Май 1869 г.

May 16, 1869. The consequences of the current test in the seventh grade showed me that: 1) indulgence in lazy students, who are often not in class and skip lessons, is extremely harmful both for them and for me; 2) it is necessary to ask more often when repeating the foundations of faith and morality, the Creed, prayers, nine beatitudes and commandments; 3) that worship must be studied and taught as clearly and convincingly as possible, with moral applications, showing its necessity for a Christian and all the harm that comes from not attending worship services. Some of my students (Leonid Grigoriev, Khrzhanovsky - do not attend classes, and Chernoruts) answered poorly (Grigoriev did not know bliss); I was seething with indignation, but the director and the archpriests, assistants Pavel Trachevsky and Pavel Lamanov, were very lenient towards them and, with my consent, gave them a “four”. There is no need to seethe with indignation at those who answer poorly: after all, their heads are all filled with thousands of thoughts from different subjects. Remember human weakness and your pride - you yourself want to shine among your students: look, they say, how well my students answer! How long until I stop eating meat? How long will I myself incite my vile heart and my vile flesh to fornication? Love is the fulfillment of the law. Rome. 13, 10 I receive everything for free from the Lord: income, salary from the gymnasium, a great salary. May I not regret giving freely to those who are truly in need, may the Lord multiply His gifts to me, for the hand of the giver will not fail. Perform a prayer of gratitude for the gift of the bucket and for the successful completion of the teaching and for other great blessings of the Lord. From creatures, try to constantly ascend with your thoughts to the Creator and teach this to everyone close to you, especially your disciples. Remember the transience of this life and the endlessness of the future - and exchange the present for nothing, reaching the future in every possible way, killing your body and enslaving [1 Cor. 9:27] and watching, praying, doing good. Project for the construction of the House of Diligence for the poor of Kronstadt. Sailing. I am writing under the influence of the freshest, morning conviction: I am a fool, a fool, that I still continue to greedily eat and drink in the evenings [...] everything indiscriminately: pickled salmon, and jam, and milk, and various varieties, and with this I only burden myself and make it difficult to get up in the morning. I am damned that I allow fast food on Fridays and Wednesdays for the sake of health - not for the sake of health, but for the sake of ill health and greater burden. Or are lean foods like pickled fish weighing me down? With vinegar it’s a heavy meal. After some time confirmation: the same; and: do not eat smoked and salted fish: it causes severe itching and insomnia; strengthens - spoils the blood. It is a great thing to name and invoke the name of the great God - the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, for for those who believe and love God, His name is life, peace, light, power, holiness, sweetness, fragrance, cleansing of sins. When you read various prayers, in which the name of the Lord is often mentioned, then what should you remember, what are the words of the Apostle? The following: Let everyone who confesses the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness [2 Tim. 2:19] – and carefully avoid sin. When I serve on behalf of the Church as a priest, the Church speaks through me, the holy, immaculate Bride of Christ, the pillar and ground of the truth [1 Tim. 3, 15]. How should I serve and speak, with what degree, firmness, dignity! Look at alms as a seed. For pennies, nickels, ten kopecks, rubles - like seeds, and with this joy. Notes for sixth and seventh grade students. Trust in the One who lives forever and gives life to all, the One who gives light, and not on anyone or anything else. He does not desire blessing, and will move away from it [Ps. 108, 17]. Remind these words to those who neglect the blessing of the priest. The key of life, my brothers, flows in our Church: the Church is a reservoir of life. How many testimonies from heaven the Lord God gives about Himself, about Himself - the Most Holy Theotokos, about Himself - all the saints! And after that we don’t believe in the future life! Let earthly rewards not seduce you as if they were something unimportant, like children’s toys—let heavenly rewards be your only goal. Do not drink beer on fasting days. This is drunkenness. Never eat a single piece of bread in the morning. No need. Execute. Neglect about food and drink, their quantity and quality. Remember that you need to eat very little; It is necessary to eat little both to maintain chastity and for health (to avoid excess juices and thinness, heaviness and cramped conditions). May 29, 1869. Ascension. Revelation in a dream: The Spirit of God speaks through Bishop Theophan. (White dove on his printed word.) Always think that there is little time left for you to live and work for the Lord, and hasten to work for Him with all zeal, leaving behind all worldly addictions and all idle talk. God wants my brother Alexey to live with me. And the wife has more fun, and there is someone to serve. Try to satisfy those who do not have anything to repay [Lk. 14, 14], - to the poor, these friends of God: for them you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the righteous; and there is no need to satisfy the rich and wealthy often and slavishly, for they are well-fed and clothed; and you yourself have no need to treat yourself to them, for you too are full. Look how the earthly spirit, the demonic, the kingdom of the earth reigns in us (we want to be kings in the enjoyment of food and drink, in dandy, in the decoration of rooms), while in us - Christians - there should be a heavenly spirit, of Christ, according to the word of the Lord: the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, has come near to you [Lk. 10, 9, 11]. Listen with your soul's ear to what ardent force, captivating the soul, acts in our insides and draws us to earthly pleasures, strikes our heart with pity at the slightest deprivation of earthly goods, such as: sweets, money, good clothes, the earthly life of our relatives, friends; listen to how few heavenly thoughts, desires, and aspirations we have, how reluctantly we engage in the work of saving the soul, how little and coldly we pray, how little we read the Gospel, and what we read most are secular books and newspapers, and so on. And we are Christians who must philosophize above, not on earth! Who will not weep for us? We have been given so much, but we care so little about our gift, about the treasure of faith! We value things created for man, and do not value man himself, created in the image and likeness of God, sparing for Him our sweet goods, clothes, money, to which our heart is attached like a leech, and hating him if he increases the frequency of consuming them. To what absurdity we reach in our earthly passions! Meanwhile, we receive all tuna 6 from the Lord, not worth a piece of rotten bread and rotten water; being parasites ourselves, we consider others to be parasites, and ourselves as people who deserve everything good, pleasant, and abundant; We spare almost everything for others, our helpers, and nothing for ourselves - thus, at the same time we sin very gravely with self-love and pride, envy, stinginess, and malice. How necessary it is to crucify your passions and their source – the flesh! How necessary is abstinence, vigil, work, contemplation of God, prayer! How the enemy constantly robs our soul! He steals from houses, in churches, on the road, everywhere. What we don’t need, what we should leave, throw away, consider as feces, rubbish, to this - a strange thing - we cling to our hearts, we feel sorry for this by others, because of this we are at enmity with others when others deprive us of it! This is how the evil one perverts our nature, created for heaven! How he tries to immerse her in earthly passions, to make her earthly, to turn her away from what is above, from mutual love, humility, and goodwill! Incessant troubles - and incessant salvation; incessant wounding - and the same healing. Glory to the faith of Christ, always saving me 7 from great troubles, healing me from great ulcers! Glory to You Lord Jesus! Glory to Thee, Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Soul! Looking at the Crucified One, we must remember our duty to be crucified with Christ. I have been crucified with Christ. Gal. 2, 19. I do not wish to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world [Gal. 6, 14]. Has the world been crucified to me with a cross, when its lures, for example, gold and honors, still captivate my heart and my sight? Have I been crucified with the cross of the world, when I still love golden ones, only golden ones, and not wooden crosses, and I covet them, forgetting that the cross is venerable for the Crucifixion, and not for gold, and I don’t think about crucifying Christ, about the crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and lusts - love of money, love of gold, voluptuousness, pride, envy, lasciviousness, freethinking, intemperance, absent-mindedness, idle talk, disobedience and other sins? Am I making the cross, on which my salvation was accomplished, a reason for sin? What kind of perversion of concepts is this? The enemy eradicates love for one's neighbor and instills enmity, and addiction to earthly goods increases day by day. This is absurd! The devil uses the thirst for earthly goods as a means to destroy in us the thirst for God, the thirst for His righteousness, the thirst for eternal life, to eradicate love for our neighbors, to plant enmity and envy towards them. This is why the thirst for earthly goods is extremely dangerous for a person! The Lord is your future Judge, whom you have angered here with countless iniquities and untruths: how can you not take care to make peace with Him here in advance, to appease Him in any way possible, for He conveniently bows to mercy towards those who seek His mercy from the soul. What does he bow down to? With heartfelt repentance and almsgiving to His members, that is, the poor, strangers, the sick and those imprisoned. I am a monster, not a man: I disdain some - low-class people, and I am afraid of others - noble and rich people; I am seduced by the beautiful, while I must look at everyone with the same Christian love and respect. You are satiated with the bitterness and sorrow of your soul - rightly so: apparently, you yourself have greatly upset the Lord with some sins; most importantly, the cause of your sorrows is your passions and your whims. Aren’t we all spiritually sick, don’t we all live as if in a child of passions, with sick heads and blind eyes, and don’t we all need mutual condescension and regret and more love and prayer for each other, as we are sick and exposed to the danger of spiritual and physical death? How is it that we are at enmity with each other and live like animals, ready to tear each other to pieces over empty things? Why pride and covetousness? Two forces act in this world on the human heart: the power from above, holy, good and earthly, or earthly, sinful, evil. The first attracts to God, to heaven, to everything good and holy, the last - to earth, to evil; the first - to abstinence, the second - to satiety; the first - to meekness and humility, the second - to pride and anger; the first - to non-covetousness, the second - to covetousness, etc. The first power is Divine, the second is the power of the devil. So, let us philosophize the things above and let us despise the things below. Servant of God! If you, living in this world, are not bound by it, do not enslave it and fight against earthly addictions, soaring to heaven in spirit, then the Heavenly Angels will applaud you as their future fellow citizen, and God’s holy men will look at you with love and mocking 8 . Those who practice giving alms should not forget the words of the Savior, which He will say at the Last Judgment to the merciful: I was hungry, and you gave Me food... and so on, and: just as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me [Matt. 25, 35, 40], and always give alms willingly, with love and respect for those who ask and accept, for in the person of the beggar you give to Christ Himself. He who pampers his flesh and soul with voluptuousness conveniently and strongly resents any trouble or insult. But he who has tempered himself in abstinence is indifferent to all insults: he looks at them as the demonic wind. You write about correction and perfection, but you don’t try to improve, you don’t care about perfection. At chance, will it be given to you? Hastily strive for abstinence, meekness, gentleness, patience, unhurriedness in the work of God, constancy. Say a word about the strong development of card games among the people, how badly it affects the structure of Christian life, on the disposition of the spirit, how ruinous it is. We must tame the impulses of passions within ourselves through prayer and have peace in the Lord, remembering that all earthly untruths and storms will pass, and if we do not succumb to despondency and anger at our persecutors, but maintain love for them and pray for them, then we will receive an imperishable crown from the Lord. Am I, perhaps, the reason that Father Archpriest stopped sincere, fatherly relations with us and acts only formally, on paper? It happened that I was at enmity against my sister-in-law for no reason; Isn’t that how I behaved regarding the archpriest and Father Matthew as well? Voluptuousness and love of money dry up love for God and neighbor: a voluptuous and money-lover, like a fierce and greedy beast, sometimes casts fierce glances at those who share his meal with him or use his money; often enmity boils in his heart against those who, as it seems to him, live with him for nothing and take advantage of the crumbs of his labor; his heart is troubled and troubled by the pity of the sweet meat eaten by his household; His spacious dwelling is cramped for him because of his voluptuousness and love of money, because his heart is constrained by malice, envy, and greed. He internally blames others for his anxiety, but a thousand times he himself is to blame for it, for he himself is cowardly, showing disbelief in the Providence of God, which cares for us. When did God leave him without a piece of bread, without the necessary clothing and shelter? Didn't he always have everything he needed in abundance? Isn’t he therefore irresponsible before God, the Father of generosity and all joy [1 Cor. 1, 3], who commanded us mutual love, giving us everything richly for enjoyment [1 Tim. 6, 17 ]? Let us have mutual love, let us seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, so that all these visible, perishable blessings may be added to us [Matt. 6, 33]. If you see that your family [eats] milk and butter on a fast day, and you feel anger and envy towards them in your heart for this, it is better to eat the meager food yourself, just leave the anger, envy, and bitterness of the heart. Love is higher than fasting. He who is partial to earthly pleasures, to self-interest and honor, even if he would like to be meek, patient, kind, a lover of God and his neighbors, a trustee and savior of human souls, but he cannot, because sweets, self-interest, ambition almost constantly plunge him into anger and malice, renouncing him 9 from the love of God and his neighbor and from concern for the salvation of the soul, which alone is for needs [Lk. 10, 42]. Therefore, it is necessary to despise pleasures, self-interest, earthly honor, but not only in words, but in deed, in order to be in the soul - truly, in deed, a Christian. The more and sweeter a person eats and drinks, the stronger all the passions act in him, for which sweets are food, material, occasion; but the simpler and more moderate his food and drink, the less susceptible he is to passions, because his flesh is weakened and because he actually sees how little a person needs to be well-fed, and how much surplus he has that can be usefully used for the benefit of others. Until now I am a pagan: I am looking for what to eat and drink, how to dress and adorn myself. I am also earthly, not heavenly, chained to the earth and the red of the world: to be a Christian means to despise the whole world, to have no attachments to anything, to contemplate grief, to despise malice, envy, pride, vanity, gluttony, carnality, fornication, disobedience, and so on. Tune (Church Glav.) – for free, without payment. Ever (Church Glorious) – always, constantly. With a grin (Church Glav.) - with a smile, affably (“grin” - smile politely). To otrevati (Church Glorious) – to alienate. You might be interested in: