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September 6th. During the liturgy, he read the prayer for the safe journey of the Emperor and Empress firmly and calmly from beginning to end. He also celebrated two weddings firmly and calmly, with boldness. After the liturgy, I sinned before the Lord - I seethed with indignation and vengeance against my wife for not allowing my brother Alexei to send a package with a form list to the Secretary of the Duma, Shakhov. Do not be partial to your will, because it is sinful, passionate, destructive, and be ready to always meet complacently, meekly opposition to it from your household, or your co-workers and comrades, or superiors and even subordinates and inferiors - do not be self-loving and deny yourself, that is, self-will, self-will, self-love, ambition, greed, bodily peace. You have to break yourself, your will, your heart, destroy yourself, endure the unpleasant and disgusting. Until now, you have been most embittered by those who oppose your will (example: you wanted your brother to take the package to Shakhov, but your wife opposed, did not allow this and wanted you to take it down yourself - you were angry with her because of this circumstance and with other household members). I myself know that you are teaching me! - ordinary words of the proud. A proud and wayward person does not tolerate being taught, being told, or having his will violated, although this will is the most empty of some kind of whim; a proud person gets irritated and loses his temper because of empty things, sometimes from one word, because of an ambiguous look at him, because, for example, they will not bow to him, will not shake hands when they meet him, or will pass over an award, or will place in a certain place not him, but another, more capable one. A proud man enjoys his own deeds and condemns those of others; In someone else's eye he sees a knot, but in himself he does not even see a log [Matt. 7, 3]. A proud person is an obnoxious, heavy person in the community. And who is vain? Ambitious? With respect and quietness, one must accept the advice of one’s wife, as one’s friend and helper, and not despise her or be upset with her - and in general respectfully treat every person, as if created in the image of God and having an immortal soul. All passions are a spiritual action and the fruit of Satan and his hasty power, and therefore we must constantly pay attention to ourselves, be vigilant over ourselves, pray unceasingly, burn in spirit towards the Lord, preserve in every possible way meekness, quietness, gentleness, abstinence, purity of soul and body, and understand the intentions of the evil spirit, which is constantly intensifying to incite us to sin. If someone who is subject to any passion had at first curbed it and not allowed it to develop and intensify in himself, then he would not have known those painful sorrows and struggles that he now has to constantly endure. Thus, every person must constantly observe himself and, if he notices in himself indignation from some incident and [the beginnings of] malice or envy, anger, stinginess, greed, impurity, he must immediately enter into a decisive struggle with sin and, in vain, mentally to the Savior, ask for help and victory. Connection of sins. On a fast day, you ate some savory food, and it strengthened your flesh and weakened your spirit, more or less. As a result of the strengthening of the flesh, passions begin to act stronger and more persistently, the spirit plunges into dormancy, powerlessness and is unable to resist their pressure, and is defeated. Know that any violation of fasting, even through fasting, but through tasty food and drink, entails moral impotence. September 7 after the all-night vigil. September 7 after the all-night vigil. I thank You, Lord my God, for You have graciously rewarded me with Your mercy, forgiving me my great sin for the sake of my prayer of repentance (the sin of delaying the sending of my form list). Thank you for the gift of prayer at the all-night vigil (on the Nativity of the Virgin Mary and Sunday). Without stumbling, cheerfully, fervently, he performed the evening and lamp prayers and the entire all-night vigil. Philip Stepanov served the all-night vigil splendidly. The voice was clear, sonorous, harmonious, blessed. Prayer renews the spirit and body of a person. This has been tested many times. Oh, how merciful is the Lord, who accepts our prayer, has mercy and saves us! We do not fall in vain before Him, we pray to Him. He is the living God, judging, punishing, merciful and saving, helping, strengthening, enlightening! During the liturgy, the self-exhaustion of God the Word for the salvation of perishing man and the mystery of His unification with the believers and their deification are depicted. What are we made of? - Out of nothing. What now on their own? - Nothing. Where are we from and what is in us and with us, besides sin? - From God. This is what we will constantly remember and thank God for - then we will be poor in spirit and will be worthy of bliss in our souls and the Kingdom of Heaven. What do I mean among these countless creatures of God - Angels and men? Nothing. What will I boast about? What do I have that I would not accept from God? [ 1 Cor. 4, 7]. Blessed are the poor in spirit [Matt. 5, 3]. Everything is from God. It means a lot just to remember someone’s name during prayer, especially at the liturgy (proskomedia, great entrance, etc.), because we remember it and the Lord will remember it. Now the enemy pursues me with laughter, now with sorrow, now with vain fear, now with despondency. Think about God and about your soul, and not about your belly and clothes or money. I thank You, Most-merciful Lord, for You have granted me to celebrate the Liturgy on September 8th in the Assumption Church without stumbling. And read the prayer about the journey of the king and queen, as well as the prayer of thanks at the prayer service, sincerely, with strength of spirit. I thank You, for on September 9th You granted me to celebrate the Liturgy in the same church cheerfully and sincerely and to receive Communion without condemnation. I thank You, for you raised me up, having fallen through the sin of anger at a small beggar, when he asked for alms for the third time with two gifts, you accepted my warm and repeated repentance, and you took away the crampedness and sorrow from my heart. I repent before my Lord of my addiction to sweets and my lack of love and respect for my neighbor, for because of my brother’s excessive consumption of sweets I grieve, and become embittered, and indulge in despondency and melancholy instead of despising them and considering them as rubbish, which everyone despises and tramples, and even considering my very flesh as pus and despising it, not caring about it. How we all sin against our immortal, godlike, autocratic soul, enslaving it to earthly decay, dust, which has no permanence or abidance! 72 How we sin against God, the Prototype of the soul, who destined us to reign with Himself in heaven! How we sin, chasing after earthly sweets, treasures, wealth, honors, amusements, despising the endless sweetness of heavenly blessings, incorruptible treasures, the honors of a heavenly calling, heavenly joy, unceasing, ineffable! God! Teach me never to be upset with someone created in Your image and likeness, except when he, having reason, deliberately does crazy things - uncontrollably indulges in delicacy, gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, theft, robbery and similar sins that make him a beast! Do not be upset at strangers who destroy your sweets, and do not quarrel because of this corruption, for God will return you tenfold, and you will not become poor. This has been tested by many many times. Just stay in love. God often, daily tempts our love: what, who and what do we love - God and our neighbor, heavenly or earthly? Woe if we daily find ourselves only partial to earthly things. I marvel at the greatness and life-giving nature of the Divine Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ. The old woman, who had been coughing up blood in Savelyev’s house and was completely exhausted, having eaten nothing, began to recover from the communion of the Holy Mysteries, which I taught, on the same day; the girl in the [Tyurikovs'] house behind the theater, who was completely dying, after communion of the Holy Mysteries on the same day began to get better, eat and drink and talk, while she was almost unconscious, tossed about violently and neither ate nor drank anything. Glory to Your life-giving and terrible Mysteries, Lord! One’s own opinion, or suspiciousness and doubt, is a cruel scourge for a person. The Churches chanting the wisdom of God in the creation of the world at the beginning of the all-night vigil mean the Angels of God praising the Lord after the creation of the world. When the stars (images of mental lights) were created, all My angels praised Me with a great voice [Job. 38, 7]. What does every Christian need to acquire? - The Spirit of Christ, the heavenly spirit, the spirit of holiness, meekness and humility, gentleness, humility, patience, mercy, abstinence, teaching. What to remember? – Death, judgment, hell, Kingdom of Heaven. What is the most important thing to know? – The Triune God, that man is in the image and likeness of God, that he must be holy, as the Lord God is holy; that sin disfigures the human soul, portraying Satan in it, defiles, kills. What should a Christian desire and seek in every possible way? - The grace of God. Why run away? - Love of money, lust, ambition, pride, envy, laziness, rebellion, cowardice, despondency. Sometimes I get angry with my wife because she doesn’t leave the key to the cupboard at home and I don’t have to drink tea at the time I want. Why this rage?.. This is greed. If you didn't drink tea at all, it would be much better. If you neglected drinking tea and eating, it would be worthy of a Christian. And greed is a pagan thing, and so is rage. You need to eat and drink less, only in proportion to bodily needs, only when you feel hungry. The funeral troparia are magnificent: You will find the holy faces of the source and the door of heaven... The Lamb of God... I am the Image... Of ancient slaughter... On the narrow path... Fathers Fotin and Pyotr Fedorovich Komarov taught me very well not to judge those who sin, especially fornicators and harlots. Make a large cypress cross to erect it on September 14th and kiss it. There are things that we value when we lose them, for example, health, money and other things: we don’t value them when we have them, we value them when we lose them. What if we lose the Kingdom of Heaven? But we do not appreciate it when it has not yet been completely lost by us, because sinners, while they are alive, still have hope of achieving it. What if we lose forever? What if we inherit Gehenna? I am unworthy of love - and they love me; What will I repay for this to the Lord who arranges this? If anyone ever hated or scolded me, it was deserved by me, and it is my fault that I was at enmity in my heart against such people and, perhaps, I am at enmity now. My sister (sister-in-law) Anna hated me, and I deserved it: why didn’t I love her and be hostile to her? On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary there was a fire in Kronstadt: the houses of Nedonoskov, in which depraved women lived, and the wooden outbuilding of Nazarova’s merchant’s wife burned down, and her stone house was severely damaged. On the Most Pure Day, God did not tolerate human uncleanness and, as on Sodom and Gomorrah, brought down fire from heaven onto the house of depravity. You feel your sinful corruption, your poverty, your damnation, your weakness. Fine. It is on you that the Lord will shed the wealth of His bounties and descend into your heart. Blessed are the poor in spirit [Matt. 5, 3]. Gluttony and delicacy (sweets) plunge the soul into extreme spiritual impotence: the heart becomes cowardly, timid, irritable, prodigal; a person is ashamed of his own face. (After yesterday's Sabayona 73 I became like a dog. Oh, how it relaxed me spiritually! And I ate quite a lot of it - in several meals.) You should drink tea in moderation. This boiled infusion also causes strong fornication - the heart is drowned by sin. Trouble, and that's all. Father Afanasy could not serve a memorial service for his late mother in the hospital chapel, nor could he read the psalter. Relaxes, irritates. With the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you [Lk. 6, 38 ]; do not spare a person anything - and you will see how God will reward you; do not spare anything necessary for your sister's groom - and he will be her husband. Oh, how heavy are the waves of sweets, how disastrous for the soul and body is eating very sweet things: how great is the sweetness, so strong is the sorrow and oppression. We say: Our Father, who is in heaven, but we have not yet known the Heavenly Father, for we do not love Him with all our hearts, we do not fulfill His will, we do not strive for Him, we do not love each other. Sinner! Do not despair: our holy and God-bearing fathers do not proclaim their holiness, not their perfections, not their successes in their writings, in their prayers and hymns, but they mourn their sins with bitter tears, their countless, as it seemed to them, sins: there is one God without sin, one He is holy, one Lord Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father [Phil. 2, 11]. Remember, people, that you are the image of God, but fallen and defiled and disfigured (everyone try to restore and cleanse it), that you have lost paradise and must seek it with all your might, for the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it away [Matt. 11, 12 ]; that paradise was opened to us again by Christ through His suffering and death - and believe in the merits of Christ, in His grace and mercy and bounty. Lawless brothers! Have you forgotten what happened eighteen centuries ago on Golgotha? Who was there hanging on the cross in terrible agony and for whom was this sacrifice made? Have you forgotten, ungrateful ones, the self-exhaustion of the Divine Sufferer for our sake? Stop crucifying the Son of God again. Behold, He is coming again from the clouds with glory to judge the living and the dead, and they will look, they will look at Him whom they pierced [Jn. 19, 37], and all the tribes of the earth will mourn for Him [Matt. 24, 30 ]! We follow with our thoughts, in newspapers, the highest persons on earth, their every step - but do we mentally follow, according to the Gospel, every step of our Divine Savior, who wandered the earth for our salvation? We greedily read and re-read the speeches of monarchs and the powerful of this world, published in daily publications - with thirst do we read and re-read the Divine words of our Savior, with thirst do we listen to the word of life, do we listen to the Hypostatic Word, the Word of God, who created the world and us with His word, and with His word contains and preserves the entire totality of creatures - great and small? What are we reading? What are we listening to? Are we reading the Gospel? Do we heed the word of life and salvation? No. Alas! A sinful language, people full of sins, sons of iniquity! You have angered the Lord and abandoned your Savior! Who will save you? Who else will suffer and die for you? What and who do you hope for? The Lord punished me with His abandonment for a time during the Divine Liturgy for my gluttony and satiety, from which I promised to retreat so many times and still do not lag behind. Oh, how hard it was for me! The nerve irritation and embarrassment were extreme! I could not read prayers for the king’s safe journey! When remembering the names of the royal family, I got lost. After the Cherubic Song, he served well, with the grace of God. The tightness remained in the soul and body even after mass. I noticed a cold in my insides because I sneezed several times. It may also happen that some of your household were at the divine service, but they say that they were not, and you will be angry with them in vain for not going to the divine service. Leave the works of faith to everyone who is of perfect age to their own discretion. Man is free - and God does not bind free will and says: If you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments [Matt. 19, 17]. Are we greater than God that we want to force everyone to live according to our thoughts and will, moreover, when we ourselves constantly live contrary to the will of God? What a whim, what evil, what pride! What waywardness, self-love! Be more indifferent to the actions of others: each one will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5]. My hypostatic life is simple - Jesus Christ, my endless life, my most perfect life. What am I chasing after, in what, besides Him, do I dream of finding life? Is it in food and drink, in money, in honors, or in precious clothing? All this is smoke, vanity, insignificance, and worse than insignificance. You have reason, and this is why you must use it... to know God and the works of His wisdom, omnipotence and goodness... to know His revelation, His saving will... You have free will, and this is how you should use it: you must do as much good as you can and improve in every virtue with the help of God. A proud person treats his family, his inferiors, and his equals with contempt. Obsequiously, flatteringly - with superiors; if he is the owner of the house or table, he treats parasites proudly and hostilely (as if we are filled with much humiliation... the proud [Ps. 122:3-4]) or with the beggars, etc.; the proud does not like advice and instruction; The proud rich man despises the poor. Pride does not live in the heart alone, but with many passions: envy, malice, vanity, condemnation. (From Climacus to a conversation about poverty of spirit and from “Christian Reading.”) So you will write catechetical conversations: do not be ashamed to tell people for edification what happened to you; teach the wicked the ways of the Lord, teach how sin operates in people in all its forms and how to avoid sin; how does pride, malice, enmity, gluttony, fornication, laziness work (as if you were the only ones settled on earth [Isa. 5:8]?); how is fornication [...] in the earliest youth, how is gluttony and greed the cause of malice and pride, how is every sin binding a person, like captives? And what, on the contrary, is freedom, lightness, tranquility, joy after resolution from sin? What is the benefit for the sons of men to be virtuous and what is the loss for them to be sinners and live in sins. (And how the belly fights against everyone who encroaches on our bread and salt, how it is afraid of guests and how the glutton himself willingly goes to visit and eats and drinks someone else’s food for pleasure?) How pride and self-love seeks to adorn itself with all kinds of jewelry, and spares pennies for its neighbors, or to satiate itself with the most delicious and expensive dishes, but spares pieces of bread for the hungry, etc.; how he decorates his home with expensive furniture, dresses the walls in silk and velvet, but does not give to the beggar even in rags. Your prayer at home and in church shows that you are members of another world - the heavenly one, that you do not think only about earthly things, but also about your heavenly destiny. Love your neighbor... as yourself [Matt. 19, 19]. I constantly violate this commandment of Yours, O God, out of my malice, for I often and very often harbor enmity towards him in my heart because of empty things (perishable): because of food, drink, clothing, housing, because of an offensive word on his part, or even because of a truthful, accusatory word, while I myself want to be respected and loved even when I am favored by something else. (food, drink, money, clothing, etc.) or when I sin in something. That person is both great and happy who, in the power of the strength of the Lord, conquers sin and stands firm in virtue. During the prayer service today, I was ashamed of the powerful and noble of this world: the Green General's wife (from the Navigation School) and her daughter (from Popov), and forgot the boundless glory and greatness of the Lord, Who does not look on His face and before Whom everyone is equally insignificant. Who are you afraid of? Is it a man who will soon fall into dust? Are you not afraid of the beginningless and immortal God? Be a refuge for the poor and mourning, and God and the Most Holy Theotokos and all the holy Angels and saints will be a refuge for you. Your pride is very sensitive, and you want others not to irritate it - in the same way, you spare the pride of others, do not irritate passions, in other words, respect the human dignity of your neighbors in every possible way and do not in the slightest way despise them in thought, feeling, word, movement, or deed: respecting another, you respect yourself, taking care of another - taking care of yourself. Where there is satiety, there is the devil, the teacher of gluttony and satiety, and with him - anger, pride, contempt, envy, greed, hard-heartedness, fornication, laziness, disobedience and other passions. Oh, what a scorching fire of passion! He is some semblance, a shadow of the fire of Gehena! How inconsistent, contradictory, and absurd the sinner is! By thinking evil about another, or wishing evil to another, or doing it in word or deed, the sinner harms himself first of all - instead of harming his neighbor. He worries himself, torments himself, burns with the fire of passion, while he would be at peace if he always wished his neighbor well and in all good things. How can you trust your virtue when it is so fickle and so quickly crumbles to dust at the first temptation? All grief, in vain or even due to actual mistakes, is all grief against our neighbor from the devil: he pours his tar into our hearts, that is, his anger, pride, envy. And lustful thoughts and lusts come from him. Give food to the poor willingly. As you are towards them, so will God be towards you. We do, we do our things, but at the very end we often (spoil) destroy them. Why is this? Priestly ministry is a cherubic ministry; priestly rank - cherubic rank. Therefore, the priest must behave sublimely, philosophizing above, despising those below, important, or majesticly without pride; During the service, maintain extreme calm, sedateness, and reverence, imagining the height of your service and who is to speak, with whom, and about whom and what he is praying and interceding. He must imagine both the greatness of the rewards prepared for the priesthood who serves worthily, and the greatness of the torments prepared in hell for the careless priest. Those rich in sins naturally need poverty of spirit, [...] exaltation. until deification. The Lord requires poverty of spirit. Why? Let us look for poverty of spirit between scholars or teachers and students. There is no poverty of spirit here: here is arrogance of knowledge, here is neglect of the Church and public and domestic prayer. Merchants?.. What is the most terrible and disgusting thing for a person? - Death. Yes, death: each of us cannot imagine without horror how he will have to die and take his last breath. And how are parents tormented when their dear children die, when they lie lifeless before their eyes? But do not be afraid and do not grieve too much, brothers. Jesus Christ, our Savior, with His death conquered our death and with His resurrection laid the foundation for our resurrection - and every week, every Sunday day we triumph in the risen Christ, our common future resurrection and we begin eternal life, to which the present temporary life is a short, although cramped and regrettable, path; the death of a true Christian is nothing more than a dream - until the day of resurrection, or like birth into a new life. So, as you celebrate every week the resurrection of Christ and your own resurrection from the dead, learn to continually die to sin and rise in souls from dead deeds, become enriched in virtue and do not grieve inconsolably for the dead: learn to face death without horror, as the definition of the Heavenly Father, which with the resurrection of Christ from the dead lost its formidability. The evening, morning and around noon services have the goal of constantly reminding us of the great deeds of God performed for us: the creation of the world, the redemption of man from sin, eternal damnation and eternal death, the incarnation, or incarnation of the Son of God, His Redemptive Sacrifice: suffering and death on the cross, the establishment of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood, and to make us real communicants this Heavenly, Life-giving and Terrible Mystery - about His resurrection and ascension into heaven. At the evening service, the creation of the world and man is remembered primarily, his blessed stay in paradise, then the fall and expulsion from paradise and the repentance of paradise, the promise of the Savior and His actual appearance (evening entrance), [...], the song of Simeon the God-Receiver, who saw the promised hope of Israel and the hope of the tongues, and then the greeting of the Mother of God is sung (carrying in her arms her Son, all God), who gave birth to the Savior of our souls. At the morning service, the birth of the Divine Child and the doxology of the Angels are also remembered: Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, and the Six Psalms depicts the conversation of believing souls with the Lord, their Shepherd and Visitor; then, after the sixth psalm, a joyful song is heard again about the appearance of the Lord in the form of a slave and a joyful greeting to him from the earthly: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord\ After that, the God-inspired psalms of the forefather of the Lord, king and prophet David are heard, with which in the depths of the past centuries he implored and praised the Lord and prophesied about Him, about His appearance on earth, about His suffering and death and resurrection and ascension, and with which it is so fitting and sweet to beg and sing of Him even now, after His appearance on earth, after the completion of our salvation and ascension into heaven. What a majestic spiritual spectacle: Godfather David is talking with his great descendant and his Savior, teaching us through his conversation to pour out our souls before Him. Then the royal doors open, like the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, opened by the Lord who appeared, again with the psalm of praise of the God-inspired singer, the Church inspires everyone to praise the Lord: for from eternity blessed is the Lord from Zion - His New Testament Church, Alive in Jerusalem (truly Alive, because He unceasingly revives and unceasingly acts); inspires everyone to confess the Lord that He is good, that His mercy endures forever, for He did not leave us to perish forever, but came and saved us - not an intercessor, not an Angel, but the Lord Himself incarnate; then after the Sunday stichera, if it is a resurrection, or after the Gospel, magnification and prayer Save, O God, Thy people, the canon, or New Testament scripture, is sung, in which the fruits of the Incarnation of Christ are sung, or the virtues of the saints, by which the memory is accomplished. After the canon, stichera are praised, in which the mercies of God towards the human race or again the valor of the saints are praised; then the doxology, then the litanies of austerity and supplication and dismissal; finally the first hour, in which the eternity of God is depicted in the first psalm... An infection, a pure infection for everyone, is tobacco (small Amosov). The Church continually thanks the Lord for us for His incarnation and all its fruits, and glorifies His Mother in canons and akathists, while you, for the most part, have remained ignorant in spiritual things, in matters of faith and piety. Just as the priests, for themselves and for you, constantly glorify the Lord both at home and in the church of God, they think, feel, speak, and do for themselves and for everyone. The golden chain of intelligent beings - Angels and humans, the Heavenly and Earthly Church. Candle to the Mother of God and the Evangelist John the Theologian. Everyone has shied away from real business and chosen their own private affairs: some houses, wealth, some voluptuousness and a cheerful life, some honors; but here is the true goal, the true work - work out your salvation, enlighten your mind with the light of the Gospel, cleanse and correct your heart, give free will direct direction - strive to find the lost paradise. This is your business, your goal. Meanwhile, you have put the work of salvation aside, you have not enlightened your mind with the light of faith, you have not corrected your heart, you have subordinated your free will to carnal lusts, and you are not thinking about returning to the lost paradise. What are you doing? Vanity things that you must leave in due time and which will leave you just the same. True Christian philosophy, or true Christian piety, is the harmonious formation and development of the three forces of the soul: mind, heart and will - and the subjugation of the flesh and carnal passions to the spirit. You must give alms to the poor in simplicity and kindness of heart, and if the same little beggars run up for alms several times, do not be embittered at them, as they still have little reasoning and little understanding, and forgive them for their childish simplicity and foolishness, and if they persistently ask for more alms, enter into their need and do not refuse alms with your strength, so that you will find God merciful to you. Oh, how cruelly we insult the Master of the Lord with our anger at the poor, at these His brethren, with our stinginess and greed, having ourselves everything in abundance, while sparing them the necessary things. How can they not complain to God about us with the word that the holy prophet David puts into their mouth: have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us, for we are filled enough with contempt; Our soul is quite filled with reproach from the arrogant and humiliation from the proud [Ps. 122.3 – 4 ]. On Sunday September 24th I celebrated mass in the Duma with extreme difficulty; it also depended on the fact that in the evening I drank tea with cream and then after an hour of studying I ate caviar with black bread and pickled lampreys, and besides, the weather was difficult - drizzle and fog all day. He was angry with the beggar boy - and this again was the reason. After mass, I received three letters addressed to Grigory Ivanovich Tsvetkov; in one of them is a letter from Anna Konstantinovna’s groom’s father with a blessing for his marriage. The Christian race is the race of God, children of God, heirs of God, joint heirs of Christ [Rom. 8, 17]. How should they therefore live in this world! The enemy of the human race constantly tries to lull people to sleep, to plunge them into spiritual slumber, so that they do not even think about God, about salvation from sin, about the life of the next century, he excuses all sorts of sins, instills contempt for virtue, and places all sorts of obstacles to doing good. So fight, so fight! Give alms to the poor from your heart - not out of sorrow, not out of need (not forced). How low I am! I am captivated by perishable and fleeting beauty; I humiliate myself and am embarrassed before the nobility of the world; In the face of poverty and ignorance, I am impudent and careless. It cost me a lot of prayerful work inside to calm down on the clipper “Horseman”, which was going abroad to the Amur, so that in peace of mind I could serve the farewell prayer service - and then I was embarrassed several more times and did not finish a few words when reading the Holy Gospel and the Water-Blessing Prayer and the last exclamation (Thou art the sanctification...). And during mass in the Cathedral on the same day, because of [Alex. Iv. Davydova] got confused at the great entrance during the reprimand of the royal house and finally lost his way and bad-mouthed his dismissal. What a weakness! Our faith is not today’s, not new, like Mohammed’s or Luther’s, but ancient, predicted in the Old Testament by the prophets of God and then fulfilled; not the work of the reformer, but the work of God Himself - His Holy, Wise institution; all of it was founded according to God’s instructions, in the image, just as the Tabernacle of the Testimony was once built in the image shown by God on the mountain. No one can remake or alter this Divine building, erected by God Himself. The evil one frightens me with ghosts because I am ashamed of the wisdom of God to please the imaginary wisdom of men, I am ashamed of the word of the Church to please men. Dignified and righteous! Who are the [great] princes - and who am I? I am insignificant, and they are powerful in everything, I am small - they are great. Unleavened and sweet food produces heart weakness, lustful disposition, cowardice, confusion, impatience, anger, blasphemy, and inability to pray. It’s a disaster to eat such food before a service on a holiday (at Grigory Petrovich Sidorov’s I ate pie, hazel grouse, blamange, drank a cup of coffee - and I felt bad, as if I was eating their sins). During the Intercession Vespers in the Duma Church, invisible enemies attacked me for my gluttony - with embarrassment and fear, and I, having stumbled in heart and tongue at the prayer of the Lord of the Many-Merciful... at the word of the good-victorious, could not further continue the names of the saints and said only the end: we pray to Thee, Omni-merciful... and then there was fear and weakness of voice... In the first hour the enemy almost brought me to madness - such cramped conditions, sorrow, despondency overtook me. I fell to the throne in the chapel of the Forerunner of the Lord and prayed to the Lady to deliver me from the villainy of my enemies - and I was delivered: I said the prayer to Christ, the True Light well and released and forgiven also quite well. He served the Mass on Pokrov in a decent manner; It took a lot of work to overcome the obsession of the spirit of malice with fervent prayer: I couldn’t stand the sexton Nikolai standing in the altar, but I wanted him to stand on the choir; I kept thinking that he was spying on me, while he, heartfelt, fervently prayed. But I humbled myself, recognized myself as worse than him due to my many weaknesses and sins, known only to God and my conscience, I prayed for him, so that the Lord would correct him, and for myself, so that the Lord would turn me to the path of His commandments - and the Lord had mercy, the waters of anger subsided from my heart, and I felt calm and at ease. He performed the Liturgy safely, and also took communion with faith and reverence, into the peace and life-giving of soul and body. Glory to the mercy of the Lord! October 1, 1868. Traveling with the cross, I met everywhere the great love of parishioners who joyfully accepted my unworthiness. You, Lord, do this, for Your Body, Your Church are all these verbal sheep. May there always be a living, firm, spiritual, holy connection between shepherds and their flock. For our sake, the Lord became poor, so that through His poverty we may become rich, taking on the form of a servant [Phil. 2, 7]. Who are we that we should be exalted and proud before others? The Lord came to serve people - who are we that we should shun serving the poor and weak and please only ourselves? You consider pleasing the belly—eating and drinking delicacies—meaning nothing for the salvation of the soul; but this is a thing of enormous importance - it does very, very much harm to the salvation of the soul, drying up the love for God in the heart, cooling true love for one’s neighbor and plunging us into self-love and carnality. The Savior says in the Gospel that many people are overwhelmed by worries, wealth and the pleasures of life and do not bear fruit [Lk. 8, 14 ]; devoured by the sweet vision of death that came from them, and Thy glory and life were alien to them, 74 says the Church on our behalf. How many times during worship have I myself felt that gluttony is a dangerous pastime and a true network of the enemy, like the once forbidden fruit in paradise. The flesh, or the evil spirit operating in it, has made enormous progress recently through the increase in whims - tobacco, excesses in wine, various delicacies, card games, etc. True Christians allowed themselves only what was necessary and sometimes remained without food for several days, but we allow ourselves everything, even unnecessary things, like tobacco, etc. Let us remember the locusts 75 and the wild honey of John [Matt. 3, 4; Mk. 1.6 ]! Wordless deeds—gluttony and satiety, or gluttony—produce a fierce darkening of the heart and dumbness of the tongue. Therefore, in order to have enlightened hearts and speak powerfully, one must fast. During the week of service, I am behind Christ my Savior, like behind a stone wall - passions do not dare to approach me brazenly. Those who have not yet learned the wisdom of the heavens will trudge (creep) on the earth, who, even during the priestly service, are ashamed of the face of a rich or noble person or are seduced by the beauty of the face and rich clothes and soft, blushed prosphora. Isn't all this just mud 76? Didn’t God create the rich and noble, as well as the poor and humble, the beautiful and the ugly; Isn’t all clothing perishable and isn’t prosphora made from the earth? Those who still do not believe in God as they should, who even in His church are afraid of anyone and anything other than God. The Lord God Himself was not ashamed to take on our nature, to suffer and die a shameful death for us, and you are ashamed to depict on yourself the sign of the cross, which is our strength and glory? What contempt, what punishment do you deserve? Or, better yet, what a regret, for you are in extreme blindness, or in the delusion of 77 the enemy. Can we, brethren, look with indifference at your iniquities and at your eternal destruction? What have we been assigned by God and our Lord Jesus Christ to be shepherds? Is it okay to look indifferently at your delusions? Or to shepherd ourselves? Or to dress in your wave 78? Or to show off your insignia before you? You are looking for benefits in trade, in everything - but aren’t there benefits from prayer, from Christian virtue, that you neglect them? Oh, I testify by God and my experience that the benefit is the greatest: cleansing of sins, freedom of spirit, light, peace, boldness before God and people. Icons are not revered, images are rejected. But why did God appear in the Old Testament in the form of a man, and in the New Testament did the Hypostatic Word take on the form of a slave? Why were the images shown to Moses on the mountain, according to which the Tabernacle was to be built? Why do we allow imagery in all other cases, but not allow it in faith? Why figurative language in the Gospel? And how can I, a humble 79 bodily being, manage in faith without images? My faith can fade, but images can ignite it. If images are not needed, then there was no need for the heavenly fire in the tabernacle, and the lamps, and the table, and the showbread; Why do both Lutherans and Anglicans use the cup of communion, especially given their belief that it is not the Body and Blood, but only an image of the Body and Blood? They are mistaken. Look at every Christian man and woman as at Christ Himself and do not dare to think anything low about him, or become embittered towards him, or be proud of him, or envy him, etc. Poverty of spirit. I am the first of sinners. Everyone sinned from Adam - both before the law and in the law... Or: What do you have that you did not receive? [ 1 Cor. 4, 7 ]; If... I do not have love, then I am nothing [1 Cor. 13, 1 – 2 ]; may God be all in all [1 Cor. 15, 28 ]; not I, however, but the grace of God, which is with me [1 Cor. 15, 10]. I was born into a world of miracles, into the world of the wonderful grace of God, His wisdom and power - I was numbered among the Church of God, or the society of those who are being saved, and here what miracles I met and constantly meet! I thank the Lord for the miracle of reconciliation with Churkov, through my prayer, in the evening, in his apartment at the seminary. The tea is strong. On Saturday evening, October 5, I abstained from food and drank only strong tea with small fluffy buns, thinking through this to serve early mass on Sunday with great calm and spiritual strength. It was not to be: from not eating enough and drinking a lot of tea (four glasses), I became extremely irritable and sick: the excess tea pricked me like needles, and I served mass and prayer services with great difficulty, the cramped conditions were terrible. Or was it an attack by invisible enemies (one against the other) for the sake of Yakov Andreevich, who gave me money to distribute to the poor to atone for the sin of drunkenness? God knows. Or the burdens of those in the church lay on me. The heart knower knows. It's rarely this hard. The flesh darkens, defiles the image of God - the soul, corrupts, turns away from love for the Creator, which is most necessary and which gives true life, turns away from love for one's neighbor - how to love it, how not to crucify it? So we became vain that we made the law of life things that were directly sinful and contrary to God: gluttony, covetousness, partiality, bribery, idleness, entertainment and gaiety, etc. The internal and external cross is necessary, for it punishes sin, with which we deserve eternal damnation; the cross kills those who corrupt the soul [passions . Without the cross there are no spiritual fruits: meekness, purity and chastity, holiness. The cross of Christ has brought us countless fruits, through it we have the Flesh and Blood of Christ; through the cross we have the relics of the martyrs; through the cross we have the relics of the venerable fathers and venerable mothers, blooming with incorruption and exuding many different healings. Through the cross, faith and piety were planted and confirmed, human life was adorned with many virtues. The Church is an earthly heaven, everything here reminds of heaven: all services, Sacraments, all prayers breathe holiness, heaven. Services on holidays and weekdays are performed in order to instill in a person his heavenly destiny, to accustom him to heavenly morals, to heavenly life, to breathe into him the heavenly spirit, the spirit of Christ. Church services and all church paraphernalia should and do tell a person that he is a citizen of heaven, a child of God, the image and likeness of God. Poor in spirit [Matt. 5, 3]. Without Me you cannot do anything [Jn. 15, 5]. The whole world is nothing. The enemy distorts everything: instead of the consciousness of his insignificance, he instills in us contempt for the sacred, or not to recognize the sacred, to reject everything (nihilism); instead of God's, the holy, he introduces the human, the devil, the false; instead of an honest marriage - a civil marriage; instead of a church - a theater; instead of the fragrance of incense - the stench of tobacco; instead of reading holy books - reading only newspapers and magazines or maps, which for today's people have replaced any book. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted [Matt. 5, 4]. Truly blessed. My experience. What causes tears? From the idea of ​​the infinite perfection of God and our unworthiness, from the consciousness of how much we could do for our moral perfection - and we do not; from the idea of ​​the perfection and bliss of God’s holy men, who were subservient to us and through their zeal, with the help of God’s grace, achieved godlikeness; from the consciousness that we are created in the image of God and do not live worthy of our origin and title, that through baptism we have become children of God and do not justify this title by our deeds; from the presentation of our sinful abominations, the multitude of sins, like the sand of the sea, like the abyss, and the greatness of God’s long-suffering, which has not yet destroyed us; from the representation, on the one hand, of God’s infinite mercy, on the other, of God’s Last Judgment. Blessed are the poor in spirit [Matt. 5, 3]. The poor in spirit and in speeches with others are quiet and compliant, but the proud are arrogant and likes to have the upper hand in conversations and gets excited when others have the upper hand. You don’t even want to remember the names of the royal family at the great entrance, but how much it means to remember someone at this time! The thief said: remember me, Lord, when you come into Your Kingdom! [ OK. 23, 42], when hanging on the cross near the cross of the Lord Jesus, and at the great entrance the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus between two thieves is remembered; The same Christ now as then. That is why we remember all Orthodox Christians at the Liturgy and pray to the Lord with the prayer of the thief, that the Lord will remember them in His Kingdom and at least honor them with the fate of a prudent thief in paradise. It is a great benefit for me to be in the church, in this house of prayer: here God gives me tears of tenderness, sweet and worldly tears, cleansing of sins, the most cherished shrine, peace, silence, joy, lofty thoughts, exaltation of the spirit, alienation from the world, that is, alienation of the heart from the vanity of the world, its corrupt customs; Here in the church, especially, He makes me feel Christian sonhood and the fact that [I am] a sheep of the verbal flock of Christ, a member of His Church, a son and heir of the Kingdom of Heaven. What house of the world's congregation can compare with the house of God! What love, surpassing reason, the Lord showed in His incarnation and in all self-exhaustion for us; how deeply we have fallen and how unimaginably terrible our destruction would have been in boundless eternity if the Lord had not raised us up and made sacrifices for us in His world to the truth of God. How infinitely much the Lord has given us through His incarnation, through the Sacrament of water and the Spirit and the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, for through this He adopted us and deified us and made us heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ, participants in such blessings as the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and has not entered... into the heart of man [1 Cor. 2, 9 ]! And how ignorant, insensitive, and ungrateful we are to God for such ineffable gifts of Him! We are voluptuous, partial and seek pleasure and beauty in human faces, in clothing, and in words, but we completely forget the image of God, in which man was created, while in the image of God people are all the same. How do you treat those who are born of God: with love, forbearance and patience? Those who practice dreamy deeds are punished by these deeds, for example, gluttons, fashionistas and fashionistas, or those who are passionate about dressing up, drunkards, thieves in gluttony, foppishness, drunkenness and theft, and they find retribution for themselves. Whatever one sins, that is what he is punished for [Wis. 11, 17]. What prayers express poverty of spirit? I am poor and damned, have mercy on me, God... I have sinned from Adam... before the law, in the law, by the law and grace I have passed on sins... Prayers for communion; prayers in the Psalter Followed 81 - they must be read. For whom did I live, for whom did I work, who tasted peace and who was hitherto satisfied with the fruits of my labors and who still enjoys my labors, which, by the grace of God, are life-giving for me? And where is the devotion to God of those for whom I work, the sincere piety that would make me happy? Where is the soul, the spirit in these people, so that I can see that my property is not going on dead stumps? Do I not see only vanity, vanity, pride? It’s amazing what a wise system the worship of the Orthodox Church is! The goal is for us to live heavenly on earth and not forget the great works of God accomplished for our salvation, not to descend into a pagan way of life, so that we remember that God has called us to the inheritance of the saints in the world! It's a pity who doesn't attend services! We don’t actually have fasting: we feast on fasting. And if we fast a little, it is as if in order to celebrate the Lord’s feasts with doubled and tripled intemperance. But think, Christian: after all, instead of bodily sweetness, you are promised incorruptible sweetness. Leave carnal pleasure and take spiritual pleasure; leave time and take eternity; leave corruption and take incorruption. Oh, how I must thank You, Lord, for cleansing my iniquities, and for healing my ailments, and for crowning me with unceasing mercies and bounties! These are blessings whose greatness is unspeakable, which are invaluable, because they return me from death to life, from sorrow to joy, from cramped space to space, from darkness to light, from shame to boldness, from languor to peace, from relaxation to strength, from hardship to lightness, from evil to good yoke. Let me exclaim more often with the Psalmist: Bless the Lord, my soul, and His holy name, my soul: bless the Lord, my soul, and do not forget all His rewards: the one who cleanses all your iniquities, the healer of all your illnesses [Ps. 102, 1–3]. The beauty, softness and preciousness of earthly clothes, blinding the eyes of the heart, distracts the eyes of the soul from heaven, tears it away from God and combines it with the world and the devil through addiction to corruptible things, adulterous pleasure in them, or through envy and enmity towards those persons who possess these beautiful clothes and, in general, wealth. But everything earthly is perishable and, like a flower in a field, fades and fades. One virtue is eternal and never fades. Let us trample upon carnal pride, let us despise the flesh and all its ornaments and pleasures, as akin to sin, and let us cleave with all our hearts to the uncreated and incorruptible and life-giving and hypostatic Beauty - God - through faith and love and contemplation. Only children or people with childish feelings and aspirations tend to admire and be seduced by beautiful and expensive clothes and shiny things in general, or, more precisely, shiny toys, and to people with a perfect mind and heart they seem to be what they are - beautiful dust, for they tend to appreciate the local, mountain life and the local bliss, the lordship there, living with Christ, with the luminous Angels - with this wonderful kindness and with all the saints, eternally rejoicing, shining and fragrant in God. Oh, into what slavery do earthly things drag the soul, what confusion do they subject it to, what cramping, depriving our being of the greatest good - peace and light! The seduction by the beauty of clothes, human faces, silver and gold, food and drink, in general, by material things, is a secular, carnal philosophizing, while contempt for all this and the incessant striving of thoughts and hearts towards God is a heavenly philosophizing; envy of someone in everyday things - again further wisdom, goodwill in everything, self-sacrifice for the sake of one's neighbor - heavenly wisdom; complacent patience of insults, insults, as well as complacent patience when we are devoured, robbed, deprived of even the last thing from us, and prayer for such people to God, so that He does not put this sin on them and saves them from their sins, is heavenly wisdom; on the contrary, zeal, rage, anger and malice towards those who offend are long-lasting, carnal, spiritual, demonic reasoning. Remembering death and thinking about it, about the future resurrection, judgment, reward is heavenly wisdom. In the one Lord there is life and bliss, although our heart dreams of finding life in matter - in food, drink, money, rich and beautiful clothes and, seduced by them, steals invisibly from the enemy and becomes disconnected from the source of life - God, worrying and languishing and rushing, not knowing why and for what. Do you fall into cowardice and despondency from the needs of life - tell your need to God, repent to Him of your cowardice, despondency, say: I am unfaithful, senseless before You, not placing all my hope on You, not casting all my sorrow on I - and the Lord will comfort you, take away cowardice and murmuring from your heart and fill you with peace and hope. That's how it was with me. Have you fallen into some kind of sin and it has hurt you, confused you, constrained you - repent heartily of your sin again in heartfelt prayer, and He will cleanse you and heal your ulcer. This is what happened to me today in Rusanov’s house before the christening (I deliberately slipped away from a beggar who wanted to ask me for alms, and that’s why I was embarrassed, hurt, but I cried out to the Lord with my heart in Rusanov’s house, standing before the icons, and the right hand of the Lord saved me. Christening). Beware of satiety and breaking the fast: this leads to fornication, hardness of heart, rage and irritability, anger, envy, laziness. Why do you need to avoid sin at all costs? Because he defiles and corrupts the soul and removes it from God and destroys it. Every day 82 the thought is set on evil 83 [Gen. 8:21], and every day we break all the commandments of God. (We must constantly remember the commandments in order to do them: this is why they were written and given to us.) Sins hurt, hurt the soul, deprive of peace, freedom, spiritual light, cause sorrow, oppression, and all this because the sinner through his sin moves away from God. People sin because sins are seductive at first sight and take on the appearance of necessity and legality. In the morning I don’t necessarily need to eat or drink, but only have lunch. Nature demands no more; excess from the devil. The flesh is prodigal: excess food and drink feed fornication and all passions. We must crucify the flesh. Today I sinned gravely before the Lord, the Knower of the Heart, Whose Holy Mysteries I had in my heart - I desired a reward for my visit to a sick eight-year-old child (whom I did not find alive). And this desire entered my soul and my bones like a corrupting poison, and it took a lot of intense inner prayer to ask the Lord for mercy and healing of the spiritual ulcer - the love of money. Oh, may my soul no longer desire a stifling reward, but may I do the holy work of prayer, not thinking about reward at all, for the desire for reward is inspired by the devil. You abhor drunkenness and condemn it; while you yourself are often intoxicated and in a frenzy of pride and love of glory, love of money, greed, lust, envy, unbrotherly love and enmity, waywardness, disobedience, bliss and laziness! How you disdain your neighbor and condemn him, instead of condemning yourself and disdaining yourself! Be indifferent to human praise and blasphemy, to favor or disposition, but may the single praise of the Lord and the terribly righteous condemnation of the Lord and His displeasure be precious to you, for human opinions and judgments are sinful and, like the wind, fickle, but the judgment of the Lord is true and immutable. So, try to gain the favor of the Lord - having acquired it, you will also gain the favor of His servants, remember that all human glory is like the flower of the grass [1 Pet. 1, 24]. Vodka, tobacco, cards, money, tea, coffee, furniture, and generally rich home decoration - these are the modern gods of Christian people. Where is the Christian spirit, the heavenly spirit, the spirit of holiness, abstinence, non-covetousness, purity, meekness, gentleness? Why is it sometimes difficult for a priest during a liturgy or an all-night vigil, especially on a festive, crowded one? Because the gates of hell are opening, and because he also closes these gates with his prayer of faith and love. Do you go to human houses, to the dwellings of sinners, but don’t you like to go to the house of God, to the house of shrine? Are you in the image of God or someone else? Caress a young man and he will be your relative: his heart will be yours. Our prayer at home and in public shows that we are members of the spiritual Kingdom, children of God and citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom, fellow citizens with the saints and members of God, having been established on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, having Jesus Christ Himself as the cornerstone [Eph. 2, 19 – 20]. We believe and confess the Holy Spirit, but do we have the spirit of holiness within us, do we try to live holy? We are told: Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? [ 1 Cor. 3, 16]. Is your body a temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? [ 1 Cor. 6, 19]. A fornicator, a glutton, a covetous person, a thief, a drunkard, a proud person, an envious person, a hater, a slothful person - do you think about it? Why don’t you curb yourself from these passions, why do you allow Satan to nest within you? Whether you are beautiful or whether you have a beautiful face - this beauty is not yours, but Christ’s. Give him glory, and do not be vain yourself or yourself, do not be a deity, an idol for yourself and for others, do not commit fornication with your heart; You are smart, educated, graceful in everything - it is not your mind, not your education, not your grace, for it was not you who created intelligence for yourself, it was not you who created yourself in the image of God, from whom education originates, it is not you who is the culprit of the grace of creatures, but God, who created everything beautiful. To Him take the glory of your intelligence, education and all that is good. Are you rich, really, but what? - sins, and all your property is a gift from God, which will not always remain with you, which will soon be taken away from you. Oh, if only you were rich in humility, kindness, purity, self-control, mercy and love for God and neighbor, faith, hope for the future age, heavenly wisdom, earthly foolishness! A terrible word and thing - Gehenna; a terrible truth, it is repeatedly mentioned in the Gospel by the incarnate Truth Himself - Christ, in order to assure us of its existence and in order to save us with His true threats from actually plunging into it. O shepherds of Christ's flock! You have a duty and obligation to remind people about it more often and to save them from the fire with fear, amazingly! But you are often like dumb dogs, unable to bark [Ns. 56, 10]. That is why people forget themselves, fall into an ungodly life - and perish. When I see human beauty, I say to myself: Jesus, most radiant beauty, Jesus, beautifier of all creation, 84 glory to You, for Yours is beauty, and I learn to look at human beauty with pure eyes, as at the beauty of stars, flowers, as at the beauty of the whole world of God. I am so insignificant - will I pay attention to the beginning of my existence? I am still so far from non-existence, from insignificance, while I have already managed to become the greatest sinner and surpass everyone in my iniquities. Will I pay attention to the end of my earthly existence - and it is close, maybe closer than I think, maybe tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and even today - and then, maybe I’m in hell?.. Oh, how insignificant I am! Meanwhile, I constantly exalt myself, despise people like me, often better than me, or I get angry and torment like a beast, envy like the devil, misogyny like a horse, and forget the eternal torment prepared for sinners. We must pray both at home and in church and read the Gospel and other holy and spiritual books, because the enemy constantly tries to blot out in us faith, the fear of God, the memory of death, judgment, Gehenna, the Kingdom of Heaven - and to instill unbelief, passions: love of money, fornication, envy, pride, wickedness, etc. Braiding my hair at night is bad, it makes me all sick. Rich dinner parties are death for me, expensive wines are a disaster, and besides, you eat and drink people’s sins, and they are a heavy burden. It was torment for me to serve vespers and perform the baptism of five babies in front of the people; the cramped conditions of hell surrounded me, I barely completed the christening in an hour and a half - how many times did I stop for a few minutes, how much shame! (Both the hair braiding and the dinner party broke me.) Today I greedily drank expensive wines: Rhein wine and Chateauiquem (a drink per person cost 10 rubles - an insane luxury). Let us remember the evangelical rich man. We all follow the path of this rich man: we should not come to his place of torment! [ OK. 16 19 – 31]. We stand in a terrible disgrace 85, in a terrible war every day: our enemies are vigilant, cunning, strong, simple, their arrows are light, filled with deadly poison, ignited - and we are weak, sad, lazy, unskillful and conveniently fall from the arrows of the evil one, flatteringly moved at us 86, we are filled with shame and dishonor, we are afraid of fear there, where there is no fear [Ps. 13:5], we are ashamed where there should be no shame, or in what we should boast about. The enemy slashes and confuses our hearts, either with crafty and nasty thoughts at the sight of human faces, especially during sacred services, or with fear, fear, stupid doubt, or with rage and irritability, or with greed for food and drink, or with covetousness and countless intrigues. Holy Angels, holy prophets, apostles, hierarchs, martyrs and saints are our representatives before God. That’s why we celebrate them every week. Blessed are those who mourn [Matt. 5, 4]. They cry especially about loss. What have we lost? We have all lost: paradise, innocence, purity of heart, the likeness of God, righteousness, bliss, immortality, safety from sin - and we have inherited and ourselves acquired guilt, sinful impurity, a strong inclination towards all evil, the curse of God, sorrows, illnesses, thousands of deaths and, to top it all, hell with its endless horrors. We must remember about our damnation, about our powerlessness for virtue and the power of evil, which is located in us and constantly forces us to commit sins of all kinds. The strong, noble, rich and learned of this world - you don’t need to spare them, but boldly and firmly hold your face against them, like an anvil, and boldly raise your voice, especially God’s, for they are inflated, drown in many sins and often do not want to acknowledge them and live unrepentantly, and besides, they are subject to even greater weaknesses than ordinary people - therefore there is nothing to be afraid of them. And if they rebel against us for the truth, then the Lord will humble them and punish them. In general, a priest should not look at faces, not be ashamed and not fear a human face, for his judgment is the judgment of God. Let us not be ashamed of man's face, for God's judgment exists. Are you ashamed of the friends of Jesus Christ, I mean the beggars, are you ashamed to go with them, are you angry at them, breathe malice, do you blaspheme them with the abusive names of a fool, a beast, and the like, while you yourself are rather a fool, and like a beast and a beast? Where is the meekness and humility? Where is the patience? Where is the non-covetousness? It is said about the Lord that He will not reproach, He will not cry, and no one will hear His voice in the streets [glory: on the crossroads]; He will not break a bruised reed, nor will he quench smoking flax [Isa. 42, 2 – 3; Matt. 12, 19 – 20] (and flax – we); but you cry out against the poor, and reproach the elders, and your furious voice is heard at the crossroads. What are you doing? When will you change your temper? When will you correct your heart? When will you give up blind and absurd pride, pride, envy, voluptuousness, selfishness? How much money the parishioners give you freely - and with love, but you give to the poor reluctantly, with anger, and you also fight because they come up to you several times! Instead of rejoicing that these children of God come to you for alms, and you yourself seek mercy from God, you grieve and get irritated and thereby make yourself, foolish, unworthy of God’s mercy. We thank You, Lord, that You did not leave us, the orphans, in sinful misfortune, but came and saved us, and are always present with us, especially in the Divine Liturgy, in the Mystery of Communion, and satisfy with Yourself those who hunger and thirst for Your righteousness, and save us from the terrible orphanhood of sin. Oh, how terrible it is to be abandoned by God even for a short time, for one minute or one hour: you don’t find a place for yourself, you rush around like a drunk. Mercy. We soon become tired of mercy and become burdened. And the Lord? Oh, He never gets tired, He is not burdened to show us countless mercies. The well-fed cannot understand the hungry. How much and with what spirit do we give to the poor? We give them a few kopecks for food, for clothing, and for an apartment, and even then reluctantly, and we also scold and humiliate, shame, and vilify them! Who, besides you, will have pity on the poor? And so they all come to you as to your father. And be a gentle but reasonable father for them: feed them, clothe them, give them shelter. The Lord will not leave you. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness [Matt. 5, 6]. How not to hunger and thirst for truth! Sin is so vile, humiliating, always associated with sorrows and remorse, but virtue is kind, sublime, and brings peace and joy to the heart! The Lord daily saves us from the devil, who seeks to devour us, not allowing him to inflame us excessively and shoot his arrows at us. Otherwise, we could be in danger every day - falling into grave sin or completely dying. Is money so precious to you, man, that you lie, deceive, break an oath, rage, get angry, hurl curses and are ready to fight because of it? And if so, then let me ask you: who are you? Do you have an immortal soul, created in the image of God, or instead of it do you have an unreasonable, animal soul, the soul of a beast? Are you not renewed by baptism and reborn into a spiritual life, holy, meek, self-controlled, peace-loving, a life filled with compassion for your neighbors; Are you not called to the heavenly Kingdom and must consider everything earthly as rubbish [Phil. 3, 8 ] and not value anything here, your very body, which is the source of all sins and passions? If the Lord had not punished you, visiting you with sorrows and hardships, humiliation, weaknesses, struggles, then you would have been overcome by either pride, or anger and envy, or lust and love of money, or greed, or gluttony and drunkenness, or laziness and other passions. Thanks to God’s punishments and admonitions, these and similar passions do not yet control you to a strong degree, although they sometimes rage in your hearts. The Lord wisely rules the souls devoted to Him. Surrender to Him, brothers, as I will return to the Creator in charity. Fear the one God, be ashamed to anger the only God with sin, and despise the dreamy fear of demons and the dreamy shame of demons (the fear and shame of eminent people during divine services). All of God’s internal punishments and admonitions to us tend to humble the human spirit, which is constantly striving for pride, and to break self-love, in order to show man his extreme sinful corruption, weakness, powerlessness for all good, for good thoughts, feelings, intentions, aspirations, deeds, his terrible, incessant, disastrous inclination towards all-destructive and dark sin and eternal destruction. For this purpose the Lord beats everyone he receives [Heb. 12, 6]. Parishioners and students need to be shown the meaning of worship, rituals, prayers, the holy cross, icons, their relationship to our lives, and not be forced to learn by heart litanies and prayers, which the Church constantly repeats even without us and which, due to a lack of understanding by many of their spirit and meaning, have become like ringing brass. It is necessary to show the basis of these or other prayers, rituals, their spirit, meaning, purpose, relationship to the main subject of priestly service and to the fallen man who is restored by the grace of Christ. How can you be irritated with these gentle sheep - the beggars, especially the boys? How can you not learn from them meekness and gentleness? Today you heard from the Gospel that whoever receives such a child in the name of Jesus Christ receives Him Himself [Matt. 18, 5]. Sin in its countless forms and strength constantly chills us, defiles, torments, worries, darkens, binds, humiliates, shames - but for believers this violence and its chill turns into good: it produces in them a strong hunger and thirst for the truth of God, the eternal, unshakable truth, the justification of Christ, which will give us truth from God, sanctification and deliverance. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied [Matt. 5, 6]. The evangelists are depicted on the royal doors with a writing hand. Who did they write for? What did the Orthodox write, why did they write? Abiding (church glory) – unceasing, constant. Sabayon (French) is a type of punch made from egg yolk with wine and rum. From the Akathist to our Sweetest Lord Jesus Christ, on the verse of the stichera: Who does not weep for me who has transgressed Thy commandment, O Jesus: through intemperance I have entered into hell, O Jesus, instead of paradise, I have been consumed by the sweet vision of the death that came from them, and Thy, my Savior Jesus, glory and life have appeared alien. But accept me, who repents, as a merciful lover of mankind, my Jesus, great for the sake of Thy mercy. Akrids are a genus of locust used as food in the east. Mortar (Church Glav.) – dust of the earth. Prelest (church glory) – deception, seduction. Humbled - bent, crouched to the ground. Dreamy (Church Slavic) – illusory, seducing with lies. The following Psalter is a liturgical book containing, in addition to the Psalter, a Book of Hours and a Prayer Book. Overwhelms (church-glorified) - compels, oppresses, attacks. Prayer 5 at Unction. Akathist to the Sweetest Jesus. Ikosy 3, 4. Disgrace (church glory) - spectacle, lists. 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