigil on the Feast of the Presentation, I was terribly captivated by the devil in my thoughts, thinking about the Lord’s multiplying the loaves during the days of His earthly life: I also thought that He is miraculously multiplying the loaves for us now, making our mug abundant, but at the same time I only instantly thought about the archpriest’s father’s mug, much larger than mine, and I envied him for a moment - but that’s what I wanted the enemy entered my heart through a thought, extremely confused and wounded me for a long time, for a long time, so that I could not get rid of him until the very end of the service. Terrible war! Terrible arrows! Terrible death of the soul! This is how disastrous it is to cling to earthly blessings and think, even think about them in church during divine services (or in homes during Baptism and other Sacraments). Oh, we, clergy, should be Angels out of love for God and neighbor and impartiality towards earthly goods, according to the only treasure of our heart - God! We bring into our hearts and into the church of God the alien fire of love for the world, for its wealth, Glory, honor, for its Delights, and in us lives Self-love, greed, envy, lust, love of glory, vanity and vanity, partiality, man-pleasing, fear of man, false shame and fear, cowardice - instead of an invincible and unshakable faith, trust in God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, instead of fiery, angelic love for God, excluding all earthly, vain, false, feigned love. Oh, how ungrateful, partial, and senseless we are, especially me, the accursed one. Correct us, Lord! After mass and revival by the Holy Mysteries during the liturgy, I cheerfully served a prayer service with Levchenko, the police secretary, then ate some pie and cheese, herring - untimely for me; then I went to a solemn prayer service in the barracks, and there the enemy struck me down for gluttony, especially for money. Levchenko was given five rubles. We get angry, we often get angry because of a penny thing, well, even because of a ruble - but isn’t it the same dust, isn’t it the same earth, trampled under foot? Isn’t the peace, love, and grace of God most precious? I sinned before the Lord by despising my nephew for his ugliness, squalor, and slowness. But for this we should be all the more sorry. I myself could easily have been ridiculed by my previous unfortunate encounter with a drawn horse. Only the Lord, in His great mercy, had mercy on me and turned away the blow to the eye, and instead directed it to the cheekbone. Forgive me, Lord! Grant me to respect my nephew as my own member, and especially Your member, to love him, especially as he is in Your image. Show mercy to him and instruct him, Lord, to live according to Your commandments and to me, especially the hitherto foolish, selfish, partial, voluptuous, hard-hearted, money-loving, lazy, careless, envious, contemptuous, unfaithful, fearful, sad, crafty, evil, treacherous. February 2. I praise the most merciful Lord, for he helped me to perform the Divine Liturgy and say at least a few names of the royal family at the great entrance, despite the demonic fear that evil demons always brought upon me, but I did not pronounce the Synod and the Metropolitan due to demonic obsession, due to some kind of cooling, dislike, involuntary neglect, all from the adversary. He said the prayer behind the pulpit firmly; not all dismissal: did not mention the holy apostles Andrew, Peter and Paul, St. John Chrysostom, St. Alexander Nevsky, did not pronounce the words of the Lord at the thanksgiving service; during the prayer of thanksgiving, I did not pronounce all the final words of thanksgiving; left unfinished. I thank the Lord, who revealed in me the miracle of His mercy in the apartment of Pavel Ivanovich Kryukov during the service of the all-night vigil and after it, and especially on the way from him, when I loudly scolded the poor and did not give them the required alms, and then repented and gave it to some who followed me; The mercy of the Lord poured out into my heart when I walked from Trofim Ivanov’s fruit shop and repented earnestly. Confusion, cramped conditions and melancholy have passed. Glory to Thee, our all-good, benevolent, benevolent and benevolent God! Glory to You, the long-suffering! Be strong and take heart, John! - a voice cries out to you from above when you endure a terrible kindling of fire inside, caused by the spirits of evil. For this is a time of achievement and struggle, a time of temptation - may the separation of evil from good appear, may your soul, defiled by worldly passions, be purified like gold in a furnace. Damned! This evening I spat in the face of a beggar (and - oh, horror! in the face of the Lord Himself, in the face of a beggar who asked me for alms!) With all my heart I accuse myself of cruelty, inhumanity, stinginess, covetousness, unmercifulness, unbelief, malice, envy. February 3. Evening. Eleven o'clock. I thank You, Lord, for the wondrous manifestation in me of Your righteousness and Your mercy at this hour: looking at the unchaste picture, through the uncleanness of my heart, I felt within me the corruption of sin, oppression and sorrow. But, having cried out to God in repentance, I again felt in myself life, peace, freedom, incorruptibility. The elders were baptized into Christ, put on Christ (Gal. 3:27), that is, into His righteousness, into His incorruptibility, into holiness, meekness and humility, patience and long-suffering, into self-control, into His love and mercy. I thank the Lord, who made me worthy to perform the victorious Matins in the face of a strong attack on me by ethereal enemies, who bound my heart and lips and brought fear into me. I thank the Lord for my rather peaceful liturgy and for the life-giving communion of His Most Pure Mysteries into peace and consolation for me, a sinner. He served Vespers in embarrassment because, having been in the Hospital wing, he drank wine and hot tea there. It got my blood pumping on a long walk. After Vespers, there was confusion in the church because of the dishonor of one girl: the watchman called her a bitch. Every sinful movement of the heart: hostility, envy, fornication, wickedness, partiality, pride, vanity - is the death of the soul, bitter as hell; Only by sincere self-condemnation and repentance can one be saved from this death, by calling on the name of Jesus Christ, for there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved (Acts 4:12). Glory to Thee, God our Savior! (Now I rejoice in the salvation of my God after my repentance for hostility towards my nephew.) Cleanse us from all filth. Parallel: Though your sins be like scarlet, they are like snow; if they are red as crimson, they will be white as wool (Isa. 1:18). February 4. Temptations reveal strong passions in me: anger, envy, fornication, waywardness, disobedience, dislike, self-love, hard-heartedness, stinginess, covetousness and other passions, from which God grant me to get rid of soon. Do not be offended by those who sin and offend, but with meekness and kindness overcome your enemies or those who fall into misdeeds and mistakes. In anger and irritability lies complete powerlessness to destroy evil in others, but, on the contrary, in meekness, gentleness and patience lies the strength that can defeat all evil. That is why the Holy Scripture says: overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21). We act extremely illogically and absurdly when we harbor evil in our hearts against those who offend us or those who sin: by doing this we torment ourselves without purpose and confuse others. May the Lord help us overcome all evil in ourselves and in others with goodness and grace. To the Lord be glory forever. Today, during Matins, the devil shot his red-hot arrows at me with all his ferocity and constancy because of a quarrel with the guard and the sexton because of the insult they inflicted on one noble maiden. And she is somewhat guilty for her smiles in church, for her pretentious movements. May the Lord enlighten everyone. I thank the Lord, who sent His wonderful deliverance and salvation to me when I walked from my home to Guardianship: I turned confusion into peace, oppression into space, sadness into joy, cowardice, shame into boldness, guilt into justification. And all this is due to one mercy. I thank the Lord, who gave kind, reasonable, well-intentioned, active members of the Trusteeship - I rejoice for them. God truly works in them both to will and to act according to His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). Act, O Lord, All-Blessed, All-Provider, All-Cunning! Remember them, Lord, in Your Kingdom. How beautiful, smart, kind, and verbal they are all! I am nothing before them, weakness! But the power of God is made perfect in weakness. Glory to the Lord for this! February 4. Twelve o'clock at night. I notice that all people are better than me. Decorated with wonderful gifts of mind and heart. Glory to the Lord! And now and ever and unto ages of ages. Therefore, after And now there is praise or prayer to the Mother of God, that by being Incarnate from Her and through Her we have received eternal life, now and ever and unto ages of ages. February 5th. Chicken cutlets are very easy on the stomach and highly nutritious. Washing it down with milk (half a cup of tea) is also very good. Egg yolk and sherry are great for soothing the insides. The end of the liturgy on February 4 was with extreme agony, and the time after mass was also a time of crowding and agony from extreme nerve pain and irritability. Due to the fact that Father Deacon did not give the honor of kissing the hand in due time. What a little thing? And at the same mass I did this earlier. The nervous soreness occurred, I think, because I was angry, ate rotted borscht (soup) in the evening and drank strong tea at Burachok’s without a roll, and I inhaled heavy, dusty air in his apartment: I felt this even in the evening. Avoid this, otherwise it will just be a disaster. Do we serve the Lord in vain, without significant benefit? Oh, don’t let us think about it even for a moment: the Lord continually vouchsafes us the great, life-giving gifts of His grace. Serving Him is service in the highest degree vital, premium, sweet, luminous, cleansing, strengthening. February 5th. I thank the Lord, who showed me His wondrous help during the service of Matins. The heart was dead, powerless, the enemy controlled it, but through prayers to God and the Mother of God and to the holy martyr Agathia, its strength was broken, and I boldly spoke the great litany, starting with the sovereign. The canon and litanies spoke firmly, solemnly, loudly. By the grace of God, he served the Liturgy freely and loudly; The Holy Synod and the Metropolitan remembered as they should; I read the prayer behind the pulpit cheerfully, only at the end, due to the violence of the enemy, I did not utter a few words. I thank the Lord for the tenderness during the use of the Holy Gifts. I thank the Lord for delivering me from spiritual troubles many times throughout the day. February 5, 1876 I thank the Lord for delivering me from the prodigal demon [...]. I thank the most merciful Lord, who saved me many times from the oppression of sin through the prayer of my repentance. Oh, by Your wound I am continually healed, Lord Jesus! Glory to You! Wonderful is Your holy name! I thank the Lord, who gave me the grace and strength to solemnly, without stumbling, consummate my second marriage from beginning to end. Glory to the victory of Your grace, Lord! I prayed to You for this, and I received it. I looked to You alone and paid no attention to the multitude of people. One should despise appearance as unimportant. I am a man of appearance, external forms, (...), turning my gaze away from inner beauty, which is often hidden under visible ugliness. This is my grave sin. Due to this direction of the heart and deception of vision, I often fall into dislike and contempt for an unseemly person, despising in him that which is in the image and likeness of God, because of a rough, ugly, unattractive shell, or bark, I violate the entire law of God, which consists in unhypocritical, disinterested, impartial love; I turn out to be a low sensualist who, even in people like himself, seeks satisfaction for his voluptuous aspirations and inclinations, as if people, created in the image and likeness of God for the eternal Kingdom of God, for the co-kingdom of Christ God, were created for his voluptuousness. My God! How far a man’s sweets and passions carry him! How blinding! How they disfigure and pervert him, making him worse than dumb animals! How necessary it is to crucify your flesh with passions and lusts, to humble it with fasting, vigil, prayer, and contemplation of God! I see the wondrous beauty of God in all the works of God, wherever I look: at the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars, at the clouds floating in the air, at the earth, at plants, precious stones, at animals and especially at people who are adorned with every gift of God. I marvel at the Lord in all His works! I marvel at the Lord and at myself, for I am wonderfully made. The constant character of a Christian should be meekness, love, humility, truth, and patience. Grant, Lord, especially to me, Your priest, these virtues! Wake up! The heart of a Christian, especially a priest, must be a flame of holy love and embrace with its love all people, and not just his relatives or friends, comrades, or the beautiful and handsome. Carnal love, blind, narrow, absurd, unclean, dead, destroys spiritual, broad, pure, life-giving love in the heart. We are extremely attached to everything carnal, earthly (flesh, sight, honors, wealth, various things elegantly made from different materials, animals, etc.), to the pleasures of the table, to clothing - and the Lord commanded us to despise everything earthly, even life in the body. This is how our aspirations, goals, intentions are contrary to the spirit of our faith. So you care about the beauty of your face - what good is it if your soul is unclean and ugly? Often to the destruction of you and others. About wealth? What is it for when because of it the soul is poor, pitiful, destitute? About the differences? What are they for when your soul has surpassed every measure of sins and is marked before God with countless sins? - For greater condemnation for you at the Last Judgment. In the akathist to the Sweetest Jesus, the first words mention the benefit to the deaf and humming in the opening of hearing and tongue. And with me the Lord performed the miracle of opening lost hearing and giving me a tongue. In the heart of a glutton, a sensualist, an exquisite eater, the grace of God cannot dwell, because he is all flesh, lust, which keeps him in constant affinity with the devil, the father and parent of carnal lusts, fornication, voluptuousness, money-loving, envy, malice, hostility, enmity, and other passions and lusts; at the same time, this carnal lust (or carnality) alienates him from God and His grace. In inner life there must be strict logic, without which it is impossible to build a science of active salvation. Thus, one cannot overcome passions without fasting or without keeping one’s flesh in constant rein at all times, without tiring it with labor, vigilance, prayer, exercise in good deeds, in serving one’s neighbors through alms or anything else that is possible and required by circumstances. That is why I do not have time in the matter of moral perfection, because there is no logic in my inner life: without exhausting and enslaving my body, but pleasing it in everything, I think of conquering my passions and achieving a quiet haven of dispassion and salvation. Today, February 7, I was subjected to extreme agony from the spirits of malice due to a feeling of hostility towards sexton Zrelov, who seemed somehow fierce at the beginning of the service, although he was not like that at all. While reading the canon, this hellish anger burst into my heart and created in me extreme confusion, oppression, and a consuming fire; During the entire canon and until the end of the morning, I could not get rid of her for a long time: with such impudence and with such violence she stuck into me, although I denied her, did not deign to attack her; I did not speak a special litany due to extreme cramped conditions and embarrassment; He spoke the prayer to Christ, the True Light vaguely, did not utter the words: to do Thy commandments... Oh, how one must beware of malice! This is the devil, and all the evil in people, in me and in others, comes from the rapist and tyrant of the devil, therefore we must excuse a stranger, but not ourselves, and pray for him if he is hostile to us, may the Lord save him from such evil. So I see for myself how difficult it is to get rid of the feeling of hostility when it has crept into the soul and, like a wedge, has settled in its depths. Only God’s mercy can deliver and heal a soul infected with the poison of malice, as well as fornication and any other passion. Sweet tea, consumed in excess in the evening or during the day, contributes to extreme nervous irritation and illness, or passion of the soul, and since the devil acts on the soul through the nerves, as through reins, it is necessary to consume drinks or food that are not irritating, but strengthening (cold water or porter in small quantities, cold (fresh) vegetables, fruits). The heart, as a spiritual sensory, as the outcome of life, as a recipient of faith, hope and love for God, must be protected in every possible way from attachment to the sensual, from carnal and spiritual passions; in it, in our heart, the heavenly fire of faith and love for God and the desire for heavenly, spiritual, eternal treasures, compassionate love for our neighbor, as our co-natural and co-member with Jesus Christ Himself, must always burn; truth, holiness, peace, love, meekness, mercy, kindness, patience, hope, the hope of eternal life, the gracious consolation of the Holy Spirit should rest in it. Now, what perverts the heart, imparts to it rudeness, deadness, dullness, fossilization, blindness, laziness and negligence, exposes it to all passions: self-love, envy, pride, arrogance, vanity, envy, hostility, earthly ambition? - Most intemperance in food, covetousness, and generally addiction to local, earthly goods. Therefore, a Christian needs constant fasting and counting money as rubbish and droppings. Why does the devil have such a strong hold on our hearts and entangle them with various passions? Why does he indignate them, offend them, amaze them with sorrows, doubts, fear and vain fear? - From our intemperance, from weak faith, from the heart’s attachments to carnal objects, to earthly, corruptible, vain things. Cling to God with all your heart and you will never fear anyone or anything forever. The Lord is my enlightenment and my Savior, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, from whom shall I fear? (Ps. 26:1). (How the Psalter answers all the needs of our soul, consoles and helps in all weaknesses, sorrows, mental and physical ailments, as in all joys and in all prosperity it comforts us, thanks and glorifies God with us! Read the Psalter often, Christian!) February 8. We thank You, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, for You have revealed to us the secret of the Divine Trinity and have granted us grace and mercy, happiness and sweetness to call the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who created and preserves everything, who saves us, who unceasingly benefits us; We thank You, for You taught us to constantly glorify the Life-Giving Trinity with our hearts and lips. Grant, Lord, that above all in deeds and with all our life we ​​may constantly glorify You, Father, Son and Holy Soul! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! The Akathist to the Savior is a wonderful work, it is wonderfully good in content and presentation; he is truly all light, life, sweetness, that is, the very akathist. It worthily depicts that the Lord Jesus Christ is everything for us: Creator, Life-Giver, God, Provider and Giver of all good things, Savior and constant Wonderworker. Remember, brethren, that in the ranks of God’s creations you occupy an enviable place, that you have been given the greatest advantages in the image and likeness of God, in your destiny to eternal bliss. Take advantage of these advantages with all diligence, do not hide your talent in the ground, like the lazy and careless servant mentioned in the Gospel (Matthew 25: 14 - 30). February 8. I thank the Lord, who vouchsafed me to perform the Divine Liturgy in the Duma Church, to say the royal family, although not all, but most of it, at the great entrance, to read the entire prayer behind the pulpit and to say a word about the Last Judgment of Metropolitan Gregory 11. He stole the release at the liturgy, and at the funeral service the release was also due to the action of the devil. This hurt me and confused me. I struggled and suffered for a long time. Through the use of the Holy Gifts I was completely healed and calmed down. Glory to the Lord! I thank the Lord, who has had mercy on me many times this day. The service of the Liturgy is a service of God’s infinite love for people, therefore, with a spirit of pure, fiery love, one must begin to celebrate the Liturgy, with a pure heart, as to the purest God. Strong tea causes pain in the lower back at night and inability to sleep (February 10). Avoid strong tea and generally drink little. 10th. I thank You, Lord, for You gave me the grace to shamelessly appear before my superiors at the gymnasium in the classroom with my students, that You put good answers in them and gave me a good, unashamed word. (The district inspector visited the second class.) Whatever the service, we are consumed by corruption, to which we are addicted, with which we have become accustomed, with which we constantly live and breathe, which constantly inflicts spiritual ulcers on us and which, however, we love; we are consumed by greed, love of money, vanity, contemplation, or passion for food and drink, for elegant clothes, for money, for beautiful faces; During worship, these addictions in thoughts and feelings confuse us, hurt us, darken us, kill us, alienating us from the life of God. It's our fault, of course. How to get rid of trouble? By renouncing all your possessions and all love for yourself: you must hate your soul, which loves sin and earthly corruption, and love the Lord - the prototype of our soul and eternal incorruption. Oh, how we suffer from decay! (A passion for kamilavka and prosphyra today during the funeral mass in the Duma confused me, and I could not pronounce the name of the metropolitan and the words: grant them to Thy Holy Churches in the world, whole...) About the high service of the clergy, about their messengership from God, about their mediation between God and people, about their continuation of the work of the Savior, about serving the highest spiritual benefits of humanity, the service of reconciliation, sanctification, incorruptibility and eternal life, purification, sanctification, improvement, enlightenment. Wonderful, worldly, heavenly service on earth! I thank the Lord for the priceless gift of the liturgy - this heavenly, all-saving, all-life-giving service, and for the communion of the Divine Mysteries, which gave me life, strength, victory, purification, sanctification, renewal, boldness. (In the Duma Church there is a funeral mass for Eugenia the Maiden.) How low, earthly, obstinate we are, how unworthy we are of the liturgy, this heavenly service filled with the endless love of God for people! We come to the liturgy with our absent-mindedness, with our passions and earthly dreams, with our impurity, our vanity, with our own (attire), in which our soul is. Listen to the soul of a Christian, which is sung at the beginning of the liturgy: The only begotten Son and Word of God, immortal, deigning to be incarnate from the Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, immutably made man, was crucified, O Christ God, trampling death by death... Do you hear: God incarnated for you, became a man so that you could become a god, do you appreciate it, do you feel it? Does it elevate you? Does it leave the ground? Look: how strange, wondrous, terribly the Kingdom of God has approached us. Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Chu! On earth is the Kingdom of God. Oh, joy, oh, delight! Oh, surprise! What kind of Kingdom is this? – Church of Jesus Christ. We are by nature our own to God, as in His image and likeness; There is no one closer and dearer to us than the Lord God. But sin alienates us from God, cools our hearts towards Him, in which the flame of pure love should burn, and puts a strong mediastinum between us and God. Before Christ, heaven was closed for all people, even for the righteous; after His suffering, death and resurrection it is open to all believers and sincere repentants. Oh bounties! Oh mercy! O wealth of goodness! This mercy of God towards the fallen human race is expressed during the service by the opening of the royal doors, depicting the gates of paradise and the Kingdom of Heaven. February 12. I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me to perform the funeral liturgy for my parents Elijah, Blasius, Theodora, Vassa, Maria, Daria, Archpriest Constantine, Anna, and to partake of the most pure, Divine, heavenly, life-giving Mysteries. I ask for mercy and forgiveness from the Lord for the hasty baptism of Captain First Rank Pilkin with lack of faith, timidity, illness, and numbness in many readings. I didn’t read many prayers or the Gospel itself, I just finished reading it at home. Because of the silk fee (and the machinations of the enemy), I could not speak, due to my addiction to it. Away with attachment to earthly things in such a heavenly Sacrament! Forgive me, Lord. I was cowardly, of little faith, unfaithful - where was I in a hurry? To get engaged to [Kozlyaninov]? But there I waited for two hours, until those whom they were waiting for gathered. 13th. I thank the Lord, who quickly heard me when I cried out to him in repentance, who delivered me from the cramps of the sin of anger and who gave me His spiritual healing - grace, peace, boldness, freedom. When we pray, we place our fingers in the image of the Trinity and the two natures in Christ so that we always have in memory the two main saving dogmas of our faith, so that we constantly have in our thoughts and in our hearts the name of the Lord, sanctifying us, merciful, preserving us, protecting us from enemies visible and invisible. 14th. I thank the Lord Jesus Christ, my Creator and Savior, who created the power of salvation in my heart when I cried out to Him in repentance with all my heart (in the House of Guardianship at eight o’clock in the evening on Saturday), condemning myself for my hostility towards my nephew. God! Overcome the hostility of my heart towards the merchants Philip Stepanov and some others, towards His Eminence Metropolitan Isidore and others. Only under the condition of the image of God in man was the incarnation of the Son of God and the entire economy of God’s salvation necessary and possible: His suffering, death, burial and resurrection; Only under the condition of the image and likeness of God in man is liturgy necessary and possible. This is a constant remembrance of His entire life on earth, the work of His salvation, His suffering, death, resurrection and ascension. What the greatest advantage in man is the image and likeness of God! (In the liturgy about the image and likeness of God, about the renewal of fallen man, about the destruction of sin.) What a terrible sedition is sin and what a terrible, deadly poison! How he woundedly killed the Son of God, who took upon himself our nature, for our sins! I always err in my heart (Ps. 94:10): now with hostility (to Philip Stepanov, my nephew, etc.), now with envy, now with fornication, now with intemperance in food and drink, now with laziness, now with covetousness. I will not trust my heart and follow it and my flesh. Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to the wrath of God (Rom. 12:19). The Lord knows that we are inclined to avenge ourselves constantly with hostile thoughts, feelings, word and deed, out of enthusiasm and passion, which means sinfully, to please the devil - and so He, through the Apostle, teaches us not to avenge ourselves, but to leave it to the all-righteous, wise and omnipotent Lord, so that we can get rid of the bad consequences of our own unrighteous vengeance and to love everyone, about everyone (and about enemies) to pray, to do good to everyone. (About Philip Stepanov.) February 15. I thank the Lord for the gift of serving Matins and Liturgy in the Duma Assumption Church on Sunday; There were many temptations from the devil, but the grace and power of the life-giving Mysteries overcame everything, and I came out after the liturgy free and peaceful. Just as you furiously attack the beggars who persistently ask you for alms a second, third, or more times, so the Lord allows the devil to furiously attack you during worship, so that through this he may teach meekness, non-covetousness, patience, and humility. We often hear in church during services Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and forever and ever, so that we remember that we belong to the eternal Kingdom of Christ, there will be no end to it, and so that we constantly strive with all our might for this eternal Kingdom, so that we do not cleave to earthly, temporary, vain things and pleasures, so that we constantly remember our calling to incorruptible eternal life through the redemptive suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I am a sinner - but he who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at me [Jn. 8, 7 ]! We are from the same dust, and there is one grave for you and me, noble, rich, learned; you and I are the same before God: you have a rank - and so do I, you are in the image - and so do I, you have received adoption - and so have I, you have been worthy of the betrothal of the Spirit - and so have I, you have been honored with the communion of the life-giving Body and the life-giving Blood of the Only Begotten Son of God - and so have I, and much more often, although due to my sins it is unworthy. So, I do not pay attention to your nobility, learning, wealth and do not impute anything to you, so that you learn not to be arrogant in the church and in society and at home, but let yourself be humble. The history of the Church is a loud witness to the truth of God, to all Revelation. This is a worldwide beacon, shining to everyone floating in the abyss of life (apostles, prophets, martyrs, saints, saints). In the Church, the spirit of God's love for people was expressed in shepherding, in fatherhood and sonship: spiritual fathers, spiritual children. Shepherds and flocks must strictly adhere to this spirit. No matter how we sing, but the Heavenly Father Himself; we must remember our Heavenly Fatherland, which the church pastorate and patronymics remind us of and to which they should lead, February 18. I thank the Lord, who quickly, quickly delivered me from the oppression of sin, as soon as I raised my heart’s eyes to Him in repentance and prayer. It was in the evening in the dining room. Here is a picture of the Crucifixion. 19th. In a dream vision today, evil spirits in the form of people extremely brazenly laughed at me, at my gluttony and at the liturgy that I supposedly served, and at the Most Holy Sacrament, and at the Holy Altar (they moved it from its place), and at Holy Communion, approaching everyone indiscriminately at the altar, both those who were preparing and those who were not preparing; and in another chapel it was as if Father Matthew was simultaneously serving another liturgy with many lambs and particles. They also laughed at my fear of taking full leave. Deliver me from evil spirits, O God, who is a Lover of Mankind. 20th. Friday of the first week of Lent. 155 people confessed from two to ten hours. The knee was difficult to move; Veliar kicked hard and raped. Oh, partiality! And where? In the work of God, where God Himself stands invisibly and His Angels. And all because of empty things. And what a sin it is to lose God’s favor for the sake of pleasing people and to be deprived of His grace! 21st. He served mass in the Duma Church with great difficulty and the most painful resistance from the devil. I was all weakness, suffering, illness, shame, powerlessness, dead powerlessness. After communion he marvelously revived, but soon there were terrible temptations again; I read the prayer behind the pulpit with difficulty; stole my leave. Take money from Katerina from the ruble. If the Metropolitan was severe with me, he was severe for my many sins, especially for my severity towards the poor. And I should not at all bear any grudge against him or have hostility towards him - on the contrary, I should maintain great respect and love for him, as for a wise archpastor and father, imagining the benefits that could come from harsh and obstinate treatment, and the multitude of my sins, for which I am worthy not only of severity, but also of disgust and rejection. In addition, one must imagine his old age’s infirmities, many occupations, grief at work, the tendency of old age to be harsh and grouchy, the general character of his life: kindness and mercy towards the fallen and the poor and condescension towards everyone - and that feeling of hostility, hatred from the devil. Retain reverence and love for him, as for a merciful and truthful archpastor, strict but also kind, who raised you to the rank of archpriest, although you are unworthy. Imagine the same about the sovereign, for he is kind, merciful, noble in spirit, compassionate, although, as a person, he has weaknesses. But imagine how many duties and moral responsibilities he has, and pray for him earnestly. February 22. I thank and praise the Lord for His wondrous salvation, revealed in me this morning after communion of the Divine Mysteries at the early liturgy after strong agony and struggle with the worst demons, and in the evening through my prayer for deliverance from the oppression of the enemy, which befell me for my silence, failure to pronounce my dismissal at the prayer service and betrothal of Abrakhimov in Ivanova’s house in Shkiperskaya Street. Having received peace from the Lord, I went to Brown and there I spent my time reading the prophets with spiritual benefit and pleasure. February 25. I thank the Lord, who saved me in the gymnasium from a bad movement of the heart when I met a woman who was in charge of washing the gymnasium linen. He cried out in repentance from the heart and was delivered by the Lord from the nasty poison. And at a meeting of the Council of Trustees, the Lord saved me from the extreme oppression of the adversary, cramped conditions, and death. And the Lord has shown His mercy many times this day. I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from nowhere will my help come (Ps. 120:1). Without God, everything on earth is nothing—in Him is all good. Let me strive towards Him alone, having hated the adulterous flesh and the adulterous world. 26th. I thank the Lord, who gave me this day and met me with more mercy and bounty. Wall walk 135. Got up at five and a half o'clock. What is the harm, they say, in eating something prohibited by law or commandment, for example, forbidden fruit in heaven? But look, what sad consequences did this eating lead to for the entire human race? - To damnation and death with all its horrors. Is it not from here that all the sins and passions developed that to this day torment and kill the human race? What's the harm, they say, to serve the belly, eat well, enjoy yourself, get drunk? But in the end, what comes of it? Fornication, adultery, through natural sins, foul language, fights, murders. What's the harm, they say, in saving money, collecting it, increasing your capital? But look, what did this love of money, this passion for collecting money lead to Judas? To betrayal of the Lord, to despair and suicide. Are there not enough such examples nowadays? Now they betray the Lord in the person of His lesser brothers, and betray them many times. Look at the stingy, greedy for money and hard-hearted rich man: he has tens and hundreds of thousands of money lying around, and every day he passes dozens of poor people asking for food, shoes, clothes to cover their nakedness without any concern, he will not stop, will not delve into their needs; or take a moneylender - a rich man who gives money on interest to a poor man, who should simply give this money in alms? Is this unimportant, not cruel, better than Judas’ betrayal of the Lord? No better. The same applies to clothing: you buy rich materials for your various attire and do not notice that through this you are depriving the poor of necessary and simple clothing, and most importantly, clinging heartily to clothing, you are alienated from the Lord, from love for your neighbor, for where your treasure is, there is your heart (Matthew 6:1). And because of the addiction to food and drink, to money, to clothing, there is so much envy of one’s neighbor, ill will, carnal sensuality, fornication, how many different temptations of the evil one, how much unfaithfulness to God! Without number. Hence the need for fasting, curbing the lusts and passions of the flesh. This also shows the necessity of the first commandment in paradise and the necessity of obedience to God on the part of man in paradise regarding not eating the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Hence the glorification of the martyrs, the apostles, the radiance of the saints who exhausted their flesh with fasting - hence the crucifixion of the Lord on the cross and His death for us. During prayer, each person praying should have his own living thought, his own warm feeling. Our parishioners are truly sheep in meekness, gentleness, simplicity, true children. May the Lord God remember them in His Kingdom always, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Such, or almost such, are all Orthodox Christians, true Christians, raised and educated in the spirit of Orthodoxy. Glory to Your faith, Christ! Yes, I am not afraid of them in church during the service, but I turn to them in simplicity. The devil scares with ghosts. So yesterday, while saying the litia over the baby Kodin (at Britnev’s), the devil embarrassed me with the poisonous pity of his new cassock, as if it would not get dirty from incense. Oh, madness! But it wasn’t love for the baby that hurt me, it wasn’t the pity of the parents who cried for him! Oh, how a priest needs spiritual love, holy love at every step. Woe to the priest who tramples on love! He is the devil's plaything. God! Grant me impartiality to everything in the world (to the triple lust), and love for You and for humanity, of which I am a member, and You, O Innumerable Grace, after your incarnation as well! Give me a sincere prayer for all Orthodox Christians and for the whole world. February 28. Saturday of the second week of Lent. Early. I was in trouble because yesterday I was drinking wine at Fyodor Vasiliev’s and eating a mushroom half-pie, as if all the sins of him and his wife had burdened me! It was so hard for me! The disease and irritation of the nerves is terrible! The demonic fear was exorbitant, as if I were the greatest criminal. This week I was at Father Porfiry’s name day and there, contrary to the rules of the Holy Pentecost, I ate fish and drank more than ordinary wine, and laughed a lot with engineer Lieutenant Colonel Petrov after dinner. I sinned in this before God, the Mother of God, before the holy apostles and before the holy saints of God and before the people living on earth. Through this failure to fast, my soul died and became a playground for demons, their tormentor. And yesterday at (...) Fyodor Vasilyevich's I drank three glasses of sherry and, no matter how long I had not eaten, I became significantly intoxicated. I suffered some pain from him in my right chest. During early mass it was extremely difficult for me. The voice was extremely painful and weak; The scrofula hiding inside, like a snake, stung me along with the spring air. I felt like I was on hot coals. And now I feel a poisonous tickling inside my right side. Today I bought some cream to treat myself. In the second week of Lent, seven rubles and ninety kopecks from confessors. I have sinned, O my Lord, Lord, by sending in anger to the devil Thy member created in Thy image and likeness and redeemed by Thy Blood, Thy son by the grace of baptism, God by the participation of Thy Divine nature. I repent before You, Lord, and ask for mercy from You, my Savior. Amen. During Compline, he lost his boldness from one sly, vain glance at the velvet tips of the sleeves of his cassock: he hid them and could not hide them. This is how poisonously, deadeningly every insignificant earthly passion, every empty thing has an effect on the soul, how (in the morning) I was embarrassed at the end of the proskomedia, afraid that my cassock would be soiled by the incense, and yesterday at Yudin’s I took pity on my cassock, so that the incense smoke would not stain it; or how today I was embarrassed because of one lady in a black velvet coat, but overcame the embarrassment and said a short, intense litany; or at mass, during the communion of the laity, he was wounded by the open breasts of one girl, but through prayer he overcame the temptation. Oh, what an abyss of temptations! He who is dead to the flesh and to the world will escape them. I glorify the mercy and unspeakable generosity of my Master and God, who saved me today with a wondrous, great salvation during the all-night vigil through prayer of repentance and tenderness from the confusion, oppression and shame of sin: before the all-night vigil, entering the church, I became very angry with a drunken beggar standing at the door, and repeatedly pushed him out of the gate, and the other by the hair, - Lord accepted my repentance and gave me peace and tenderness. But I stole the beginning and the end at the all-night vigil out of fear of demons, and again I was wounded in my heart, and again I prayed with hope, and again I received peace. Glory to the gracious Lord! But sometimes at a time when the most important things are forsaken and not saved by the Lord. What does it mean? February 28. 29th. You, scientists, address yourself in the area of ​​the mind, in the area of ​​transitory objects, but there is a more extensive, important and essential area of ​​the heart and action - according to the principles of faith, hope and love for God, and this area is mostly neglected by you. Thus, you are left only with transitory images, so to speak, with the chaff of grain, and not with the grain of mystical life itself, because in you there is no life in the spirit of the Gospel, internal life, but external life, external feelings and impressions from external objects and phenomena of life. You remain the old man and not the new man. It is false that you cannot speak freely - this is an obsession of the evil demon, this is his pride, which disparages the merits and intercession of the saints of God. Resist him with firm faith. In the Church there is imperishable food for our souls - the word of God, the Sacraments, worship, or readings, chants, sacred rituals that nourish the mind and feelings; come here more often and partake of incorruption with your mind, heart and lips. In the world you constantly feed only on decay: your vision, your hearing, taste, smell, touch, mind, memory, imagination, imagination - all senses feed on decay. In the church, everything is incorruptible: beauty is incorruptible, eternal, sweetness is incorruptible, wealth is incorruptible, glory is incorruptible - but worldly, carnal beauty, sweetness, glory, and wealth are subject to corruption, disappearance, and they are also deceptive, charming, and sinful. Remember, Christian, that because of eternal life you fight sin and the devil, endure wounds, ulcers, endure sorrows, hardships, labors, poverty, and do deeds of virtue. There is something to work for and be patient about. Through longsuffering all the saints received eternal life. So, Christians, always keep this goal in mind. Which one? - Eternal life. Foreign journalism complains about the abundance of educational material and the burden of young students in educational institutions. It's the same with us. It is not a lot of material that is needed, but thoroughness and firmness in mastering the main, so to speak, veins of science, or the constructions and laws of speech of one or another language without unnecessary details, burdening the memory and brain with a lot of material, but not refreshing the mind and soul. Subjects according to the Law of God are the soul of the entire educational process, but to a limited extent it is difficult for students to complete it as they should due to the many lessons. Many students consider classical languages ​​to be their main subjects, I don’t know why, and therefore they try to prepare for them with great diligence, thus transferring their primary respect to pagan literature. They, of course, do not know the saying of the great Apostle of Languages ​​that five reasonable words in their native language are better than tens of thousands of words in a foreign language, but without a reasonable, definite purpose (1 Cor. 14:19), although the benefits of classical languages ​​cannot be denied. But they generally provide little food for the healthy, nutritious, strengthening Christian soul. Only Christian Science gives true enlightenment, healthy food, strength and strength to the soul. [Promised to you in advance] in the name of God, the well-being of children, a prosperous life, if faith, the law of God, the word of God are at the head of all your activities. And we see beautifully the fruits of such a mood. Over the course of thirteen years, many learned and went out into the world happy. December 18. I sinned before the Lord and before people and before the holy Angels and holy people, that because of a glass broken by my wife, I had a cruel quarrel with my wife and sister-in-law Anna K., who began to defend my wife and reproach me. May this not be imputed to us by Thy mercy, Lord, for behold, I repent of the sin I have committed. My wife, instigated by her sister, (found) me the most worthless person, having forgotten everything good; I am truly worthless and useless as Your servant, Lord, but I still repent and ask You, my good, generous, beneficent and almighty God, for the mercy and kindness of my soul. Be on this day and at this hour the God of mercy, generosity and love for mankind, and may our malice not overcome Your unspeakable goodness and mercy through the prayers and intercession of our Most Holy and Most Blessed Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, the glorious and all-praiseworthy and spirit-bearing and all-wonderful apostles of Yours, martyrs, hierarchs, reverends and all saints, whom we always bring to You in prayer for us. Amen. Perform, O Lord, the miracle of Your mercy. He committed before the Lord the sin of self-love, the stupidest addiction to earthly things (a glass), pride, impatience, unpeacefulness, enmity and hostility, envy, greed, suspicion. But I repent of everything and ask for mercy from the Lord and from my neighbors. February 29. In all persons and things, contemplate all-goodness, generosity, wisdom, beauty, sweetness, greatness, omnipotence, the holiness of the All-Artist God: in woman and man, in all their members, in every animal; in all the gifts of nature and grace, in the sky, in the luminaries, in the earth - in everything. He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of everything (Rev. 1:8). Amen. But the enemy distorts everything, presents it in an unclean form. Have deep pity on those who are dying in sins and only outwardly, out of need, those who repented and received communion, not willingly, especially those who did not repent and did not partake of the life-giving Mysteries, and fervently, tearfully pray to God for them, and do not be a cold, insensitive participant in the rite of requiem and funeral service. And pray fervently for the living sinners; do not despise anyone for their sins, but pity and cry for them. Let your heart be a flaming altar or censer. When you visit different places for church needs and see different people of different ranks and conditions, with the brilliant furnishings of a temporary home, or simple or noble women, shining with the beauty of their faces and eyes, do not be seduced by this and do not attach your heart to it, remembering that you are a servant of the indescribably beautiful God, who abides forever, Who has allocated His beauty to all creatures, or poured it out. for all creatures; that you are a servant of Him who is eternal sweetness, eternal bliss; that all the glory of man is like the flower of grass: the grass is gone, and its flower falls away (Isa. 40: 6 - 7); that to be seduced by human beauty is the lot of low, earthly, voluptuous people, but you are a heavenly thinker and consider everything earthly, highly valued by people out of passion, as nothing. Woe to our hearts! (Oh, what a war was in me today at the baptism of baby John in Kronstadt Street, in Ivanova’s house, where the successor was a beautiful maiden, kind, of angelic beauty!) And in Povalishin’s apartment, giving a prayer to the wife and baby of the officer, I was embarrassed and could not pronounce many words. In Karpov’s house, he baptized a poor tradesman without stumbling, easily, because everything was simple and there was nothing tempting. Forgive me, Master Lord, for everything in which I have sinned before You. At Vespers, I was embarrassed while saying the prayer, Lord and Master of my life, and did not say my release for fear of turning to the west. Without the prayers for us of the heavenly Church - the holy saints of God - our sinful prayer is nothing. Despite our sins, despite our abominations, we still allowed arrogance and pride to exist! So what will come of this? I thank the Lord, who saved me from the oppression of sin at three o’clock in the morning, when, feeling it, I stood up and flowed to God with a prayer of repentance. Cling with your heart and mind to the infinite, original, imperishable beauty - God, who beautifully adorned all His creations and especially those that are in His image and likeness; instead of the corruptible, love the incorruptible sweetness, which imparts such wondrous sweetness to the fruits of the earth and those necessary for the sake of the reproduction of the animate, but not for the sweetness of the outpouring of the Seed. The flattery of wealth and... the lusts that come in suppress the word, and there is no fruit (Mark 4:19). This is what I, damned one, experience myself all the time. For example, I begin to perform proskomedia, and often I am overcome by greed for soft prosphora, and if it is callous and small, anger at the prosphora; or sometimes I feel sorry for the cassock (this decay), then I feel sorry for the cassock, then I feel embarrassed at the sight of a good baptismal scarf, then at the sight of a good, beautiful woman’s face, or you never know what! Oh, carnal lusts, vain, unclean, ungodly, perverting the soul in the image and likeness of God - the incorruptible and immortal bride of Christ God and the Holy Spirit, daughter of the Heavenly Father! Is not your desire, your life, your soul perishable? Is not the Lord the end of all desires - your peace, your eternal life, beauty, glory, your sweetness, your light, your justification and your deliverance, your physician and your Savior? March 1st. Monday. I thank the Lord for the revival of the Presanctified Gifts by the Divine Liturgy, for the communion of the Divine Mysteries and for the victory over the worst invisible enemies; They fought me hard, embarrassed me, hurt me, as if they were stabbing me with needles or burning me with hot coals. Damned one, I work for the flesh and think at the same time to work for God, but as this is impossible, the flesh, of course, always takes over. I thank the Lord, who saved me yesterday from prodigal indignation and fire by looking at an open female breast (in a shirt) and who healed me from the prodigal sweet deadly poison that was beginning to spill. Confirm, God! Grant me fasting: I do not fast on my own. The Lord for me and for every person is the all-perfect good, everything for me and for everyone - why do I cling with my heart to transitory, empty things and corruptible forms? God! Transform and renew me and, having renewed, establish me. Deliver me from flattery. To what height of holiness and truth, of deification, has the nature of the holy saints of God been raised: the Forerunners, the apostles, the prophets, the saints, the martyrs, the saints, the unmercenaries and all the saints! They, like the suns, shine in the sky with sacredness and deification, and smell like flowers of paradise. Carnal people do not understand their height and dignity and consider them ordinary people, not deserving of worship and calling for help. Give understanding to everyone, Lord! March 3. I thank the Lord for His wondrous help to me during Matins and the Liturgy, for prevailing over the all-evil fighter, for without grace it is impossible to destroy even the slightest of his machinations; I thank the Lord for the communion of the Divine Mysteries. During Compline, I was subjected to the terrible slander of an incorporeal enemy because of emotions before Compline, when I was at home [...] for what? For his (nephew’s) apparent ugliness and (blindness), crookedness and lack of development. Whom did I despise and hate Tune? Created, like me, in the image and likeness of God, an honorable member of Christ and His Church, a child of God, an animated temple of the Holy Spirit, heir to the Kingdom of Heaven. Because of what? Because of his unsightly face and physical defect, for which he should be more pitied and loved, he forgot that we are all decay, which we should despise the flesh, but passes away, but strive for souls, things more immortal 136. That we are all earth and to earth we will go, that all flesh is hay and all the glory of man is the flower of grass: the grass came out, and the flower fell away (Isa. 40:6). Oh! I'm a partiality madman! Because of the material, unseemly shell of a person’s body, he despised and hated the soul, the rational, beautiful bride and daughter of “God. The Law of God destroyed everything through its pride and malice, forgetting its countless iniquities and infirmities, forgetting brotherhood, the equality of nature and gifts of grace in all of us, not sparing the kinship of flesh and blood. But terrible distress and sorrow befell me during Compline, and even before Compline. I repent with all my soul before the Lord that I have sinned grievously, that I was a birth of vipers, a child of the devil, according to the Scriptures (Matthew 3:7). But may the Lord restore me in love and let me always love every person impartially. My nephew, as a martyr, should be held accountable by me for the loss of an eye from smallpox and for the disfigurement of his face by smallpox and for the fact that, perhaps, the face of his soul is handsome, for in the world of moral beings the opposite is often the case: the face and body are handsome, but the soul is ugly; if the body is ugly, then the soul is beautiful; Is it not because of beautiful faces that fornication spreads throughout the world? March 4th. I felt bitter about the opposing forces today during Matins after yesterday’s Compline and the meeting in the Council of Trustees. Hundreds of serpentine stings were pierced into my heart, and with extreme difficulty I spoke the litany; I could not speak the petitionary litany for the sake of the plague brought upon me by the evil one for the impurity of my heart after reading in the canon the words addressed to the Mother of God: how do you give the breast of mania to the One who nourishes the entire universe? 137 It was necessary to be amazed by these words, to be touched, to revere, to thank and glorify the Lord, who so belittled Himself for our sake and so honored us, but I was embarrassed, tempted by the unblemished, most pure breasts, felt oppression and fear in my heart and therefore could not speak the litany and glorify with my heart and lips our Most Holy, Most Pure, Most Blessed, Glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary with all the saints. But I thank the Lord - the canon was read clearly, Christ, the True Light, too, and the whole dismissal was said. Glory to Your power, Lord! It’s great not to eat anything in the evening: you sleep peacefully, easily all night, your voice is pure, clear, loud (in the morning at Matins). Yesterday I drank tea with strawberry jam at the merchant's wife Marya Alekseevna, ate Crimean apples and oranges. My heart numbs when I need to pray for the emperor, empress, heir, heiress and their children, for the metropolitan and the Synod, to remember the holy saints of God... a sin for my sake, for the sake of lack of faith, fear, fornication, gluttony. The verbal sheep of Christ's flock - ordinary women - greatly consoled me with their sincere, pure love - with their zeal for me, their diligent listening to my conversation, offering services (handkerchief, ruble to the poor, pretzels), bowing at their feet, although I always reject this strictly, kissing my hands, feet, shoulders. My God! Why does my unworthiness deserve such respect, such love? But no, this is not for me, but for You, Lord - they see in me, the priest, You, the Primordial and Eternal Priest, Who gave Yourself for us for the immaculate slaughter. You repay them. And grant me to love them and all people as much as they love me. During the mass at the end, turning to the people, say goodbye: I did not say it, but hid many words, being afraid - alas! stupidity - Green! Isn't my service God's? I am not mine, but God’s, and I should not think about myself during the service, but about God and people. March 4th. I thank the Lord, who heard in sorrow and need the prayer of His servant Sofia Vasilievna and her child for her husband Sergei Petrovich. May he give him a good answer before the investigator. The Lord of our belly is benevolent and merciful to everyone. The Lord is near... to all who call on Him in truth (Ps. 144:18). I am afraid, damned one, of educated, important, rich or elegantly dressed people standing in church, and not of the great, all-holy, righteous, omniscient, omnipotent God, the Judge of all men. Do not the rich, the so-called educated and the noble despise us and faith itself? We should be afraid of them least of all, we should speak the most truth to them, we should especially thunder in their ears with prayers of repentance, thanksgiving and glorification - a completely righteous deed, and none of the people can exact from us for this, but God will glorify us for this, according to His faithful word: those who glorify Me will glorify, and those who disparage Me will be dishonored (1 Samuel 2:30). ); the holy Angels and holy saints will rejoice and applaud us for this. Be it, Lord! Remember not our sins, Lord! What honor has God bestowed upon man, by dwelling in him and walking in him and with him - in a word, making him His animate church, just as the Lord said: to him (who keeps His commandments) we will come and make an abode with him (John 14:23). Meanwhile, people who bear the Christian name, for the most part, do not feel this immeasurable goodness of God, dishonoring the church of God - their body and soul with all sorts of sins, all sorts of passions and lusts. Oh, our insensibility, madness and wretchedness! The Universe, so majestic and beautiful, does not contain its Creator and its Lord and is unworthy to contain Him as a material one, but the human soul contains Him, becomes a member of Him, His bride! The Lord called us to an imperishable life by His incarnation, but we cleave to corruption, work for various carnal passions: gluttony, love of money, covetousness, fornication, luxury, etc. Oh, our wretchedness! We have turned our lives upside down, inside out, inside out, and that is why evil demons control us, laugh at us, and we ourselves suffer greatly. By You, Lord, I am constantly saved, I get rid of fierce demons, I am cleansed, sanctified, renewed, I receive peace, space, strength and strength of soul and body. I thank You, Lord, for Your life-giving Mysteries, for through them eternal grace comes to me from You. From confession it is clear what kind of meek, weak sheep all Orthodox Christians are, what sins and how many their souls are burdened with, in what networks the bodiless enemy keeps them all and no one is free from his networks; nevertheless, there is no reason to be afraid of any of the people, no matter what rank, condition, sex or age they may be; all thoughts that confuse me or us regarding other people are the work of the devil, who is constantly working in us and doing dirty tricks. From the confession of well-intentioned people, it is clear how necessary confession is before a person like oneself, for sin is a true offender and robber, moreover, a flattering, insidious, vile one, which defiles and kills. Against such a cunning, strong, irreconcilable enemy, united forces and, most importantly, grace-filled forces are needed. March 6th. Saturday of the Third Week of Lent. I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me to perform the Divine Liturgy, to partake of the Holy Mysteries, and to give communion to about twenty communicants. At the great entrance, the enemy weakened my heart, confused, darkened, oppressed, and out of cowardice I could not speak the names of the royal family. He did not finish the prayer behind the pulpit; stole my leave; exclamation Remember first, Lord... did not finish for the same reason. What kind of dirty trick is the enemy? Why can't I cope? Because of gluttony, satiety, tightness in the sides and heart. The enemy does dirty tricks for maintaining chastity, although externally more than internally. I thank the Lord, who granted me forgiveness of the sin of a quarrel with my wife and healing of the wound in my heart after my sincere prayer to the Lord with faith and hope. And the quarrel arose over a small silver-gilded tea spoon, which I sent to my sister in the village; Instead of this spoon, I bought my wife another, better one. The one I sent supposedly belonged to sister Anna Konstantinovna. She, my wife, reproached me for spoiling the village sexton and my sister, but she herself did not want to see that she had extremely spoiled her sister Anna and her children. God sees and will judge. God! Remind them of all Your bounties, through me, the unworthy, poured out in every abundance for so many years by Your all-good Providence, and arouse in them gratitude to You, the all-generous Benefactor. After the all-night vigil for the resurrection. I thank the Lord, who revived me, killed by my sins; revival took place during the sixth psalm, when I went out to read the morning prayers in front of the royal doors; here the Lord gave me mental light and heartfelt tenderness, peace, sweetness and heartfelt space. Until that time, I was cold, confused, oppressed, and unfree. Glory to the Lord! He stole the vacations again due to fear of demons. In the Gospel he did not utter the words: it is not in the Scripture that it is fitting for Him to rise from the dead (John 20:9). I believe and hope that prayer will not put you to shame. Twelve o'clock at night. Walking around the yard in the fresh air and reading prayers for communion, at the end of them I prayed with tears to the Lord, may He forbid the mayor and chief of police, who hate us, to collect for the needs of the parish Guardianship, and may He Himself, the most kind, generous and all-powerful and all-rich, grant material means to support the institution created in His name. The governors, the chief of police, and the archpriests who have held back our wealth in the century, give almost nothing to the poor and forbid us to collect for the parish Trust, which has so many needs; They are ready to do good with other people’s material means, and then only for show. Look upon them, O Lord, that they may not destroy Thy work, undertaken for the glory of Thy name. Our deeds are before You, Lord. Send us Your bounties; Behold, Lord, we have many needs and many debts - fix everything, You who are rich in all gifts. The pride of the devil disgusts me to pronounce during the service of God the names of high authorities, secular and spiritual, the name of the Lord and the Lady with the holy apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, saints and all the saints. They reject, it is said, the rulers and slander the high authorities (Jude 1:8). o Stand up to collect with a cup of Guardianship. Done. March 7. I thank the Lord, who reconciled my wife to me and me to her: she again, by God’s grace, became kind, gentle, and considerate. This is the fruit of prayer! Prayer is never wasted. I thank the Lord, who performed with me an internal miracle of pardon, pacification, healing in Tretyakova’s house, before the prayer service of my fellow countryman Nikolai, who serves in Maynard’s office; I developed hostility in my soul towards Police Chief Golovachev for his actions against the Guardianship, it embarrassed me, it tormented me, it cut me, it burned me. I condemned myself for being rude against him when I met him, I justified him, I was internally reconciled, and the Lord immediately healed my soul. You should never be angry with anyone or anything. This anger and anger is the work of the devil. Be patient, pray for your enemies with the desired heart, sincerely, pity them as erring brothers. God! What did You do at that hour and now with the police chief? What will happen to us?.. Will there be impoverishment? No... You are generous. I wrote at four o'clock in the evening just before evening. I also glorify the mercy and benevolence of the Lord, who saved me after my christening at the merchant Kulikov, when I, kneeling before the Lord, prayed to deliver me from the sorrow that befell me for deceiving my heart with a baptismal handkerchief and confusion and embarrassment when reading prayers. How can I, cursed and blind, of my own free will not see beyond the beauty and splendor of things - their dust and decay, their disappearance, and do not consider them for what they really are? How do I not value above all, above all, the rational, free and immortal human soul in the image of God, regardless of the person: whether it is a royal soul or other royal, highest persons, the soul of a nobleman or another noble, an official or some scientist, or a rich or poor person, a high-ranking person or a commoner, a man or a woman, an adult or a young person, a youth or an infant? How is it that I am still deceived, deceived in my heart, walking as if by groping, although I am a learned and knowledgeable person? How is it that I continually anger the Lord? I am chasing the charm, and now the charm pursues me everywhere, fights, torments me, fools me; I chase the charm of human faces, the charm of clothes, materials, the charm of self-interest, food and drink - it is this charm that torments me, or, better yet, my charmer, who teaches me every destructive delusion, turning my eyes away from the truth, from God, from the soul, from virtue, from eternity. How do I still not neglect food and clothing, money, distinctions? How can I not look to the incorruptible, the heavenly, the eternal? How do I not love the Lord with all my heart and do not do His will in everything, how do I not love all Christians hitherto through the womb of Christ, especially my spiritual children, and do I not always pray for them sincerely, ardently, willingly, willingly, firmly? – Self-love and carnality eat away, destroying love for God and neighbor. How lofty and majestic is the liturgy, how sublime, fiery, heavenly are its prayers, and how low, earthling, sinful, unclean, damned am I, who performs the liturgy! The same should be said about Baptism and Confirmation. How great were the holy apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, reverends, who despised everything earthly, turning away from God and from the love of their neighbor, and who gave up their souls for the sake of the Lord! Before them I am unclean clay of the ways, carried by the wind (Ps. 1:4). How can we, clinging to the visible, corruptible and transient, do not want to notice the loss of the greatest spiritual blessings - simplicity, directness, rightness, peace, freedom and spiritual joy, which can never be replaced, forever and ever, by any earthly blessings? Or we notice, for it is impossible not to notice the loss of the most sensitive, dear, essential thing - but the charm of earthly blessings overcomes us, and our original enemy and rapist, the devil, drags us and the unwilling into his captivity, entangling us hand and foot. Woe to us from the unenlightened eyes of the heart; If we see someone ugly, or ugly, or wretched - one-eyed, or hunchbacked, or lame, or with smallpox on his face, then we despise and turn away from him inwardly; If we see a beautiful person, especially a woman, we are seduced by beauty; We are afraid of the strong and the rich and the learned; we servile them willy-nilly; whether we see beautiful clothes, we are captivated, or pleasant and expensive foods and drinks, we are seduced; We envy the rich. Oh, there are many, many misconceptions! Oh, overwhelming darkness of seduction! What do I need and how much do I need? Apart from God, and with Him the necessary food, clothing, shelter, I need nothing. Give me God: in Him is everything, every good thing that is mine. What do we have in heaven? and from You what Bocxotex on earth? My heart and my flesh, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, are gone forever (Ps. 72:25-26). March 8. Monday. I fell into terrible trouble today during Matins: because of yesterday’s gluttony, satiety (I ate pie in the evening at night and drank tea for the third time), the enemy wrapped himself around my soul, poured out his terrible poison into it, confused, wounded, instilled fear and timidity, did not allow me to speak litanies and exclamations. I was in trouble, grief, despair on all sides. The Lord and the called one left me for the sake of my grave sins and for the sake of not correcting my accursed life, for I have so many times trampled on His Divine, life-giving and terrible Mysteries with my intemperance and unreason, and this is a terrible sin, equal to the crucifixion of the Son of God. Yes, because of yesterday’s charm at Kulikov’s (silk scarf), the consequences of which were former embarrassment and dumbness when saying prayers (the enemy strengthened itself on me): I became mentally weak and allowed invisible enemies to take power over me. At Fyodor Vasiliev's he ate apples, nuts, and drank grape wine - and this is the reason for the hostility of the celebration. After eating and drinking with them, I always feel heavy and tempting. March 9. Yesterday the Lord laid the foundation for my deliverance from the long, bitter captivity of the enemy - the theft of official words from me by the enemy during my service to the Lord, and laid this foundation with the extremely bitter temptations of the enemy, my bitter tears because of the terrible tightness, sorrow and fear of the heart; the enemy covered me with his fear and his misfortune, so that there was nowhere to run. I turned in weeping and tears to the mercy of God (here stood (B...) with his wife and children, a boy and girls from his school), - and in the latter’s trouble the Lord showed His strong arm: I said the entire litany of supplication on the clock, although the enemy, considering himself invincible, triumphed over me, suggesting that he too would defeat me here again - and then he said all the prayers and dismissed, having conquered the dreamy fear the devil. I thank and praise the Lord, my Chosen Leader. Five o'clock in the morning. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, that is, grant us to live holy; may Thy Kingdom come - grant to reign constantly over strangling passions and over the deceits of demons; may Your will be done - grant the greatest and sweetest good - to fulfill Your will and despise your sinful, disastrous will; Give us this day our daily bread - grant us what is necessary for life, and not for luxury and satiety, not for hoarding and storing at home or in interest-bearing institutions, material means, but especially the bread that strengthens the heart of man, and especially the true Bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:33) - the Most Pure Body and Blood of Your Only Begotten Son, the incorruptible food of the word Yours and unceasing prayer, nourishing, strengthening and fattening the soul of man with grace; Grant our bread not to me and not only for me, but also for my brethren - the poor, with whom I always want to share Your gifts. When the disembodied enemy, the culprit of all iniquity, pours into me the poison of sin through various imaginary forms, then You, Lord, grant me to immediately look to You with the eyes of my heart, to Your ineffable beauty, incorruptible, eternal, to Your incorruptible sweetness, to Your holiness and truth - and to despise the vain, corruptible views that seduce my sinful soul with their corruptible beauties, sweets, removing her from You and killing her. My flesh is truly an idol, which I slavishly serve, accursed, fulfilling its sinful lusts; this idol daily demands for itself countless victims of a sinful nature: gluttony, fornication, anger, envy, self-love, pride, vanity, negligence about salvation, laziness, vanity (that is, all sorts of trifles), chatter (idle talk), laughter (especially theatrical, newspaper and magazine and all kinds of little books), contemplation, love of money, stinginess and hardness of heart, self-indulgence to the highest degree, self-will or tyranny, severity, obstinacy, impatience, man-pleasing or servility and fear of man (instead of Thy fear). March 9th. After Matins. I thank God, my Helper, who made me worthy to perform Matins with a joyful and solemn spirit - only the small, intense litany before the Six Psalms was unable to be uttered out of embarrassment, and also to Christ, the true Light, from the intoxication I felt and from the movement of hostility towards the watchman, the culprit of the intoxication - that means, from sparing my sinful flesh, which is not worth pitying as prodigal; and stole the release out of the same embarrassment. I sinned against the Lord and before people. After matins, I visited Klimenty Petrovich in Nikiforova’s house, opposite the Duma. He, I think, is a holy fool for Christ’s sake, or looks like a holy fool; He says a lot of things very sensibly, accurately, even insightfully. I, he said, know not only the living, but also those who have died. He complains extremely about a lot of debauchery in the city and about a lot of decorated harlots, hinted at my stumblings during the service, about the ruffs squeezed out in my youth (he knows and understands). We need to take a closer look at what lies in it. Complains about general licentiousness (imaginary freedom). He does not like to be forced to pray, and does not get baptized. He grumbles against the Lord because he gave him a heavy purse to carry. About Father Pavel he says that he is angry. If you don’t suffer, you won’t learn, he said. This applies to me, and he also applied this saying to himself. At the end of Compline today I became embarrassed and crumpled up forgiveness and the final litany - why? Because he did not truly, not sincerely, not humbly, not holy, lovingly speak the words of forgiveness and the words of the litany, not with sincere love for those for whom the Church has established to pray: for the emperor, wife, heir and wife and their son, for the Holy Synod and other persons. Oh! My heart must be the bearer of the spirit of Christ, His love, sympathy, condolences, meekness, simplicity, patience. After the crumpling of forgiveness and litany, I felt confusion, fire, tightness, and shame within me for a long time. But when he cried out to the generous God, then he was heard and had mercy, he calmed down, expanded in his heart, and received boldness. Thank the Lord! Grant me, Lord, to always show the publican’s humility before everyone and sincerely ask for forgiveness from everyone as brothers and sisters and children. This crushes the power and violence of the enemy over us. I thank the Lord for my unfaltering service of the Presanctified Mass and for the communion of the all-wonderful, life-giving Mysteries of the Most Pure Body and Blood of the Lord. I read the prayer behind the pulpit slowly, all the way to the end. He said the whole dismissal, but did not mention the holy noble prince Alexander Nevsky and the Monk Joseph the Songwriter. Here in front of me hangs the desecrated Son of God, tortured and killed for me, and I conceal within myself this viper of sins [not breaking (...) the connection completely)? Publicly, courageously break ties with him. Russians! Have you declared war on your God with your vices? Theatres, clubs, brothels, etc., spiritualists? “God will declare a hard war on you.” March 10. Wednesday of the Week of the Cross. I thank the Lord, who made me worthy to triumphantly perform Matins and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts and to partake of the Divine Mysteries without condemnation. He sinned grievously before God - he was fed up with the fish table and abused the poor, he tore out his hair in a great rage, with curses and reproaches, and even kicks. Are these the fruits of fasting? The rage was precisely a consequence of satiety. I repent to the Lord and ask for mercy. O hand that often lifts up the Lamb of God, the most holy, the meekest, the most long-suffering! Do you reach out to the slaughter of your neighbors and members of Christ? O lips that praise the Lord! Do you pour out reproaches and curses?! Working against dumb passions, and in fact you will often be dumb when you would like to speak, and, conquering the passions, you will always be verbal, as John Climacus says (to them): be silent and numb, - and they will become silent and numb 139. Attribute all good things to the grace of God, all the love of your neighbors for you, but cry about your sins, about the insults of your neighbors. (...) Anna Konstantinovna’s are too pretentious: they open the doors in the kitchen to carry water or firewood, you can’t open the doors to the dining room: the children will catch a cold; I came from the street - you can’t approach them; The children's stomachs are clogged - they are stuffed with even more anything. How long will this last? God! Make them understand yourself - they do not accept my words. 12th. Yesterday I was at Burachok’s, talked, drank wine and tea, ate fruits, and this drinking of wine had a bad effect on me today during the morning: my heart from breaking the fast turned out to be cowardly, fearful, and I hesitated to pronounce the litanies and only proclaimed the ends of each petition. During the hours, thanks to tears of repentance, I strengthened my spirit and said the troparia of the hours and the prayer to the Lord and Master of my belly firmly, although the enemy was strongly undermining my heart. He performed the entire mass, thanks to tears of repentance, without stumbling. I praise the Lord! Long-suffering and abundantly merciful Lord! In humility and contrition of heart, I confess to You my sin, that yesterday I shouted at the poor in rage and hit one of them on the side with my right hand, with which I bless instead of the image of Your Body and Blood! I have sinned grievously before You, but be also my all-powerful Intercessor to Your Father, so that for Your sake and for Your sake, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, forgives me this sin and grants me without condemnation to always perform all Your services with boldness and especially the Divine Liturgy. Amen. A Christian man has been given so many, infinitely many, spiritual blessings from God that he is rightly condemned to eternal torment if, after accepting the mind of truth, he remains insensitive to the gifts of God and tramples on them, working for his passions, committing every sin unrepentantly. Be horrified, unrepentant sinners! But let me also tremble, as one who through knowledge and ignorance falls into countless sins. God! Deliver me from the fear of demons, which kills my soul and deprives me of Your grace! This is a false, dreamy fear that does not allow me to get rid of my sins. 13th. Again and again, I will sing to You of Your mercy and judgment, O Lord (Ps. 100:1), for even today You have had mercy and helped me many times, when in great sorrow, with the slander of 140 invisible enemies, extremely outrageous and intolerable, I cried out to You in tears of repentance for help and deliverance. So, at the midnight office, I firmly said goodbye and asked for the usual forgiveness from those standing in the church; pronounced the entire litany of the Midnight Office and pronounced the entire great litany at Matins. During the funeral litanies, due to weakness of spirit, I was outraged and did not calmly and firmly pronounce the prayers. The canon was read loudly by itself; I asked the deacon to say a petitionary and especially litany, who, thanking him, immediately agreed to help me. Christ, the True Light and the dismissal was pronounced in full, despite the satanic confusion and fear. Before the liturgy, confessing to one girl, for a moment he experienced a prodigal movement both in the flesh and in the heart, but then in a tearful prayer he asked the Lord for forgiveness and peace; I thank the benevolent and merciful Lord. At mass, I was greatly embarrassed by the sexton’s haste in reading and singing, despite the warnings not to rush (at Matins the same remarks, embarrassment that passed by the grace of the Lord and the Mother of God). At the great entrance, he said everything that needed to be said: First remember, Lord, the Holy Synod and our master... he said everything, thank God, and said with feeling, remembering the great Bishop who passed through heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 4:14). I read the entire prayer behind the pulpit: for all this I thank the Lord; preliminary prayers before communion of the Holy Mysteries, I Believe, Lord, etc. I read everything with feeling. Let go did not say everything, having something to say about the sexton for his haste in reading and singing. Having received communion, I felt a life-giving fire in my mouth and in my womb; Having consumed the Holy Gifts, I felt blessed. I soon lost this bliss, shouting indignantly in the church corridor at the beggars who approached me against my wishes. He prayed hard and repented to the Lord on the way to customs. The confusion and oppression passed, and again the most merciful Lord granted much-desired peace. Generally speaking, the Lord has saved and is saving me from countless spiritual deaths. I glorify Him, thank Him, exalt Him, but why am I still angering such a loving, such merciful Lord? Oh Lord! Grant me a complete change for good. I sin most often by intemperance, failure to fast, self-love, irritability, stinginess, hard-heartedness, dislike, that is, lack of love, lack of condescension, waywardness and disobedience (behold, Lord, You have not quenched the smoking flax until now (Matthew 12:20) according to Your unspeakable mercy!), vanity, internal covetousness, lust, contemplation, covetousness. When I sat today in the Council of Trustees for the Poor in a meeting of members, then the Lord visited me with His goodness in my distress and delivered me from my distress through my prayer (internal, in a sitting position) and gave me sweet peace. Glory to the Lord for this. In order to strongly and effectively confess others, one must oneself be experienced in the fight against sins and live in every virtue, having a feeling trained by long reasoning in relation to good and evil. March 14. Resurrection. I thank the Lord, who has visited me many times this day with His wonderful deliverance from sinful death, and above all during Matins, when in confusion and cramped conditions I remarked to Father Deacon Poletaev and my sexton Zrelov about drunkenness the previous night; secondly, during mass, at the beginning and before the Gospel (a visit from God that was especially wondrous for its great deliverance), and finally after the great entrance, at which I was embarrassed by the thought that I had upset the sexton (I had made peace with my father the deacon earlier) - and I could not say the names of the royal family. I read the entire pulpit, and dismissed it all. This is also the grace of God. O ethereal enemies, seeking to devour me, how vigilant and evil you are! And all because of my gluttony and delicacy! I thank the Lord, who performed the miracle of delivering me from confusion, sorrow and cramped conditions in the apartment of a retired official outside the city (before the christening of a sailor of the sixth crew), when I prayed to the Lord on my knees for deliverance. Soon the Lord heard and saved, and I, with a triumphant spirit, unfalteringly performed the baptism. Glory to the Lord! In correcting my brethren, I myself was faulty, I reprimanded them in spirit - not in the spirit of meekness, humility and gentleness, but in confusion and passion, hostility towards those who sinned, although I myself often sin. Love is long-suffering, merciful, does not envy, does not boast, is not proud, is not irritated, covers all things, endures all things, and never falls away (1 Cor. 13:4-8). I didn’t keep these conditions, which means I don’t have love myself, you damned one. – Marking yourself with the sign of the cross, think that you have been redeemed by the Lord through the cross from sin, the curse of sin and from eternal destruction for holiness, the blessing of God, eternal life, so that you may crucify your flesh with passions and lusts; Do not voluntarily fall again into God’s terrible curse and eternal destruction through your passions and unrepentant life, but with all the strength of your mind and heart and will strive for a holy life, in a word, for perfection: failure to strive for perfection for a Christian is a sin. If your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, then you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:20). I often make the mistake of considering my own, often false views, painful feelings, ghosts, dreams of the imagination, and evil suspiciousness to correspond to reality, and as a result I become embarrassed, lose love for my neighbor, become irritated, and fall into fear. Heal my soul, Lord! The disembodied enemy rapes a person in everything, inducing laziness, sleep, pride, self-love, anger, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, despondency, impatience, etc. (too lazy to get up for church, too lazy to go, too lazy to stand, too lazy to read, listen to the word of God, talk about God and the soul). I sinned before God, before myself and before people, despising and hating my nephew Ivan Fidelin - not for any bad spiritual qualities, although even then I should not have hated, but for an unsightly face, riddled with smallpox, which did not depend on him, and for the crookedness of one eye, which was also not his fault. I, the accursed one, learned sight and respect for persons and all the unrighteousness of carnal feelings: lust, incense, soft touch, red eyesight and pleasant sounds. Because of my uncomely flesh, or face, I have despised a comely soul, which is in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by the Blood of the Son of God, unconvinced by Christ, born of water and the Holy Spirit, having received the guarantee of the Holy Spirit, drenched in the Blood of the Savior - incorruptible beauty, which can be found even with an uncomely face. Who will heal me from this illness of the soul, from this voluntary madness? He, my nephew, can be my friend, brother, which he is. God! Grant me and my family to have a sincere spiritual disposition towards him and not to offend or upset him with any thought, feeling, look, word, or action. And make him pious, God-fearing, hardworking, helpful, kind, so that he will gain the love of me and my family. Have faith in Jesus Christ our Lord of glory, regardless of persons (James 2:1). The face passes and decays, like any clothing, any thing, but the image of the soul is eternal and equal to itself, like the image of God. March 16. Tuesday. Yesterday I sinned with gluttony and intemperance, eating five times a day, albeit little by little: in the morning with tea, then in the hospital before tea with my spiritual daughter Anna Geras, then at home, then with my father, Priest Vasily Dmitrievich, in the house of Golovarev (sardine with black bread) and finally at home fried fish and fish soup with ruffs. That is why the vision of fornication and desecration happened at night. I am worthy of all condemnation and all punishment, having an uncorrected life and heart and constantly angering my Lord. And the Lord is still patient with me. I am a damned person: I repent before God, receive mercy and forgiveness, and again commit the same sins that I just repented of. The Lord showed me a wonderful salvation this evening when I went to a prayer service at six and a half o’clock in the evening to the waiter’s wife Stepanida Avvakumovna: I went upset with the gymnasium teacher Udaltsov for all of a sudden neglecting me in the teacher’s gymnasium room, saying hello to everyone, but not to me. I felt painful, heavy, cramped; I was tempted to express his ignorance to him at the first meeting in my bitter terms. But then I, pressed and tormented by hostility towards him, remembered the word of St. Maximus the Confessor about love, that whoever is angry with a brother because of some insult has not yet learned love 141. And so I repented from my soul that I had ruined the law of the Lord, that I had fallen from love through pride; I called on the Lord, and He had mercy on me, the accursed one. The Lord moved into my heart and filled me with peace - glory to the Lord! When a person’s house is on fire, then it is inappropriate and unreasonable to be angry with that person, to despise him, to hate him, but we should feel sorry for him, and help him in any way we can willingly, with love. This is how one must act with an angry, irritable person: his soul is inflamed with malice, with this hellish, terrible fire, one should not irritate him, but should pity him, as if he were burning with the hellish flame of anger, pay for evil with love, meekness, affection, service, heartfelt prayer, as if for oneself, when one is in some passion and, wounded by it, pray with all one’s heart to the Lord for getting rid of it. We are all pathetic instruments of all-pernicious passions. If evil intentions, desires, thoughts are falsely attributed to you, then, without saying much and without being offended by this, let your deeds prove the opposite. March 17. I thank the Lord, who saved me twice in the Council of Trustees regarding my repentant prayer due to Anna Konstantinovna Tsvetkova’s anger towards me, who extremely neglected me, and then at home or, better yet, when I went out into the yard, when I left the anger and quarrel of my wife and sister Anna. Oh, in a serpentine way she incites my wife, arms her against me, wants to rob me. (There is a certificate somewhere asking whether my wife can take half of my income.) From Ivan Petrovich Rudakov (in Shubina’s house) six rubles a year. Received three rubles on January 22, 1875. From Andrei Pavlovich Chepyshnikov ten rubles a year - sixty kopecks received for the first case; from the tailor Prokofiev forty kopecks. From Feofil Malinovsky, the owner of the drawing room, three rubles. From Semyon Tarasovich Bersenev, clerk of the fifth naval crew, he received one ruble. He received three rubles from Lieutenant Pavel Aleksandrovich Malinovsky. March 17. I thank the Lord, who pacified me through the prayer of repentance, internally read from the heart on the street. My wife, through delusion or slander from Anna, her sister, considers me guilty of everything against herself (my wife), and herself guilty of nothing against me. But I leave it to the Lord to judge me, not to people; do not entrust me to human intercession, Lady, 142. Do not remember the sin of my youth and my ignorance: by Thy mercy remember me, for the sake of Thy goodness, O Lord... If you see iniquity... who will stand? (Ps. 24, 7, 129, H). Remember to them their sins, Lord, who vehemently slander me, especially sister Anna. I will write to all my brothers-in-law about what my sister-in-law did to me and my nephew, about how my younger sister-in-law is inciting my wife to divorce me. March 18. A great quarrel over my nephew, whose letter was stolen by Anna Konstantinovna and my wife Elisaveta, a quarrel over the fact that I sent the second, eldest nephew Alexander, godson, clothes worth thirty-eight rubles to Verkola. They read about this in a letter from Ivan’s nephew, who lives with me. My wife and Anna Konstantinovna attacked me strongly, and there were a lot of curses on their part; my nephew was called an ugly face, a peasant, a drunkard, and I got curse words. I, too, was quite excited and clearly reminded them of my good deeds, especially God’s, and not mine... I felt bitter, I was embarrassed, left them and went into the fresh air to walk and pray - it became much easier. They sulked at me all evening and all night. I prayed and slept peacefully, thanking the grace of God. In the afternoon, the meeting was again bitter: Anna Konstantinovna was sulking angrily, setting the little children on us: they were extremely spoiled by character with her. Until one o'clock everyone was sulking at me, my wife and Anna Konstantinovna. She left without saying goodbye, I left without bowing or saying goodbye, seeing her perkiness, pride, and anger. I was very calm in the gymnasium. But when I left the gymnasium, my heart ached. At home too: the wife was angry, indignant for her nephew, scolding him. All the money is not enough for her - give her fifty years or a little less in advance. I say: you will die sooner. Had lunch with my nephew. After lunch (tightness) on the heart. I prayed to the Lord: Lord! There is no malice in the whole world that Your goodness could not overcome—forward, Lord, defeat the malice in me, in my wife and in my sister-in-law Anna. I said this several times and - oh! Amazing miracle! – Anger is defeated, the heart is healed, pacified, expanded! This means that it is the same in my wife and in Anna K. Glory to the Lord for His mercy, for His almighty power. When my sister-in-law Anna K. gets angry, angry, she is constantly sarcastic, does mean things, dirty tricks, slander, teaches her little children to do dirty tricks, the servant Anna, who is just as evil as she, my wife... Therefore, I should not spare her, but by prohibition, forbid her not to show up in my house, so as not to lead everyone into confusion and disorder. The Lord is my helper. To whom will I look, only to the meek and silent and trembling of My words (Isa. 66:2). God is dear to the person who, like the Lord Jesus Christ, is meek and silent before evil, envious, proud, unrighteous people who rebel against Him, who scold, revile Him, and inflict various injustices on Him. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth, says the Lord (Matthew 5:5). The meek pray for their enemies, as the Lord does for His enemies, and as Archdeacon Stephen does for his own. A meek person, with his meekness, often at the very beginning and at the very root destroys the anger and malice of people, for meekness is strong to disarm an evil person, or at least over time, meekness turns the evil into meek lambs. How many quarrels would stop at the very beginning if one side always endured the insults and attacks of the other side with meekness and silence! How many whole people there would be who were not crushed by anger, vexation, malice! What peace there would be in families, partnerships, and societies! Then there would be the Kingdom of God on earth. And is it not because there are quarrels, family and social discord, that while some attack and embarrass, others do not want to be silent in time, endure, endure an insult, but get excited, angry and say offensive words? This is why sometimes terrible and lasting anger occurs. It also happens, however, that evil people want to eat a meek but unpleasant person, and no amount of meekness can save him from them, but it seems that the more meek he is, the more they want to eat him. All that remains is to endure and pray for your enemies. March 9. I thank the Lord, who has repeatedly saved me from the grief, melancholy and distress that arose in me over the memory of my sister-in-law Anna, who was angry with me and threatened me and my wife, who was carried away by her sister against me. As soon as I look to the Lord with a prayer of hope, I will immediately receive the mercy of the world, freedom, space and boldness. Scatter the threats of the evil ones, O Lord, and turn them into nothing, so that they may not laugh at Your servant who works for You. I thank You, Lord, for You heard my small, brief, but sincere prayer of repentance, Lord, when I, having come home after confession and seeing the disorder at home, was indignant at my wife and in bitter, reproachful, likening (pillar of salt) expressions reproached my wife, who did not want to be submissive and meek and only reproached me unrighteously, as if I deprived her of much, robbed her, sending money to my relatives for their needs, and especially sending clothes to my nephew Alexander without her knowledge. She made and continues to make many unrighteous reproaches to me, and all, I think, through sister Anna K.: she teaches and incites, causing all sorts of confusion in the house. Therefore, I pray to the Lord that He will remove her forever from our house, that she may not be like the evil one in the house, that there be peace in the house. Lord Lover of Mankind! I myself, who rests on the law and leads Thy will, so many times in one day I act contrary to Thy commands, am carried away by my passions, how much more, Lord, are my household, who do not follow Thy law, who do not train themselves to piety and who always turn to the vanity of life! Forgive them, Lord, their sins and iniquities, all their insults and aspirations against me and my nephew and all our blood, having first punished them in part for their iniquities, so that they will understand not to embarrass us in the future; soften and enlighten their hearts, visit them with Your goodness and do not become completely angry with them. Behold, now feeling in my heart the outpouring of Thy life-giving peace, I thank Thee for this heavenly gift, which I have received from Thee, O Lord, according to Thy mercy and Thy bounty. Confirm this gift in me, Lord, and in all my household, so that we may live before You in peace and silence and mutual love. Amen. March 19. Friday. March 20. Those praises of the Mother of God that are written in the Akathist to Her, the Immaculate One, 33 are far from corresponding to Her exalted merits, which She possesses by the grace of God, for every tongue is perplexed to praise the merits, but the mind and the worldly praise of Thee, the Mother of God, are amazed. The Church, according to her strength, according to the grace given from God, praises Her with God-inspired songs, also very sublime and wonderful. God! The great days of Your suffering are coming: let me meet and spend them in a godly manner; Deliver me, Father, from the bitterness of demons and wicked people, especially my sister-in-law Anna. I want, Lord, peace and love, but I do not want enmity and strife. Those who stir it up, either punish and enlighten, or forbid them, or consume them, so that, having ascended as great, they will not overthrow every order of the sacred times, so that they will not remove Your peace from my dwelling and from our souls. Hey, amen! God! Protect Your will, Your servant, and from myself, from my old man who still lives in me, and from people of war and enmity. Wake up! Defending myself against the malice of my family and other people, may I, Lord, not fall into unhealed malice, may I hold on to meekness, kindness, love, may I overcome evil with good and evil with the help of Your grace, may I not look at people with suspicion, fear, malice, indignation, with despondency, which is from the devil, but may I look at them with trust, love, meekness, complacency, condescension, patience, courage, frankness, but also with caution, without excessive trust, which is sometimes very harmful. Eleven o'clock at night. I thank the Lord, who consoled me with quick hearing and deliverance from the poisonousness and oppression of sin through a momentary invocation of His holy name. I said to the Lord: You do not require many words, just calling Your holy name is enough to receive salvation. And immediately salvation came, I was miraculously revived, the life of God spread through all my members, and death disappeared. Glory to God, our Savior! 20th. Saturday. Yes, in sweet tea and especially in fish there is fornication, adultery... Violation of fasting is immediately followed by fornication. God! Cleanse me, a sinner, and have mercy on me. I thank the Lord, who performed the miracle of reconciliation for my wife and before me for her, through my prayer. I glorify grace, mercy, bounty, strength, power, the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. May it be the same, Lord, with my sister by wife Anna K. ... The grace of God is my strength, glory, sweetness, decoration, light, life, health. Glory to the Lord about this. 21st. Resurrection. I thank You, Lord, for the miracles of Your salvation during Matins and especially early mass: I saw, Lord, I saw Your procession in me, how spiritual death, invading my heart through sin, ran away from me through Your visit, and I received peace instead of confusion, joy instead of sorrow, space instead of crampedness, life-giving tears of tenderness instead of dead coldness. When uttering the words First Remember, Lord, I, from a feeling of diabolical hostility towards His Eminence Metropolitan Isidore, could not utter the words of this exclamation and then became greatly embarrassed, fell into oppression, powerlessness, and a bitter hostility towards him, although I strongly resisted it. He said the prayer behind the pulpit and the dismissal completely. God bless! I learned that not speaking due to cooling and relaxation of the heart is the work of the devil! I thank the Lord for the work of reconciling my sister-in-law Anna K. - this is a miracle of my prayer, a miracle of God’s power and goodness, for the anger was fierce, the quarrel was strong, caused by the hatred of my wife and Anna Konstantinovna for my nephew; I was also to blame for not enduring this hostility. March 23. Tuesday. They called me this morning at eight and a half o'clock to administer unction to Vasily Dmitrievich Nikitin and serve a prayer service. I drank sweet tea with pretzels, I drank three glasses to excess; when I drank the second glass, then they came for me; I sent to the sexton and said: I’ll come in a quarter of an hour, and began to finish the second glass; then he poured a third and drank it, and began to get ready. Instead of leaving the second glass and going to the sick man, I, the accursed one, began to delight my flesh and relax and destroy my soul, until I was completely satisfied with the flesh. When I administered the unction, I felt dead, powerless, timid, fearful, despondent, unable to speak for fear of prayer. Oh, I am spiritually dead! What am I practicing? Is it lust and gluttony? And the soul dies in a pitiful way, it is all in trouble, in wounds, in captivity from invisible enemies. In these disastrous cases for people, in their illnesses, sorrows, misfortunes, cramped conditions, I find myself insufficient for sympathy, compassion, consolation - in a word, for Christian ardent, unfeigned love; my partiality-loving, self-loving, greedy for earthly goods, unkind to souls, evil, envious, cowardly, impatient, tender heart shows what it is like - and woe to me from my lack of correction. What will the Lord do to me when he comes to Judgment and finds me so unprepared and uncorrected? Oh, how I am especially captivated by partiality! For example, I don’t like my dear nephew because of his ugly face and crookedness, his clumsiness, his sluggishness, I despise and turn away as something vile and disgusting, although he is meek, humble, kind, obedient, hardworking, reasonable and intelligent. But grant, Lord, to love and respect in him the hedgehog in Your image, to despise, consider unimportant the flesh, his face, which is earth and decay, like the most beautiful people, and will be equal to the food of worms, but to be diligent about the soul, things more immortal, respect it, love it, educate it, give it due honor as godlike, beautiful, incorruptible. I feel that the disembodied enemy, the hater of the human race, who is trying to plant dislike, enmity, hostility, quarrel, hatred everywhere in human hearts, is laughing at me, as he once laughed and tormented me when I had a mother, Feodora Vlasyevna. But let me forever renounce Satan and all his works, and all his angels, and all his ministry, and all his pride, and let me regard the flesh as nothing, no matter what it is - good or bad, and throw away my fornication and my partiality. And to avoid this, let me stop drinking sweet tea in the morning and eating anything, and drink only one glass without a glass, for there is a great connection between the voluptuousness of the flesh and partiality: the luscious flesh seeks carnal pleasure in the faces, in the sight of people, which is extremely absurd and impudent. Human! Was it for your delight that the Lord created a man like you, like a fruit to be eaten? He was created for God, for the glory of God, just like you, to promote the good of others and for his own contentment and well-being; he, like you, has his own high moral goal - unity with God, with the earthly and heavenly Church and the bliss of eternal life, in which everything will be new, beautiful, light, incorruptible and everything ugly and ugly, sinful and unclean will disappear. I thank You, Lord, for giving me understanding. Look how the enemy laughs at us, constantly seducing us with handsome and beautiful faces, sometimes with unseemly ones - with some attracting us to partiality and vile voluptuousness, to carnal, sinful love, and with others turning us away from love, attracting us to contempt, hatred, enmity, and with both of them, turning us away from the true life according to the spirit of Christ, pure, holy, eternal love. Oh, pride! Oh, the absurd carnal wisdom of the flesh! Oh, pride! Oh, abomination! Oh, resistance to God! Oh, vanity! Is it because of the shell of the flesh that we despise the soul, which is in the image and likeness of God? Or is it because of the shell of the (good-looking) flesh that we again abandon the good-looking soul, incorruptible, rational and immortal, and strive to concentrate all our attention, all our heart, all our affection on the flesh, the corruptible food of worms? Oh, foolishness! So, throw away the scented sweets! Oh, how bitter they are for the soul! How souls relax! How they turn away from the love of God, kill, shame the soul, humiliate it! Oh, grant me, Lord, to have all my concern for souls, and not for bodies and bodily goods! Amen. Oh, sinful skill! Oh, harmful carnal wisdom! Kill him, Lord! I am a monster, not a man: before the superiors, the rich, the noble, I am servile, servile, flattering, fearful, cowardly; before the inferiors I am arrogant, angry, contemptuous, reproachful; I am attracted by the beautiful, I turn away from the ugly; I fear the rich, I abhor the inferior, although not always, but sometimes; before the highest, the noble, the learned - not a word; before the lowest and the poor I utter an abyss of words. And the priest must be even with everyone, important, sedate, calm. 24th. Modest food encourages laziness and inaction, sleep, especially in the evening, but not prayer, meditation, repentance, or reading; it also disposes to fornication and hardness of heart, to stinginess and love of money. Blessed is he who fasts wisely and accompanies fasting with good deeds, especially prayer and almsgiving. (Yesterday I drank a glass of milk in the evening, and at night in a dream the unclean spirit appeared in the form of a pretty, dissolute girl and led me to a house of debauchery; sweetness carried me away, and I surrendered to the words of the charming woman, damned! God, have mercy and cleanse me - it’s good that I woke up in time.) I almost became a freak myself when a horse ran over me in 1865. Let me remember the mercy of God, which preserved me, and let me pity and love all the poor, deprived of any members due to illness or accidents. Let me sympathize as a fellow member with the misfortunes of human nature, and not despise it because of disasters and accidents or illnesses, as the devil teaches. God, have mercy on me! God! Thank You for keeping me from crookedness, blindness, deafness, and lameness. I thank the Lord, who yesterday accepted my repentance in cruel, angry, reproachful Words against a beggar who had again arrived from St. Petersburg because of an expired ticket. And where did I express my anger at him? In front of the church itself. Oh, cruelty! Oh, oblivion! Oh, blindness! Oh, love of money! O voluptuousness! And this is during Lent! I mercilessly condemn myself. Watch carefully the flow of your thoughts, thoughts, feelings, movements of the flesh and spirit. The enemy does not sleep, seeking to devour us. But the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. You are sinners - save yourself through mercy and alms. I preach about almsgiving, I invite and encourage you, my good parishioners, and all of you, residents of Kronstadt, to do it. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and powerful seekers take it away (Matthew 11:12). At every step, word, deed, thought and feeling, I have to be convinced of this by the very deed, I see the immutable truth of the said words. March 25. During Matins, I was at first embarrassed because Father Archpriest did not give me church vestments, but assigned my own vestments, which I had made for the services; in repentance for this he received forgiveness from the Lord. In general, I felt under extreme pressure from the evil one: I sang stichera at the litia and at the stichera; words: You are a merciful and philanthropic God... could not pronounce; I didn’t say the prayer to the Lord of the Many-Merciful... at the end out of embarrassment. He also did not finish the prayer for the consecration of the loaves in words: You are the one who bless... in the Gospel the words: For the Mighty One has done great things for Me (Luke 1:49)... also did not pronounce. At the Liturgy, the Lord showed me His rich mercy, reviving me, dead sinners... He received life-giving communion. He said a lesson. He collected nine rubles for the Trusteeship. At twelve o'clock the Lord saved me twice, revived me, killed by the sin of the beating of a drunken beggar and the curse of sexton Zrelov for sluggishness and slowness in fulfilling the assignment. I repented to the Lord, asking for mercy, and received it, and came to life. Arriving at Matins of the Annunciation, I felt extremely unprepared for the heartfelt, spiritual celebration of this great holiday; my heart was carnal, rough, weak, subject to all sorts of temptations from the evil one. And this is from lack of fasting, from lack of godly thinking, from not reading the word of God. I am poor, accursed, poor, blind and naked. How dare you judge a foreign slave, I mean a dead man who died after great sins, but repented? Speak the mercy of God completely and do not steal God’s words. My heart aches with corruption and is disgusted by incorruption. Transient earthly beauty, transient images, are eternal, imperishable Beauty, giving from Itself all beauty to creatures. Strive for Her, man! The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost (Matthew 18:11). God! Seek also this deceased Vasily Dmitrievich Nikitin. Seek and save him, and me with him. And all sinners like us. Let not the multitude of our iniquities overcome the abyss of Thy mercy. God! Let the enemy not rejoice over us. When you read the prayer Our Father, then have, firstly, a deep, clear and distinct knowledge of all its contents, invocations, petitions and doxologies; secondly, fiery love for the Heavenly Father, since you are His child by the grace of rebirth, and a fiery desire to avoid all sin and live holy, completely 144, constantly, unfailingly obey Him (Thy Kingdom come) and in no way, no sin, no passion, lust to work for the devil, thirdly, a fiery, firm desire to cut off completely your carnal, sinful, destructive will and love with all your heart the perfect and saving will of God, which is our sanctification and eternal life; fourthly, observe constant abstinence in all Desires, thoughts, in Words, in food, clothing, in all bodily needs, avoiding all inappropriate luxury (give us our daily bread today), ardently desire the incorruptible food of the word of God and the Holy Mysteries of the Most Pure Body and Blood of Christ - this source of life and immortality; fifthly, acquire constant heartfelt repentance, deep, constant self-condemnation and self-reproach, and completely cast away from your heart all malice and all rancor, from the heart forgiving everyone else’s sins against you; sixthly, flee temptations, cases of sin or courageously endure them when they are upon you, and seventhly, daily deny Satan and all his works, and all his angels, and all his service, and all his pride (deliver us from the evil one). Grant this, Lord, to all of us. For Thine is the Kingdom (we are truly the servants of the Lord - He is our eternal King), and the power (He can accomplish everything in us), and the glory (He is the God of glory and created everyone and everything for the glory of His great name, and we blaspheme His name with our deeds) of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen. True. Unhypocritical. From the repetition and continuation of our sins they receive the force of an irresistible habit; the heart, tired of repeating them, becomes stone, unable to perceive the life-giving grace of God. This is the state in which many Christians and I, a sinner, find ourselves. For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, and have fallen away, to renew them again with repentance, when they again crucify the Son of God within themselves and mock Him (Heb. 6:4-6). Here I am, damned one. But I still do not despair of my salvation. (November 2, 1874 Saturday. I ate meat today, and the cough resumed, and fornication of the heart too. There is no need to eat meat, or even fish.) 26th. I thank the Lord, who saved me twice during Matins by His great mercy: once from lustful thoughts, another from hostility towards my co-servant Father Matthew, and from the sorrows and oppressions of sin. Thank you for the gift of peace. But what happened to me during mass! What grief and distress from the heartfelt hostility towards Father Archpriest Pavel Vasilyevich Trachevsky for his unsociability, coldness, for his aversion to the poor, for his opposition to the Care of the Poor! True, I myself am unsociable, but I think it’s because of him, because I don’t see an example. I prayed for him with all my heart, and it became easier. Throughout the mass I was under a terrible bombardment (blockade) from invisible enemies: I couldn’t help but cry - it was so hard. Mass was held for the deceased Vasily Dmitrievich Nikitin in the Cathedral. Communion revived me. What am I lacking? A lack of Christian love, and especially love for enemies, real or imaginary. Yesterday, during the Presanctified Liturgy, my heart was kindled with terrible hostility towards Father Archpriest, against my will and my desire, although I had previously suffered from this, and only through deep repentance did the grace of God deliver me from this hellish enmity, giving me love for Father Archpriest, as at Matins for Father Matthew, and I calmed down and got rid of demonic violence. O Divine love, unfeigned, non-alienating, live, live in my heart unceasingly! Anger is a terrible punishment for itself or for the person in whom it nests - one must feel sorry for him, feel sorry for him ardently and pray to God for him from the bottom of his heart, as well as for himself; if it is in me, may the Lord remove it from my heart. And how many excuses does a proud heart come up with for enmity! He, it says about his brother, is unsociable, hard-hearted, extremely money-loving, proud, contemptuous or unjust, speaks ill of me in society, or is stingy, stingy, etc., that is, the cause of hatred is all sins, as if we ourselves are sinless and innocent before that brother who really or imaginary hates us, or as if he cannot make mistakes regarding us and strive for anger against us and do us lies at the slander of an ethereal enemy; as if he must please us in everything, but we do not, or as if he is an Angel, and not a man and should not, certainly should not be like us - prudent or money-loving, stingy, but should invite us to visit him, treat us and gain our favor and favor. So, the end is that, knowing our common weakness, sin, our common passions, mental and physical ailments, we must be lenient towards each other, pray for each other so that we will be healed (James 5:16), and not despise each other, not be at enmity with each other. God can do everything: soften hearts, attract them to love, destroy enmity, and save everyone. This is our misfortune and grief, that we have abandoned our love, love for God, in whose image we were created, by whom we were born, sealed with the Holy Spirit, whose blood we were given to drink, and love for our neighbor, who is the image of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, a member of Christ, a joint heir with Christ and ours; The trouble and grief is that we, having abandoned (love), not seeing anything good in our brother, see only wickedness, only bad, and we hate him. Thus the enemy darkens us with malice! Did you give the bride's passport to the sexton on April 22? Eating fish and drinking wine during Lent and at other times causes great temptations and gives reasons for prodigal sins. Eat fish and drink wine, or eat a lot of sweets, and in your dreams you will dream of food and glasses of wine and various voluptuous sights. From eating fish comes a completely different air in the body and a different spirit: in the soul there is a stench, a spirit of fornication, rage; the heart becomes coarser, earthier, stoner, and becomes alien to true love. From not eating fish and from eating only plant foods, there is again a completely different air in the body and spirit in the soul: the air is light and the spirit is calm - the spirit of chastity, meekness, humility, patience, God-mindedness, love for God and neighbor. 27th. Today, simple people confessed to me: compared to the local town inhabitants, these are angels - not people, they are almost saints: simplicity, meekness, chastity, sincere consciousness of their sins. It was not in vain that the Lord chose the twelve apostles from simple fishermen. It was a whole nature, healthy, alien to guile. This is truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile (John 1:47). What are our officers, our learned teachers, our newfangled merchants and merchantwosses, the wives of officers, teachers, and officials, before them? These latter are freethinkers, unbelievers, bitter ignoramuses, malicious, crafty, arrogant, speaking haughtily about God and the Church and its institutions, arrogantly criticizing what is not subject to criticism of their minds, rejecting very, very much of church practice: public prayer, prostrations, confession of sins, even Communion and other Sacraments. They reject monasticism, which is the life of angels on earth, and call monks parasites. One young peasant confessed in confession that he poisoned his wife with arsenic in a pie and that she was sick for a week and died. And this evil deed arose from a quarrel between the household, the mother, the wife and the wife herself. I deprived him of communion of the Holy Mysteries and ordered him to pray and repent at home for a whole year, shedding tears for his crime and praying to the Lord to forgive his wife’s sins and repose her in a place of light, peace and coolness. I am the door: By Me, if anyone enters, he will be saved (enter by faith and repentance into His Kingdom), and he will enter and depart (that is, from the body, from this life, from the earthly Church), and will find pasture (John 10:9), that is, for his soul after the death of the body, in the afterlife. It’s amazing and terrible what kind of weakness the devil plunged me into through sweets during several days when I did not have a liturgy service: he tied me up, confused me, shackled me, did not allow me to speak, prayers and exclamations. The Doxology on Saturday loosened the heart and tongue. God bless! (Shyness and fear took possession of me, internal bonds.) In the world - service to the flesh, sin and the devil, in the Church - service to the spirit, sacred things, God. If we do not work for God, then we work for passions: one of two things. It's better to work for God. Church litanies, prayers and litias are an ideal, an example of Christian perfection, to which we must achieve throughout our lives. The Lord wants to penetrate us completely in the communion of His Holy Mysteries. In Your image, in Your members, I offend You, O Lord! From Kulikov to order cardboard boxes for the Guardianship. March 1st. From members of Kulikov - 12 rubles. Ivan Denisovich Zakharov promised 5 rubles a year. From Arkhip Ilyin - 10 rubles. From Fyodor Vasiliev - 5 rubles. In Medv. The street shopkeeper promised 3 rubles. From Efrem Oreshin - 5 rubles. From Ivan Serebrennikov – 2 rubles. Rudakov has 3 rubles left. From Anna Vasilievna Kasatkina – 12 rubles. From Elena Petrovna Kalmykova – 8 rubles. From Alexandra Nikolaevna Shubina – 18 rubles. From Fedor Nikolaev. – 15 in three months. From Efrem Stepanovich - 15 rubles. From Ekaterina Yakovlevna Nikitina - 25 rubles. From Pyotr Stepanovich - 3 rubles. From Ivan Vasilyevich Yakovlev - 10 rubles for two months. Semolina milk soup is very healthy - cook it more often. Roast veal too - gives a clear voice. On March 13, 1876, Polyglotov, Zrelov, Nikitin and Adrian drank until twelve o'clock at night at Poletaev's. We must report to the archpriest to calm down the rioters before the service on Sunday (capturing). Everyone ran out into the street with lit cigarettes. From Dmitrieva 5 rubles for Guardianship. From Arkady Ivanovich Shlyapnikov - 5 rubles. From Konovalov Grigory Ivanovich - 3 rubles. April 6, 1876 To the Trusteeship from Kalinin 3 rubles. To Ivan Ivanovich Dobrynin on April 22. 13 NoNo of “Home Conversation”. 10. No No "Church Herald". 19 NoNo of the “Church Public Bulletin”. Suggest questions to the administrative Board of Trustees: a) what to do with poor soldier widows, who have small children with them and who have absolutely nowhere to go? Or those women with young children whose husbands are crazy? What to do with our young burghers, sent in large numbers from St. Petersburg to Kronstadt and remaining idle? What should the Trustee do with them when they are not hired for work, because it is known that they go out every day in large parties to look for work and are refused because the army is taking these jobs away from them? A list of the members of the Trusteeship must certainly be compiled in order to know what forces we have and what we can have at our disposal annually. List of all poor people who need benefits. Give the Gospel and spiritual books to the barracks. January 24, 1876 There will be a prayer service for Marya Ivanovna, the wife of Trofim Ivanovich, on January 26 at nine o’clock in the morning. February 6, 1876 Is there money from Major Petrov in the mug? You don’t need to drink vodka or eat meat—they’ll weigh you down. Buy Marsala from Prushevsky. 1875. June 1 day. A parte in monte 145 [...] 1875 Beggars, a man and a woman, were fighting in the bathhouse. The story of my family. Should we give alms to them, that is, to the poor in general? In the third week of 1876 there were eighty-seven confessors. From prayer requests at the lithium. That is, along one of the granite embankments of Kronstadt. General troparion for the monks. Troparion of the 8th canon of the Grateful Canon to the Most Holy Theotokos. Gobzuyuschiy (church-glorified) – living in contentment and abundance, overflowing with wealth. The great saint of God, the Venerable John, lived in the 5th century, a Syrian by birth, called Ladder or the author of the “Ladder” in his writing, and Sinait after the place of his pious deeds. In the seventeenth year of his life, John sacrificed himself to God: he ascended his body to Mount Sinai and his soul to the mountain in heaven. Having remained on Mount Sinai in the exploits of solitude until he was forty years old, the monk then retired to the Sinai desert of Thola, located five stages from the Sinai church, and here he labored in great exploits of strict fasting and unceasing prayer for forty years. During this extraordinary Lent, his fast was as extraordinary as the very continuation of his fasting. Although the monk did not shy away from the food permitted by statute during Lent, in order to crush, as he himself said, the horn of pride, he accepted it so little that he seemed more to taste than to partake; but he resolutely abstained from all passion, speaking commandingly to her: be silent, be numb! His repentance was accompanied by deep contrition of heart and tears. For a long time after his blessed death, they showed a very narrow cave under the mountain - this is a secret place of feats of repentance, which is called the tear chamber and which was so far away from the hostel as necessary so that others could not hear John’s sobs. Slanders (Church Slavic) – attempts, intrigues. “Love for God and true love for others are inseparable and require each other. And whoever has hatred in his heart for his neighbor is alien to the love of God” (see St. Maximus the Confessor. On love. 1st centenary, 88 15, 28, 33, 55). Stichera for the 6th canon of the prayer service to the Most Holy Theotokos. Rus.: No (human) language is able to praise You according to your worth, and even the heavenly (angelic) mind is perplexed how to sing of You, Mother of God... Irmos of the 9th song of the canon at Matins of the Feast of the Epiphany. Whole (church-glorified) – simple, pure, immaculate. From birth to death... (lat.). You might be interested in: