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Malice, like a fiend of the devil, is inexcusable and intolerable under any pretext. Malice is always malice or, so to speak, always the devil. Publish articles about prayer for the glory of God. I started taking sassaparilla on the 13th of June, and my wife started taking it on the 3rd of June. God united human nature with Himself in the person of the God-man. How we must honor and love every person, especially a Christian! That is why it is said: Show respect to one another [Rom. 12, 10]. We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones [Eph. 5, 30]. I have not yet laid down my life for my friends [John. 15, 13]. To spare the dust of the earth and water for the image of God is insane. I mean food and drink. It is good for me to cleave to God [Ps. 72, 28], but to cling to money, to food and drink - to love them, to feel sorry for them for someone - is evil; clinging to God is life, clinging to money, food and drink is death. To be indignant at a brother because of food and drink or because of money is death, not to regret, to offer cordially is life. There is nothing more valuable in the world than a person. ABOUT! What a precious pearl the man is! O living image of the Living God! Oh, container of the Trinity - the Creator! 1 O man, worthy of all love and self-sacrifice! Oh, eternal life - man! ABOUT! Appointed man to unspeakable bliss! Oh, man, who has been granted innumerable blessings and has been granted from God! ABOUT! Human! for whom is the good of heaven and earth! Oh man! for whom the Heavenly Father did not spare His Son, but gave Him up for us all [Rom. 8, 32 ]! But very often there is nothing meaner, lower than a person, when by his actions he becomes like the devil and completely distorts his nature. The Lord is completely opposite to the devil, therefore it is said: What agreement is there between Christ and Belial? [ 2 Cor. 6, 15]. That is, there is nothing in common between them. Christ God is the Truth, he is a lie; Christ is Life, the devil is death; Christ is Good, the devil is Evil. All cases of salvation are omitted, and these cases are fasting, fasting, confession, and communion. Self-sacrifice and the inseparable bearing of the cross imposed by the flesh, the world and the devil. Every Christian should always keep these words in mind: if anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me [Matt. 16, 24; Mk. 8, 34; OK. 9, 23]. A collection of soul-helping articles. Know yourself. Listen to yourself. Let us not fall and become lazy, but be watchful and raised up for the work that is to come, prepare us for joy and the Divine palace of His glory, where those who celebrate the unceasing voice and the indescribable sweetness of those who behold Your face, the ineffable kindness 2 . Restore your laziness to exploits with these words and console yourself with them; remember what you are striving for, for what bliss. You who have been united with the Son from the Father, Holy Soul, have mercy on me! Holy Soul, peace, joy, my life together and together one peace, joy, life 3 - God, exalted in the Trinity, have mercy on me! Love never fails [1 Cor. 13, 8]. Remember and do it. Keep in your heart this spiritual, subtle, pure, most precious feeling more than any material treasure. What good is it if you save a material, transitory treasure, but lose your love? Material treasure does not give life to the heart. And love is the life of the heart, there is God Himself, the belly. God is love [1 John. 4, 8]. The devil is the spirit of doubt, confusion and fear, despondency, laziness, idleness, gluttony, drunkenness, drowsiness, abuse, foul language, blasphemy, enmity and malice, envy, stinginess, love of money, adultery, theft 4 , deceit, lies, hypocrisy, heartfelt petrification and insensibility, the spirit of self-love, self-indulgence, spirit addiction to everything earthly: to clothing, wealth, to luxury in the decoration of the home, clothes, table. The devil is afraid of our attention to ourselves, cannot stand it when they recognize his cunning in our insides, when they firmly believe in the truth of his presence in us, for he is a lie and, cunning in us, always hides behind us, as if we alone were the cause of all evil. But there is nothing hidden that would not become obvious, and nothing is hidden that would not come out, says the Savior [Mk. 4, 22]. So it is with the devil: no matter how he hides, he cannot hide his long tail from those who are attentive and cannot hide his paws. And how he would like this, how he would like to make sure that no one would find out about his machinations! This is what he does with worldly, carnal people, for they do not believe in him and his machinations. Are you keeping up with all the devil's wiles? Is it worth answering him every time, unfollowing him? You shouldn’t pay attention, because what is the need to pay attention to a dream? 5 The devil, says the Lord, is a liar and the father of lies [John. 8, 44]. So, in all kinds of intrigues, tell him: let your lies be with you, fire and distress be with you - eternal fire, says the Lord, prepared for the devil and his angel [Matt. 25, 41 ], and not to us; let your darkness be with you. Live in your heart, not in your head. When receiving communion, look into your heart and do not distract your mind from it. The Lord comes to your heart - meet Him there. Let all your retinue - mind, imagination, memory - accompany the King and your God and stand before Him decorously, in reverence. If you leave the King reclining in your heart, you will meet in the air with hordes of demons who can dream and scatter your mind and overturn your inner man with unbelief. Here there must be heartfelt faith, not speculation. Mind aside, like a leader who is no longer needed at this time. For the very way, the truth and the life are in the heart, the Lord Himself of the mind and heart. There is no milk. And I repeat: don’t eat. It's bad for the heart. Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance [Lk. 3, 8]. Do not be greedy, gluttonous, stingy, uncommunicative, or brotherly-hating. Don't look like a wolf at anyone. As you want people to do to you, do so to them [Matt. 7, 12]. Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your Father in heaven feeds them. Aren't you much better than them? [Matt. 6, 26]. The spirit loves to share the latter with its neighbor; the flesh loves to seize everything for itself and devour everything itself. By these fruits you will recognize the spirit and the flesh. The Spirit places all its hope in God. Flesh is for food and drink, for clothing and other perishable things. Let us be partakers of the Divine... nature, having fled the lustful aphids that are in the world [Russian: having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust] [2 Pet. 1, 4]. Remember often these great, comforting words of the Divine Spirit and flee the corruption of the earth, so that you will be a partaker forever, without end, of the Divine nature. Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you [1 Pet. 5, 7]. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need all this [Matt. 6, 32]. Do you think, do you doubt: does He know your needs, will He send you what you need? Knows, knows; will send, will send. Do you doubt whether He will deliver you from the surrounding disasters? – Won’t the Heavenly Father deliver? The Lord knows how to deliver the godly from temptation [2 Pet. 2, 9]. A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but he will not come near you [Ps. 90, 7]. What would have happened to me if Your goodness had not had mercy on me daily, O Lord? If you had not saved me, Master, every day and hour from my sins? My soul would be exhausted, my composition would soon melt away. Truly. If the Lord were not in us, no one from us would be able to overcome the enemy’s battle, but the victorious ascend from here 6 . The fullness of all good things for me is Christ. Meekness, humility, kindness - these are the qualities that everyone should have when dealing with people. Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart [Matt. 11:29], says the Lord. All the saints in God are like God, so close to us. For he who is united with the Lord is one spirit with the Lord [1 Cor. 6, 17]. The priest needs to notice and remove moral weeds from the people, and for this he needs to have intercourse with society. Many seriously consider the Lutheran confession to be purged of human traditions and innovations and do not respect the traditions and rituals of the Orthodox-Catholic faith, considering them an excess and a burden for themselves and claiming that they were produced by human arbitrariness, and not by the essential need of the human spirit, not by the Holy Spirit and not by the Church, but by simple human wisdom. Friend who thinks so! Who said these wonderful words for you and me about the truth of faith and the Church: When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth [Jn. 16, 13 ]? Is not the Church, instructed and guided by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, the pillar and foundation of the truth [1 Tim. 3, 15 ]? And do you boldly call the Lutheran schism a purified confession? Do you consider those who rejected tradition to be right when the apostle of Christ himself says: brothers, stand and keep the traditions [2 Thess. 2, 15 ]? Does the pure and right apostolic faith need purification and correction? Are you tempted by our many rituals? Tell me, what bad things have you found in the rituals of our Church? Are they not all essential to arousing the spirit of faith, hope and piety? (You sympathize with the Lutheran religion because it flatters your sinful flesh, your sensuality: there are no fasts, there is a lot of freedom in marital intercourse and divorce, there is sitting in church and much more.) Don’t they all flow harmoniously from the very spirit of religion, just as the body is formed by the soul? Since we consist of flesh and spirit, then for us, with the spirituality of our faith, we also need visible rituals, like the body of faith. If rituals are not needed, tell me, why do you yourself perform rituals at Baptism? What is the water of Baptism for? What are the bread and wine for at Communion? What is the purpose of the church itself and the rituals of prayer in it? Dreamers! You refute yourself with your own actions. You say: why do you have icons? – Because we ourselves are physical beings, not [purely] spiritual; for the fact that we ourselves are living icons of God, animated by the Spirit of God; because icons are useful for piety, for they help living prayer; because icons in some way replace the faces themselves for us. Look at sweet food and drink under the image of dust and pus, which is what they really are, and don’t worry about what you eat and drink. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness [Matt. 6, 33 ] - peace, holiness, love with everyone, and God Himself will supply you with everything you need for your body. Look at each person as the image and likeness of God and, in accordance with this concept of him, deeply honor and sincerely love each person. Be kind to one another with brotherly love; warn one another in respect [Rom. 12, 10]. But since a person does not think otherwise than as a sinner, a fallen being, subject to passions and countless weaknesses and shortcomings, then forgive him, out of love for him, in one day many times his mistakes or injustice against you. Love even those who hate and offend you and who do harm to you - out of respect for the same image of God inscribed in their soul, and out of obedience to the commandment of Christ God, who loved us, His enemies, to the cross and death. Love hunger and thirst for Christ's sake. Insofar as you pacify the body, you do good to the soul. For the Rewarding Judgment according to deeds, words and thoughts will reward with good and for the small things that we endure for Him with joy. St. Gennady about faith and Christian life. 41 art. 8 The priest, above all others, must remember and fulfill the following commandment of Christ: if anyone wants to come after Me, turn away from yourself, and take up your cross, and follow Me [Matt. 16, 24], for his service requires a lot of self-sacrifice from the priest (those who are Christ’s, says the apostle, have crucified the flesh with passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]). We, the strong, must endure the weaknesses of the powerless and not please ourselves... For Christ did not please himself [Rom. 15, 1, 3]. Woe to the priest if he falls in love with peace and bliss. Then he will overcome 9 like overcome salt, and nothing will happen except he will be scattered and trampled under foot by men [Matt. 5, 13]. The devil, seeking whom he may devour [1 Pet. 5, 8], will find in such a priest a glorious catch for himself 10, as well as in the sheep of such a shepherd. The hireling flees because he is a hireling, and does not care about the sheep... and the wolf plunders the sheep and scatters them [John. 10, 13, 12]. Yes, the priest must remember the spiritual weaknesses of his spiritual children, who involuntarily rely on their spiritual father, and bear these weaknesses. In order to be always kind and elusive to the enemy, [he] must not be satisfied with an abundance of food and drink, must not be greedy, money-loving, stingy, but must love greed and thirst, be uncovetous and generous, must sincerely love everyone and from the heart call everyone children, as he is called father, and truly see children in everyone, like Jesus Christ, like the apostles; must forget about the embarrassment that comes from lack of faith, pride and false shame, and it is not good to be inaccessible to this false devilish shame even when he really does something wrong. Especially the priest must beware of being bound by any passion before the Sacrament of Confession, when hundreds are waiting for a word of instruction and advice from their shepherd, for the enemy, having then tripped up the priest, then does not easily leave him and often deprives him of real reason and words for the entire confession for his sins, because of his passions, warring in his death. And, knowing the weaknesses of the priest, the devil always tries to influence these sides by strongly irritating them before confession. Woe, for example, to the covetous and stingy priest at the cathedral, when, before the people, the general confession, the enemy stops him by calling him to another service, for example, to baptism. Another, non-covetous person, would look at this circumstance calmly, without worrying about missing out on income, while the covetous person would be indignant at the inopportuneness and would regret in his soul the expected money for confession. You must look at everything indifferently, at all accidents, and fall in love with them, saying: be the will of the Lord in everything. And the Lord allows everything precisely for our testing, He left the enemy complete freedom over us: Simon! Simon! Behold, Satan asked to sow you like wheat, but I prayed for you, so that your faith would not fail [Lk. 22, 31–32]. And pay attention so that your faith does not fail. What will you do if you become scarce and if the dark forces cover your entire soul with their multitude? Many priests will begin well and then weaken on their way; They will begin with faith and love, and then they will extinguish faith and love in their hearts. One must be faithful unto death [Rev. 2, 10]. I have this against you, says the Lord, that you have left your first love [Rev. 2, 4]. The temptation disappeared: the Lord mercifully accepted me, repentant in prayers for communion, and after communion rejoiced me with joy unspeakable. Glory to the Lord, who atones for my iniquities and does not remember them! February 26th, 1862 Saturday of the First Week of Lent. Do not spare land for your brother. Verily, all food and drink, money, clothing are earth and water. Away with all the charm of 12 enemies! Away with the charm of high cost, the charm of beauty, the charm of sweetness! Remember: God is indispensable in man, as the Prototype in an image, the entire Prototype in the whole image, the living and Prototype in a living image, the Personal in the personal. Say to yourself to the brethren who visit you: May the Lord who is in you admonish you to do this and that. Having eaten and thanked God for the bread and salt, do not dare to eat soon afterwards: it will be gluttony. The Lord of our belly is very disgusted by this, and He immediately punishes this sin with the stomach itself. The Lord punishes a priest who does not keep his word by having his faith in the word of God weaken and weaken, which can be a source of strong internal intrigues and torments of the devil. The word of a priest should always be action - then he will not doubt in his heart or in a single word of God. Away with the pampered life! Let the harsh life be accepted for the Lord’s sake. For the words of Your mouth [pyc.: according to the word of Your mouth] I have kept the cruel ways [Ps. 16, 4]. All that is brought from those who do not exist 13, All-Holy Father, Word and Soul! I present to your brightest eye this empty book! Fill the hand of me, a sinner, with the light of understanding of Your unapproachable glory. Let my mouth speak wisdom here. Amen. January 23rd day, 1862. Tuesday, nine and a half o'clock in the evening. Remember the Being, what He is and what you should be - the image and likeness of the Being. Who is Sy? He by Whom everything was created exists and governs well, Who alone possesses complete existence, for He alone fills everything, for He alone has neither the beginning nor the end of His existence. The word of God is work. Speech and bysha [Ps. 32, 9]. My heart spoke these words, and the liar devil, who scorched me with his slander against the Lord, struck by the faith of my heart in the word of the Lord, disappeared. Love - with love in your heart for God and your neighbor you will have everything and will not become destitute, for where there is love, there is God, and God is everything for us, the main thing is our life, peace, sweetness, bliss. It’s strange and pathetic to see for what empty reasons the devil deprives us of love for God and neighbor! Because of the earth's dust in the proper sense, innumerable and trampled under foot: because of money, because of food and drink, clothing, housing, honors - this passing, together with its mother earth and with our many-caring bodies, dust. Remember Love, who laid down His life for people. Do not spare your very soul for your brother and mercilessly crucify your carnal man, who turns away from self-sacrifice for his brother. By love for God and neighbor I belong to heaven, I am heavenly, but by cares, especially worldly attachments to earth, I am earthly, spiritual, demonic. Lord and Master of my life, grant me the spirit of love, Thy servant. Say to the demon of stinginess: God fed Israel in the wilderness, much more will He feed me who live in the world. The rivers overflowed and the winds blew and beat against that house, but it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock (Christ) [Matt. 7, 25]. For example, the winds (spirits of evil) scatter your faith in the Holy Spirit. Be strong. Know that the stone – Christ – Himself taught you the dogma of the Holy Spirit. An evil spirit is, by the way, a spirit of melancholy and evil despondency. He drives the careless, impatient and prone to sensual pleasures to spend time in empty games, for example in theaters, cards (which were played in the theater) in landsknecht 15 and so on, to indulge in gluttony, satiety and drunkenness. Oh, all-evil and treacherous enemy! How skillfully he deceives poor people, addicted to their sinful flesh, who do not want, according to the Apostle, to crucify it with passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]. With boredom, despondency and melancholy, the seducer drives all the sons of Adam to all the sensual pleasures (to gluttony, tobacco smoking, wine drinking, games, fornication and other pleasures); when they, poor ones, begin to satisfy their flesh, then where will the boredom, despondency, melancholy, melancholy go: it will become fun - but this joy is obviously false, sinful, carnal, devilish. All those addicted to sensual pleasures admit that they are very bored, that they are attacked by melancholy, melancholy - how to drive it away? And so they go looking for entertainment, or they go to play, drink and eat, or look for prodigal pleasures. Where, in boredom and melancholy, would we turn our attention to spiritual hunger, the poverty and wretchedness of our soul, pour out our prayer before God and declare our sorrow to Him, for 16 our soul is filled with evil and our belly is drawing near to hell [Ps. 87:4], - and then the Heavenly Father would fill us with the joy of the Holy Spirit, cleansing our sins and reviving our soul dead by sins. We are prodigal children, ever 17 we go astray in our hearts and do not know the ways of the Lord. It is fitting to do these things, and not abandon them [Russian: that] [Matt. 23, 23]. You are engaged in internal sobriety, you pursue the machinations of evil demons, you take care of cutting off passions, you try to serve God by faith with reverence and fear and [trepidation] and, if possible, you do it well. But the family must also devote itself to a conversation of love with them, to caring for them, and to regularly attend classes and teach children the Law of God with care and extreme attention, remembering that the Lord Himself, who dwells in their hearts, inwardly teaches children that you yourself are an instrument of the Divine Spirit, guiding you to all truth. Greedy and greedy miser! Did money or bread give you life and support you? Isn't it God? Was it not His word that gave existence and life to you and to all other creatures? Is it not the Son of God who bears all things by the word of His power [Heb. 1.3 ]? Is your life supported by money and bread, water and wine alone? Is it not because of every word that comes from the mouth of God that a person lives? [cm. Matt. 4, 4; Deut. 8, 3; OK. 4, 4]. Isn't money and bread dust? Isn't it just the least amount of bread we need to support our lives? Everything was created and maintained by the word. The Word is the source of life and its storage. For the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, God in the Trinity, stand all His creatures: the Councils of Angels, silently proclaiming the Trisagion, and the Holy Church of Christ - the holy apostles, martyrs, saints, saints, righteous and all the saints, the whole visible world, all true Christians living today - the whole world. The Truth of the Trinity of the Divine is like the air that surrounds us on all sides and with which we breathe and are completely imbued with it. Is it possible after this to doubt the Divinity of the Son or the Spirit of God? But in reality, how many works do we see performed in the common name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, how many powers of the Spirit of God have we experienced and are experiencing? The Holy Spirit is spiritual air for rational beings: what air is for physical bodies, the Holy Spirit is for rational and free beings - He fills them, enlivens them, sanctifies them, makes them wise, strengthens them. The Son of God is for us the way, truth, life, peace (I will give you rest [Matthew 11:28]), joy (I will see you... and your heart will rejoice [John 16:22]). We have experienced this ourselves and are experiencing it. Who will we listen to after this, who suggests the opposite? Are the internal whispers of an evil spirit, this gloomy spirit breathing lies, malice, despondency, tightness and fire, which, like smoke, like dust, disappears from the name and cross of the Lord? Will we listen to this dreamer and be indignant at his machinations? Let it be known to you firmly that he is a pure negation of the truth. If I say that I do not know Him (the Father), then I will be a liar like you. But I know Him [Jn. 8, 55]. The very fact that he always kills the soul proves that he is a lie, death, and not this truth, not life. We know one Giver of Life - God and one culprit of death - the devil. Amen. Pride, arrogance, contempt 18. How, by the way, is the Lord’s love for us expressed? - Because He gave us all kinds of fruits for enjoyment. So you will show the greater love, the more generously, abundantly, and cordially you offer sweet food and fruits to the brethren. At the supper, the Savior, having soaked the bread in salt, gave it to Judas the traitor to signify that [later] because of bread, for the sake of his greedy belly, he betrayed his Lord and so that we would be afraid of being greedy and stingy and not betray our neighbors because of bread [...]. God is a simple being; Be you also completely simple in Him, and do not let your heart wander into words or thoughts of wickedness [Ps. 140, 4]. Be simple in mind and heart in faith and life and in satisfying your bodily needs. Remember often: God is a simple being; say more often to yourself: I must be simple, unscrupulous, trusting the truth without inquisitive investigation, for by inquisitive investigation of what should not be investigated, the devil encroaches on our simplicity and wants to deviate the heart to crafty distrust. So, be simple in life, simple in faith, in prayer, in love; say more often: God is love, God is love, God is love. The Lord God is unchangeable, and the stamp of this immutability lies on all the teachings of the faith, on all the Sacraments, on all the commandments. Remember this. They say: there is no need to punish physically trained youth. The thought is diabolical. This bodily impunity leads youth to laziness, pride and arrogance and to every evil known in youth. How not to punish corporally? The body, the flesh, that is, the carnal man, represented by the flesh and carnal passions, is guilty, but do not punish him, do not scourge him - caress, stroke, caress him. What demonic wisdom! What, truly, hellish humanity! This is how the devil pats his favorites on the head, and he himself thinks about how to drag his favorites into the eternal fire, into his company. Brethren! And how do you look, tell me, at the action of the Savior, when, remember, He created a scourge from ropes 19 and with it drove out all the shameless and fearless traders from the church and overturned the tables of the money changers and scattered the money [John. 2, 14 – 15 ]? Isn't this a kind of corporal punishment? Doesn't it also authorize us to punish carnal people? Isn’t that why the government and good parents use whips on the guilty? Remember also the saying of the wise: love your son without sparing the rod 20 . How does the Lord punish His chosen ones in this life? How many internal and external scourges! Shouldn't we also imitate the Lord [in this]? The Lord loves him, punishes him, and beats every son whom he accepts [Prov. 3, 12]. When a brother is proud of me, or is angry with me, or envies me, and I feel in my heart a kindling against him and mutual pride and malice, then I am in deception, and my brother is in demonic deception, and both are guilty and blind. Glory to the power of the cross of the Lord, and especially to the name-bearing sign 21: waking up in the evening from sleep, I felt a murderous devilish melancholy in my side, I immediately made the sign of the cross, and the melancholy disappeared. January 23rd, 1862 When your heart becomes embittered against your brother and condemns him for his love of money and seeking, calm him down by sincerely condemning yourself in the same thing, remind yourself of the twig and the beam 22 and judge better without mercy, hate yourself better. When, at the sight of a rich dead man and when praying for him, your heart rebels and condemns him for his love of money and stinginess and prays insincerely for him, immediately turn the same condemnation on yourself and say; and I am subject to the same flattery of wealth and stinginess - and pray for him as for yourself. We all live captivated by the enemy’s flattery in this life, we all walk among snares, from which may the Lover of Mankind deliver us all. When, during a conciliar service or outside the service, you do not want to bow from the heart to the primate, in whom you notice pride, force yourself to worship the office sincerely, as the image of God, imprinted in his soul, as the primate, bearing the image of the primacy and primacy of Christ, and do not pay attention to his pride, but rather teach yourself to humble yourself and walk in love: love does not think evil of a brother and covers everything. Is it not because of our pride that our bosses are often proud of us? And how would we learn humility if there were no proud people? Why is prolonged prayer necessary? In order to warm up our cold hearts, hardened in the long bustle of the world, through the duration of fervent prayer. For it is strange to think, much less to demand, that a heart worn out in the bustle of life could soon be imbued with the warmth of faith and love for God during prayer. No, this requires work and work, time and time. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it away Matt. 11, 12]. The Kingdom of God does not come to the heart soon when people run away from it so diligently. The Lord Himself expresses His will that we should not pray briefly when He presents as an example a widow who went to the judge for a long time and bothered him with her requests [Lk. 18, 2 – 7]. The Lord, our Heavenly Father, knows before we ask what we demand, what we need, but we do not know Him as we should; We are very devoted to worldly vanities, and not to the Heavenly Father - here He, in His wisdom and mercy, turns our needs into a pretext for turning us to Him. Turn to the Lord, My erring children, even now, to Me, your Father, with all your heart, if before you were far from Me; At least now, with faith and love, warm up your hearts towards Me, which were previously cold towards Me. The Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, like a bishop or a king, stands aside in the church and looks at us. More reasons for the duration of prayer: [our inert] heart is reluctant, lazy, hypocritical and begins to pray; we must fight it, and prayer itself must be made a time of struggle for it, in which it will gradually acquire the strength and fervor of prayer. The image of God - man - is infinitely higher than all earthly treasures; respect him according to his dignity and do not spare anything perishable for him, knowing that you serve the image of God and God will reward you for him. Let your habit of a person not change your relationship with him. Feeling sorry for our neighbors who are eaten, we die. The improvement of material life is accompanied by torment from an evil, evil, envious spirit. Experience. Free monetary gain is torment; donated clothes are torment; a fixed, elegant apartment is torture. Alas! I fell into materialism, because a miser is a materialist. If, without attachment to perishable goods, the devil torments us because of them, then all the more because of attachment, as we have experienced a thousand times. How one must be impartial to perishable goods and despise them! I count everything as worth, says the apostle, in order to gain Christ [Phil. 3, 8]. You do not tolerate dancing or smoking tobacco by guests in your apartment. And what does the Lord tolerate from people in the world, what stench of sins and passions, and what does He not tolerate from you? Remember that love endures all things [1 Cor. 13, 7]. Your love is insignificant when you get irritated by all sorts of disturbances: to live with people - how can you not learn to tolerate their disturbances indifferently? After all, that’s what they are people for, and what kind of disturbances are you not making before God? The poverty of your love for your neighbor is also evident from the fact that you spare perishable food for him. And how many tuna 24 mercies do you receive from the Heavenly Father, while you spare tuna for others? How many spiritual debts does the Lord forgive you, but you don’t want to forgive material debts? He who eats what is yours is the same as borrowing what is yours. Due to our oversight, the enemy sometimes does not allow our hearts to be completely convinced of the well-known evangelical Christian truth, proclaimed by Christ Himself or the Apostle, if this truth can have a huge impact on a decisive change in a person for the better, on the abandonment of such passion through which the devil most of all deceives people. This kind of truth is the following: man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God [Matt. 4, 4]. The majority of humanity lives their lives in food and drink and does not care about anything in life as much as food and drink, just as the Lord pointed out this ailment; Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink [Matt. 6, 25]. If every person believed with all his heart that man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, then he would not worry so much about the accumulation of wealth or generally would not be tormented so much by the thirst for acquisition and self-interest, but would work calmly and place his hope in God, would not extend his views far beyond the limits of need, would not then become stingy, but, on the contrary, the more generous God would be for him, the more generous he would be for others and He would rejoice, like the Heavenly Father, that with the gifts of God’s goodness he can nourish and cheer others. His heart would not shrink at the sight of many beggars or many guests in his house and at meals, he would not sit with his guests bound from the enemy, with a sad look, with a hostile look towards his short acquaintances and frequent guests, but he would have a spacious heart and a cheerful, affectionate face and an attractive manner with the children of God, for Christians are children of God, as the word of the Gospel testifies to this: to those who accepted Him (Christ, the Son of God), to those who believe in His name, He gave the power to become children of God [Jn. 1, 12]. He would not spare money, food, or drink for the poor or for guests, because he would then reason like this: today I have money, food, and clothing - and thank God; I don’t worry about tomorrow: maybe I’ll die tomorrow or tonight, and then everything will remain different; and if I live, then the Lord, who feeds the crows and sparrows, will feed me too, for I mean more than the crow and the sparrow: that’s why I have the head, that’s why I have the strength and abilities, that’s why I have my position in the world, my position. Then with all his heart he would have desired the incorruptible and imperishable, eternal blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven and would have directed his worries, strengths and abilities mainly towards gaining the Kingdom of Heaven, according to the words of Christ God: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all this will be added to you (Matthew 6:33), - whereas now he uses all his cares, strengths and abilities without reserve to acquire perishable wealth, food and drink, honor and glory. Then vain, transitory wealth would not be the idol of his heart, he would not have placed his life in food and drink. It would not have been in his thoughts that his house, according to the psalmist, would be eternal and that his dwelling would be from generation to generation, for this really happens in the thoughts of rich people who have treasures and do not know to whom they will gather. In exactly the same way and for the same reason, that is, so that, having believed, Christians would not be saved, the enemy does not allow people to be convinced, due to their oversight, inattention to the word of God and addiction to earthly things, of the truth of the Judgment of Christ and the afterlife - blissful or painful. He does his best to distract the minds and hearts of Christians from thinking about this and feeling this truth. It also does not allow the heart to be convinced that everywhere and in everything there is one Lord, who contains everything, controls everything and provides for everything. The devil steals from the heart of a Christian these comforting words of the Gospel, capable of comforting anyone: Your Heavenly Father knows that you need all this [Matt. 6, 32 ]; Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you [1 Pet. 5, 7]. When you spare food and drink for many guests, and are subjected to stinginess and hatred, say to yourself the words of the apostle about the Church: One body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism for all, one God and Father of all: Christians and non-Christians, and try to maintain the unity of the spirit with all in the bond of peace [Eph. 4.4 – 6.3 ]. Remember that you feed the Church of Christ, the hearts of Christ; comfort everyone with affection, cordiality, and generosity. Remember that the Lord Himself treated you with wine at the wedding in Cana, with loaves of bread and fish in an empty place, and before with sweet manna in the desert. And how many sweets He gave for food and drink to man, for His glory! And how generous! He spares nothing for His beloved image. When you have guests in your house, remember then that you yourself are a guest on earth, and as the Heavenly Father generously treats you here, so you generously treat others, so that in the Heavenly Fatherland you will be honored with His ineffable, endless bounties in Christ our Lord. Before bright, great holidays, bright celebrations and magnificent, rich processions, funeral and religious processions, as well as before the days of general cleansing by repentance, the enemy intensifies especially to oppress and darken my soul in order to declare his great malice against me. Here he turns the spark of my sin for me into a huge flame that devours me. And before I receive it, as well as when I receive material profit, out of envy, he brings a whole house of guests to me. Here I must turn his machinations to the benefit of my soul, to the provision of Christian love and hospitality and to the defeat of the passions of stinginess and unlovingness. If we walk in the light... we have fellowship with one another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Thou shalt not steal [Exod. 20, 15]. This commandment, by the way, means: do not steal the glory of God in church or in Christian homes when performing divine services and the Sacraments with your sluggish, heartless service, concealing words, and outside of divine services with your passionate thoughts, rotten words and sinful deeds. Also, do not steal the glory of God when teaching the Law of God to the disciples. The first thief of the glory of God is the devil, who wanted to be equal to God and now reigns in the world with ungodly deeds in the sons of this age; then - the adulterous and sinful world, stealing glory from the God of glory in all its ungodly life and its manifestations: in science, in art, in trade, in industry, in food and drink, in mutual communication with each other, in household and social affairs, in conversations, in one’s thoughts. Because the devil and people have appropriated the glory of God for themselves through false, ungodly deeds, we say in the Lord’s Prayer: Hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come [Matt. 6, 9–10; Ak. 11, 2]. When the passion of stinginess invades your heart or when you spare your brother food, money or clothing or something else, conquer it immediately with the words of your heart: brother is the image of God; There is no need to spare anything for the image of God, as long as it has a need for my property, as long as it seeks my favor and hospitality. Let us borrow, says the Savior, without expecting anything. Give, and it will be given to you. Do not demand back from the one who took what you have [Lk. 6, 35, 38, 30]. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. If your neighbor has offended you in any way... impute this to me... I will repay you: let me not say to you, as I owe to myself [Russian: that you owe me to yourself] [Plm. 1, 18 – 19]. So, if your neighbor has offended you in any way - I’m not saying only in a material sense, but also in a spiritual sense - impute it to the Lord. He will repay, although you, in fairness, owe Him countless debts. Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give room to the wrath of God. For it is written: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay [Rom. 12, 19]. When you are called to your home to serve a prayer service with an image from the church in a spiritual procession, or without an image by a beggar, and, moreover, ugly in face, do not succumb to the temptation of the enemy, do not be indignant at the beggar in your heart, but with readiness and all willingness go where he calls, as if a rich man was calling you: have faith in Jesus Christ our Lord of glory, regardless of face. For if a man with a gold ring and rich clothing enters your congregation (the church), a poor man will also enter in scanty clothing... [Jas. 2, 1–2]. If you happen to be tempted by the action of the devil and by your own foolishness and passion, if that is, you despise the beggar and become embittered at him for his request, immediately bring sincere repentance to God and tell Him: I have sinned before You, Lord: I have despised Your living royal image (man is the image of God) through my partiality. Have mercy on me, do not despise me as I despised my brother, and grant me to honor every person unfeignedly and to love him sincerely as myself, according to the Scripture: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39]. And in order to protect yourself from such partiality in the future, always remember the words of the Savior: whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant [Matt. 20, 26]. And also the words of the apostle: Has not God chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom, which He promised to those who love Him? [James. 2, 5]. Moreover, it often happens that the beggar is rewarded no worse than the rich. How, then, should we honor the poor man for such a sacrifice? This poor widow - you can’t help but say - put in more than anyone else... [Lk. 21, 3]. Dignified, heartfelt, reverent service to the Lord in church with living faith is a source of peace, joy and bliss for our soul. Thus, a reverent priest, performing services, the Sacraments, and prayers, actually finds for himself the greatest pleasure and bliss. If we call upon the saints with faith and love, then they will immediately hear us: the connecting principle on our side is faith, and on theirs and together on our side is love, for they are both in God, and we are in God, Who is love. Try to accept all the troubles in life indifferently, patiently, and, if possible, without embarrassment; if we become indignant and irritated by them, then we ourselves will be extremely unreasonable, we ourselves will be enemies of our own mental and physical well-being. So, an offense has been caused to you - do not be indignant, but be calm; the loss happened or often happens - do not be indignant, but be calm; a person’s life, according to the Lord, does not depend on the abundance of his possessions [Lk. 12, 15 ]; lost a father, mother, son, daughter, benefactor, friend - do not grieve inconsolably, but bear the loss generously, with Christian hope; If you find turmoil at home, don’t be indignant: is it worth being embarrassed because of them? Isn’t peace of mind more valuable than anything else? Don't we better correct every disorder in the world, and by embarrassment don't we create new disorder in our souls, and don't we spoil things even more, don't we sometimes increase the chaos at home with our confusion? Passions outrage you, heartfelt attachments to the blessings of the earth outrage your soul, its integrity (which lies in the world) - but be convinced once and for all that they are the deception of the enemy, a pure denial of the truth, a deception of Satan. When you are so prudent and skilled in God, the Lord will prolong your life for a long time to the glory of His most holy name. So, acquire wisdom for yourself, because acquiring it is better than acquiring silver, and the profit from it is greater than from gold [Prov. 3, 14]. Give us this day our daily bread [Matt. 6, 11]. These words mean, by the way: give us only the necessary book, the Bible and the Gospel, like bread for the soul, and we do not seek or demand many books. Grant us to read this book of books more often and understand it properly and apply its holy word to our hearts like bread, strengthening our hearts with it. In prayer to the Lord, let all created things flow past, as if non-existent, and look to the one Existing One. God is a Being of beings - and a word is a being, and a letter, and an atom, and a speck of dust, and a simple thought. If every atom of matter exists, if every thought of ours exists, then the Being with every atom, with every thought together certainly exists and, as it were, says: you exist - of course, and I, who contains you. We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones...we are members of one another [Eph. 5, 30; 4, 25]. Great words! Think! The Word of the Lord is work, life, being: from Existence - existence, from Life - life, from Truth - truth. From the devil, who fell through dreamy pride, who wanted to appropriate for himself the impossible and who fell away from life and truth, comes dreaming, lies: from death - death. The spoken prophets. Understand this about bishops, priests and deacons: when they speak sermons or pray in church, the Holy Spirit speaks through them. When the Gospel is read, Christ Himself speaks through them. When you speak right, truly, speak boldly, firmly, decisively; when you do a right thing, act just as boldly, firmly, decisively, without doubting, without timidity, without relaxing, without hesitating, for only lies are fearful and powerless, because they are unfounded, shaky, crooked, ephemeral, but truth is bold, because it is solid and solid. Believe firmly in the truth - and you will boldly pronounce it and defeat all its opponents and enlighten those who do not lead it. This is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith [1 Jn. 5, 4]. I haven’t been without food for one day - who can I complain about that he eats and drinks me? Truly, only greed torments me and stinginess. Even if I were to remain hungry for a day because of my brother, I should rejoice that, out of love for my brother, I restrained myself for at least one day for the sake of his contentment. I would then sacrifice love for myself to love for my neighbor. When you perform a service or a Sacrament or a prayer, firmly believe and remember that it is through you that the Holy Spirit, who accomplishes everything, speaks and acts, descending on you through the episcopal ordination in the Sacrament of the Priesthood, and not your weakness; believe that in all prayers the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the Life-giving Spirit breathes, and do not doubt the truth of a single word, not a single sacred action. That in the words and actions of services, Sacraments and prayers the life-giving Spirit of truth breathes, this is proven clearly and palpably by the fact that when you perform a service, a Sacrament, a prayer with shameless, undoubted faith, you feel in your heart a heavenly peace that surpasses all understanding [Phil. 4, 7], joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14, 17] and holy and blessed. Amen. Man, they say, is free; one cannot force him or should not force oneself either in faith or in teaching. Lord, have mercy! What a diabolical opinion! How not to force? What will come of people after this! Well, what will come of you, herald of newly invented rules, if you do not force yourself to do anything good, but live the way your vicious heart, your proud, short-sighted and blind mind, your sinful flesh wants you to live? Tell me what will become of you? Aren’t you forcing yourself to do anything, I don’t say directly good, but at least necessary and useful? How can you do without forcing yourself? How can Christians not be encouraged and forced to fulfill the requirements of faith and piety? Isn’t it also said in the Holy Scriptures that the Kingdom of Heaven is in need and the needy [Russian: those who use effort] delight it [Matt. 11, 12 ]? How not to force, especially boys, to study? What will come of them? Aren't they sloths? Aren't they naughty? Will they not learn all kinds of evil? About current charities. You taste earthly blessings to the fullest, give to those in need, but you caress yourself more - that means you do good deeds without the slightest self-sacrifice! The price of your charity is not great. What else is there? What are imaginary benefits? They do amusement with a charitable purpose, that is, first of all they want to intentionally serve their sinful flesh, the devil, and then their neighbor and God. Yes, gentlemen, this is not charity at all! It bears the name of charity alone. Let us do evil, so that good may come [Russian: shall we not do evil so that good may come] [Rom. 3, 8 ]! Woe to you who are now satiated! for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now! for you will mourn and lament [Lk. 6, 25]. If you read the holy book and do not fulfill what is written in it, or listen and do not fulfill it, or compose and teach yourself, but do not fulfill it yourself, then you are nothing more than a hypocrite and a verbal sensualist. You have to do it, [otherwise] you will be... like the voice of a sweet-voiced, blessed singer [Russian: like a funny singer with a pleasant voice and a good player] [Ezek. 33, 32]. When any passion begins to torment you, say to yourself firmly: I crucify my flesh with its passions and lusts, according to the word of the Apostle [Gal. 5, 24], - and it will immediately weaken and subside. When you resist a boss or the just demand of someone and the crafty opponent hurts you, say within yourself: we have sinned, Lord! He accepted the spirit of rebellion and followed the spirit of rebellion. For the rest of my life, I want, Holy and True Master, to follow the spirit of obedience, Thy Holy Spirit. The miser is the great enemy of God: God is the Father of generous gifts and of all comfort [2 Cor. 1, 3], and the miser walks directly opposite the Heavenly Father, sparing everything for others, far from consoling others, thinking only about himself, about his belly and pleasure, and himself not properly tasting any pleasure, for whoever is stingy for others, God is not generous for his soul, for there is no peace and joy in it about the Holy Spirit; whoever does not treat others, according to the judgment of God’s truth, is deprived of consolation. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. Fear not them (demons)... But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts [1 Pet. 3, 14–15], that is, have Him in your hearts. God the Trinity - the One - quickly, very quickly, easily and very lightly, like lightning, like a thought, appears to us and unites with us. Our heart, like an undeveloped, short-sighted boy, must be taught until it firmly learns faith and virtue. It is necessary to teach and teach, to introduce and to introduce faith and virtues. The enemy still has a lot of room in me. Alms cleanses sins, and treating guests too, since it is mercy, is free, undeserved, and without reward. Pay attention: treat the Christian whom you have given communion (or baptized, unction, sick or healthy), with extreme meekness, love and purity, for Christ is in him and he is in Christ, and willingly fulfill his desires if he asks you to satisfy any of his needs, spiritual or physical. Otherwise, it is precisely at this time that the enemy especially inflames our hearts with impatience and irritability. A glutton is the greatest enemy of God, because he gives his heart, which should be the church of God, to decay - food and drink, and does not allow the Spirit of God to dwell within him. That is why gluttons are not capable of spiritual wisdom: do not expect strong and fruitful preaching from them - they do not have spiritual words. A gluttonous person, like a bird with tied wings, will not rise to the sky. And the enemy constantly uses this easy means of enslaving people to his dominion. Moreover, it is so convenient: everyone loves to drink and eat sweets. Obey the superior unquestioningly in everything that is not contrary to the commandments of God and the statutes of the Church, although his order is apparently unusual and petty: it is not petty when it can arouse controversy and resistance in you. Apparently, the commandment of God in paradise was of little importance - not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but disobedience to it killed the entire human race through sin and bodily death. Humility is tested by the pride of others. Look at all passions as the dreams of the devil and do not be irritated when you see them in others, and if in yourself, do not be discouraged. Before confession: repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand [Matt. 3, 2]. Or: I came to call... sinners to repentance [Matt. 9, 13; Mk. 2, 17; OK. 5, 3]. How important is repentance! Be simple in everything, for your Lord is a simple being and calls everyone into the unity of His being. The falling away of my heart from God and clinging, even for a moment, to something earthly, immediately produces spiritual death in me, constricting and shortening the life of the body itself, and having fallen away from God, the heart will certainly cling to earthly things, for it cannot remain idle, not clinging to something. So the Jews, who fell away from God in faith and love, always clung to idols. And in Christianity, serving the passions, the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life is idolatry. This is idolatry, spiritual and carnal. Spiritual: secular literature, music, theaters; material: money, food, drink, clothing, entertainment, the fair sex, magnificent houses. My life is prayer, the word of God and the Body and Blood of Christ. When you stand for prayer, burdened with many sins and overcome with despair, begin to pray with hope, a burning spirit, remember that the Spirit of God Himself helps us in our weaknesses, interceding for us with unspeakable groanings [Rom. 8, 26]. When you remember with faith about this action of the Spirit of God in us, then tears of tenderness will flow from your eyes and in your heart you will feel peace, sweetness, justification and joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14, 17]. You will cry out with the voice of your heart: Abba, Father! [Rom. 8, 15]. My eyes and my heart will be there all the days [1 Kings. 9, 3], speaks of the church. There - that is, of course, more on the hearts of those present and praying, for the Most High does not live in churches made by hands [Acts. 7, 48]. How gratifying it is to read these words from the wise Solomon [1 Kings. 8, 27 ]! The eyes of the Master in the church of God are fixed on each of us, inside us, and see all the thoughts of our heart; the Lord’s heart is addressed to each of us. Is it possible to demand more intimacy? The very heart of the Lord is turned to me. Sometimes you stand face to face with a person and talk with him, but his heart is not turned to you, does not lie towards you, but is occupied with something else - but here God’s heart is still turned to you, all His love, all His goodness, all His bounties are ready to pour out from Him on you according to your faith. Remember and do not forget, my soul, with whom you are united in the Sacrament of Communion! You unite with the Truth, with the Belly Itself, with the ineffable Beauty, with the Hypostasis Wisdom. After communion, do not allow your heart to cleave to anything else! Avoid doubt, lack of faith, and unbelief in every possible way; Do not place your life in food, drink or anything earthly; Let no beauty created deceive you, let the wisdom of this age be bitterness for your heart and riot (foolishness) for your mind: has not God turned the wisdom of this world into madness? [ 1 Cor. 1, 20]. You are united with Goodness and Love - so you also love the Lord with all your heart and all your mind and your neighbor as you love yourself; Far away from your heart all malice, hatred, envy, suspicion (thinking evil towards your neighbor). You unite with the Most Generous - be generous to everyone with both spiritual and material wealth, or material and spiritual treasures and your sweets; If you unite with the Meek and Humble, be yourself meek and humble in heart. What is truth? Truth is what a thing is in itself, and the word “truth” itself comes from the verb “is” with the letter e in the noun changed to i. It even happens to hear from many people instead of the word “is” - “is”: “Is there such and such a visitor here?”, “We have a good product.” So, truth is called what is or what a known thing or a known being should be. It is true that God is truth and life. For example, it is true that the devil is a lie and the father of lies [Jn. 8, 44 ]; It is true that in people there are many thoughts, feelings, intentions that are not true, but false, there are many false words, false deeds (hypocrisy), and deceptive ones. This is the lie of free, fallen creatures opposed to God - the devil, demons and wicked people; it is something accidental, temporary and will exist until the truth of things - Christ - illuminates what is hidden in the darkness [1 Cor. 4, 5], when he discovers a lie, he will take off her disguise and punish the liar and the father of lies - the devil - with eternal torment. Our duty in this deceptive, vain life is to fight to the last opportunity against all lies: against the lies of fallen spirits - demons, against the lies of people and against the charm and deceitfulness of visible things. We must firmly know what is true in things, expose their lies and use them in accordance with the truth, despising their false use. During divine services, be calm, patient, unhurried out of man-pleasing or out of laziness and negligence, cheerful in case of stumbling, have unshakable, unashamed faith, neglect false fears of the devil. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye [Matt. 7, 3; OK. 6, 41 ]? Close the eyes of your heart to the shortcomings and infirmities of your neighbor if you only want to condemn and not instruct [...]. You are not appointed to rule over him, but, having eyes, be as one who does not see, cast away from your heart pride, hatred and malice towards him, so that the Lord of human hearts does not strike you as a workman of the devil, as a servant of Satan. Take care first to remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see how to remove the speck from your brother’s eye [Matt. 7, 5; OK. 6, 42]. ABOUT! Truly, you have a whole log, for to many other sins hiding in you: pride, malice, envy, ill will, you add the sin of condemning your brother, you deliberately suffer from your own spiritual blindness and petrified insensibility. So, first of all, judge yourself: you are closest to yourself, you see yourself better than others; You will give an account for yourself to God, for each one will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5 ]; first of all, harbor malice towards yourself and towards the devil: you yourself know very well that there is something for you to be angry at yourself for, for you are the greatest enemy of God: for His countless daily blessings you pay Him with stinking smoke in the heart of your passions and you constantly remove from yourself the Spirit of the All-Holy, who wants to live in you with the Father and the Son; You desecrate His church, you only love yourself, not the Lord. Be angry with yourself more often, especially when you feel dislike and anger towards your brother. The devil sometimes strikes the soul with such despondency, such murderous melancholy that one ambiguous look at us from others, one unkindly spoken word can bring us to tears; the soul becomes so cramped that one just wants to cry bitterly and cry out all the devil’s insult. Therefore, a kind word, a simple-minded, sympathetic treatment of the sad and sad is a great blessing for him. Weep with those who weep, the apostle also commands [Rom. 12, 15]. Here is a human illness: for example, my brother asks me to replace him in the service, I answer: okay, I will replace him; but then, having left him, out of hostility towards him and suspicion of him, I repent of my word and look for plausible excuses to refuse to replace him. And thus it turns out that what happened to the servant whom the Savior cited in the parable as an example of failure to fulfill the will of God. The Lord said: you go today and work in my vineyard, but he said: I am going, sir, and did not go [Matt. 21, 28, 30]. Or what happened to the fierce and proud Pharaoh: he said after each of God’s executions: I will let the Jewish people go, but as soon as the execution was over, he repented of his promise and did not let him go from his land; and then, when he actually let him go, forced by the destruction of the firstborn in his land, he again repented and chased after them in order to satiate his anger with cruelty against them. How great is the malice in us! When you pray to the Lord and ask Him for yourself or for other spiritual, heavenly, or material, earthly benefits, then for complete confidence in receiving what you ask for or in general the good that is most beneficial for us at the discretion of the wisdom and goodness of God, keep in your mind and heart the following words of the Savior: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you; For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Is there a man among you who, when his son asks him for bread, would give him a stone? and when he asks for a fish, would you give him a snake? So if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him [Matt. 7.7–11]. Look at the complete indifference and even disdain for earthly sweets, sensual souls of noble and exalted souls, and even more so, be indifferent to them and neglect them, for you have the original, spiritual, eternal sweetness - Christ, your life, your strength, your peace. Sensual and material sweets excite voluptuousness and produce voluptuous nocturnal outpourings. My life is one - Christ; living faith in Him, in His co-presence, calms and delights my heart and brings to my body general calm, lightness, cheerfulness, delight, strength. We lay down our life in food and drink, as Christ convicts us, saying: man shall not live by bread alone [Matt. 4, 4; OK. 4, 4 ]; but food and drink do not bring me any benefit, neither my soul nor my body, when I have lost faith in Christ and am not united with Him by faith in my heart: both my soul and my body are in cramped conditions, in the fire of Gehenna, in relaxation; the soul dies, and the dead soul produces the beginnings of death in the body: irritation of the nerves, improper circulation of blood, improper digestion and circulation of juices, compression [of the body] and general relaxation. This is how significant living faith in Christ is and how insignificant bodily food is, even harmful, when we are not united by faith with Christ. This, however, does not happen the same for everyone. Many live like senseless animals - they eat and drink, grow fat, get stronger physically, but they are like dumb animals, led by nature, born to be caught and exterminated... in their corruption they will be destroyed [2 Pet. 2, 12]. These are those who have been attached to foolish cattle and have become like them [Ps. 48, 13, 21], from them I am often the first one. The Lord leaves such people to live only a bodily life because they loved with all their hearts not the Lord, but food and drink and the enjoyment of meat alone instead of the delight of the Lord and spiritual blessings; That’s why they are as fat as oxen, strong and strong like lions, predatory and insatiable like wolves, greedy like bears, proud like roosters, misogynistic like horses. The temptations that happen to us most often concern our heart’s attachment to earthly goods, for this ailment is common, chronic, and greatest. In a priest, attachment to earthly things is especially unpardonable, and in him the Lord punishes this attachment with particular severity and severity. A priest should not spare money even when, in the opinion of secular people, he really should have spared it. When you read sermons or any other holy books, with an open, simple, humbly believing heart, accept the teaching of truth or the rules of life, try to imprint it in the depths and with all your heart thank the All-Holy Spirit, who guides us through His chosen ones into all truth. Nowadays there is a very abundance of sermons and various books of spiritual content - do not neglect this abundance, but even more so thank the most generous and generous God, who gives us the gifts of spiritual wisdom in infinite abundance. Remember that the writers of spiritual works are not content with the esma [Russian: capable] of themselves to think that, as if from themselves, but contentment, their ability to speak the truth with anointing, with spiritual power, is from God [2 Cor. 3, 5]. Amen. When reading known truths, do not say: this is not new, I know this, I said this too. All this is the pride of the devil. This mood responds with the following wisdom: I know everything, good and evil; this means almost the following: I am an omniscient God, or something else. And many do not read sermons and spiritual books because they seem to know everything, that everything is the same, what they have known for a long time, while secular books, in which there is always the same empty everyday vanity, are read willingly, re-read! ABOUT! Unclean flies that feed on carrion and dung! Be calm and happy when you treat your brothers with tea, sugar and all sorts of good things, putting aside all regret for perishable sweetness, firmly knowing that for a brother, no matter how hungry and thirsty he may be, very little is needed, and yet due love and honor to the image of God, which a brother bears in his soul, is given through treating his brother. Remember the treat of the hospitable Abraham, Whom he received as guests - the Holy Trinity. Remember how the Lord treated us to five loaves of bread in the desert, giving us an example of hospitality: He said, “I don’t want to let them go without eating [Matt. 15, 32] - give them, he says, you to eat [Matt. 14, 16; Mk. 6, 37; OK. 9, 13]. So don’t let your guests go without eating. Remember also how the Lord Himself was treated to sinners and tax collectors. The Lord calls us all into the communion of His Divine nature, and we must strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit among ourselves in the bond of peace [Eph. 4, 3], as members of the body of Christ, as delights of one another: we are delights of one another [Eph. 4, 25]. Respect for the dignity of a person requires that we trust him as ourselves, in his words and especially in his actions, and not offend him by distrust and suspicion and whims over him (over his deeds). As you want people to do to you, do so to them [Matt. 7, 12]. If you want people to have confidence in your actions, you should also have confidence in the actions of others. Have constant respect and love for a person, even if he comes to you every day to eat your bread. Love is then recognized when we sacrifice our labors and property for our neighbor, or when our neighbors inflict injustice on us, and we endure these injustices or insults. God will reward the offended. Attachment to earthly goods. The pity of earthly goods is terrible, lethally makes itself felt to a person - so what? He is still carried away by this attachment. Place your neighbor above everything in the world after the Lord God, do not exchange him for perishable goods, do not spare him any blessings. When you ask the Lord of heaven and earth to grant you any good, believe without a doubt that you will receive from His goodness, which has no measure and time, which is not faster and more informative, the required or the best, according to His providential discretion, which has the benefit to be granted. For complete assurance of this, let your heart repeat the words of the Savior: Ask, and it will be given to you... - everything to the end; Imagine how earthly fathers, being wicked, like the children of the evil one, immediately give good gifts to their children when they ask them for what they need for life, and do not give stones instead of bread, or snakes instead of fish. Much more is your Father in heaven... [Matt. 7, 7–11]. Love for our brother is evident from the fact that we: 1) sacrifice everything for him without regret; 2) we forgive him for his mistakes; 3) we suppress our pride for selfless service to him. When a brother owes you something, for example, even frequent visits to your meals, do not be upset by this, but say to yourself: I myself am the greatest debtor to God and people. I leave the debtor to my brother, and my debts will also be left to me. I often eat tuna bread myself. Say again: my brother is a member of Christ, and everything earthly is rubbish, decay. dust. Say again: man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God [Lk. 4, 4]. Say again: the life of my soul and my body is Christ. Remember to sacrifice yourself for your neighbor out of love for him. This selflessness is necessary. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends [John. 15, 13]. The sweetness of the taste and belly certainly responds with bitterness in the soul: bodily pleasure is short-lived, but spiritual bitterness is long-lasting. Why? For a very simple reason: sin enters quickly and easily, but comes out slowly and tightly, enters with sweetness, but comes out with bitterness. That is why there is no need to be seduced by sensual sweets, no matter what they are, even permitted ones. When the devil binds and oppresses your soul with stinginess or trust in money, in general in earthly things, say to yourself with firmness: My hope is the Father, my refuge is the Son, my protection is the Holy Spirit; or: God is my hope. The heart of a stingy man hopes for money, for food, for clothing. The antidote to passion will be the words of the heart: God is my hope. By creating the world in six days, and not suddenly, the Lord sanctified the law of matter - gradualism and succession - and laid the foundation for time and space. It was necessary to show that He also created gradualism in creatures. So He Himself deigned to submit to the law of this gradualness, having spent nine months in the womb of the Ever-Virgin - the usual extension of the time of womb-bearing; He himself gradually grew in spirit and body, and already in his thirtieth year he went out to serve the salvation of the human race. The false hope for bread, for a single bread, in fact reveals its destruction every day: I ate well, pleasantly, satisfyingly, drank vodka, selected meat, ate a sweet pie - it feels good, and prayer, it seems, is not completely away from my heart: so the tears flow. But not for long. Wait: you will soon feel all the harm from your pleasant and nutritious food: in proportion to the sweetness in your food intake, the evil one will give you a dose of bitterness, and the sweetness is even stronger, to the point that he will exhaust you, weaken your body, make you shed bitter, bitter tears from excessive grief, stun you, [rape] you with passions. Yesterday you fed sinful flesh, delighted it - you yourself strengthened it against yourself. The saying is true, that by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God man shall live [Matt. 4, 4]. Oh! How fair that is! How often do you experience the truth of these words! When do passions fight less on the soul? – When you despise food and observe fasting. Worldly people very rarely taste the life-giving food and drink of the Body and Blood of Christ God, and therefore it is not surprising that they love carnal food and drink to the point of addiction; But for you, a priest who partakes of the life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, it is unforgivable to love passionately perishable food and drink, to cleave to earthly and fleeting sweets. You have the greatest, eternal sweetness - Christ. Leave it to those who do not have the good fortune to often eat incorruptible food and feed only on perishable food and drink to eat abundantly. Give them this consolation, but do not impute bodily waste to anything. Stand courageously against the seductions of the flesh and the enemy. When the enemy attacks you with the passion of the love of money and gluttony, repeat in your heart the words: Jesus, my imperishable treasure, Jesus, inexhaustible riches, Jesus, strong food, Jesus, inexhaustible drink, Jesus, sweetness of the heart, Jesus, bodily strength, Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me. I praise the power of the name of my God. Frequent guests came to me, my heart was outraged by stinginess. But I said: God is my hope - and my indignation passed! February 6th day 1862 Say: God is my hope - at least they take the last piece from you, nobly or ignoblely. Frequent and annoying guests take it nobly; It is ignoble when something that belongs [to you] is taken away unjustly in any way. Say: God is my hope, even though the hundredth guest will come to you and sit at your table. Show us the great and favorable hope in the Lord in Him, like our wonderful reverend fathers. When you intended to go on a visit and guests come to you, who often come to you, do not be indignant at them and do not neglect them, saying: I will go to visit myself, but stay with them, caress and comfort them, reassuring yourself with the words of Scripture: it is more blessed to give than to receive from others [Acts. 20, 35 ]; It is better to caress others than to receive affection yourself; It's better to treat than to be treated. As if I had gotten rid of the evil ones, I will write a letter of gratitude 25 to You, the Virgin Mary: I cried out to You to deliver me from the tightness and flame of my passion, and You took me away and placed me on my spacious nose 26 . Behold, although the lion of hell every minute seeks to devour me, piercing my soul with carnal passions and evil despondency, but You, Lord Jesus, and You, the Lady and Mother of our Savior, do not allow him to devour me, and when I with unshameful faith and contrition of heart pray to Your goodness, Lord Jesus, and Yours, Good King, Good Mother, You kindly take me away from the very jaws of the lion and serpent of hell. I tread on the asp and the basilisk and trample the lion and the serpent 27 . Why? - Because I trust in you, because I have come to know your name, living, gracious, glorious and saving. February 6th day, 1862. You, who live piously in society, pay attention: sometimes the enemy will use all his measures to divert you from communication with others, especially through stinginess; reject from your heart the machinations of the enemy and try in every possible way to have communion of love and material wealth with your neighbors, trying to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace [Eph. 4, 3]. Do not forget also to do good and be sociable, says the apostle, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God [Heb. 13, 16]. Those who are alienated from society are subjected to a worthy punishment - melancholy and murderous despondency. Look at the example of Christ, what kind of sociability He had. When you cannot tolerate guests who often come to you and your soul is indignant at them, tell yourself that all people are one great family of the Heavenly Father, that just as the Heavenly Father graciously tolerates your indecency in His house, so you should graciously receive and tolerate guests in your house. We are all brothers, but what is good or what is good, but the brethren live together [Russian: together] [Ps. 132, 1]. Love your neighbor in such a way that, if possible, you do not separate the benefits of his innocent pleasures from your own, that is, what you wish for yourself, wish for the other, and what you do not want for yourself, do not wish for the same. Let your neighbor be the same to you as you are. Love your neighbor as yourself [Mk. 12, 31]. There is one body and one spirit, just as you are called to one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all [Eph. 4, 4–6]. You are the head of the family, for you and for your family guests and friendly sociability with them are necessary: ​​in conversation, our soul, stale and cold from the everyday, monotonous bustle of life, softens, warms up and receives energy; Hospitality supports friendship and mutual love. Hospitality is a great virtue, rewarded with a blessing from the Life-Giving Trinity Itself, which deigned to be treated, in the likeness of the sons of men, to the hospitable Abraham. Therefore, it is considered a duty to receive guests. Remember that we are all guests on earth. When you show your neighbor, who often visits you, love and treat him, then you will doubly oblige him and a) with love, b) with a treat you will make him your debtor; and when you show him enmity instead of love, then, although you treat him out of necessity and out of decency, you yourself will become his debtor and a debtor to the Lord, and a great debtor, at that, for enmity is a grave sin. Isn’t it better to treat your neighbor with cordiality, with love, so as not to lose rewards from the Lord and to doubly delight your neighbor—both his soul and his body: the soul with love and affection, and the body with food and drink. Amen. February 6th day, 1862. If someone calls you a hypocrite, a crooked one, do not be angry with that person, but meekly and kindly bear his insult, and even more so, take his words to heart, for sometimes you are definitely a hypocrite, intentionally or unintentionally. Remember that the Truth Himself - Christ was called a flatterer, they said that He flattered the nations [Jn. 7, 12]. Who are you? In general, do not be offended when you are offended or blamed. Touchiness means pride and conceit. Love for God, for the Most Pure Mother and for the saints is recognized when the enemy throws blasphemies into our hearts against the Lord, the Most Pure Mother of God and the saints: then the loving soul is aroused to glorify the Lord, His Most Pure Mother and the saints, and the more, the more impudent the enemy’s blasphemy, the more ardent and abundant the glorification. Hence the canons and akathists. You say: I am the greatest sinner, an indecent vessel, I have corrupted myself entirely with all sorts of sins and iniquities, I do not dare to look at heaven, I do not dare to approach and pray to God, lest He cast me away from His presence, like a stinking dog, and burn His Divinity with fire. This is what the devil is saying in you. I tell you, come boldly to the throne of grace, so that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need [Heb. 4:16], Christ with His blood renewed our nature, corrupted by sin, and He wants to renew yours - just surrender to Him, just repent with a contrite heart and with tears. That is why He is the Savior, to save sinners. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance [Matt. 9, 13; Mk. 2:17], He says. Approach your Heavenly Father through Christ with the boldness and hope of a prodigal son. When we eat modest or generally nutritious and tasty food, then passions find more food and support in our heart and usually act on us stronger, more persistently and more murderously. When we eat lean, low-nutrition, light, non-delicious, simple food, then passions, finding no support, weaken, the mind becomes clearer and the heart becomes purer, just as the sky is clear when the air is not saturated with vapors. Also: when we work and get tired in the service, then our passions are also muffled and suppressed. Idleness provides great scope and revelry for passions. That is why it is said: Everyone who is idle has desires [Prov. 13, 4]. And popular speech says: idleness is the mother of vices. The best way to triumph over the malice, envy, and contradiction of others is not to be indignant in spirit and not to be offended (not to become embittered) and to overcome evil with goodness, kindness, meekness and humility and calm prudence. By this behavior we will force our very enemies to respect us. We must consider all evil as a dream, as smoke, as insignificance, and recognize the culprit as the devil, who sinned from the beginning, and not man, who is his pathetic instrument. When the spirit of despondency attacks you, remember the words of the apostle: Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing [1 Thess. 5, 16–17]. When there is a spirit of self-humiliation, remember these words: you... are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for your own possession [1 Pet. 2, 9]. We are children of God, we will be partakers of the divine nature [2 Pet. 1, 4]. Look at those who are sick with spiritual passions and embitter you with their passionate actions as if they were your own sick members, do not irritate them, but apply to their hearts the medicine of meekness, meek conviction and love. Treat them like your sick members. Let us not be vainglorious and irritate each other... correct one in the spirit of meekness... Bear each other’s burdens (moral, not just physical), and in this way fulfill the law of Christ [Gal. 5, 26; 6, 1,2]. When receiving communion, look at the terrible Sacrifice as if there were only one and you, and everything else did not exist. You and Sy, who created you and contains you. Think of nothing earthly in yourself, not even heavenly things, except the Lord. Especially imagine the dreamer-devil, as if non-existent, with all his dreamy intrigues or seductions. It is precisely the negation of spiritual existence and the pure negation of truth. Amen. Consider any evil, passion in yourself and in others as a diabolical dream, a ghost, and with such a deeply true concept of it, destroy it in the very bud. When addressing and conversing with other people, carefully observe the movements of your heart so that it does not deceive or be hypocritical; say what you feel, or speak from the heart, sincerely: what is not in the heart, let not be on the lips. For example, do not invite into your house with your tongue someone whom your heart does not want to invite, otherwise you will fall into hypocrisy. Or in other words: if you invite someone to your place, then invite them with your heart and lips. Do not be double-minded and do not serve the liar devil with your hypocrisy. Also carefully watch the movements of your eyes, or, better, the movements of your soul in your eyes, so that they do not look at anyone unchastely, or maliciously, or contemptuously, or enviously. Be sure to remember that the Lord is watching you, and the enemy is watching your heel, like a roaring lion prowling around seeking to devour you [1 Pet. 5, 8]. From the heart of man come evil thoughts... adultery... the evil eye, blasphemy, pride [Mk. 7, 21–22]. The closer a person is in food and drink, in lifestyle and in pleasures to Mother Nature, the more favorable she is to him, the more she spares him and protects him from various diseases - which means the more healthy he is; but the further someone is from the order indicated by nature, the more someone perverts her order, the more someone allows himself artificial variety, excesses in food and drink, in lifestyle and pleasures - the more she is strict, punitive and, so to speak, with his own hands weaves a whip for him and with this whip punishes him painfully, painfully, in order to admonish him not to abuse the gifts of the Creator, not to pervert the order, indicated by the Creator in the order of nature. Taken from experience. Completely destroy your hope for earthly blessings, but place all your hope in God, although all your possessions are lost; don’t cry, don’t be faint-hearted - you have God, who is everything to you. Others do not rely on money, but rely on sweetness: they do not spare, for example, coarse or unsweetened food, but regret sweet foods, for example, sugar, cream. But don’t rely on any devoured idols. Do not hesitate to share the latter with your brother: a brother is the image of God; if necessary, the Lord will unexpectedly send him or create food for him out of nothing, or turn something into food, or send a dumb animal with bread in its mouth. Always treat your brother with kindness in every possible way. All food, no matter how dear and sweet it may be, is of no account when it is necessary to treat a brother with it; spare nothing for him. Brother, you say, he often comes to me to eat and drink - but don’t you often eat and drink with good people for nothing? Aren't you yourself a parasite of God? A? A parasite, truly a parasite. He reveals a great passion for his carnal man who does not tolerate an unpleasant smell in the room and gets irritated by it and, if this happens during prayer, loses sincerity in prayer and becomes inflamed with internal annoyance at those who spread this smell. We must be impartial to our flesh and crucify it with passions and lusts. And how not to crucify? She causes so many stumbling blocks to our soul on the path of our spiritual perfection, on the path of salvation! It removes us so much from God with sensual pleasures! That is why we must embitter her with various unpleasant odors, unpleasant sights, unpleasant sounds, coarse things, coarse food, simple drink, simple clothing, simple housing, because she alienates us from God with fragrances (the first stench [Russian: the best ointments] smeared (Am. 6, 6)), pleasant sights for sensuality, pleasant sounds for the carnal ear, expensive, elegantly decorated and shiny things, pleasant food and drink, soft and rich clothing and a luxuriously decorated home. How undoubtedly it is that in prosperity a person is ready to bless God, and in difficult circumstances that unexpectedly meet him, he is ready to bring out of his heart blasphemy and murmuring against the Lord! The temptations of our patience, faith, hope, love often show us that we are far from perfect in love. Equally, we apparently love our neighbor when he does not cause us trouble, as long as he does not cause us labor, anxiety, as long as he does not offend us, as long as he does not harm our mental and physical well-being (as long as he does not cause ill health to our body) in any way, intentionally or unintentionally; but if you happen to work hard for your neighbor, sacrifice your peace of mind, if your neighbor causes us offense, if he damages our health, damages our property, we will attack him, and love, like the thinnest and lightest ether, will immediately fly out of our hearts, and irritability, enmity, hatred, and abuse will follow. The enemy knew and knows this weak side of us, and so he told the Lord about Job that he would only bless You to your face, because of your good deeds he loves You, and equally loves his neighbor because he himself is prosperous, but touch, he says, his property and especially his bones, his health - and you will see that he is hypocritically serving You [Job. 1–2]. It is necessary that neither work, nor anxiety, nor sorrow, nor illness, nor misfortune, nor death - nothing should separate us from the love of God and neighbor. And these temptations show that we love ourselves incomparably more, our health, our peace, our well-being, our honor, than our neighbor, [we do not care] about his health, peace of mind, well-being, honor, benefit, we love ourselves incomparably more than God. A small trouble can separate our heart from the love of God. Equally, prosperity easily plunges us into spiritual sleep and oblivion of God. What a cunning animal man is! We must skillfully tempt him 28; we need a great mind, great love, great patience to lead him to God and to eternal salvation! A very cunning and self-loving and at the same time blind animal! In illness and in physical weakness in general, as well as in sorrow, a person at first cannot burn for God with faith and love, because in sorrow and illness the heart hurts, but faith and love require a healthy heart, a calm heart. Therefore, there is no need to grieve greatly over the fact that in illness and sorrow we cannot, as we should, believe in the Lord, love Him and fervently pray to Him. Time for everything. Sometimes it’s not a good time to pray. When you pray to the saints, remember that you are morally insignificant before them. And let this remembrance be a reason for humility for you. Does the Holy Spirit speak accurately in bishops, presbyters and deacons when they perform divine services, the Sacraments and speak teachings? - Exactly. The Apostle says: He (Jesus Christ) appointed some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some shepherds and teachers [Eph. 4, 11]. But the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers or priests are made by the Holy Spirit. The grace of the All-Holy Spirit is given to every bishop, presbyter and deacon in sacred ordination, and to the bishop especially before the priest. The priest and bishop are clothed with the grace of the priesthood, like a spiritual robe. In particular, the words of worship, Sacraments, prayers, sermons are the verbs of the Holy Spirit, for we are not able... to think anything from ourselves, as if from ourselves, but our ability is from God [2 Cor. 3, 5]. Today I served the Liturgy by the grace of God with great reverence and tenderness, and at the words: Singing the song of victory, crying out, calling out and saying - I felt in my heart great faith that these words of the Holy Spirit and He Himself, the All-Holy, speak in me and through me, and with solemn calm and joy he pronounced them, but the envious enemy immediately instilled the evil thought that those words not the Holy Spirit and that the service was not spoken from the Holy Spirit, that it was not the Holy Spirit who spoke in the Holy Fathers and speaks in us, and wounded us with this thought. Due to the flow of the service, I could not quickly gather my thoughts and overturn his lies even before communion. He took communion with faith; came to life, the ulcer was healed, the spirit rejoiced. It is necessary to be sober and vigilant so that the enemy does not falter during worship and the performance of the Sacraments. The Lord also said to His disciples: I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him and does not know Him; and you know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you [Jn. 14, 16–17]. The Holy Spirit will remain with you forever, the Savior said, but since the apostles did not remain forever on earth, but died the death of righteous people and martyrs, this promise applies, of course, to the successors of the apostles - bishops and presbyters and deacons consecrated by them. That is why sacred ordination exists, apparently transferring the gifts of the Holy Spirit from the apostles to the priesthood until the end of time. So, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit living in you? Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? [ 1 Cor. 6, 19; 3, 16]. But since the Spirit of God is always living and life-giving and active, He speaks in you, and acts, and quickens your hearts, and enlightens your minds. To write something well, in calligraphy, and not to do what is written means to be hypocritical. For example, some teacher will perfectly and honestly write the class schedule, perhaps put it in a frame and behind glass, but he himself goes to class late, lazily, studies carelessly, and only receives his salary for nothing. This is real hypocrisy and parasitism. It is necessary that the external be consistent with the internal, the thing with the deed. When human beauty seduces your heart, immediately direct the eyes of your heart to the Lord and say to Him: You, my Lord, are the beauty of beauties, the uncreated, endless beauty of all finite beauties created from You! Have mercy on me. May my heart cling to You alone. When silver and gold deceive your heart, immediately fix your eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ and tell Him: You are an imperishable treasure, You are my pure gold, You are my silver, whiter than snow. You are my philosopher's stone, which scientists searched in vain and did not find. You can turn everything in me, if necessary, into gold. But what's in gold for me? Gold does not give life. And You give life. Belly give 30. I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly [Jn. 10, 10]. When the sweets of food and drink seduce you, turn the eyes of your heart to the Lord and say: You are my eternal, indescribable sweetness, who has poured out all the fullness of spiritual and material sweets in the Holy Spirit, who gives life in heaven and on earth. You are our most prized food and drink, we hunger and thirst for You here and hope that we will be satisfied with You, ever appearing in Your glory [Ps. 16, 15]. Do I make you drunk from My Chalice worse than that you drink vodka? Is it not enough that I amuse you, that you also drink a joyful drink for the sake of (carnal) joy? - God! Your joy, received from Your Chalice, is perfect, incomparable: it gladdens the heart and does not burden the body in the least, and it gladdens the heart purely, sublimely, calmly; and wine gladdens the heart, but also clouds and weakens it, and then produces heaviness in the soul and in the body. – Or do My Mysteries not strengthen your body? But you yourself have experienced a hundredfold that they are strength, healing and health not only of the soul, but also of the body. So, stop drinking vodka. Do not cloud your heart, do not drive My grace away from you - it is tender, subtle, chaste and easily offended by the slightest carnal pleasure. I love a lean stomach, eating simple bread and water. Do not speak evil to the prince of your people [Russian: do not revile the leader of your people] [Ex. 22, 28], written. And I, the most sinful of all, spoke evilly to the head of the church of my parish and condemned him for covetousness. God! Who am I, who dared to condemn Your servant? Judge not, You said, lest you be judged [Matt. 7, 1]. Have mercy on me, Master, and do not destroy me with my iniquities! Treat your neighbor with a perfect heart, that is, truly and with the love that you have for yourself, so that your neighbor will love you, and if he does not love you, then at least he will honor your virtue in your person and will be imbued with respect for it and may he himself be jealous of it. I sin in hating my brother. Do not be angry with someone who often comes to you to eat your bread and salt, drink your tea and sugar; do not be stingy, do not place your hope in perishable food and perishable sweetness, but in the only Lord God. You consider your frequent guests to be unfair to you, but you, by your stinginess alone, are incomparably more unfair than them in relation to the Lord God, whose all-good Providence and infinite goodness you insult by relying on food and drinks, and thereby eliminate and even push His Providence away from you. I will never leave you nor forsake you [Heb. 13:5], says the Lord God. Is it true that they say that no matter what bad a priest does, when he serves mass, all his sins are forgiven? - Is it true. The blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cleanses us from all sin [1 John. 1:7], says the apostle, - but with the necessary conditions for worthy communion. What conditions? If he brought true repentance to the Lord before performing the Liturgy, and true repentance requires heartfelt contrition for sins and a decisive intention to leave those sins and addictions for which he repented, and if he received communion of the Holy Mysteries with every affirmation, without the slightest shadow of doubt, that he is partaking of the very life-giving Body and the very life-giving Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we know that not all priests bring sincere repentance to the Lord before receiving the Holy Mysteries, not all have heartfelt contrition, not all have a decisive intention to leave their addictions and only one rule is fulfilled: approaching the Lord with their lips, but keeping their hearts far from Him [Matt. 15, 8 – 9], without laying down a good beginning for a truly Christian life. We know that many priests receive communion with a heart devoted to silver, envy, malice, satiety, drunkenness, adultery and other sins. Such people eat and drink judgment, not forgiveness, and not eternal life, for they do not judge the Body of the Lord [1 Cor. 11, 29]. Such trample upon the Son of God and are awarded the torment of the worst [Heb. 10:29] than those who did not take communion at all and lived lawlessly. Frequent communion of the life-giving Mysteries must certainly be accompanied by holiness of life. The royal robe of the soul must be carefully preserved. This garment is Christ, as it is said: you have put on Christ [Gal. 3, 27 ]; you... are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for your own possession [1 Pet. 2, 9]. Do not slacken in zeal; be on fire in spirit; Serve the Lord [Rom. 12, 11]. This instruction of the Apostle must be kept in mind and [try to] fulfill it both in all service to God, and especially when celebrating the Divine Liturgy. From beginning to end, try to serve her with a burning spirit, with all your heart, with faith and love, by no means allowing your heart to become relaxed, laziness, coldness, having rejected from your heart everything earthly, all worldly cares, all worldly addictions, all worldly troubles, all earthly calculations. The Lord sacrificed Himself on the cross for our salvation, He gave Himself all to us, giving us His Body and Blood and His soul and His Divinity; we must sacrifice to Him the trampling of everything earthly, and present ourselves as a sacrifice with the sacrifice of everything that is dear to our carnal man on earth. Just as Abraham sacrificed his son, so we must sacrifice, especially during the liturgy, our old man with his passions and lusts to God and crucify him on the cross of self-denial, according to Scripture: And those who are Christ’s are the flesh crucified with passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]. If ever, then especially during the liturgy, the priest must remember the words of the Lord: I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot; Oh, that you were cold or hot! But because you are warm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth [Rev. 3, 15–16]. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God [Rom. 12, 1 ] . Look at the throne as you look at life. Know that you are still a carnal man, if your heart shrinks at the sight of a brother who has come to visit you and is looking for your meal, that you are still stingy. When you rejoice at the arrival of your brother and the opportunity to treat him, then you will have evidence in yourself that the Lord had mercy on you and, for your heartfelt repentance of your sins, delivered you from your passion. After the worthy performance of the service and the Sacrament, always thank the Lord with a short prayer from the bottom of your heart, that He has vouchsafed you with all your heart, with faith and love, to serve Him, His most humane intentions and deeds, for our service to the Lord, our All-Creator and Redeemer, is the greatest gift and benefit to us sinners, very fruitful both for those who receive God’s sanctification and salvation through us, and for ourselves, because we pacifies, revitalizes and pleases them too. We must always thank the Lord that He deigned to make us, sinners and unworthy His servants, His companions, as the apostle says: For we are God's companions [Russian: co-workers], His servants and builders of His mysteries: everyone should understand us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God [1 Cor. 3, 9;4, 1]. Meanwhile, what are many of us doing? They perform services and Sacraments and prayers reluctantly, sluggishly, carelessly, hastily, with omissions, wanting to quickly finish the holy work and rush to the bustle of life. What a terrible deception and what a grave sin! At the same time, you involuntarily remember the formidable word of the Lord to the careless performers of His works: Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord carelessly [Jer. 48, 10]. I said, what a terrible seduction! Yes, a terrible deception, because in our blindness we neglect verbs The Holy Spirit, breathing in the prayers of the Sacraments and services, we neglect the very thing that for us would serve, with proper diligence and zeal, as a source of sweet peace, joy in the Holy Spirit and even a source of bodily health, for the words of prayers read during services and Sacraments, read with faith, reverence, fear of God, calmly, burning in spirit, have an undoubted and wonderful property together with to revive, strengthen and heal our body with our soul. This has been proven by experience. A grave sin, I say, because by performing the Sacrament carelessly, we thereby blaspheme the shrine of the Lord. What needs to be done in order to perform the Sacraments and services with dignity, carefully, and with a burning spirit? We must always have a living faith that our God, worshiped in the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is always with us, looks at us and, at the first word of our sincere prayer for help, is ready to help us in a holy cause, for the prayer of faith, like breathing for our body, is absolutely necessary for us while we live on earth: what breath is for the body, the prayer of faith is for the soul. Remembering that the Almighty is always with us, and having Him as the very thing in our thoughts, rejecting from our hearts all thoughts of doubt, worldly cares and addictions, we will always do God’s work worthily. All voices, living and countless, must serve to glorify God. Therefore, vocal or instrumental music that sings not the glory of God, but the vanity of man, commits adultery from God, for even through the voice the soul must speak to God, express its movements, its feelings towards God. I am an animated speck of dust, or a humanized dust. Almsgiving is the preaching of works. When you go to church to ask the Lord for forgiveness of sins, make your prayer convenient and fulfilling through alms. The enemy hits us with nothing so often and so strongly as with earthly things, our earthly body and our possessions. We must consider everything as insignificant rubbish and seek first of all the Kingdom of God and His righteousness [Matt. 6, 33]. Will a beggar who feeds on scraps from his master's table be proud that he feeds on his scraps? What should he be proud of? Is it because of your poverty? The beggar is me. Master is the Lord; grains from His meal are all gifts of grace and nature. Our carnal man does not like to be rebuked, and is annoyed, angry, angry at those who reprove. However, it is all the more necessary to expose and crucify him. Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give room to the wrath of God. For it is written: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay [Rom. 12, 19]. When someone offends you in word or deed, do not avenge yourself even in thoughts, do not have spiritual zeal or impulses of indignation to take revenge on the offender in words of bitterness and annoyance or show him your vindictiveness by deed, but, as a disciple of the meek and humble-hearted Lord Jesus, forgive him the offense, leaving him to be admonished by the Lord, who will not hesitate to admonish him according to His unfaithful word: Vengeance is mine, I will repay. Or, as the Lord Himself also said: I tell you that He will take vengeance on them [Russian: im] soon [Lk. 18, 8]. Eradicate zeal and arbitrariness from your heart, remembering that the Judge of all does not sleep, but is always awake and sees everything. He who guards Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps [Ps. 120, 4]. Forgetting this commandment leads to disturbance of the spirit, irritability, quarrel, enmity, hatred, malice, fights, intrigues or intrigues, and in the case of excessive pride and ambition of a person and the inability to take revenge on the offender, and to suicide. If someone causes you, rightly or unjustly, any evil, do not be faint-hearted because of this, but firmly believe that the All-Good God, in His wisdom and omnipotence, will turn this evil into your good, and the offender himself will soon see that instead of evil, he did you good, which he did not intend. It has been noticed by everyone that all our misfortunes are directed by God for the better, we just have to endure. Therefore, everyday experience generally speaks of all misfortunes, sorrows and illnesses: it is God who leads to the better - and indeed, to the better. This, by the way, is the ultimate greatness of God’s goodness, wisdom and omnipotence, that He miraculously turns the very evil to good, turns the very calamities into a source or guarantee of prosperity. About hypocritical prayer. Did the Pharisees think that they were praying hypocritically? – They didn’t think: they considered themselves right in the very hypocrisy. It became a habit among them, it became, so to speak, their nature, their spiritual member, and they thought that they were serving God with their prayer. Do today's Christian hypocrites think that they pray hypocritically and live hypocritically? - They don’t think so. They pray daily, perhaps for a long time, out of habit, with their lips, and not with their hearts, without heartfelt contrition, without a strong desire for correction, just to fulfill the established rule. And they think of offering service to God [Jn. 16:2], while by their prayer they bring upon themselves only the wrath of God. We are all more or less sinful in that we pray hypocritically, and we will receive great condemnation for this. Always serve with a contrite and humble heart, in the full meaning of these words, alive and active. Remember that God is a Self and a simple Being. Humble yourself like grass before ancient oaks or like thorny thorns before magnificent, fragrant and delicate flowers, for you are grass, you are thorny thorns because of your passions. I learned that the oppression of the heart from regretting perishable goods for a brother is one of the enemy’s pretexts for hatred of his brother, his most crafty deception. Love your brethren and be generous to them, just as God loves you and generously shows you without measure. Put on... mercy, kindness, humility... forgive one another, just as God in Christ forgave you [Col. 3, 12; Eph. 4, 32]. Do not seek gratitude for good deeds and do not cloud your charity with self-interest. When you give to a beggar who, apparently, is not poor and healthy and does not deserve alms, and your heart regrets the alms given to him, repent of this, for Divine love also gives us His blessings when we already have enough of them. And your love for your neighbor should say: although he has it, it’s not bad if I increase his well-being and joy (and, to tell the truth, one or two or three kopecks will not really increase and improve his well-being). The Lord gives to me - why shouldn’t I give to the needy? I say: to the needy, for a beggar would not stretch out his hand without need. If you yourself only received the gifts of His goodness from God based on your merits, then perhaps you would have to walk as a beggar. Otherwise, God is generous to you beyond what you deserve, and you yourself want Him to be generous. Why don’t you want to be generous to your brothers, having an abundance? When your sight seduces you with the beauty of some fabrics and you spare them for a needy brother or for some shrine, for example, for relics for the church to which you promised to give them, correct yourself from your stinginess and charm in the following way: look at every beautiful and precious fabric as a transitory shadow, soon disappearing, and rejoice that with corruptible and fleeting things you can show zeal for the holiness of the Lord, love for God and His saints and earn their favor towards oneself. Only let your gift be completely voluntary and willing. Look at everything in the world as a passing shadow, do not attach your heart to anything, do not consider anything great, do not place hope in anything. Cling to the one incorruptible, invisible, all-wise God. We look not at what is seen, but at what is unseen: for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal [2 Cor. 4, 18]. A man-pleaser and glutton cannot be a servant of Christ, a true lover of Him (if I still pleased people, I would not be a servant of Christ [Gal. 1:10]). Let's imagine an example. Let us suppose that today he received communion and for the sake of communion of the Holy Mysteries he must especially observe abstinence in food and drink. But then a friend comes to him, preparations begin: wine, snacks, tea and sugar. A friend asks the owner for a drink, or the owner himself, being glad to see his friend as a guest, earnestly asks the friend to drink a glass or two; Here they are drinking and eating; they drink and praise, eat and praise, and do not notice how they get drunk and eat to the point of immoderation, and often indecentness. But where is faith, reverence and love for Christ? A friend is dearer than Christ, a womb is dearer than Christ; no attention is paid to the Heavenly Guest, resting in the heart, He is filled with food and drink, like rubbish, like slop, and so He moves away from such insolence of man from his heart. Oh, how a Christian, especially a priest, needs to maintain his dignity. You are indignant, irritated that, in your opinion, unworthy parasites come to your meal. But remember how many unworthy parasites and sinners the Lord feeds with His most pure Flesh and Blood! Remember that the Heavenly Father commands His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unjust [Matt. 5, 45]. But you will say: why do my enemies eat from my table? - For what? And you listened to the words of Moses: If your enemy is hungry, feed him with bread; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink: for in doing this you are heaping burning coals on his head [Prov. 25, 21–22]. Remember also that you yourself are a parasite to God. Remember the words of the Apostle: I count all things as rubbish, that I may win Christ [Phil. 3, 8]. You ask the Lord for the gift of love for God and neighbor, not defeated by any machinations of the enemy. And so the Lord, to test your love, to fight your passion, which is contrary to love, sends you frequent, numerous guests. Find out from your feelings in relation to each of them separately what your love is, and fill in what is missing in it. But accept how merciful the Lord is: He will send you in advance what to treat your neighbors with, and then gathers them to you, so that on the day when God sent you a generous wage for the easiest work, you can probably say: I will have guests tonight, because God sent me today the means to treat them. Experiments. February 14th day, 1862. Having received the Holy Mysteries, remember firmly what a great Guest you have in your heart, and do not place this multitude of rubbish and slops next to Him, in your belly (I mean an excess of various foods and drinks); do not offend your Life-Giver with the abomination of gluttony, do not bind your heart with worldly lusts and pleasures. Do not worship idols with such incomprehensible self-forgetfulness and oblivion of God, do not be so daring in your attitude towards God, lest you accept unnecessary condemnation and execution instead of the justification of Christ. How severe a punishment do you think the one who tramples on the Son of God will be subject to?.. Heb. (10, 29). Fasting is necessary for a Christian, among other things, because gluttony is idolatry. And whoever does not fast without a good reason certainly pleases the stomach. But the womb is unreliable for life, is fleeting and soon puts its worshipers to shame. Meal 31 the belly, and the belly meat: God will bring to naught both this and this [1 Cor. 6, 13]. So, remember that both your belly and your trash will pass away like a shadow and disappear. Don't waste your love on this decay. Indulging in gluttony, we commit adultery with our hearts, because we transgress the boundaries of lawful love, clinging with our hearts to food and drink instead of clinging to God with all our hearts. That is why it is said: The body is not for fornication, that is, with food and drink, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God raised the Lord, and He will also raise us by His power [1 Cor. 6, 13 – 14], that is, clinging to the Lord will not put us to shame, because we will be resurrected with Him for eternal life. The sequence for communion, consisting of the canon and prayers for communion, is so touching and touching, filled with such warmth, so suitable for the state of the soul of every Christian, that it would be very useful for Christians to read it not only before communion, but also at any other time when they feel burdened with their sins, cold and lacking boldness before God. These short verses and songs of the canon, these stichera and psalms, these long prayers before communion are capable of softening and warming the stony and coldest heart, touching the most motionless soul towards goodness. Proper repentance is the true life of the human soul. Do not be deceived by yourself: illness or sorrow will soon destroy your pride, drive away the liveliness and freshness of your face. If during the performance of the Sacrament, while casting a spell or while reading other prayers, the devil instills in the heart a thought of doubt regarding the omnipotence of God and exalts himself with his imaginary power before the Almighty, defeat his deceit and pride with the following words: you, fallen archangel 32, overthrown from the heights of lordship and bound by the bonds of darkness, were created by one thought the Creator and before His infinity you disappear like a nonentity; How easily you were created, so easily you can be destroyed, and therefore only the Lord does not destroy you, because you, as having come from the Eternal and once being His image and likeness, retained for yourself even in a fallen state the property of eternity, although you were forever deprived of righteousness and truth. But even now one thought, one wave, one word of the Creator or a believing Christian, one sign of the cross drives you away like dust, and you cannot in the least stand before the name of the Almighty, pronounced with living faith. So, do not arrogantly magnify your imaginary power: you have it only over unbelievers, desperate lawless people. The devil greatly torments a person with evil despondency, disgust from people and reluctance to talk with them. We need faith in his existence and in his machinations over us and the ability, achieved through prayer and experience, to defeat him. So today I came with my family to the house of some friends; a friend of theirs from Revel was there and came to visit them; I sat down next to her. I said a few words, but there was a heaviness in my heart, or, better yet, in my right side, as if a mountain had fallen, despondency, repulsion 33 such from my neighbor, from talking with him. I really don’t want to talk - it’s so cramped for me, I so want to get away from human society. He jumped off and ran to the piano. There was a German illustration there, I began to look at it, and in my side there was all the heaviness, all the pinching, all the withdrawal from people - so I would sooner leave them; They began to gather, I invite you to visit - I call you not from the heart, insincerely: again the obstacle of some evil force hiding in the heart. Left the house. Angry at the enemy; I knew that the enemy was in me. I say: get away from me, fallen spirit, only through my lack of faith and lack of faith in God’s omnipresence, goodness and omnipotence is held within me. I know that you are tormenting me, but I believe that you were brought into existence by the sole thought of the Creator and are insignificant before Him, like a shadow, like a ghost. Run away from me, gloomy nonentity: I am united by faith with the Lord of spirits and all flesh. I said these or similar words - and my enemy jumped away from me, ran away from my side. And it became easy, easy for me. Oh, poor people! After all, the enemy often tricks you like this, but you cannot give yourself an idea of ​​what it is that is tormenting you internally. And this is the devil - the original murderer [John. 8, 44]. February 14th day, 1862. Wednesday of Cheese Week. When, after committing any sin, you feel in your heart the weight of despair for God’s mercy, say from the bottom of your heart the following words to the Lord: Lord! We know that there is no sin, conquering Thy love for mankind, if there is hope for salvation in me, if Thy love for mankind overcomes the multitude of my iniquities, be my Savior, and according to Thy generosity and Thy mercy, forgive and forgive me all that I have sinned, for my soul is filled with many evils, and there is no hope of salvation in me. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy, and do not reward me for my deeds... but convert, intercede, deliver my soul from the evils and cruel perceptions that grow with it. Save me for the sake of Thy mercy, that where sin multiplies, Thy grace abounds. And I will praise and glorify You always, all the days of my life 34. For You are the God of mercy and generosity and love for mankind. All gambling, as they say, pats the selfish heart on the head. They caress, on the one hand, the passion of love of money, malice and gloating, on the other hand, they arouse ill will and envy. Can a Christian view them as an innocent pastime? Aren't they disgusting? Are they not taking away from us the most precious time given for eternity, are they making us idle and idle? Treasuring time, because the days are evil [Eph. 5, 16]. How diligently we serve the carnal and sinful man! I don't hope for decay. God is my hope. I sinned today: I condemned the brethren, I was stingy, I caused harm. Remember the commandment of the Apostle: He who eats, do not disparage the one who does not eat - let him not say: such and such is greedy, eats a lot; and whoever does not eat, do not judge him who does eat [Rom. 14:3], - without eating food himself, let him not spare it for the one who eats. Let us act unanimously among ourselves, in a brotherly manner, putting ourselves in our brother’s place. Always rejoice when they call you to any need, because you are going to talk with the Lord Himself and serve His sheep, whom He loved to death, even death on the cross [Phil. 2, 8]. Rejoice also that, by serving the members of Christ, you fulfill the word of the Savior: whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant... since the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His soul as a ransom for many [Matt. 20, 26, 28]. Don’t think about the payment: whatever they give you is fine. It’s a disaster if self-interest creeps into a holy cause. The enemy will stop, and you will perform the Sacrament or prayer insincerely, carelessly, to the court and condemnation of yourself. Beware [also] of extreme reluctance, slowness, laziness in holy work. Hurry to every poor person, do not be alienated from him in your heart, do not say in yourself: a dry spoon is in your mouth - they will not give anything for your efforts, it is not worth working. You work for the Lord Jesus Christ, who will reward you with eternal life. Blessed will you be that the poor cannot repay you, for you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the righteous [Lk. 14, 14]. People are for the most part orphans in this world, because most people live without the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the Trinity of our glorious God: He is not in human hearts, the abomination of desolation stands in houses not made with hands. One day the Lord Jesus Christ said to the disciples: I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you [Jn. 14, 18]. You see that we are orphans when we live without God, without living, heartfelt faith in Him. And how cruelly the devil, this enemy of God and man, offends us, orphaned by our sins, how tyrannically he torments us for our sins - it cannot be described! He removes, he drives us further and further from the Heavenly Father, our orphanhood makes us more and more sensitive and difficult; and he tries in every possible way to block the paths returning to the Heavenly Father, in order to make us miserable orphans forever and ever, in order to plunge us into eternal torment. And he does all this to us because of our lack of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, because of our attachment to earthly things, to worldly pleasures, because of our inattention to ourselves, because of our pride, because of our laziness. Whoever wants to be with Christ, the Lord will never leave him orphan. I will not leave you orphans, He says, I will come to you. We are all orphans. An orphan is one who cleaves to wealth, for he cannot work for God and wealth; an orphan is a glutton, for he has God in his belly, and not the Heavenly Father; The orphan is proud, for he has his father the devil, the leader of pride, and not God, for God opposes the proud [Jas. 4, 6; 1 Pet. 5, 5]. An orphan is an atheist; orphan - polytheist; orphans are all sinners, for they have all wandered away from the Heavenly Father through their sins. The orphan is our soul, because we ourselves leave it, we do not enter into ourselves. Oh, how far I am from the spirit of Christ, from the spirit of patience, from His cross. He allowed the villains to mock His pure body, to spit on His face, to hit Him on the cheek, to pierce His head with a cane, to lift Himself up on the cross, to pierce His legs and arms with nails, and to pierce His side. What about me? And I lose my temper when others do, in my opinion, some injustice to my material property, when they take my money, eat my bread and salt, tea and sugar for free. No one scolds me, does not spit in my face, does not hit me on the cheeks, no one has ever pierced my head with a cane, no one has pierced my arms and legs - and I almost declare war on my neighbors, who cause damage not to my body, not to my life, but only to my material wealth, my generosity and hospitality. God! Because of this, I truly suffer in my insides, because of this, severe stomach pains torment me; because I expressed displeasure at the imaginary insults of my brethren, who often partook of my table, because I was greedy - behold, I suffer in my belly. With what someone sins, he is punished [Wis. 11, 17]. Grant me, Lord, at least from now on to come to my senses completely and to endure with love the frequent guests who come to me. God! I am a sinner, a great sinner, have mercy on me! Generous! Grant me to be generous! Lender, to whom I owe ten talents, grant me to readily forgive my debtors who owe only ten talents. 35 Amen. Whether you eat or drink... do everything to the glory of God [1 Cor. 10, 31]. How do we eat and drink for the glory of God? – When we eat and drink in moderation, when we give thanks for food and drink, when we share a meal with our neighbors. Share your meal with your neighbors and eat for your health, or if you feel sorry for your neighbor’s food and drink, suffer from stomach pain and do not eat against your will. For whoever spares others food and drink will soon not eat himself, although for a while, for admonition. Grant, Lord, that I may completely give up pleasing my belly. Should I please my belly when I partake of Your life-giving Mysteries almost daily? When are You alone - my sweetest comfort? Is it possible for God and mammon to work? Oh, I, most malicious and most voluptuous, how often do I trample on the Blood of Thy Testament with my gluttony and delicacy and satiety! How often do I trample on it with my greed and stinginess! Will I please my belly so that it will then tyrannically torment me? Yes, it sometimes hurts very, very much and torments me with its severe pain. Will I taste a moment's sweetness in order to pay for a few minutes of sweetness with hours and days of illness? What imprudence! What stupidity! Feed your neighbor with joy, as you would yourself, more so as the Lord, and with a cheerful face accept his gratitude for the treat. Remember that the Lord Himself is in the person of your neighbor: you made Me... I was hungry, and you gave Me food [Matt. 25, 40, 35]. Teach your children also with joy, firmly believing that your good deed, like fragrant incense, goes back to the Lord Himself, the good Shepherd of His sheep, the Father of His children and the Brother of His lesser brethren. Remember every person that you are the image of God and by virtue of this image you are led to union with God for eternal bliss; as the image of God, with living faith in God, in His omnipotence, you can perform great deeds for the glory of God and the salvation of others, and even miracles; as the image of God, you must value all earthly blessings as nothing, and not in the least become attached to them in your heart, for they are unworthy of you and not akin to your spirit, [for] we will be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust [2 Pet. 1.4 ]; as the image of God, you must love your Prototype - God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your thought, and as all people are images of the living God, you must love every neighbor as yourself, for they are exactly the same as you, they have exactly the same dignity and rights as you as people, as Christians, as having one faith, one title, one hope, one God and Father of all [Eph. 4, 4 – 6]. Do not put anything above your brother: no money, no food and drink, no clothes, no jewelry - and always have respect for him, not violated by any petty everyday calculations. If he wrongs you in any way, forgive him or blame it on God: God will reward you. The treatment of mental illnesses (passions) is completely different from the treatment of physical illnesses. In physical illnesses, you need to dwell on the disease, caress the sore spot with mild remedies, warm water, warm poultices, etc., but in mental illnesses it is not so: if an illness has attacked you - do not dwell on it, do not caress it at all, do not indulge it, do not warm it, but beat, crucify it, do the completely opposite of what it requires: hatred of your neighbor has attacked you - quickly crucify it and immediately love your neighbor; stinginess has attacked - rather be generous; envy attacked - rather be kind; pride has attacked - quickly humble yourself to the ground; the love of money has attacked - rather, praise non-covetousness and be jealous of it; tormented by the spirit of enmity - love peace and love; If you are overcome by gluttony, quickly become jealous of abstinence and fasting. The whole art of treating illnesses of the spirit consists in not dwelling on them at all and not in the least indulging them, but immediately cutting them off. You are sick, and your illness is very painful: you have lost heart and are despondent, thoughts, one darker than the other, overwhelm you; your heart and your lips are ready for murmuring, blasphemy against God. My brother! Take sincere advice from me: endure your illness generously and not only do not be discouraged - on the contrary, if you can, rejoice in your illness. What is there to be happy about, you ask, when you are being broken up and down? Rejoice that the Lord has punished you with temporary punishment, that He may cleanse your soul from sins. Whom the Lord loves, he punishes [Prov. 3, 12]. Rejoice in the fact that you now do not satisfy those passions that you would satisfy if you were healthy; Rejoice that you bear the cross of illness and, therefore, walk the narrow and sorrowful path leading to the Kingdom. Diseases, to our eyes, are nothing but painful, unpleasant, terrible, but rarely do any of us during illness imagine the benefit that illness brings to our soul; but with the all-wise, all-good Provider of God, not a single illness will remain without benefit for our soul. Illnesses in the hands of Providence are the same as bitter medicines for our soul, healing its passions, bad habits and inclinations. Then not a single disease sent to us will return to the Lord. Therefore, we must keep in mind the benefits of illness, so that we can suffer more easily and calmly. He who suffers in the flesh ceases to sin [1 Pet. 4, 1], says the Scripture. The love of the Lord is greater than the love of a mother. My mother carried me in her womb and then brought me into the world by God’s dispensation; then she began to feed me, caress me, and carry me in her arms; when I became able to walk on my own, then she left me to carry me in her arms and even earlier stopped feeding me with her nipples. The Lord always, so to speak, carries me in His womb: He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, He says, and I in him [Jn. 6, 56], or: because you... are neither hot nor cold, then I will spit you out of My mouth [Rev. 3, 16 ]; always carries me in His arms: in My hands are your walls written, and before Me forever [Russian: I have inscribed you on My hands; your walls are always before Me] [Isa. 49, 16], upholding all things by the word of His power [Heb. 1, 3], - He is my strength, my peace, my sweetness, my joy, the light of my mind and heart; He constantly nourishes me, like a mother with breasts, with the various products of the earth; He is my strong food and inexhaustible drink. According to age, parents leave us and we them, for it is said: a man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife [Gen. 2, 24 ] (either in the actual sense understood, or in a figurative meaning: to Christ, Who is the highest and brightest love, more than a loving wife). The Lord, from the beginning of our existence until our death, does not leave us for a minute (ever before Me [Isa. 49:16]), every moment providing for us, like a kokosh 36 for his chicks; He is hope in our death, He is life after our death, He is our consolation at His Judgment: He will not put us to shame, and then He will lead us into the eternal abodes of the Kingdom of Heaven. You, Bogomati, gave birth to me who deified me (who made me a god). How much more so 37 You yourself are deified! Fasting brothers and sisters! Let us fear the petrified insensibility of our sins, let us fear the pride of our hearts, which says: I do not need forgiveness of sins, I am not guilty, I am not a sinner; or: my sins are light, human, as if they [must certainly be demonic]; or: It’s not bad for me to live in my sins. This is satanic pride, and Satan himself repeats such words in our hearts! Let us feel deeply, deeply, with all our hearts, our countless iniquities, we will sigh for them from the depths of our souls, we will shed tears of tenderness for them and we will appease the angry Master. Let us not justify ourselves in the least, like the hypocrite Pharisees, for, as it is said, no one living will be justified before God [Ps. 142, 2 ]; and if he is not justified, then with one sincere repentance of sins he can appease God. Let us abandon indifference and coldness, let us be diligent, not lazy, and fervent in spirit [Rom. 12, 11 ] to work for the Lord. Let us not forget that after a whole year of lawless life we ​​have now come to appease the Lord of our life and our righteous Judge. Is this a time of coldness and indifference, which is not approved even in the community when dealing with people? Shouldn't our whole soul turn into spiritual fire and pour itself out in tears of sincere repentance? Oh, our God! Our God! Our iniquities, in the proper sense, have multiplied more than the power of our head, more than the number of the sand of the sea, and we do not feel them, we are indifferent to them, we do not even stop loving them. What if You see through all our iniquities, Lord? Who then will stand before You, Lord! 38 Grant us all, Lord, a contrite spirit and a humble heart, so that we may bring You true repentance. Amen. When we pray, it is up to us to receive the gifts we ask from the Lord, due to the sincerity of our request. So, look: are you sincerely praying, do you want to receive what you ask with all your heart? Do you not pray with your lips alone, without the participation of your heart, without the hope of receiving from the Lord what you ask? In this case, do not expect to receive anything from God. You pray in one prayer for the sleep of the future: I am worthy of all condemnation and torment 39 . And so the Lord sends you illness to test you, whether you sincerely say these words, whether you recognize yourself as truly worth all condemnation and torment. Take care, beware of cowardice, despondency and murmuring during illness, but thank the Lord that He visited you with illness or sorrow for your sins. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. Don’t say: why did God send me such sorrow? - For your sins, they are countless. When your faith in the Lord during your life and prosperity or in illness and at the end of this life weakens and fades from the vanity of everyday life or from illness and from the horrors and darkness of death, then look with the intelligent eyes of your heart at the hosts of forefathers, patriarchs, prophets and righteous people (Simeon the God-Receiver, Job, Anna the prophetess and others), apostles, saints, martyrs, saints, unmercenaries, righteous and all saints. See how they continually looked to God during their lives, and when they left this life, dying in the hope of resurrection and eternal life, and be their imitator. These living examples, so numerous, are capable of confirming the wavering faith of every Christian in the Lord and in the future blessed life. Those Christian societies that do not venerate the saints and do not call on them in prayers lose much for piety and Christian hope. They deprive themselves of the great reinforcement of faith by the examples of people subservient to us. When your spirit becomes depressed in illness and begins to imagine death with horror, then calm and comfort your restless, trembling and sad heart with the following thoughts: Build everything with the depth of wisdom, lovingly, and give useful things to everyone 40, Our Creator and Master will certainly arrange for our good - whether life, illness, misfortune, sorrow, or death, so that you cannot wish for anything better. Don’t say: it would be too early for me to die, I would like to live a little longer for the glory of God, for the benefit of my relatives and neighbors, I would like to see the world again, to enjoy the blessings of earthly things. - Be grateful to the Lord for the fact that until now you have enjoyed His benefits, His mercies, His bounties. Now submit to His will, His calling. Regarding the fulfillment of what you ask from God in prayer: so believe that just as it is convenient for you to pronounce words, so it is convenient for the Lord, and incomparably more convenient, to fulfill every word of yours, and if there is a word, then there is also a deed, for the Lord does not have a word without deed: the word does not return to Him empty, according to His word 41 . Always remember in prayer that God exists, everything comes from Him - a thought about something, a word about something, a deed, and everything, that He is all-wise, all-powerful, all-good. How much people lose for home conversation, for enlivening it by not talking about God. How animated, fruitful and diversified their conversation would be! Believers would then have rivers flowing from the belly of their saving words [Jn. 7, 38]. How much such conversations would bring edification, soothing, true sweetness! Meanwhile, now, not talking about God in home circles, but talking about the vanity of the world, they soon become exhausted in conversation, get bored and then kill precious time in stupid games or dancing. The enemy of the human race noticed this weakness in people to engage in vain everyday conversations and generally spend time in vain amusements and derived enormous benefit for himself from this weakness: he started theaters and circuses - a true manifestation of vanity, a true mockery of human vanity, and the insane among people, prone to vanity, laziness, inaction, willingly visit these theaters and circuses, not finding for themselves a better occupation that would provide peace and pleasantness in their spirit. Vanity of vanities... all is vanity!... Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is all for man [Eccl. 1, 2; 12, 13]. If you ever decide to regret and not give to the servants what you yourself and your family ate, then remember the commandment of the Lord: love your neighbor as yourself [Mk. 12:31], and henceforth share with your servants all the gifts of the Lord’s goodness, unless they relate to objects of whim and do not pamper a person. When you feel in your heart the hellish fire of malice towards your neighbor or pity for corruptible food for him, pray to the Lord in your heart like this: Lord! grant me to love my neighbor as myself, and to wish for him with all my heart everything that I wish for myself. When you sincerely and with faith say these words in your heart, the fire of anger or stinginess will immediately go out, disappear, and peace and silence will settle in your heart. If we impartially consider the reasons for others’ hatred of us, as well as their rudeness, insolence and ingratitude towards us or failure in service, then it turns out that the cause of all this is mostly ourselves, our malice, ill will, stinginess, envy, irritability, internal negligence and other passions and weaknesses. Each one diligently examine himself and blame himself more for all the troubles caused by others. Who will harm you if you are zealous for good? [ 1 Pet. 3, 13]. Even though it’s hard, overcome it somehow, don’t sleep during the day and be active all day long: this refines the heart, lightens the flesh and makes prayer of the heart and every task convenient. Only sleep during the day as a last resort. Experience. And he sleeps well at night and gets up easily. Be patient with those who sin not only against you, but also against God, meaning God’s long-suffering towards sinners; do not be irritated and do not lose your temper when reprimanded, but instill in meekness the word of instruction, according to the advice of the Apostle [Jas. 1, 21]. It is an impossible task to live with sinners and not see their sins, not tolerate their inattention and negligence towards God and all works of piety. Moreover, we ourselves are sinners, often subject to the same negligence about pleasing God and saving our souls, therefore we must treat sinners all the more leniently. Do not be gluttonous and lacquered: in a belly filled with sweets lives voluptuousness and blasphemy against the sacred; the voluptuous belly is deaf to prayer. Spiritual sweetness is inaccessible to him, at least it is achieved with great difficulty, precisely when, through unsparing of the body in prayer, all the sweetness is knocked out of the belly, so to speak. Experience. In case of temptations from the enemy, stock up on patience and impartiality towards money and love for your neighbor. Temptation of February 24th day before confession. Remember the bounty of God’s love for mankind and provide yourself with these bounty of love for mankind. He sinned against the Lord: for his neighbor, for the image of God, he pitied corruption and because of decay he hated the image of the immortal King. The tempter is left with complete freedom to tempt us at any time and even when we most would not like to be tempted, when we are not ready for it, when we can conveniently fall from temptation. To get rid of temptation, the main thing is to value earthly blessings as nothing and to love God with all your heart, not preferring anything to Him, and to love your neighbor as yourself, not to prefer anything earthly to him, diligently leaving him his debts against us. With righteousness and true judgment, the Lord allows the temptations of the evil one to come upon us, may he awaken us from slumber and insensitivity of heart and may he kindle us with the fire of repentance for our sins, which are countless and which, out of self-love, we do not feel. Glory to the most merciful Creator that He, in the manifestation of His truth, allows the tempter to tempt and torment us, so that, having awakened from the petrified insensibility, laziness and relaxation of the heart, we will feel the entire abyss of evil in which we are immersed, and the horror of salvation embraces us, and let us realize our greatest sinfulness and lewdness, and let us not imagine ourselves for the sake of some good deeds, that we are righteous, yes Let us avoid Pharisaic hypocrisy, Pharisee pride and Pharisaic condemnation. You are righteous, Lord, and with righteousness and true judgment You bring all temptations upon us. In my heart I can enclose both God and people with faith and love, with the prayer of faith and love. How deep and spacious is the human heart! What a great man! The monarch is the father of the fatherland. Legal. There is one God and Father of all [Eph. 4, 6] – one and the father of his subjects. There is only one head of the human race - Adam. The ancestor of the Jewish people... United judges. Kings... If I become your true shepherd and father, then I know in advance that I will live in your grateful memory even after my death, and you will glorify me; and the less I care about your glory to me here on earth, with my diligent labors for your salvation, the more my glory will shine after death. Even a dead person will force you to talk about yourself. Such is the glory of those who work for the common good. Servants of God even now often imagine themselves mentally at the Last Judgment and bring their sins before the eyes of the Righteous and All-Holy. Lord, from Whom are all things and in Whom are all things, do not forsake me. My closeness! Have mercy on me! You are a voluntarily fallen being, corrupted by sin, - this is where the strongest motivation for you to pray is; you receive daily the greatest mercies from God - this is where there is a strong incentive to thank God; You daily contemplate the deeds of God’s omnipotence, wisdom and goodness - that’s where the motivation for daily praise lies! Do not be oblivious in your heart to kindness to everyone who comes to you, and especially to your table; do not squeeze your heart, but rejoice that you, like the Heavenly Father, can feed His children with corruptible food by grace, that you can, like Him, be merciful and generous. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful [Lk. 6, 36]. Thinking about anything everyday during divine services, especially, as at any other time, outrages, overshadows, oppresses my heart. The Lord has complete respect for the nature He created and its laws as a product of His infinite wisdom, therefore He usually accomplishes His will through the medium of nature and its laws, for example, when He punishes people or blesses them. Therefore, do not demand miracles from Him unless absolutely necessary. Be afraid to eat a lot when you do little or nothing at all - this is sacrilege, parasitism and suicide. But don’t hesitate to eat a lot when you work hard - this is necessary to strengthen your strength. Like chicks under the wing of a kokosh, so the whole world is under the wing of the Lord: all the Councils of Angels, all people, all animals. He enlightens everyone, warms us, and just as the kokosh hears the cries and sighs of the chicks under him, so the Lord hears our secret sighs, our prayers, our praises and thanksgivings, sees all our needs, notices all our tears. Therefore, in the prayer it is said like the Lord: cover us with the shelter of Your wing! 42 Take and cook in your heart what they sing and read. When you have contained it and, as it were, boiled it, turned it into juices, into blood, into life, then demand more, and if not, there is nothing to desire more. Worship is truly food, the heart is the stomach. The weakness of Christians cannot endure or digest prolonged worship. Monks have stronger stomachs. He is strengthened by constant prayer. And we are surrounded by the bustle of the world and live in it. When you perform incense, be all mentally in God, fixing your mind and heart on Him. Forget about yourself, offer all of yourself to God as a sacrifice on the altar of burnt offering, forget about human opinion, do not descend with your thoughts into the unity of this world, but be entirely in heaven - and you will be exalted, important without pride, calm, majestic. But if you think even for a moment about your own glory, about gaining people’s opinion for yourself, you will immediately lose your sublimity and peace of mind. Conduct yourself in this way in all your service to the Most High God: think of His one glory, fix your mind and heart on Him alone, and do not think about people, do not worry about pleasing them, do not think about how to earn their glory - and you will always be exalted, calm, majestic. At home, when you sit down at the table, avoid by all means greed in eating food and do not thereby expose your addiction to food and drink, like an animal. In this case, your heart reveals its love for food, and not for the Lord, for decay, and not for His holy word, for the corruptible waste, and not for the incorruptible waste of the Body and Blood of Christ. During prayer, one must put aside the satanic pride of mind and heart, which philosophizes in its own way and does not wholeheartedly agree with what is said in prayers. You just need to revere the content of the prayers, and not philosophize. If you pray somewhat hastily and do not feel peace in your heart, but confusion and coldness and pretense, stop and pray slowly, thinking with your heart about each word and trusting in your heart the power of each word; cry about your wretchedness and poverty and blindness and nakedness. After communion of the Holy Mysteries, as at any other time, avoid by all means greed in the consumption of food and the slightest satiety - do not clothe the spiritualized heart, do not burden the lungs. Greed for food and drink and satiety are an abomination to the Lord. (Do not eat fish or meat after communion, perhaps only a little.) Giving the heart to the love of food and drink, when it should belong to God, is reckless and inconsistent with nature: the heart is intended for the love of God and neighbor, and not for the love of anything perishable. So, never eat with greed, never eat hastily, for whoever eats hastily and greedily eats without reasoning and will certainly eat without measure. Calm prudence is needed everywhere, and it is certainly needed when eating and drinking; I need to think how I won’t eat more than my body requires, how I won’t turn food into an object of pleasure, how I won’t become like a dog, a pig, a wolf, a cat in greed and not become along with the dumb. We must remember that the devil has a habit of being very treacherous over us when we take food and drink with greed and haste. He always tries to use this as a means to overeating and drunkenness, for where there is addiction and unreasonableness, it is easy to go beyond the limit and easily bind oneself with the initially pleasant, but then heavy shackles of food and drink. The Lord, who created everything by measure, number and weight [Wis. 11, 21], for this reason he also gave reason to man, so that he would do everything prudently, in number, measure and weight, and so that he would always consume food and drink with prudence, number and measure, and not just according to the blind attraction of nature, like animals. Everyone who is greedy must also remember that the body cruelly punishes with illnesses those people who have turned food and drink into the purpose of life, into the pleasure of life and use it beyond measure; they often become ill in soul and body and die prematurely, and most importantly, even during their lifetime, their soul becomes like the souls of dumb animals, turns away from God, for it cleaves to food, and upon death is condemned to torment, as having voluntarily become like dumb, having neglected the growth of spiritual talents and having mocked the image of God. He who sows to his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption [Gal. 6, 8]. There cannot be love for one's neighbor in the heart of a greedy and gluttonous person: he is certainly stingy and eats 43 with the eyes and hearts of those who eat with him; he, like a cattle, does not like a common meal when this meal is his, but loves to eat alone, like cattle, like a bloodthirsty beast. Wisdom does not live in the heart of a greedy person, except when he ardently repents; he cannot be a wise adviser, for his wisdom is drowned out by sensual, bestial pleasures. If your prayer is sluggish and cold and does not bring you the fruits of peace and lightness in your heart, then it happens because of your lack of faith or oblivion that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit look at you as you pray. Be firmly and vividly confident that the Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is looking at you - and lethargy and languor will disappear from your heart and immediately life-giving peace and lightness will be established in it. (Experience.) Otherwise we pray like mercenaries, like slaves, as if behind the eyes of the Heavenly Father. Manifestation of satanic pride in people. Pride usually shows itself in the fact that those infected with it make themselves equal to everyone, or at least many, who are superior to themselves in age, in power, in ability, and cannot tolerate being inferior to them. If a proud person is a subordinate, he does not respect the boss as he should, does not want to obey him, does not respect his orders, carries them out reluctantly, out of fear; if he is a learned, [falsely] educated person, he equates himself with all educated people and does not give preference to anyone or to a very, very few; if he is a learned or even unlearned son or daughter, he does not pay due respect to parents or nurturers and benefactors, especially simple and rude ones, considering them equal to himself, similar to himself in everything. The subject compares the king with himself, saying: he is the same person, and condemns him, saying: he has such and such weaknesses, what kind of king is this? You must be extremely careful not to compare yourself with others in any respect, and to place yourself below everyone else, even if you really were in some way better than many or equal to very many. Everything good in us comes from God, not ours. This is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God: not from works, so that no one can boast [Eph. 2, 8 – 9]. All this is shared by one and the same Spirit... 44 But how can I be proud of someone else’s good and be equal to those who are placed above me by God Himself and public trust? So, do not sit in the first place, lest one of those called by him be more honorable... everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humiliates himself will be exalted [Lk. 14, 8, 11]. Pride in faith manifests itself in the fact that the proud dares to put himself as a judge of faith and the Church and says: I don’t believe this and I don’t recognize this, I find this superfluous and this is unnecessary, but this is strange or funny! Pride in faith also reveals itself as boasting in the imaginary knowledge of everything, while it knows very little or is completely blind with the eyes of the soul. This is not worth reading, he says, he knows; These sermons are not worth reading - they all contain the same things that I already know. A great degree of human pride is revealed when a mere mortal dares to compare himself with the saints of God and does not see their great and wondrous perfections, acquired by their own exploits with the assistance of the grace of God, perfections that God Himself crowned and glorified in them. He says: “Why will I honor them, especially pray to them? They are the same people; I pray to God alone,” but does not know that God Himself commands us to ask for the prayers of the righteous for ourselves: only His face will I accept [Job. 42, 8]. Pride is also revealed in the insensibility of one’s sins, in the Pharisaic self-justification and self-praise, in the insensitivity of God’s mercies, in ingratitude to God for all that is good, in the inability to feel the need to glorify the magnificence of God. All those who do not pray to the Lord Almighty, the God of spirits and all flesh, to their own belly, do not pray out of secret pride. Thanks be to my Lord that He delivered me from the enemy of oppression and the burning of my heart with stinginess and gave me the grace to entertain my guests with a calm and cheerful spirit, thinking of them as images of God and with love for them, and of corruptible food as a passing shadow. I thank the Lord that He gave me, through my prayer, a free and spacious heart. The grace of my Lord Jesus Christ gives me the strength to triumph over the machinations of the enemy, over the passions of the flesh, to count the corruptible blessings of this world as nothing, and to rejoice over what people grieve about and because of which people are angry, who do not resort to prayer to the Lord for His all-powerful help. (So ​​yesterday I was calm and majestic by the grace of God from the elevation of my spirit above the corruptibles, while at another time the enemy kicked me and plunged me into oppression and evil despondency from regret about their destruction.) My Lord is merciful and graciously heeds my prayer and tangibly saves me with His mania. Glory to Thee, my Savior! Passions struggle with me, but You Yourself intercede and save me, my Savior! I appealed to the Lady, to Her Kazan Icon for deliverance from the fiery oppression of the enemy, and She delivered me. One must gaze with the eyes of the heart into Her most merciful, maternal, God-bearing womb. When Satan gnaws and pours his poison into your heart, cry out to the Lord from the bottom of your heart with clairvoyant faith: Father, Son, Holy Soul, have mercy on me - and immediately the wound will heal, confusion and oppression will pass. When, during the prayer to the Mother of God, you do not find in your heart the appropriate reverence for Her, but feel evil and blasphemous thoughts, then exclaim in your heart the following words of praise that are appropriate to Her: all You, Lady, are light, all are holy, all are goodness, all are wisdom, all You can, as the Mother of the Almighty, You are always one and the same all-perfect one, like the Mother of the all-perfect King of glory. When you pray to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, our only God in the Trinity, do not look for Him outside yourself, but contemplate Him in yourself, as living in you, completely penetrating you and knowing you. Don't you know that you are the church of God (God in the Trinity), and the Spirit of God lives in you? [ 1 Cor. 3, 16]. I will dwell in them and walk (and walk with them), and I will be their God [2 Cor. 6, 16]. God! You penetrate me and know, says David in Psalm 138. When Satan burns and constricts your insides with the desire for money for your neighbor, reject in your thoughts and in your heart all hope for it and say sincerely: You, Lord, are my hope! Tell the Lord the same thing when you, of necessity, have to spend your income somewhere. When we talk about the God of glory, about His will and His law, then we must completely forget about our own glory and completely immerse ourselves in the contemplation of the glory of God or His all-wise and all-good will; We should not then even think about our shortcomings, which the devil introduces into our consciousness and into our feelings in order to lower us in our own eyes and plunge us into false shame, despondency and despair. We must remember that there is no perfection on earth in anything, nor in the word: we know in part, and we prophesy (preach) in part [1 Cor. 13, 9]. And whoever is ashamed and blushes for his imperfections is ashamed of the ghost that appears to him in his own imagination, and he is proud of his imaginary perfections. When, during prayer, you doubt the possibility of fulfilling any of your requests, then remember that on the part of God, everything is possible to bestow upon you, except for direct evil, which is characteristic only of the devil; that your very word or your very request for something is already a sure guarantee on your part that its fulfillment is possible, for if I could only think about something, whether it is possible for me or impossible, then this something is certainly possible for the Lord, for whom one thought is a deed, if He deigns to carry it out. Yes, and for you this requested good already exists in word and only does not exist in deed, but for this, that is, for carrying out the request in fulfillment, He has a Son - the Creator, and for that the Holy Spirit is the Perfecter. To the ability to accomplish everything add His infinite goodness, according to which He is the ever-flowing source of both being and all the gifts of being. He is the God of gifts, the God of mercy and generosity. Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you [Matt. 7, 7]. Add to this the wisdom of God, which in its gift knows how to choose for us the best, the most appropriate good to our spiritual and physical state. On your part, what is required is firm, undoubted confidence in the possibility of the Lord fulfilling your request, and also that your request is certainly good, about something good, and not about something bad. He will give, it is said, good things to those who ask Him [Matthew 7:11]. I have seen and heard people who, with slyness and gloating, talk about some dark spots in the life and activities of great and even holy people, and because of these dark spots, imaginary or true, they condemn a person’s whole life, calling him a hypocrite and almost an apostate. They will present you with facts, only these facts are as dark and doubtful as their suspicious, crafty soul is dark, which from someone else’s stain, from someone else’s sin, from someone else’s weakness wants to extract for itself an imaginary justification for its vicious deeds. But they will not justify themselves, and moreover they will incur condemnation upon themselves for the fact that they see the mote in their brother’s eye and condemn him, but do not feel the logs (truly logs) in their own eye [Matt. 7, 3]. You say: this holy father or this pious man has such and such sins. What then? - He's a man. But no one is sinless. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us [1 John. 1.8]. But are you without sin? If not, why are you throwing a stone of condemnation at your brother? If I began to analyze your life according to the word of God, then in your own words I would condemn you in countless and grave sins: in pride, and in arrogance, and in unbelief, in fornication and adultery, and in misinterpretation of the word of God and the commandments of God, and in coldness towards your faith, and you never know what! I would find that perhaps your whole body is dark, because your heart's eye is deceitful. Oh! How disgusting this is to me - the devil’s gloating about the sin of one’s neighbor, this hellish effort to prove his true or imaginary weakness. And people who do this still dare to say that they respect and try with all their might to fulfill the law of love for God and neighbor! What kind of love for one's neighbor is there when even in great and holy people they deliberately want to see and look for dark spots: for one sin they denigrate his whole life and do not want to cover up the sin of his neighbor, if he really exists. They forgot that love... covers everything [1 Cor. 13, 4, 7] (talk about Filaret). How much evil these moral worms do to themselves and others! They undermine the legitimate respect for a famous person in many, darken her light for them and distract them from imitation of her, and confuse their souls with thoughts of condemnation and harm themselves by accepting from the devil the poison of condemning their neighbor. Brother! Who are you, judging another man's slave? Before his Lord he stands, or he falls. And he will be raised up, for God is able to raise him up [Rom. 14, 4]. Having called the Holy Spirit to the Gifts presented on the throne and sanctified them with the prayer of transposition, remember that heaven and earth will pass away, but the words of the Lord will not pass away [Matt. 24, 35], that bread and wine are certainly transformed into the Body and Blood of the Lord according to the will of the Lord Himself and according to the action of the Holy Spirit. About prayer. The Kingdom of Heaven, it is said, is laborious, and the needy [Russian: those who use effort] delight it [Matt. 11, 12]. So, you need to constantly force yourself to truth and goodness; Thus, in prayer, you must at every moment force yourself to pronounce every word with strength, truly, from the heart; in the event of a mistake, inattention to one’s heart, or forcing oneself to be sincere, the prayer will be hypocritical, false, and ungodly. You need to say the words of prayer convincingly for yourself: when the prayer words are convincing for you, then they will be convincing for God, and without convincing yourself, do not think of convincing God with your prayer to grant you any good. God gives according to our hearts: the more sincerity and heartfelt fervor in prayer, the more generous the gift. Remember, man, that you are both a moral and a physical nonentity: moral, because you are all sin, passion, weakness, and physical, because your body is the dust of the earth, and in order to vividly, tangibly depict your insignificance before God, ancient people, and even some today, sprinkled and continue to sprinkle their heads with ashes, taking off the light clothes that feed vanity and vanity in immortal human spirit. So, man, the slightest good in you is from God, like the smallest trickle of air that is in you or is inhaled by you - from the air around you. You entered someone else’s house, which has now become yours through the wife you took from this house, and back: from now on, graft yourself onto it with your heart and be not only externally, according to the law of marriage, one branch with your wife’s family, or vice versa, a wife with her husband’s family, but also internally, spiritually; Strive from now on to maintain unity of spirit with all your household in a bond of peace. Try to have peace with everyone and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord [Heb. 12, 14]. Otherwise, very many, having been grafted into another clan externally through marriage, are not grafted into it internally, and from this internal disunity arise enmity, disorder, and domestic troubles. God's commandment commands you: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 19, 19; 22, 39]. So that the imaginary difficulty of this commandment disappears before your eyes or before your consciousness, always imagine humanity, especially Christianity, as one great tree, whose original root and decayed by sin is Adam, and the subsequent one, living and life-giving, is Christ, who supports and waters us all with the grace-filled waters of the Holy Spirit. Let us all drink of one Spirit [1 Cor. 12, 13]. Look at a tree covered with leaves: how all the leaves hang together on the tree, how they all abundantly feed and drink from the same root, on the same trunk, and if any leaf falls away from the unity of the whole, it will soon decay. You see a beautiful unity out of many, identity for each other and, as it were, mutual love - be you, a leaf on the tree of the human race, one with the whole tree, with all the other branches and leaves, and don’t say: I want to live by myself and for myself. No, try to be one with humanity in the spirit of peace and love. Let each one not only take care of himself, but each one also of others [Phil. 2, 4]. We, the strong, must endure the weaknesses of the powerless and not please ourselves. For Christ did not please Himself... Each of us must please our neighbor, for good, for edification [Rom. 15, 1, 3, 2]. Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ [Gal. 6, 2]. Look more often at the kinship of every person, especially a Christian, with you, at his origin from the one God with you, from the one forefather and, according to the font of regeneration, from the one Christ God and the Holy Spirit. Remember often that we are members of Christ and are also members of each other. We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones [Eph. 5, 30]. Remember that, according to Gregory, you are a particle of the Divine and must unite with God; therefore, do not associate yourself with anything earthly, alien to you, corruptible and transitory, with anything - this is death for the soul; Have unity of spirit with people like you. Be... of one mind [1 Pet. 3, 8]. Righteous people will all be one in one God. May they all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so may they also be one in Us [Jn. 17, 21], Jesus Christ prayed to the Heavenly Father, and His prayer will certainly be fulfilled. Love each person as a part of yourself, as your member and a member of Christ. Glory to the Most Holy, Consubstantial and Life-Giving Trinity: the devil will pinch his side with displeasure and hatred of his neighbor because of something worldly, carnal; It will become hard for me, painful, but I will rise and lift up my heart’s eyes to the Trinity and say: Father, Son, All-Holy Soul, have mercy on me, - and I myself look at the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as the very essence of the Most Holy Trinity, essentially present everywhere, and even in a single word; look, it will be done immediately and easily, and the enemy will flee from the all-powerful and ever-worshipped name, like smoke disappears. Glory to Thee, Holy and Consubstantial and Life-Giving and Indivisible Trinity! Most Holy Trinity, teach me to despise everything earthly, teach me to place peace, contentment, bliss, life in You alone! Holy Trinity! Keep me from pride and teach me humility! You kindly and quickly listen to me and save me; I can become proud of this mercy, turn Your infinite goodness and mercy into an excuse for self-praise: supposedly I myself was worthy of such attention as having done something good! Cover me, most merciful Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Soul, with Your shelter from all sin. February 28th day, 1862. Ten o'clock in the morning. And so as not to become proud because of the gracious attention of the Most Holy Trinity to you and the salvation She gives you, remember that She graciously listens to every worm, every chick, every pup. Remember also that many Christians, who have created many powers in the name of God, will one day hear from. The Lord says: Depart from Me... I do not know you [Lk. 13, 27] – for his non-evangelical life. Again I called out to the Trinity in the straits of the enemy, and again I now received salvation and relief. And in order to clear the eyes of the heart and gaze upon the Holy Trinity with faith and beg Her for mercy, one must certainly fast: food clogs the heart, even though it is spiritual, and the devil conveniently hides in food taken immoderately and greedily. When you say to yourself in your heart or pronounce the name of God: Lord, or: the Most Holy Trinity, or: Lord of hosts, Lord Jesus Christ, then in this name you have the whole being of the Lord, in it - His infinite goodness, boundless wisdom, unapproachable light, omnipotence, immutability. With the fear of God, with faith and love, touch this all-creating, all-containing and all-governing name with your thoughts and heart. This is why the commandment of God strictly forbids taking the name of God in vain, because His name is He Himself, the one God in Three Persons, a simple being, depicted and contained in a single word and at the same time not contained, that is, not limited by it. Real life is not a joke or a toy, and yet people have turned it into a joke and a toy: they frivolously play with the time given to prepare for eternity, they play with idle words; they will gather for a visit, sit and chat idlely, and then sit down to play one way or another; they gather in the theater - and there only the actors and those watching their action are amused; are amused by their mental gifts and human weaknesses or virtues, the ability to speak and write well; they even amuse themselves with food and drink, using them in excess and delicacy, instead of using them only for the necessary saturation; they play with their clothes; they amuse themselves with their faces; They amuse themselves with their children, instead of raising them in faith, piety and the fear of God. Their whole life is fun. But woe to those who amuse themselves. ABOUT! How terrible it is to eat and drink for fun, to become satiated and drunk! A well-fed womb loses faith and fear of God and becomes insensitive to prayer, to thanksgiving, to the praise of God. A well-fed heart turns away from the Lord and becomes like a stone, hard and insensitive. That is why the Savior carefully warns us against overeating and drunkenness, lest the day of death suddenly come upon us because of the Lord’s anger against us for frivolous and idle spending of time in food and drink [Lk. 21, 34]. Take care by all means that before the service of the Liturgy, especially early, you do not eat much in the evening, but as moderately as possible: tea with one roll, no more, and nothing more edible: no oatmeal, nothing like that. Otherwise, the enemy can strongly stifle our heart with some passion, for example, envy, stinginess, malice and the like. A similar thing happened to me in the second week of Great Lent on Saturday before, during and after the liturgy. I barely escaped the mouth of the lion and the serpent. Do not desire or look for a spacious and beautiful apartment, elegant, soft and expensive clothes, pleasant foods and drinks - honey, beer and others: all this pampers the body and spirit and makes the soul carnal, impatient; In general, do not want everything to happen according to your desire, because if you meet anything contrary to your desire, you will become irritated and indulge in anger and thus lose the spirit of Christ’s meekness and humility, you will find yourself a despiser of His commandment: learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart [Matt. 11, 29]. Also: do not wear precious and soft clothes, they are God’s condemnation on the priest: so, it seems, the oath of God weighs on you. Remember the word of the Savior: Those who wear soft garments are in the palaces of kings [Matt. 11, 8]. Don’t go to dinners, balls or evenings - and this greatly weakens the soul and removes you from God. Do not love the world, nor the things in the world... For everything that is in the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but from this world [1 John. 2, 15–16]. Don’t dance, for dancing is the work of an empty and frivolous soul, like Herodias. The feet of a person, it is said, will announce what is about him [Russian: a person’s gait shows his property] [Sir. 19, 27]. As a person satisfies his sensuality, he becomes carnal and removes from himself the Most Holy Spirit of God, Who cannot dwell in people who live a carnal life: What does light have in common with darkness? [ 2 Cor. 6, 14]. This tear-worthy condition is experienced by many people and - alas! They do not recognize that they do not have the Spirit of God in them, just as those who were blind from birth do not realize the great loss that they do not see the light. So people do not have faith and love in their hearts and the spirit of prayer, and they run away from fellowship with the Church. My God! How many dangers there are in life for me! I become my own greatest enemy, while I dream of being my own friend when I satisfy my flesh. If you want to curb the passions of your heart, deny yourself food, especially tasty and fattening food, and then through the prayer of faith you will easily overcome the uprisings of passions. I thank the all-powerful and all-saving Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Sweetest Jesus, my life, together with the lives of the Father and the Holy Spirit - Three and One Life 46, as it saved me from the tyranny of passion and the devil through my prayer, saved me quickly, saved me with a sweet, tangible salvation. May the new experience confirm my soul in the faith that my life is the only Lord; everything earthly is vanity and dust. March 1st, 1862. Before great holidays, we must be extremely careful not to eat immoderately, otherwise the enemy will greatly hinder us and deprive us of the opportunity to rejoice on the holiday and plunge us into sorrow, cramped conditions, despondency and despair. When you spare for your neighbors expensive and pleasant food, which you yourself do not want to eat due to the need for abstinence or for the sake of the honor of the received Mysteries, for the sake of the sweetest spiritual meal of the Body and Blood of Christ, then tell yourself that your neighbors very rarely have the happiness, pleasure and joy of partaking of the sweetest, incorruptible, most joyful meal of the Body and Blood of Christ, but as a person cannot to live without consolation in life, then they should at least have carnal consolation in the absence of spiritual consolation. And for what else, if not for consolation, if not for our pleasure, did our most generous and honored Lord give us an abundance of various sweets from plants and animals, fish and birds? Let us only eat and drink to the glory of God, in moderation, without partiality, thanking God and sharing food with those who need it. I am a persecutor of Christ, for I persecute Him incessantly with worldly lusts and passions. I am the murderer of Christ, for I crucify the Son of God through the passions that act in me a thousandfold; I am prodigal, for I often leave Christ, with whom I was united in Baptism, especially in the life-giving Mysteries, and cleave to the corruption of the earth and to the enemy of Christ - the devil. I leave my God and create for myself idols of many different passions: pride, lack of faith, avarice, love of money, envy, enmity, despondency, despair, laziness, negligence, adultery, man-pleasing, I bow to them and serve them. Builders of houses. You build material, perishable houses, temporary dwellings of idleness and vanity, but do not furnish and decorate your inner, spiritual, eternal home? - Reckless. Take care of your soul, adorn it with the virtue of mercy towards the poor. Create the well-being of your neighbor, may the Lord Jesus Christ create your eternal salvation. To the silver lover. You collect everything for yourself, but you don’t grow rich in God, you don’t enrich your soul with good deeds! Remember: perishable wealth is in vain: if this night your soul is taken from you; who will get what you have prepared? [ OK. 12, 20]. And where will your soul, which worked for wealth and not for God? Every living man is all vanity [Ps. 38, 6]. Man is like vanity [Ps. 143, 4]. About prayer. When praying, you need to bring every word to your heart and feel with your heart the truth and power of every word. This will be prayer in spirit and truth, according to the word of the Savior [John. 4, 24]. For example, I say: God! Cleanse me, a sinner! Saying: God! - I must feel that God is with me and in this very word: God! Saying: cleanse, I must sincerely desire the cleansing of my sins and imagine the goodness of the Lord, cleansing our countless sins. Saying: “me, a sinner,” I must know and feel vividly my iniquities. Go hastily to fulfill every need when anyone calls you, remembering that you must be, according to the word of the Savior, a servant of all [Matt. 20, 26; 23, 11; Mk. 9, 35; 10:43] and that disobedience is a sin equal to idolatry: just as sin is idolatry, so sin is disobedience [1 Sam. 15, 23], and that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme Shepherd, was obedient even to our death for the sake of salvation, and death on the cross [Phil. 2, 8]. When the enemy oppresses and burns you with stinginess, defeat him with the words of the Savior: man will not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God [Matt. 4, 4], - about the verb by which everything was created and everything created is kept in being. And so tell him that it is not bread alone that is the means to support a person’s life, but every word of the Lord God can support him in sensory-spiritual existence, like Moses, Elijah and others. There is no doubt that if the Lord, the essence of wisdom and omnipotence, wanted to create, He would have created the entire visible world in an instant, because He is an omnipotent and simple being and everything with Him can be done in an instant, for nothing is higher or stronger than Him, and if He could not create the world in an instant, then He would be, so to speak, more powerless than the world, being unable to bring it from non-existence into existence with a simple wave of thought and will His own: thought ecu, and appeared [Russian: appeared] [Judith. 9, 5 – 6]. Both the wisdom of God and the essence of the world - complex, rough, inert, finite - demanded that the world be created not suddenly, but gradually. But we must remember that He is all-wise with omnipotence, and, creating the material world, He at the same time had to outline and consecrate for it the laws of space and time, as for a complex, inert, weak being, and give us the law of space and time, or gradualism. And this space and time is a necessary form, a condition of existence of finite, created beings, otherwise they cannot be. God alone is infinite. However, even then the Lord did everything quickly, although every day. As He spoke, and was, He commanded, and was created [Ps. 148, 5]. Remember also that the heavens and the earth, according to the word of the Lord, themselves had to be arranged by the forces given to them by God, and this is all the more amazing because the inert, complex, lifeless substance itself had to be arranged and organized under the influence of the Spirit of God, for which, of course, time was needed: let the water gather... let the dry land appear... let the earth grow... let there be lights in the firmament of heaven... let the water produce reptiles, living soul; and let the birds fly over the earth, across the firmament of heaven... let the earth produce living souls... [Gen. 1, 9, I, 14, 20, 24]. How can there not be gradualism here? Do you demand from a baby that as soon as he is born, he walks and talks and writes essays and does business? Isn't this reckless? However, the creatures of the world were formed quickly during creation, in one day, by a special action of the [creative Spirit]. Do not forget that the whole world with all its creatures exists in space and time, that it arose from nothing gradually, and that now living and inanimate creatures also come from nothing under the influence of the law of space and time; May we see in practice and constantly remember that the Lord (who created and is creating everything from nothing) has brought and is bringing everything from non-existence into existence, that we are very weak creatures, limited by the laws of space and time, and achieve perfection only over time with the powers given to us by the Lord. Yes, this should show us our limitations and weakness and inspire us that only God is unlimited, or limitless and omnipotent, and strongly encourage us to humility before the infinite God, before this most perfect, purest and simplest being, not subject to any conditions of limitation. So, the world was not created suddenly, not in an instant, because it, being complex, spatio-temporal, would not have contained this in itself - it is not spirit: not everyone can accommodate this word... Whoever can contain it, let him contain it [Matt. 19, 11, 12]. Finite, complex beings had to appear under the form of time and space, for only a simple, infinite Being is above all time and space. But that the Lord, out of extreme need, can suddenly, instantly create different creatures or transform them, He showed this by turning the staff of Moses into a serpent, transforming fire into dew (instant), water into blood, dust of the earth into midges, a man into a pillar of salt (Lot’s wife), water into wine. He also shows this in the greatest Sacrament of Communion, for bread and wine are instantly transformed into the most pure, animated and divine Body and Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, according to the unchanging goodwill of the Father through the action of the Holy Spirit. Man, as a being limited in his abilities and strengths, cannot suddenly accommodate spiritual perfections, but can develop or acquire them gradually. For him, earthly life is a field for achieving perfection and virtue with the help of God’s grace. And the Angels did not suddenly become perfect, but gradually; some of them even fell, while others quickly rose to perfection. Remember that the performance of the life-giving Mysteries is the unchangeable will of the Life-giving Trinity, predetermined from the foundation of the world, and it cannot not be, and when you perform the Mysteries, then God the Father Himself, by His Holy Spirit, transforms bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. You are only a tool. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit Himself in you performs the liturgy, its power and performs the Gifts. You bring and offer, they say, Christ our God. Remember God’s immutability and faithfulness in all His words [Ps. 144, 13]. I, accursed one, do not see my brother’s spiritual treasures, but I see in him a bitch of sin and condemn my brother; I see in myself imaginary spiritual treasures and do not see the log of sin - and I rise above my brother. Oh, my blindness! Oh, my pride! Whoever is stingy and spares food and drink for his brother and puts money, food and drink above his brother, sells his brother for pieces of silver, like Judas Christ. For Judas also spared myrrh and money for Christ. But Christ is in us. Everyone must always remember that our flattering, most dangerous enemy, constantly seeking our destruction - our flesh - is always with us, and we urgently need to fight against it, not to please it, especially in fasting, for the pleasing flesh creates the most powerful warfare against the spirit with carnal passions. I thank the Lord, who pacified and blessed me with His Presanctified Holy Gifts on the heel of the Second Week of Great Lent. And he served for my father’s brother Matthew, and he served outside the city at the cemetery on the fortieth day of Sinebryukhov. Then you will worthily, with firm, unfeigned faith and love, partake of the life-giving Mysteries, when you leave your addiction to food and drink, when you stop eating with greed, when you leave your covetousness or love of money. Only then will you perform the Sacrament of Repentance worthily, when you are not selfish, but loving, when you are patient and not irritable. Oh, what great love is needed for the souls of our neighbors in order to confess them worthily, without haste and without getting excited! The confessing priest must remember that there is joy in heaven for one sinner who repents [Lk. 15, 10]. How should he try to arouse repentant feelings in those who repent, who do not know what to repent of, as it should be. The priest must also remember how the Apostle taught each of the newly enlightened Christians day and night, teaching with tears [Acts. 20, 31]. All selfishness in the work of God must be cast aside - the reward must be placed in the one God, the lover of souls. During confession, the devil stands on the right side of the priest to resist him [Zech. 3:1] throughout the entire celebration of the Sacrament, in order to prevent the priest from confessing calmly, sensibly and rationally as much as possible, in order to inflame him into impatience, in order to darken his heart and mind; from those who confess, it takes away the feeling of their sins, makes them cold, unresponsive, ignorant of their sins. Don’t be hasty: whoever is in a hurry, pursuing another, extraneous goal when doing something (and not that one), whose heart is double, is impatient and cannot do things in good faith, because his attention is distracted by an extraneous goal. When confessing, do not pursue the goal of collecting more money - but rather for vacation. Work like an ox. It's not often you get to work like this. Remember the words of the apostle: In labor we multiply [Russian: much more] [2 Cor. 11, 23]. Don't look for a person's property, but for the person himself. Prepare for confession by prayer and fasting, arouse in yourself a thirst to work with all zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of human souls. Give up calmness and self-indulgence in general during confession and for the entire time of serving the verbal sheep. Surrender yourself completely, put yourself into the salvation of your neighbors. Keep in mind the example of the Lord, who says: now I will rise... I will rely on salvation, I will not complain about it 47 [Ps. 11, 6]. Meditate and gain wisdom for the salvation of human souls. Teach, reprove, rebuke, plead with all longsuffering [2 Tim. 4, 2]. Read the Gospel, the Acts of the Holy Apostles and the Apostolic Epistles with the Apocalypse more often in order to learn how to save sinners. Rejoice when the work of confession comes, in the hope that with this work you will greatly please your Master Jesus Christ, Who came for this purpose, as it were, to call sinners to repentance [Matt. 9, 13], - it means that you are doing the kindest, most dear work for your Christ, - equally in the hope that this work will not exhaust, but will strengthen your body, according to the immutable and everlasting dispensation of the Life-Giver. Yes, this work strengthens, if we at least do it conscientiously, both our soul and body, so that our soul becomes stronger in faith, hope and love for God and in virtue, and the heart becomes purer (who cleanses others, how can he not cleanse himself?), and the body becomes stronger, so that for our sleep, for strengthening our bodily strength after confession, we need only the least amount of time, from four to five hours - and that’s enough. You see, there is no excuse for you to indulge in ardor, impatience and anger in confession, as well as haste, thirsting for your own enrichment and bodily peace. Be calm, strong, important, reasonable, slow, unselfish, Christ-loving, soul-loving, diligent, hardworking, despising bodily rest. Ask about sins and teach with firmness and sincerity, and not sluggishly and with a divided heart: a firm word will evoke firm repentance, will soon pierce the heart and cause tears of tenderness and contrition of the heart. But if the priest asks not firmly, but sluggishly, double-mindedly, then the spiritual child, seeing the sluggishness and double-mindedness of his spiritual father, is not himself mentally and heartily disposed to repent. I thank the One who punished me with the fiery scourges of Satan, who admonished me for the movement of the passion of envy towards my brother in his material profit and in his lawless deed - in the quick confession of the sins of his spiritual children. Instead of feeling sorry for my brother and admonishing him, I envied him for committing lawlessness, and turned out to be a zealot not of God, but of the devil, not of the glory of God, but of the glory of the devil. I should silently say to the one who abuses the priceless shrine of the Spirit for profit: let your silver perish with you [Acts. 8, 20]. Meanwhile, I was jealous. Great is my sin! Those who have sinned before You, Master! Do you really deserve condemnation and torment from the Lord for confession and those spiritual children who come to you? What would happen, what condemnation would you not deserve, if there were incomparably more of them? How would you deal with them? If this number of spiritual children is far from being due to your weakness, then what can be said about more? Do not rush to confess out of [envy] of your comrade who confesses quickly and a lot. Remember [...]: Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord carelessly [Jer. 48, 10]. And repentance is primarily the work of the Lord, who said about Himself: I have come to call... sinners to repentance [Matt. 9, 13; Mk. 2, 17; OK. 5, 32]. Murder will out. So the devil, this all-evil, all-evil slayer, cannot hide in our hearts: now you will feel him like a goring and wounding awl, now like a consuming fire, now like overwhelming lead, now like embarrassment, now like relaxing laziness, now like hellish coldness and insensibility; In general, you feel like a slave, bound in your heart, restless, internally depressed. By their fruits you will know them. Do they gather grapes from thorn bushes? or from fig thistles? [Matt. 7, 16]. So, from Satan there has never been and never will be any sweet fruit: like thorns, he always butts our soul. The Lord for me is a stone that exudes an abundant drink of life, a field that endlessly grows for me classes of life-giving food, and an endless treasury of spiritual and at the same time bodily clothing. He is my life, my refuge, my help, my strength and strength, my peace, my sweetness, my joy. He is my every good. By teaching others not to envy, not to love money, not to be angry, not to be proud, not to be stingy - aren’t you teaching yourself [Rom. 2, 21 ]? You see: a murderer kills your soul, exhausts and corrupts your body with passions - won’t this make you understand? Remember at least your prayer to the Lord, in which you called yourself an unrequited sinner, unable to offer any justification or apology. Don’t be mad in advance, lest the villain completely kill you. Do not be jealous of evildoers, do not envy those who do iniquity, for they, like grass, will soon be cut down and, like green grass, they will wither. Trust in the Lord and do good; live on earth and keep the truth [Ps. 36.1–3]. God is a jealous God [Exodus 20:5] - He does not tolerate us loving anyone or anything more than Him, placing our hope in anyone or anything other than Him: He severely punishes and torments us for this through the tormentor the devil. I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images [Isa. 42, 8]. Do not trust in man: cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes the flesh his support, and whose heart departs from the Lord [Jer. 17, 5]. Don't rely on money, food, drink. Otherwise, the Lord will be jealous and punish you. Imagine by your strength the omnipotence and magnificence of the Hypostatic Word of God. He speaks - and His words immediately become multiform and varied being; says: let there be light - and light appears; says: let there be a firmament - and the firmament appears; says: let the waters that are under the heaven be gathered into one place... let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven... let the water bring forth reptiles... [Gen. 1, 3, 6, 9, 14, 20 ] and so on - and everything appears according to His word, like the army of God. So the voice of the leader, resounding in the air and reaching the ears of the warriors, moves them as the leader of the army pleases, putting them in various positions, directing them to various actions, achieving through them the fulfillment of their various intentions and goals. Imagine these thunders of created matter, imagine how huge mountains emerged from the earth according to God’s word, what the sound of the waters was when they gathered into oceans, seas and rivers and springs; imagine how the air filled up, imagine how suddenly the most diverse vegetation appeared at one word of the All-Creator God; imagine how the stars appeared and shone and began to make their endless circuits, how suddenly fish, birds, reptiles, animals and, finally, man appeared. And all this is from the same ugly substance, or, more precisely, from only four soulless, formless, lifeless elements. Doesn’t the mind marvel at all of these? For Thy works are magnified, O Lord: I have done all things with wisdom ecu [Ps. 103, 24 ]! So now the Lord creates from matter, he wishes, he speaks, and it happens. I thank Thee, Lord my God, for Thou hast granted me the grace to show hospitality to my brethren with love and generosity, and has not allowed stinginess to overcome me, and has not allowed my enemy to gain a foothold over me, who initially troubled me before the meal with pity and hostile separation from the brethren. Confirm in me, O God, this which you have done ecu [Ps. 67, 29]. How did I overcome stinginess? – In the words of Holy Scripture about the unity of love among ourselves: we are members of one another [Eph. 4:25], and: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 19, 19], I trusted in Your words [Ps. 118, 74], and also the conviction that all earthly blessings are a passing shadow. And the world passes away, and so does its lust [1 Jn. 2, 17]. I was majestic, calm, clear that with the help of God I had triumphed over my passion, over earthly corruption. And how a man, overcome by his passion, humiliates himself! How restless, sad, gloomy, unreasonable, and animalistic he is! Everything in the world, as Metropolitan Gregory 49 says, is under the control of God. The Lord arranges all the events and circumstances of our life and the lives of others in such a way as to test my faith and hope in God and love for God and neighbor, in order to test whether I do not place hope in earthly blessings, whether I have attachments to them, for this is very important in the matter of saving my soul - if I do, then the Lord, as an all-good Father, cuts off, albeit painfully, these attachments, teaching me to cleave to the one God, my inexhaustible treasure and life infinite. The Lord also arranges the circumstances of my life so that I can test from time to time whether I have love for my neighbor as for myself, or whether I am self-loving, money-loving, stingy (and I place my hope not in God, but in money, food and drink), proud, adulterous, hateful, envious, and so on. For this question is of great importance in the matter of my salvation. The Lord says to me: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. And if I do not have such love for my neighbor, my salvation is very doubtful. So I need to test my love for my neighbor, especially since the solution to the question of love for my neighbor must also solve another, closely related question of love for God, for he who does not love his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God, Whom he does not see? [ 1Jn. 4, 20]. And my very experiences, my very consciousness, tell me most convincingly that the Lord arranges all the circumstances of my life precisely so as to test me, what I am like, in order to show the state of my soul to myself, so that I can see what path I am on: am I going to the Kingdom of Heaven or to hell? Therefore, look at the people who come into contact with you in thousands of different cases as instruments of God testing you; a person’s whole life should be a test of the insides of his heart, because he is constantly inclined to forget himself, constantly prone to various passions that must be cut off. Remember the words of the Lord from the prophet: Is the ax greater than the one who cuts with it? [Is. 10, 15]. Neither the devil nor people will attack you if God does not allow it; they will tempt you as much as God’s wisdom desires, as much as is necessary for your spiritual good, to show you your passions and addictions and to heal them. Without God, no one can reach the threshold: neither demon nor man. So, turn all temptations into opportunities and means to prove your love for God and neighbor and contempt for everything corruptible and fleeting, remembering that the world passes away, and its lust, but he who does the will of God, who loves God and his neighbor, abides forever [1 John. 2, 17]. Verbal creature! Remember that you have your beginning from the Word of the All-Creator and in union (through faith) with the Creative Word through faith you yourself can be a material and spiritual creator. Believe that with your faith in the Creative Word of the Father, your word will never return to you in vain, powerless, when, for example, you pray to the benefactor God according to the leadership of the Holy Church or according to the instructions of the Lord, it will bring you a beneficial gift; Believe that with faith in the Creative Word, you will not be unsuccessful in teaching the people in church during divine services, during the celebration of the Sacraments, in homes; your word in school will not be unsuccessful, but will build the minds and hearts of those who listen to you. But when you pronounce the powerful, commanding, creative words of the Lord Himself, then consider fulfilling them as an ordinary and convenient thing, just as it is convenient and ordinary for you to breathe, take [food], as it is convenient and ordinary for a baby to form in the womb - even incomparably more convenient. Remember that in the word itself lies the possibility of action, only you must have firm faith in the power of the word, in its creative ability. The Lord is inseparable from the word; not a single word returns to Him faint [Isa. 55, And], for we are images of the Word, and the Word most sincerely united with us through the incarnation, deifying us, accepting us into communion of the Divine nature [2 Pet. 1.4]. When you doubt the perfection or fulfillment of the word of prayer, remember that the nature of the word is perfection, effectiveness, and that the Holy Spirit, who teaches us to pray for something as it should be, is and is called the Perfecter Himself. It is He who performs our prayer, performed by the Spirit. Remember that the word is power. It is said that no word of God will remain powerless [Luke 1:37]. The Word of the Lord does not return to Him void [Isa. 55:11], but like rain or snow, it waters the earth of our hearts and gives seed (fulfillment) to the sower. And they say about people: he has extraordinary power of words. You see, the word is power, spirit, life. God is my hope. Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you [1 Pet. 5, 7]. Give alms generously to the truly poor, and the Lord will reward you generously on the same day on which you give alms. Do not spare a candle for the Lord or the Most Pure Mother or a saint: bring material fire, material light - and you will receive blessed fire and immaterial light for your soul. The Lord or His Most Pure Mother or the saint will not remain in debt. Conquer stinginess with generosity towards holy churches, hospitality, and mercy towards the poor. Remember the immeasurably high dignity of man: in him the Creator expressed His entire image and likeness, in him God shines like the sun in a drop of water, for him God became man, so that he, man! make a god. It is said that God becomes a man, and makes Adam a god 50. The Son of God deified, that is, made him Divine, or partaker of the Divine nature [2 Pet. 1, 4], human nature. The human soul is the abode of the Most Holy Trinity, according to Scripture: We will come to him and make an abode with him [John. 14, 23]. Christ and a true Christian are one: He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him [Jn. 6, 56], says Christ; You are the church of God, says the apostle to Christians, and the Spirit of God lives in you [1 Cor. 3, 16]. We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones [Eph. 5, 30], that is, Christ God. In accordance with such dignity, respect and love every person, doing his honor more than yourself, and respect yourself - do not cling to the world, do not give yourself up to the will of passions. My brother in the priesthood, Father Matthew, is worthy of all respect. He speaks most brightly, most piously about God. He's a hundred times better than me. Opening for others the door to the Kingdom of Heaven through Baptism, shall we not enter ourselves? By cleansing others with Repentance and resolving the sins of others, will we not receive remission of our sins? Uniting others with Christ in the Sacrament of Communion, shall we ourselves not unite with Him most sincerely in the eternal days of the Kingdom of Christ? By giving the strengthening and increasing grace of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, will we not ourselves receive strength and strength from the All-Holy Spirit and increase the gift of our spirit? Truly we firmly hope to receive the promised good things through the grace, generosity and love of mankind of our Savior God; May God grant that everyone receives them. Just let us not be lazy, let us not become discouraged, let us not please the flesh through lust [Rom. 13, 14] and let us keep the sacraments of faith in a clear conscience [1 Tim. 3, 9 ] and may we prosper in the love of God and neighbor. Just as the body breathes air, so the soul breathes the mercies of God. Just as fathers and mothers consider it an ordinary, as if natural, necessary task to serve their children daily bread or fish - our most common food - and do not give them a stone instead of bread, or a snake instead of a fish, although by nature they are evil and wicked, then how much more 51 is not the Heavenly Father infinitely more gracious, the essence of goodness, and how much more will He not give good things to those who ask Him [Matt. 7, 9–11]? Just as there is an abundance of water on earth and everyone drinks it, comes and scoops it up for free, so the Lord is like an ocean of spiritual waters - come and draw up every spiritual blessing with the help of true, firm, unashamed faith. Just stretch out this heartfelt draw, and you will certainly draw up the water of life in abundance - forgiveness of sins and peace of conscience. But beware of doubt. They will deprive you of the means to receive all the mercy of God. When, during prayer at home or in church, your heart becomes indignant and embittered towards your brother because of damage or loss of some thing (even a church thing), do not get carried away by this indignation and malice, but leave all regret about things as perishable, all anger towards your brother and pray with a burning heart of faith and love to your Lord, who is with you and who listens to you, for is not it more precious than all else? is the Lord your God for you? And is it possible to leave Him, to become attached to something earthly and perishable, even sanctified? Is this not an extreme insult to the Divine, in Whom our whole heart should be? For isn’t there a clear preference here for the thing that we regret and because of which we are indignant and angry with our brother, over the Divine, before Whom we stand in prayer? And do we not prefer things to our brother who has damaged or lost them? What madness happens to us! Because of a damaged or lost item, we are sometimes ready to tear our brother to pieces; moreover, we doom him to eternal destruction, send him to hell, to Gehenna. Oh, impudence! Oh, the wickedness of the devil! Truly, only the devil can instill this in us, and only those who are obedient to his will can do this! Such people forget the prayer of St. Ephraim, which we all pray so often during the days of Great Lent: grant me, Lord, to see my sins and not to condemn my brother. Why is it appropriate to wish your brother death, and sometimes eternal death, because of some thing? Is not the soul of a brother more valuable than all the treasures of the world, for what ransom, says Christ, will a man give for his soul? [Matt. 16.26; Mk. 8.37], giving them to understand that the human soul is priceless. And it is truly priceless, for in every human soul the entire image of God is expressed, every person is like a drachma 52 with a royal image; God, all, indivisible, united, resides in the soul of the brother. Truly, we urgently need to be attentive to ourselves and judge ourselves as harshly as possible, for each one will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5], and in order to judge ourselves with dignity, we need to listen to ourselves every minute, delve deeper into our hearts and notice in it with an impartial look all evil. During prayer, remove all attachment to things and regret about them, even under the pretext of legality. This is one excuse. When you doubt the presence of the Lord in the Mysteries, say to yourself on behalf of the Lord the words: Am I not king everywhere? Am I not Sy? – And your consciousness will say that He is certain, that He reigns everywhere, is present everywhere, especially in the life-giving Mysteries. It is even present in every word and in general is essentially everywhere. In order to have unshakable confidence during prayer to receive every spiritual good from the Lord, believe that when you unite with the Lord in prayer, you become one spirit with Him [1 Cor. 6, 17 ], and God is all-good, all-powerful, all-wise; He is all-perfect perfection, which means that you, to the extent of your acceptability, to the extent of faith and love, will become a participant in His Divine perfections. In the union of your soul with God, do not consider anything inconvenient or impossible; perhaps to God [Mk. 10:27], not only what you can think about or are thinking about, but what you cannot even think about or what you think about as impossible. For God is an infinite Being and all His perfections are infinite. If you doubt that you will receive the benefits you ask from God, then remember how even you, being angry, stingy, not rich, and not omnipotent, give to those in need and those who ask you, or even before their request you give, knowing only their need. How much more will the Heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him [Matt. 7, 11] - all-good, all-rich, generous, all-powerful. If you do not have firm, unashamed faith in God, the all-good and all-powerful, do not hastily ask Him to bestow any good, otherwise the devil will defeat and wound you with little faith or lack of faith in the possibility of fulfilling your prayer, and you will depart from the face of God disgraced, sad and gloomy. Do not be frivolous, but beforehand, having sat down, honor, according to the word of the Lord, your spiritual possessions, or take away your faith, if you have immash, the essence is to be accomplished. Otherwise, 53, the demons who see your stupidity will begin to laugh at you, saying: this man began to build and could not finish [Lk. 14, 30]. So, in advance of your prayer, consider the degree of your faith and, having found it sufficient, living, firm, and unashamed, approach boldly the throne of grace, so that you may receive mercy and find grace in time of need [Heb. 4, 16]. The more people you ask for benefits from the Lord and the higher these benefits, the stronger the devil opposes the praying priest, so that for his fervent, fervent prayer God will not give those benefits, for according to your faith, it is said, it will be to you [Matt. 9, 29]. And if you can believe a little, all things are possible to him who believes [Mk. 9, 23]. However, where the wiles of the devil multiply, there the grace of God also abounds [Rom. 5, 20]. The one who prays must remember that if God did not spare His only begotten Son for us sinners, but gave Him up for us all, then how will He not also give us everything with Him [Rom. 8:32], every good thing we can think of? Because if an infinitely great good is given, then lesser blessings will not be given? In Christ, the Heavenly Father has given and continues to give us every good thing. From His Divine power we have been given everything we need for life and godliness [2 Pet. 1, 3]. Look: the enemy is tempting you with the arrogance of your mind and leading you by the nose. Do not test, but believe. Have you not yet realized the myopia of your mind? Look: the devil uses another person as an instrument for himself and through him approaches you with flattering words: father! do yourself a favor, intercede for so-and-so with so-and-so, write at least two or three words - and you’ll win. You, he will add, there is nothing to say, are held in high esteem here, with great respect: just your name and the deed will be done. Do not accept, look, these devilish words that incite pride: if you accept, you will turn out to be a proud man, in the likeness of Lucifer 54, who dreamed of himself as something great and was therefore cast down from the highest lordship. Say: I am an ordinary person among ordinary people, a sinner among sinners, a weak person among weak people, a person who does not deserve any special respect. However, if you hope that your request for the poor or those in need of a place in the service will be successful before a person, do not refuse to do this out of Christian love. Lord! I sinned with demonic pride, imagining myself as something truly worthy of respect in itself! I repent! Have mercy on me. Save me from the shadow of satanic pride. To the stingy. Do you spare the grass and the dust of the earth, brethren? Isn’t the earth the Lord’s and what fills it [Ps. 23:1]? Who are you? How long have you been in the world? How long ago have you assumed full power over the gifts of God? Dust swept up by the wind, be careful that you do not quickly disappear from the face of the earth again. Humble yourself, do not dominate the gift of God with such madness, but consider yourself a steward of the estate entrusted by the Lord. Life is a great experimental science. There is nothing more difficult than to pass this science: narrow is the gate and narrow is the way [Matt. 7, 14]. And whoever, at motherhood school or college, has not learned faith and the fear of God and a pious life, will find it especially difficult to study at the school of life. He, although he was smart, knowledgeable in the school of sciences, was held in high esteem for his abilities, in the school of life he turns out to be an ignoramus - moreover, sometimes he has no need for anything: neither for family life, nor for social activities because of his quarrelsome character or his unbridled heart. He is poor and often wrecks in life, like a ship loaded with a lot of goods at sea, launched during a storm without a rudder, tackle and without sails. During prayer, when faced with strong temptations from the devil, cast all your sorrow on the Lord, for He nourishes you [Ps. 54, 23]. When you pray, just believe in the Lord, as He is at your right hand, and everything will be possible for you. Coolness of my insides, Christ, have mercy on me! Our passion for the flesh is expressed, among other things, in the fact that we do not tolerate odors that are disgusting to us. He who has crucified his flesh with passions and lusts indifferently endures all odors, because the intention of his whole life is not to indulge his flesh in anything, not to caress it in anything. Even if his flesh decays alive, he is in joy, because his inner man - his soul - is renewed all the days [2 Cor. 4, 16]. When you sin for the fiftieth and hundredth time a day and you are overcome by extreme devilish despondency and despair of God’s mercy, say from the depths of your soul with Metaphrastus 55: I know, my Lord, that my iniquities have exceeded my head: but the multitude of Your mercies is immeasurable, and the mercy of Your kindness is ineffable, and there is no sin, conquering Your love for mankind. Moreover, wonderful King, kindly Lord, surprise me, a sinner, with Your mercy, show Your goodness the power, and show the strength of Your gracious mercy, and when you turn, accept me, a sinner. Receive me as you received the prodigal, the robber, the harlot. Receive me more than in word, and in deed, and in placeless lust, and in wordless thoughts, having sinned against You... and do not convict me with Your righteous judgment... punish me with your wrath: have mercy on me, Lord, for not only am I weak, but I am also Your creation. Thou, O Lord, hast established Thy fear upon me, and I have done evil before Thee. For You alone have sinned: but I pray to You, do not enter into judgment with Your servant.... Lord my God, I trust in You: if I have hope for salvation, if Your love for mankind overcomes the multitude of my iniquities: be my Savior, and according to Your bounties and Your mercy, weaken, forgive, forgive me all that You have sinned, for my soul is filled with many evils, and there is no hope of salvation in me. Have mercy on me, O God, the Lord of Your mercy, and do not reward me according to my deeds, and do not judge me according to my deeds: then turn, intercede, deliver my soul from the evils and cruel perceptions that co-increase with it. Save me for the sake of Your Mercy... and I will praise and glorify You always, all the days of my life. For you are the God of those who repent, and the Savior of those who sin.. 56. Give up all self-pity, especially when others hate you, become embittered against you, cause you various rudeness, ridicule, curses and other antics, when they clearly rise above you, being under you. Crucify your pride, your old man. Hate yourself as a godless person. The Lord, through my prayer, saved me today with a clear and wondrous salvation. The enemy fired heavily and pressed me, and in cramped conditions I cried out: Lord! You Yourself, with Your most pure lips, said: Call Me on the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me [Ps. 49, 15 ]; and so in my sorrow I cried out to You: deliver me, O most merciful Lord, from my sin and from the violence of the devil. So what? The Lord immediately extended His saving right hand to me and saved me, leading me out of the tightness of my heart into space. I sing to God, my Savior, my world, my belly, my coolness, my space! From the one Lord there is forgiveness of sins, salvation and life! During Vespers, the rules for confession and during confession I was filled with the grace of God as a result of communion, fasting and prayer to the icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God; I was calm, unhurried, instructive, jealous of the glory of God, but at the end of the confession the enemy faltered in a girlish voice (he did not look at my face - and precisely because he did not look, he faltered, and plunged my heart into relaxation, and made me laugh: I had to look straight) and introduced me into the sin of relaxation of the heart. Alas! I smiled for no reason, I blushed for myself and could not listen indifferently to the confession, but I smiled. But you just had to look with a prayer of faith at the face of the Mother of God, and there would be no temptation! How do you, when you say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” commit adultery? [Rom. 2, 22]. Oh, Master, I am guilty before You and have the will to repent, and I regret my sin and ask You for mercy, All-Blessed Master, repent of our evils! Do not remember my sin and my iniquity! I forgot that I stand before Your face and do Your work! I forgot that he who does the work of the Lord carelessly is cursed by You [Jer. 48, 10 ]! I sinned by seeing! Pushed you back! I have counted Your Sacrament for nothing, I have despised Your words, I have saddened, insulted, and driven away Your Holy Spirit! Alas for me, wretched one! Glory to the Chosen Voivode, Lady Queen Theotokos: now She, the most merciful, most swift Intercessor, through my prayer, stood up for me before the Son and Her God, removed the heavenly condemnation from me for creating the Lord’s work with negligence and drove away the devil who had clothed my soul with Her mania, and after the tightness of hell I suddenly felt lightness and coolness. I prayed before the Kazan Icon: Zealous Intercessor... and then: Stretch out Your hands... and: Do not entrust me to human intercession... March 9th day, 1862. Friday of the Third Week of Lent. Remember, verbal being, that everything was created by the Word and everything exists by Him, and have undoubted faith that creation or transformation through the word of your mouth by the power of God is the most ordinary thing; therefore, have the greatest respect for the word and do not waste it in vain, much less use it as an instrument of lies - the Lord will judge those who speak lies [Ps. 5, 7]. Oh my God! The world of spirits and the material world were created and exist by the Word of God, which, together with the Father and the Spirit, is a simple Being, a Spirit, an ever-worshipped Unit in the Trinity of Hypostases. The desire and hunger for silver is from the devil. Judas Iscariot is proof of this. He turned near the very Life of the Hypostasis, the Lord Jesus Christ, and meanwhile he rejected the Lord and clung with his heart to the silver and hungered for it in blindness, like life. But the hunger for silver brought him to the point of betraying Belly to death and brought him himself to a shameful death. Beware of coveting in any way, under any plausible pretext of money. He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver [Eccl. 5, 9], because the Lord alone can satisfy our heart. Daily experiments on people show that they are not satisfied with silver, but are still hungry and hungry, they keep saying: little, little, we are poor; or even: we have no money. This is how they serve the devil with both love of money and lies. Desire to have less silver, so that your heart does not cleave to it and place hope in it, for the rich, according to the Apostle, trust in perishing wealth [1 Tim. 6, 17]. Love to give your money to the poor or in debt, and it will bring you God’s blessing. Silver is for people, not people for silver. Desire to have less silver so that your hope is in God. Do not regret that some spiritual children, patients, customers leave you, and thus take away their silver from you. Look: if you regret this, then you do not want to save human souls, but to get money from them; You do not thirst for the salvation of human souls, for the salvation of which Christ died, but for your own enrichment; You do not seek Christ Jesus, but your own 57 [Phil. 2, 21]. This is a grave sin. This is betrayal of Christ. Your silver, like Judas, will perish [Acts. 8, 20]. Do not insult the Life of God by hoping for decay, for that which has no life in itself. A person's life does not depend on the abundance of his possessions [Lk. 12, 15]. You see: life does not come from abundance, so why desire abundance? Our daily bread is our rain this day [Matt. 6, 11] - only today 58. It takes a little sense to understand this. Everyone sees how little a person needs to maintain his bodily life. But fire, cramped conditions, extreme torment and some kind of disappearance from the desire for silver and from avarice don’t tell us too clearly that in the hunger for silver there is death, and not life. To avert stinginess and hatred of a brother who often visits your meal, say to yourself; Christ, whose Body and Blood I often take into myself, laid down His soul out of love for people, and not perishable and fleeting possessions - will I refuse to sacrifice at least food, drink, money, labor as a sacrifice of love for my neighbor? Also remember the passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews: you...the plunder of your property is accepted with joy, knowing that you have in heaven a better and lasting possession [Heb. 10, 34]. You too should imitate these Christians, converted from Jews, by joyfully accepting the plunder of your property. Always carry in your heart the words: Christ is love - and try to love everyone, sacrificing for love not only your possessions, but also yourself. I thank and glorify the Lord of my life, Christ God: after communion of the life-giving Mysteries with unashamed faith by His grace, He gave me peace, joy, and bliss after the previous painful machinations of the devil, who tormented me with cramped conditions and despair. Until six o'clock in the evening I maintained this peace and joy. May God grant you to preserve these heavenly gifts of the Lord until the end of the day and then. Know: everything that calms and enlivens the heart is truth; everything that worries, deadens, is a lie, a ghost. Anyone who becomes irritated with another because of something material puts this material object above his brother. But what is higher than man? There is nothing on earth. Some say: why remember the names of the dead or the living when praying for them? God, as omniscient, Himself knows these names, and also knows the needs of everyone. But those who speak this way forget or do not know the importance of prayer and the word in prayer - how important the word spoken from the heart is; they forget that God’s justice and God’s mercy are bowed down through our heartfelt prayer, which [God] in His goodness credits to the dead or living themselves as merit as members of the one body of the Church. Such do not know that the church of the firstborn, who are written in heaven [Heb. 12:23], out of his love he constantly prays to God for us, and specifically mentions before God the names of the people who pray to them; equal for equal: we remember them - they remember us. And whoever does not remember his neighbors in prayer out of love will not be remembered and will not receive mercy. One word of faith and love means a lot in prayer. The prayer of a righteous man can do much [Jas. 5, 16]. Those whom we remember with faith and love, God remembers according to the law of His righteousness, and this is enough for us. If God remembers us, then this already means a share of bliss for the people for whom we pray. The memory of God for someone is salvation, peace and joy for him. (I will not remember their names with my lips [Ps. 15:4].) Lutherans say: why should we ask the prayers of the saints for ourselves? we ask God Himself. And they refute themselves, because why do they ask the pastor to pray for themselves? We would pray without a pastor if everyone has the same access to God and there is no need for consecrated prayer books for us. What blindness! They say: by praying to saints, we worship idols. - Not true. We do not honor a single saint as God, we do not pray to a single saint as God, but only ask his prayers for ourselves - is there even a shadow of idolatry here? Just as we ask the living clergy and prayer books for us before God, so that they pray for us, so we ask the heavenly prayer books, who, out of their love for God, have great boldness before Him; Moreover, very many of them here on earth were prayer books and intercessors before God for peace; there, in heaven, this activity of theirs only continues, has large dimensions and is especially strong, for it is not crippled by heavy and inert flesh. All saints, although they have finished their earthly career, are still alive: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for with Him all are alive [Lk. 20, 38]. When you desire free money or clothes from parishioners, immediately repent of this thirst for acquisition or covetousness and remember the words of the Apostle Paul: I have not desired silver, nor gold, nor clothing from anyone: you yourself know that these hands have served my needs and the needs of those who were with me [Acts. 20, 33 – 34]. You should not set an example for others of covetousness, bribery and parasitism, but deserve everything through your labors. An undeserved gift is difficult for the soul: with the gift we take upon ourselves the obligation to pray with all our hearts for those who gave the gift, we take on their sins. Beware, like fire, of the heart’s addiction to anything earthly: all worldly lusts scorch, oppress and corrupt our soul and exhaust and dry up our body. Heartfelt clinging to the one God and His saints and impartiality to everything earthly is true peace, lightness, spaciousness and true life of the soul. For our soul, which animates our body, is God’s breath, God’s image; We must cleave to Him, be united with Him, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust [2 Pet. 1, 4]. Don't like yourself, don't be nice to your face and don't make an idol of yourself and don't bow to yourself. This is an abomination to the Lord. Give glory to the one God, who created all wisdom, and remember about yourself that you are grass that blooms in the morning, hardens in the evening and dries up and passes away like a shadow [Ps. 89, 6]. Looking at your neighbors eating from your meal, rejoice, reasoning with yourself like this: all the blessings of the world are a passing shadow, but my neighbors, as images of the immortal God, are eternal. They are my members and members of Christ the Giver of Life. So reason and do not be stingy in feeding them, although they often come to you. Remember also that you yourself love the generosity of others towards you. Remember also that acts of philanthropy, hospitality and generosity follow us and will continue to follow us. Consider earthly blessings as God’s gifts not only to you, but also to others, so that you have a communion of love with your neighbors, so that you have the opportunity and opportunity to show through them that you love your neighbor as you love yourself: what you don’t want for yourself, you don’t want for him either - and you don’t claim 60 everything for yourself, out of your own self-love, like a bottomless, all-consuming abyss that returns nothing. Earn here on earth, through the generosity of hospitality and alms, the great and generous mercy of the Heavenly Father in heaven. Remember that God, who created us from nothing, is the God of gifts, He is the goodness that overflows on everything, or the ever-flowing source - and you are the image and likeness of God. Give daily to others, both tuna and loan, so that you may become like your God. The life of my soul and body is Christ. When you do not recognize and do not feel your sins, then do not consider yourself righteous: when we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us [1 John. 1.8]. You just don’t see your sins, but you have an abyss of them: In the abyss of sin, it is said, wallowing in the wake of Your mercy 61. Take the trouble to see your sins and pray to God about it - you will see that you are a sinner who has surpassed everyone in your sins, and you will shed tears of tenderness and repentance for yourself. You will find in yourself lack of faith, unbelief, pride, malice, hatred, gluttony, stinginess, love of money, covetousness, despondency, laziness, idleness, idle talk, false shame, offending others, man-pleasing, human-reliance, negligence in the cause of God, partiality, fornication, adultery, and so on. When asking God for various blessings, believe that God is everything to everyone: if you ask Him for health, believe that He is your health; If you ask for faith, He is your faith; love - He is your love; peace and joy - He is your peace and joy; help against enemies visible and invisible - He is your omnipotent help. Whatever good you ask from Him, He is precisely this good, like any other, and if He finds it worthwhile to grant you this good, He will be this good for you. God will be all in all [1 Cor. 15, 28]. The Word in the mouths of some is spirit and life, while in the mouths of others it is a dead letter (for example, during prayer and preaching). The words that I speak to you are spirit and life [Jn. 6, 63]. Such should indeed be our words, for we are images of God the Word. Remember that if during prayer you do not idly talk, but say the words of prayer with feeling, then your words will not return to you thinly, without power (like the husk of bread without grain), but will certainly bring you the very fruits that are contained in the word, like fruit in a shell. This is the most natural thing, just as the fruit and its shell are natural and ordinary in nature. But if you throw words in vain, without faith and without feeling their power, like a husk without a kernel, then they will return to you empty: you throw a husk, and the husk will return to you. If you throw a seed, it will bring you a whole ear, and the better, the fatter the seed, the more abundant the ear; so it is with our prayers: the more sincerely and heartily you pronounce each word, the more fruit from the prayer: each word, like a grain, will bring you spiritual fruit, like a ripe ear. Who among those who pray has not experienced this? It was not in vain that the Savior compared the seed with the word, and human hearts with the earth [See: Matt. 13, 3 – 8, 18–23.]. The same must be said about the words of prayer. Also: whoever does not know that rain waters the earth and plants and gives them water, then the word of God, and even our word, spoken with faith, will not return to us without watering our souls or the souls of good-obedient and believing souls. This is natural, just as it is natural for rain to water and nourish the earth and plants and promote growth. You, the one praying, want to be sure that the Lord really hears and soon hears our prayers? Here is an example for you: the prudent thief, hanging with Him on the cross, only said: remember me, Lord, when He comes into Your Kingdom! - and He immediately answered his prayer: truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise [Lk. 23, 42 – 43]. So you also know for sure that the Lord immediately hears every word of your prayer. Unbelief exposes itself in that it is false and has nothing in common with the truth; the unbelieving heart is restless, vague, weak, unfounded; on the contrary, faith is calm, blissful, majestic, firm. When you doubt the truth of the words of any holy father, for example John Chrysostom in his Divine Liturgy, or when performing other Sacraments you doubt the words of prayers and the devil will confuse and weaken your heart, remember the words of the Savior in the Gospel: A good tree cannot bear bad fruit [Matt. 7, 18], or the words of the apostle: one source cannot pour out salty and sweet water [James. 3, 12], or the words of the Savior: By their fruits you will recognize them [Matt. 7, 16]. And St. John Chrysostom showed in his life and works only good fruits: the voice of his contemporaries and the works of his pen reveal in him a completely holy man. The Holy Spirit Himself glorified him even after death, making his body incorruptible and miraculous, like a church of a soul completely sanctified by His grace. Remember also the words of the Savior to the disciples: I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever... He... will guide you into all truth [John. 14, 16; 16, 13]. You see: the Holy Spirit is always with us, especially the shepherds (and the flock), and He guides us into all truth. God! I thank You, for You have vouchsafed me to overcome the wiles of the enemy and to show the love of my brethren by cordially treating them to my meal; I thank You, for You have enlightened my face, removing from it the darkness of 62 demonic despondency. I thank You, most merciful King, for the kindness of heart bestowed upon me through my prayer. Strengthen, O God, this in me which you have made ecu [Ps. 67, 29]. I thank You, Lady, my most swift Intercessor, for You stretched out Your most pure hands to Your Son in intercession for me, a sinner, and You begged for His warmth to deliver me from the violence of the devil. I read: Stretch out Thy hand... and so on according to the Canon and: Zealous Intercessor... When you pray, try to pray more for everyone than for yourself alone, and during prayer vividly imagine all people together with you as one body, and one in one as members of the body of Christ and as your own members: we are members of one another [Eph. 4, 25 ]; pray for everyone as you pray for yourself, with the same sincerity and warmth; Consider their weaknesses and illnesses as your weaknesses and illnesses, their spiritual ignorance, their sins and passions as your ignorance, your sins and passions, their temptations and misfortunes and varied sorrows as your temptations, misfortunes and sorrows. Such prayer is accepted with great favor by the Heavenly Father - this common good Father of all, but He has no partiality [Rom. 2, 11; Eph. 6, 9], not a shadow of change [James. 1, 17], this love, which has no limits, embraces and preserves all creatures. Wonderful thing! When confronted with an unbeliever and a person who is cold towards God, our souls feel disgust towards him; our hearts do not lie towards him; and the devil tries to turn this just dislike and indignation into malice towards him. In order not to harbor malice and serve the devil, one must say to oneself: I am not disposed and cold towards my brother because of his dislike and coldness towards God, and I do not harbor in my heart hatred and malice towards him, for I endure him as my own sick member, and I want to heal him, with meekness punishing my opponents, whether God will not give them repentance to the knowledge of the truth [2 Tim. 2, 25]. If he turns to God, I will turn to him with heartfelt love. If he is compassionate towards others, and does not think only about himself, about his benefits and pleasures, then I will sympathize with him. However, endure everyone with love and look more at yourself, what are you like, are you not cold towards God and your neighbor? If so, then why throw a stone at your brother when this stone should be turned on yourself? He who keeps [Russian: chuchchii] vain and false (wealth, literature, theaters, cards, tobacco) has abandoned his (Christ’s) mercy [Jonah. 2, 9]. For this reason, God came down to earth so that he could lead us to heaven 63. After this, it would seem that even while living on earth, we need to live in things above, moving there in advance with hope. In fact, for the most part, it turns out quite the opposite. People cling with their entire being to the earth and everything earthly. Why is this? Because the common enemy, the devil, is trying with all his might to oppose the intention of the God-man Christ, he is increasingly doing everything opposite to what Christ did and is doing. Christ wants to raise people to heaven and has given all the means to do this - the devil, himself cast down from heaven for pride into the airy valley, wants in every possible way to tie a person to the earthly, sensual, transitory and uses the most powerful, most enormous means for this. Christ taught us the truth - the devil teaches lies and tries in every possible way to contradict every truth, raising various slander against it. The devil tries in every possible way to keep people in error, in the delusion of passions, in the darkening of mind and heart, in pride, stinginess, love of money, envy, hatred, evil impatience and irritability, in evil despondency, in the abominations of fornication, adultery, theft, false witness, blasphemy, negligence, laziness, parasitism. Why should you pray to God? Because God is the ever-flowing source of existence and all spiritual and sensual benefits, and we received and receive everything from Him: life, bodily strength, abilities, help, protection, good thoughts, feelings. When asking the Lord for various spiritual benefits: forgiveness of sins, the gift of various virtues, feel your iniquities, your damnation, poverty, misery and the blindness of your nature corrupted by sin; Be sure to recognize yourself as spiritually insignificant, according to the words of Christ: Blessed are the poor in spirit [Matt. 5, 3; OK. 6, 20 ]; fall heartily to God as the rich giver of heavenly and earthly blessings; Feel from the depths of your soul that without God you cannot not only do, but even think of anything good [2 Cor. 3, 5]. Remember that at all times you are completely guilty before God, realize that your heart is always covered, like bark, with the scabs of sin and the decay of passions, that you drink iniquity like water [Job. 15, 16], breathe them like air, eat them like bread. Consider yourself worthy at all times of all kinds of executions and torments - and you will be on the right path to the Kingdom and beg for God’s mercy. Remember every Christian! that you are called and are a servant of Christ, that is, you have undertaken to work for Christ through a recipient at baptism, or to do, to fulfill the commandments of Christ throughout your life, just as our servants, when hired to serve, undertake to carry out our orders, and we undertake to give them a salary for that; and Christ, for His part, also promised in due time to give us a reward for our work, and nothing, not even the most insignificant good deed will remain without reward. Just as servants must know the spirit, [intentions,] demands of their masters in order to please them, so Christ’s servants must know the spirit of Christ, their Lord, conform to this spirit and try in every possible way to do what is pleasing to Him. And the spirit of Christ is shown in the Gospel: read the Gospel, understand, gain wisdom and be saved; the same in church: go to church services more often, approach the Sacraments with appropriate preparation and reverence, and you will assimilate the spirit of Christ and please Him. If inhaling tobacco smoke is a human need, as most people are, then I don’t know why the Creator didn’t fill the atmosphere with smoke instead of clean air? Oh, the machinations of the enemy! He perverted everything in our nature, turned everything upside down! I turned my whole life into a toy, into fun! For smoking tobacco is a carnal, sinful pastime; sniffing is also fun. What carnal things do people not amuse themselves with? They amuse themselves with food, drink (tea, coffee, a variety of wines, various drinks), they amuse themselves with various games, their body (fornication), the gracefulness of bodily movements and even, alas! they amuse themselves with words - in the theater, in empty, idle books, in empty, idle conversations; People turned their whole life into fun and forgot about the life of the future century, endless and endlessly blissful, they loved the present, feigned, temporary century! 64 Who is driving poor Christians away from Christ, from His Church, from the Sacraments of Repentance and Communion? – The devil, due to the negligence and inattention of Christians to the salvation of their souls. Who arms the verbal sheep to be shepherds of Christ's flock? - The mental wolf is the devil. My God! What will happen? What will our life come to? There is no righteous man on earth, for there are no faithful among the sons of men. Everyone tells a lie to his neighbor; flattering lips speak from a feigned heart [Ps. 11, 2 – 3]. The root of all evil is a proud heart, or self-pity, self-sparing; from self-love, or excessive and unlawful love for oneself, all passions stem: coldness, insensibility and hard-heartedness towards God and neighbor, evil impatience or irritability, hatred, envy, stinginess, despondency, doubt, lack of faith and unbelief, greed for food and drink, or gluttony, covetousness, pride and vanity, laziness, hypocrisy, Never feel sorry for yourself in anything, crucify yourself, your old man, nesting primarily in the flesh, and you will cut off all your passions. Endure complacently everything that happens that is unpleasant for the flesh, do not spare it, go opposite to it - and you will be a true follower of Christ. The whole wisdom of a Christian consists in prudently going against his flesh in everything in his life, for good does not live... in my flesh [Rom. 7, 18], says the apostle. Husbands! Do not be mad, do not waste your property on the luxuriously rich outfits of your wives: these outfits in this life lie a heavy burden on their souls, and in the future life they will condemn them and you for the fact that you squandered the gifts of the Lord for nothing, were self-loving and did not care about the virtue of mercy for the poor and unfortunate, who met you at every step, whom you knew, but whom you considered doing good. not your duty. You, brothers, if you do not turn from your madness, I will tell you where you will be after death: you will be where the rich man was, dressed in purple and fine linen 65; If you add new madness to this - you want to have fun every day, eat and drink, then all the more undoubtedly you will inherit the fate of a luxurious merry fellow. Be horrified, brothers! The abyss is ready to open its jaws beneath you. Unhappy ones! You are luxurious in food, drink, clothing, housing, but you do not see the poor and unfortunate, suffering widows and orphans who require your sympathy and help, and leave them, your brothers, to be in poverty, to grieve and cry inconsolably, to endure hunger, cold, violence from offenders. Let each one not only take care of himself, but each one also of others [Phil. 2, 4]. People are now overcome by luxury, extravagance, and debauchery. When the devil traps you with some everyday, earthly addiction, for example, to food, drink, clothing, to someone’s face, or passions: envy, stinginess, malice, despondency, pride, doubt, lack of faith or haste in words - and wounds your heart and continues his fiery wounding and tightness in the heart, then, sitting at home alone or walking along the road, or even at a gathering of people in any house or in a church, tell him in your heart: that you have spread your long tail in me, Satan, that you have let your paw into my heart, fallen archangel! I see you clearly, you cannot hide from me, although you try in every possible way to hide your tail and your black paw from me. And if you say these words with confidence, he will not tolerate shame, for he is too proud to endure such shame from a lower and weaker creature than himself, and will immediately run away; peace, lightness, joy will take the place of anxiety, heaviness, tightness and languor in the heart. Taken from repeated experiments. But beware later: he will try to take diabolical revenge on you for this shame. Be sober and awake. (March 14th day, 1862.) When a parishioner comes to you to call you to the service (especially if to a sick person for a farewell message or to a sick baby for hasty baptism), go immediately, complacently and willingly, and do not send him to another priest, although you are not the next one, except perhaps in those cases when you are busy with another necessary matter; Consider any service to the good of your neighbor as an acquisition, especially in his spiritual need, knowing firmly that you serve Christ Himself, Who will reward everyone according to his deeds [Rom. 2, 6]. Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me [Matt. 25, 40], He says, and if, because of serving your neighbors, you receive illness or are exposed to misfortune, insult or misfortune, sorrow and need, consider this as the great mercy of the Lord, who thus deigns you to have the happiness of having a lot among those who lay down their souls for their friend [Jn. 15, 13] and the corresponding reward in heaven [Matt. 5, 12]. The Lord tells you in the Gospel: If... you want to enter into eternal life, keep the commandments... love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 19, 17; OK. 10, 27]. You say: teach me how to love God and my neighbor? And here’s how: The Lord said: whoever loves Me will keep My word, or: If you love Me, keep My commandments [Jn. 14, 23, 15]. And His commandment is this: This is My commandment, that you love one another [Jn. 15, 12]. So, if you strive with all your might to live in mutual love for your neighbor, do not give reasons for disagreement, do with everyone as you want others to do with you, what you do not want for yourself, you do not want for others, if you provide all possible help to those in need and do all this for the sake of the Savior’s commandment - then you love both God and your neighbor, because you love your neighbor for God, seeing in him an image God, you love him out of obedience to the commandment of God. Will you also say: teach me how to more often show me love for my neighbor - this image of God, in whose person God Himself deigns to accept His services? I answer: there are many different manifestations of love and mercy towards one’s neighbor. The image of mercy is varied, says Chrysostom, and this commandment is broad [Ps. 118, 96]. A guest came to you - receive him kindly, warmly, treat him cordially and with love - and you showed love; welcome a stranger into your home, treat him, give him peace, comfort him - and you have shown love; someone asks to walk a mile with him - go further, and you will show love; forgive the offense to the one who offended you - and you will show love; give to a beggar and you show love; lend - and you show love; visit a sick person and you will show love; stand up for orphans from insults - and you will show love; visit a widow in grief - and you will show love; intercede for the weak before the strong - and you will show love; intercede for the weak - and you will show love; comfort the sad and show love; instruct the ignorant - and you will show love; give advice to your neighbor in difficulty or in danger - and you will show love. Do this as often as possible, not counting your mercies, as God sends you His mercies without counting, do it for the sake of the commandment of the Lord, out of love for the Lawgiver; show unquestioning, hasty obedience to all His commandments when He sends you the opportunity; also: do not attach your heart to anything more than God: let your Creator and Benefactor prevail in your heart over everything earthly: before earthly parents, wife, children, benefactors, relatives, friends, before all people, before all things and pleasures - and you will love God with all your heart... with all your soul... with all your strength... and with all your thoughts, and your neighbor as yourself [Lk. 10, 27]. Manage in love in this way, and you will receive an eternal life. When, due to any calculations of worldly greed or ambition, your love and respect for your neighbor dry up in your heart, immediately return to your heart the due love and respect for your brother with the words of the Gospel: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. May your love and due respect for your neighbor not fall before any earthly calculations, for the soul of a brother is the image of God. The heart of a completely healthy person relaxes for faith and love for God and neighbor and easily falls into carnal lusts: laziness, negligence, coldness, gluttony, stinginess, fornication, pride; but the heart of an unhealthy person, or a wounded, oppressed, exhausted heart, is strengthened in faith, hope and love and is far removed from the passions of the flesh. That is why the Heavenly Father, who cares divinely about our salvation, punishes us, as if with whips, with various diseases. The tightness and sorrow of illness again turn us to God. When we want to pray from the heart, then our prayer encounters the spirits of malice in our hearts, which prevent us from praying with all our hearts and induce doubt, lack of faith, blasphemous thoughts, crampedness, laziness, coldness, and guile. We must fight with all our might, calling on the Lord Jesus for help, and not weaken in spirit. May you not be cold [Russian: so as not to become exhausted] with your weakened souls [Heb. 12, 3]. One must always pray and not lose heart [Lk. 18, 1]. Whether you baptize, anoint, perform the Sacrament of Repentance or Communion, Marriage, Blessing of Unction, or any other verbal service you offer to the Lord - cast all your sorrow on the Lord, for He cares for you [1 Pet. 5, 7]. A glutton buries the life of his spirit in his belly. What to do when the waters of unbelief or anger towards one’s neighbor reach the soul [Ps. 68, 2] ours just before communion? “We must try in every possible way to arouse in ourselves a contrite and humble spirit and, if possible, shed a tear about our wretchedness.” If the devil tempts you during the liturgy and at other holy times with anger towards a brother in the service, to whom we are not inclined, do not love him for anything and move away from him in life, then we must henceforth get closer to him and more often start a brotherly, sincere conversation with him, in order to thus harden our hearts in sincere love for him: be brotherly loving towards one another with tenderness [Rom. 12, 10]. Behold, whatever is good, or whatever is good, but let the brethren live together [Ps. 132, 1]. The slightest hope for material goods and the pity of them for one's neighbor means cramped conditions, powerlessness, and death for the soul; neglecting them; generosity for one's neighbor means space, lightness, strength, life of the soul. Love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. Always remember these great words of the commandment of God, every person. Remember also that our life is the Lord. I am... life [Iv, 14, 6]. Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for lentil stew - this is an image of people attached to earthly things, to food and drink and money, and selling their heavenly birthright for sensual pleasures and depriving themselves of the blessings of the Heavenly Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! [Matt. 11, 15]. When someone possessed by the passion of stinginess invites someone to visit him, he invites for the most part hypocritically and with fear in his heart, fearing impoverishment. Unhappy! You see that air and water do not become scarce. Hope that your bread will not run out and that you will have it daily. Our daily bread is our rain this day [Matt. 6, 11]. To love your neighbor as yourself, to sympathize with him in joy and sorrow, to feed him, to clothe him if he needs food and clothing, to breathe with him, so to speak, the same air - consider it such an ordinary thing as feeding and warming yourself, and do not think of deeds of love for your neighbor as a virtue, so as not to become proud of them. We are members of one another [Eph. 4, 25]. Just as in the material world the Lord does us good through the sun, illuminating and warming us and the earth with all its contents, through air, water, plants, animals - so in the spiritual world the Lord, doing good to us directly, enlightening our minds and hearts, interceding, saving, merciful and preserving with His grace (however, here through the clergy), does us more good through His servants: Angels, called ministering spirits, through His saints and especially through the medium of the highest of all creatures, His Most Pure Mother, through the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs, saints, righteous and all saints. These holy beings are God's servants for our salvation: Are they not all ministering spirits sent to serve those who are to inherit salvation? [Heb. 1, 14]. They are luminous, intelligent 66 rays of the eternal Sun of Truth - God. How can we not call upon these good beings, who have received the grace from God Himself to serve our salvation, for help and intercession [Heb. 1, 14 ]? How can one remain without due reverence and gratitude to them? Is this consistent with the laws of even human society and decency? God! I have sinned, I have been unfaithful before You, before Your commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself [Matt. 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. I did not love the brothers because they often visit me, as if only for food and drink, and smoke tobacco in my apartment! Jesus Christ! You tolerate countless iniquities against us, the stench of our iniquities rises to You every day, every moment, You took upon Yourself the sins of the whole world, and You tolerate them, and we - oh, shame! oh, ingratitude! oh, wickedness! oh, insensitivity! “We don’t want to endure the slightest trouble from our neighbors. You laid down Your life for them, but we do not want to lay down a few shares of our property on them! Oh, impatience! Oh, dislike! Oh, the flattery of food and drink! 67 Oh, the machinations of the enemy! God! Have mercy on me, damned one! Free my soul from the flattery of the enemy! How small and insignificant our love is! He fed and gave his neighbor something to drink once, perhaps twice - but if he came a third, fourth, fifth time in a row, he would become miserable about food and drink, and we would even begin to look at him unkindly! Oh, insignificant love, or, better yet, complete impoverishment of love! Oh, the betrayal of a brother on Srebrenitsa, on food and drink! How cheaply we value our brother, like Judas the traitor, who sold the innocent Lord for thirty pieces of silver! Are we not betraying the Lord, like Judas? For in all things and in all (Christians), it is said, Christ [Col. 3, 11]. Or do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless you are what you ought to be [2 Cor. 13, 5]. You are the body of Christ, and individually you are members. Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? [ 1 Cor. 12, 27; 3, 16]. But how dearly we value ourselves! We think that we are worth everything, every respect, every treat, and others - don’t come to us. And God does not allow many to come to us, whom we call insincerely. I marvel at God’s omnipotence and wisdom, how from the same earth and water He created for me various parts of the body: flesh, blood, skin, bones, hair, lungs, liver, bile - everything; As an inert and immobile substance itself, He put it into motion in me, and in me the harmonious movements of blood, juices, phlegm, the separation of food, bile and other things are constantly taking place. For Thy works are magnified, O Lord: I have done all things with wisdom ecu [Ps. 103, 24]. You don’t have the words to tell the wisdom, goodness, omnipotence of God, the Creator and Provider - ask the Word of God. And what a variety of creatures of heaven and earth, animate and inanimate, from the four elements! Your knowledge is marvelous to me... I cannot comprehend it! [Ps. 138, 6]. Of the four elements - the sun, moon, stars, clouds, light, air, water, earth, various stones and metals, trees, all vegetation, the flesh of all animals, birds and fish and humans! I am truly the worst of all men, for I do not have the love for my neighbor that is proper [to have], and the love for God. For the most part I am cold towards God, I sometimes harbor anger and hatred towards my brother in my soul, I keep up with stinginess, irritability, anger, arrogance, pride, laziness, idleness, neglect, parasitism. I judge others, but I myself am worse than everyone else: I judge the drunk, but I myself am drunk every day with anger, stinginess, pride, laziness, negligence; I don’t like burrs, and I almost always burr out of demonic delusion. In general, there is no sin in people that would not truly exist in me. Why haven't my sins been corrupted? Are Kiimi not kept evil? I have committed every sin, I have brought every uncleanness into my soul... 68 I have surpassed all in sins, I am the most damned of all! The Savior suffered from a cold every day all day long, 69 people, and He lovingly endured it with Himself - we get irritated if visitors come to us for two or three days in a row. The Lord daily feeds us, as sinners, with the gifts of His goodness - we do not want to willingly feed the members of Christ for several days in a row. Oh, evil! Oh, ingratitude! Oh, inattention to yourself! Oh, blind passion for earthly things and a disposition towards ill will towards one's neighbor! Learn to treat everyone with heartfelt tenderness, especially your wife and your household. Worry about this with all your might. Be... merciful [1 Pet. Zg 8]. When elegant and precious clothing seduces and confuses your heart, especially during prayer, distracting your mind and heart from God, say to yourself: will this clothing be dust of the earth? Didn't she come from the dust? And who looks with passion at the dust trampled underfoot, who cleaves to it with his heart? My soul! Cling to Jehovah, from Whom everything is, to the eternal, unchangeable God: He is your bright robe, your peace, strength, belly - everything; and let dust remain dust: do not give it a price that it does not have. Look at food the same way and at earthly differences: everything will go down into the grave, into the ground, everything will be dust. Say: all this is a passing shadow, everything will pass away sooner or later, and the world itself will pass away, so that not a trace of it will remain: heaven and earth will pass away [Matt. 24, 35; OK. 21, 33]. God and my soul are eternal. For me to think, and for God to think and create and translate are one and the same thing, because He is He, a simple and omnipotent Being. By His very simplicity, everything is possible for Him in a single moment. Since He is Existent, His thought is a being. For example, He thought about a tree that it was a serpent, and the tree became a serpent; I thought of water that it was blood, and it was blood; about water that it is wine, and water becomes wine; about bread and wine, that they are Body and Blood - and they become Body and Blood through the action of the All-Holy Spirit, the Life-Giving One. So I thought in my heart that the whole Lord was on the cross, as omnipresent, and immediately He was all there. Quite fair. The Lord said - this is enough for me to believe without a doubt that a certain thing is exactly what He said. Let doubt be impossible. Deity would not be Deity if It were not omnipotent. Our God has created everything in heaven and on earth that He wills [Ps. 113, 11 ], He wants - and it happens. He wants water to flow from the stone! - and it flows. He wanted the world to come out of nothing, and it appeared; and works show that He is omnipotent. Come and see [Jn. 1, 46]. The devil tends to strike our hearts with a stony insensibility of our sins, a cold insensibility of the omnipresence of God, an insensibility of the power of the words of prayer, an insensitivity to our neighbor, to his sorrows and joys. We must constantly fight. Try to turn your whole life into the service of God: whether you read anything at home, begin this work with a short heartfelt prayer, so that God will enlighten and make you wise in faith and piety and in carefully fulfilling your duties, and never read out of idleness, to pass the time: by doing this you will humiliate the word, which should all serve our salvation, and not idle talk and a means for pleasure and a pleasant pastime; If you speak to your neighbors, speak wisely, prudently, instructively, edifyingly; Avoid idle talk, like the poison of the serpent, remembering that for every idle word that people say, they will give an answer on the day of judgment [Matt. 12, 36], that is, they will hear the just verdict of the Judge. Whether you teach your own children or those of others, turn the matter into the service of God, teaching them with diligence, first thinking through the means for teaching clear, intelligible, complete (if possible) and fruitful. Defeat in the name of the Lord and by the power of the cross the machinations of the enemy, who is trying to confuse, overshadow, constrain, and weaken you. Even if you eat, drink or do anything else lawful, do everything for the glory of God. If the devil stops you in prayer with doubt that this prayer is not from God and does not lead to God, tell him: does it lead from you to you? But you, a spirit fallen by pride and malice, do not pray to the All-Creator, the Judge. Is it just so that He does not torment you, and then with your characteristic pride and malice because of the cruelty of the torments you endure; and all church prayers are composed with the greatest humility, and all true prayer books humbly ask the Lord, with a sense of their wretchedness, poverty, misery and blindness, for various benefits, mainly spiritual, according to the commandment of the Lord: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness [Matt. 6, 33 ]; and you, devil, forever and ever have never asked and do not ask God for any good, for you are pure evil. So, [...] the fruits of the prayer of humility. In addition, our prayers are all holy in content, pure, peaceful, joyful, and life-giving. And from whom does peace, joy and belly come? Is it not from the Holy Spirit, the Life-Giving Lord? From you, evil soul, comes only anxiety, languor, evil despondency and spiritual death. If you are offended and hurt by someone’s exposure of your weaknesses, then, despite all your other shortcomings, you also have a strong illness of pride. You need to beat this dangerous snake in your heart more often until your heart is not at all embarrassed and hurt by reproaches and accusations. But if you avoid reproof or if you do not endure reproaches, you will perish in the devil’s pride and fall into the devil’s claws. My Lord, Lord Jesus Christ! My speedy, swift, unashamed Intercessor! I thank You with all my heart that You graciously listened to me when I, in darkness, crampedness and flames of the enemy, cried out to You, and very quickly, sovereignly, graciously delivered me from my enemies and gave my heart space, lightness, light! Oh, Master, how I suffered from the machinations of the enemy and how timely You showed me help, and how obvious Your almighty help was! I glorify Your goodness, benevolent Master, hope of the desperate! I praise You that You did not completely disgrace my face, but mercifully delivered me from the darkness and dishonor of hell. How, after this, can I ever despair of Your hearing and mercy on me, the damned? I will, I will always call on Your sweetest name, my Savior, but You, O most innumerable goodness, as always, now and before 70 save me according to Your immeasurable compassion! For Your name is Lover of Mankind and Savior. (The Lord saved me twice through my prayer: in the apartment of Alexander Sergeevich Prokofiev and at the merchant Grigory Petrovich Sidorov.) The all-evil enemy invented a new way of blaspheming the Only Begotten through printed secular books - with what? Because they contain almost no word about Christ, about the Savior. And then in a dream he decided to blaspheme the Only Begotten to me under the guise of blasphemy against the king of the earth. The lamentation of Jeremiah is an image of lamentation with which the priest of the New Testament should cry for the Christians captured by the devil, alive caught in his will [2 Tim. 2:26], suffering all the misfortunes of satanic captivity and not noticing their captivity. The proud will jump on the proud, but pride will be punished by itself: with what one sins, he is punished [Wis. 11, 17]. A proud man will live in the same house with a proud man, but pride is punished closer and more often. The greedy and stingy will join the greedy and stingy, so that greed and stinginess will be punished by themselves. The devil oppresses the human race and especially the poor and destitute Christians of this world by bringing all the needs of life to the extreme cost. That's his area 71. Press as much as you like, but we trust in God. He created us - He will nourish us, the most good, generous, wise, all-powerful Creator. Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you [1 Pet. 5, 7]. If you want to make a sacrifice pleasing to the Lord, deny yourself for His sake sleep for a few minutes at midnight and flow to Him with prayer for yourself and for His people. Midnight prayer is especially easy, pure, sincere and successful. Equally, if you want to please the Lord, deny yourself the delicious food, so that you may be completely pleased with the Lord and His spiritual food - His Body and Blood (the essence of the spirit and the life [John 6:63]), His holy word and church service. Do not satisfy the completely sinful flesh that resists God even in its natural needs, lest it prevail over your spirit, but oppress it wisely in everything: in food, in drink, and in sleep, even with somewhat unclean and fetid air, cramped housing, denial of the things it loves. A pleasant and long sleep, delicious food, a spacious, richly decorated home, elegant clothes, various pleasant whims - the same as pleasant shackles, the pleasantness of which leads to destruction. Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts in every way [Pal. 5, 24]. One of the most powerful deceits of the devil is relaxation through laziness of the heart, and with it all spiritual and physical strength: faith, hope and love dry up in the heart, you become faithless, sad, insensitive [...] to God and to people, you become like salt that has lost its strength [Matt. 5, 13; OK. 14, 34]. Do not believe your physical relaxation and do not think that it is from natural causes: it is from the relaxation of the heart and the whole body by the devil, who is trying in every possible way to stop us in piety. The Lord is incarnated daily during the Liturgy from the Holy Spirit and from bread and wine. Do not trust your flesh when it weakens and refuses to serve you, as if due to a lack of reinforcement with food. This is a dream. Overcome yourself, pray fervently - and you will see that the weakness of your body was false, illusory, and not real. And you will see in practice that man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God [Matt. 4, 4]. Don't rely on bread. Christ on earth, be exalted 73, it is said. This means that the believer in the coming of Christ to earth, in His incarnation and in all His humane views about our salvation does not cleave to the earth, but is constantly lifted up mentally and heartily, and his will strives incessantly - to God, to heavenly blessings and is not seduced by earthly sweets, the earthly splendor of wealth, honors. Unfortunately, we have little faith in Christ, and we want to combine love for the world with love for Christ, worldly passions with love for God. Incompatible! If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself [Matt. 16, 24; OK. 9, 23; Mk. 8, 34], everything he loves in the world to the point of addiction and let him hate his sin-loving soul. December 24, 1869 My God! How our neighbor’s love and sincere sympathy for us delights our heart! Who can describe this bliss of a heart imbued with a feeling of love for me from others and my love for others? It's indescribable. And if here on earth mutual love delights us so much, then with what sweetness of love will we be filled in heaven in cohabitation with God, with the Mother of God, with the Heavenly Powers, with the holy people of God? Who can imagine, describe this bliss? And what temporary, earthly things should we not sacrifice to receive such indescribable bliss of heavenly love? God! Your name is Love. Teach me true love, strong as death [Song. 8, 6]. So I have abundantly tasted its sweetness from communication in the spirit of faith, even in Thee, with Thy faithful servants and maidservants, and I have been abundantly pacified and enlivened by it! Confirm, O God, this which you have done in me [Ps. 67, 29]. ABOUT! If only it were like this all the time! Grant me more often to have fellowship [...] of love with Your faithful servants [...], with Your Church, with Your members. My sweetest Savior! You, having gone out [to serve] the human race, not only preached the word of heavenly truth in the church, but flowed around cities and villages, did not shy away from anyone, went to everyone’s houses, especially to those whose warm repentance You foresaw with Your Divine gaze. Thus, You did not sit at home, but had loving fellowship with everyone. Grant us also to have this communion of love with Your people, so that we, shepherds, are not confined to Your sheep in our houses, as in castles or dungeons, going out only for services in the church or for needs in houses according to one duty and only memorized prayers. May our lips open for free speech with our parishioners in the spirit of faith and love. May our Christian love for our spiritual children be revealed and strengthened through lively, free, fatherly conversation with them. ABOUT! What sweetness You, Master, our boundless love, hid in the spiritual, love-warmed conversation of the spiritual father with his spiritual children, what bliss! Oh, angelic bliss! Oh, God's bliss! And how can I not strive on earth with all my might for such bliss? And it is still only weak beginnings, only some, weak semblance of the heavenly bliss of love! Love especially the fellowship of charity, both material and spiritual. Do not forget charity and fellowship [Heb. 13, 16]. What the Lord and the Church say is so, but what the devil says is not so. When the devil confuses you with unbelief in the Mysteries, saying: it is impossible for bread and wine to be the Body and Blood of Christ, tell him: yes, for you and for me this is impossible, you are telling the truth, but not for God: everything is possible with God [Mk. 10.27]. The very thought of God is deed, the word of God is deed. Speech and bysha [Ps. 148, 5]. He says - and it happens. Brief and clear. And all the worlds stand by the word of God: bearing all things by the word of His power [Heb. 1.3]. Don’t your feet want to be above and teach, scary to say, the Creator of all? Is it possible to doubt something that our own experience and the visible and invisible worlds assure us of being? Remember what the secret of the existence of all creatures consists of - in the word of the Creator: speech, and came! [Ps. 148, 5]. Everything comes from the word. All the infinite variety of creatures from the omnipotent, all-wise, all-good Word of God - from nothing else. You are also shown an example in Scripture of how everything became powerfully and quickly by the word of God: according to the word of Moses, the waters turn into blood, the earth into midges, the rod into a serpent; the hand becomes covered with leprosy - and suddenly it is healed and recreated; light is transformed into tangible darkness. The country of Egypt is covered with frogs, because Aaron, at the voice of Moses, stretched out his hand to the waters; Moses takes the ashes in his hands and throws them through the air - and people and livestock are covered with scabs. Moses only raises his staff to the sky, and a terrible thunderstorm with hail appears. Moses only stretches out his hand, and the Lord in an instant transforms the essence of things: come and see [Jn. 1, 46]. This is how convenient it is to create everything and turn it over to the Lord! Isn’t it the same Lord who acts through us, priests, among us? Here is God Himself, incarnate for our sake, and the Intercessor and Finisher of everything: He offers sacrifice and is offered, and receives and is distributed. The priest only speaks the words, stretches out his hands, and the Lord does everything. Remember: the mind is the servant of the heart, which is our life; if it leads the heart to truth, to peace, joy, to life, it fulfills its purpose, it is true; if to doubt, anxiety, languor, despondency, darkness - he deviates from his purpose and is certainly deceitful, of a false mind. If the heart, from believing in something, feels peace, delight, lightness - that is enough: there is no need to demand from the mind evidence of the truth of this object, it is undoubtedly true - the heart assures of this with its life. For the goal of all the searches of reason is truth and life. When we perform the Sacraments, the enemy tries in every possible way to keep us in his hellish bonds: in darkness, fire and cramped conditions. Oh, what a fire! Oh, how cramped! Everything must be endured. Are you going to repent? – Feel your sins and look for tears. When you perform the Sacrament of Repentance, you feel your most remorseful repentance before God and all the poverty, ignorance, and sinfulness of human nature. The cross, truly the cross is a confession! Oh, what a debtor a priest feels to his spiritual children during confession! Truly an unpaid debtor, guilty of heavenly truth and deserving of a thousand gay lights! You see and feel that with people’s deep ignorance of the truths of faith and their sins, with their petrified insensibility, the confessor must pray firmly, firmly for them and teach them day and night, early and late. Oh, what ignorance! Ignorance of the Trinity! They don't know who Christ is! They don’t know why they live on earth! What about the Falls? But we are looking for enrichment, peace, we don’t like work, we get irritated when there is more of it than usual! We are looking for a spacious home, all kinds of convenience. No, brother; do not seek wealth, a spacious home, rich clothing - lest you love earthly peace, lest you become lazy, lest you neglect your spiritual affairs, and lest you lose eternal blessings and heavenly peace. For those who have tasted worldly peace here in abundance, what kind of peace should they expect there? The Most Holy Trinity is a loving and good unity. The Most Holy Trinity is the most perfect unity of the Three Persons in one Being, because it is the most perfect equality. He gives true alms who gives from the heart and with a loving heart. He is truly merciful, who speaks with everyone heartily, and not just with his mind or lips, who gives everyone sincere, heartfelt respect, who preaches the word of God and serves from a true heart, unfeignedly - in a word, who [...] everyone and carries everyone with love in his heart, despising everything material that becomes an obstacle in love between me and my neighbors - he is truly merciful. Now, with God’s help, begin to fulfill in action everything that you wrote about the passions, and with all your soul turn to your neighbors to create their eternal good. Think about their spiritual needs. Glory to the Holy, Almighty, Consubstantial, Life-Giving, Omnipresent Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit - our all-good God, through the sign of the cross, delivered me today after Matins and the rule for communion from the devil’s stony insensitivity of heart and hypocrisy. The Lord transformed the fiery tightness in an instant into cool space and lightness! I glorify the power of the Father and the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit, the indivisible, uncreated Divinity, the Trinity of One Essence, reigning for ever and ever 74 . Oh, my strength is the Trinity! Oh, my wealth is the Trinity! Oh, my shameless hope is the Trinity! Deliverance from sins, troubles and sorrows - Trinity! Oh, sovereign driver of evil spirits - Trinity! May the Trinity always be everything to me! Glory to Thee, my sweet, sweet belly, Jesus the Son of God, for Thou hast rejoiced and relieved me with the joy of Thy face after communion of Thy life-giving Mysteries (Saturday – communicants: Week of the Worship of the Cross)! The devil tried in every possible way through an eclipse of mind to knock my faith out of my heart, but I did not doze off or fall asleep by Your grace and repelled the serpent’s flattery with firm faith in the Mysteries, as You Yourself, our belly, invariably completely dwelt in them, like a soul in a body. March 17, 1862. Resurrection. Morning. Fifth week of Lent. This morning I was overcome by devilish laziness and drowsiness. I prayed, I resisted, I overcame. Before mass it became so easy, easy. He served mass until halfway through with great faith in the Lord and calmly. But from the halfway point, from the most important thing, which I deliberately read in advance, the devil instilled doubt regarding the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, confused, wounded, weakened, tormented; I served the entire other half of the mass vaguely, chaotically, with relaxation and torment. I doubted the Spirit of God (but not intentionally) as the Divine Person - and the Spirit of God withdrew from me, and the devil entered into me - the spirit of lies, doubt, powerlessness for all truth and goodness, the spirit of all evil; and I learned by experience that there is the Spirit of God, that He is God, life, light, strength, strength and peace for me, that without Him I languish in torment, melt, disappear internally and externally; that He is the Spirit of all truth, is everywhere and fills everything, that He is like air for our soul: all true and good thoughts and feelings flow from Him, our Divine air; that the Son of God Jesus Christ guides us into all truth by the Holy Spirit. Do not give in to irritability and anger because of the devil’s attack on you with blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, do not be faint-hearted, but be strong, take courage and be complacent. Thank God that for the sake of His truth you endure the attack and malice of the liar and deceiver of the devil. Blessed are you when they revile you [Matt. 5, 11 ] bodiless villains of God, and you resist their reproach and courageously repel their slander and blasphemy. Without the Holy Spirit, nothing of God is communicated to us: everything is given through the Holy Spirit. Remember who the Teacher of the Divine Spirit is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself: through Him the Holy Spirit came into the world below. I prayed to the Divine Spirit, read it three times to the Heavenly King, and the Most Blessed One came again and inhabited me at the end of the liturgy. Why did the devil attack me so viciously? - For my hibernation. The devil often tempts those who pray with inner heaviness and intense drowsiness: this is how he tends to make you sleepy. Words do not come from the mouth, the chariot of the tongue is tied up, like Pharaoh's chariots in the Red Sea. We must overcome ourselves. At first it can be incredibly difficult, but then it becomes easy. When your only begotten - your mind - is arrogant and goes against the truth of God, agreeing with the father of lies, forced by him to rebel against the Father of truth, crucify and slaughter this only begotten of yours and offer him as a sacrifice to God. This crucifixion and slaughter of one’s child, who is always within us, is painful, but it is necessary: ​​those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]. Under the flesh, understand the carnal mind. or carnal wisdom, which is enmity against God: for it does not obey the law of God, for it can do less [Rom. 8, 7]. The wisdom of the flesh is death, but the wisdom of God is life and peace [Rom. 8, 6]. Or here is another urge for you to slay your only begotten, that is, a mind that resists the truth of God: If your right eye - I mean your heart and mind, the puffed up mind - offends you, tear it out and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your members (the natural man) should perish, and not your whole body should be cast into hell [Matt. 5, 29], where their worm does not die and the fire does not go out [Mk. 9, 44]. Do not spare any expensive sweets for your neighbor: your neighbor is more precious than anything in the world. You are doing a favor to the image of God, and God is an incomparable, infinite sweetness, who gives everything abundantly for enjoyment [1 Tim. 6, 17]. If the Lord promised to reward for a glass of water [Matt. 10, 42; Mk. 9:41], then will he not reward us for what is dearer to us than water? Show your brother love by donating what is dear to you. Woe to Christians, especially priests, who have learned by experience who is their life - I mean Christ, and with all this, they place the hope of their lives in this, which is not life, but a passing shadow, sweet or red or pleasantly tangible dust, and clinging with their hearts to this dust as if to something permanent, imperishable, reviving. It would be better for them not to know the way of truth [2 Pet. 2:21], rather than to know, but to be led astray from the holy commandment that was delivered. They will receive a share with the adulterers [Lk. 12, 46; 1 Cor. 6, 9]. Eating and walking, walking and eating is an empty pastime, and the teacher of such a way of life is the devil, leading such a person as a slave by the nose. By Him we are revived, we live in His air, we drink His water, we eat His bread; He gave us His only begotten Son - how can He not give everything to those who ask [Rom. 8, 32]? And prayer is needed only to reveal your acceptability: God knows everything before. All in God. To the sins of covetousness we must add the sin of book-loving. To the sin of idleness - the sin of idle talk and vain, inattentive or only for passing time reading any book, spiritual or secular; sin of idle talk during prayer. To wean our corrupt nature from being seduced by the temporary sweetness of sin [Heb. 11, 25], the Lord arranged it in such a way that the most pleasant sensual pleasures, which we greedily rush to, are always harmful, both by their very nature and because of our greed and immoderation: such are all almost delicious dishes, all pleasant drinks, such are the pleasures of voluptuousness. Glory to the goodness and wisdom of the Heavenly Father, who by all means diverts us from falling into sensuality, or into the crude pleasures of sensuality! He who has spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear – let him see and hear all this. Thus, for a Christian, the very harm from sensual pleasures that are destructive to our body shows that we were not created for them and live on earth, but for higher, spiritual, eternal pleasures! So, rest and enjoy in God, my soul! Here is your perfect, harmless, true, eternal pleasure! You've already experienced it many times. But all earthly pleasures are charming, harmful, transitory, and at their very beginning bear the germs of corruption, as soon as we touch them. The pain and illness from them are proof of this. Glory to the most merciful God in the Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who, through my prayer, delivered me from the jaws of the mental wolf and did not allow my wretched and sinful soul to be tormented by the jaws of the serpent! Oh, may Thy power and Thy love for mankind always triumph, now and ever and unto ages of ages, over the insignificant, like smoke, power and malice of the devil! Do not betray us for our sins to the rapacity and cruelty of this hellish wolf, but always deliver us from it for Thy name’s sake, when we call upon Thee! (He confessed calmly, with feeling, by the grace of God, without haste, sincerely zealous for the salvation of souls.) Brother! You feel in your heart a murderous evil towards your neighbor (you are tormented by evil thoughts about the insults inflicted on you by him). Here is a way for you to get rid of inner tightness: imagine the multitude of your sins, innumerable in number, and vividly imagine how the Lord of your life endures them on you, how He forgives you daily and without number, if you sincerely pray to Him for your sins; Meanwhile, you do not want to forgive your neighbor for a few unsmooth or abusive words, perhaps very well characterizing your character or some vice, some passion of yours; you don’t want to forgive your neighbor for several outbursts of passion aroused in him by the devil; sigh and, if you can, cry about your madness, just be sure to condemn yourself, and not your neighbor, - and now mercy from the Lord is ready for you: the inner tightness will disappear like smoke, your thoughts will become clearer, your heart will calm down, and you will again walk in the space of your heart. Accustom yourself to gentleness as if it were not you who listened to reproaches, slander, insults, but someone completely different or, as it were, your shadow. Don't be suspicious. I walk through my kindness [Ps. 25, 1]. There will never be a sinner to stand before me. I became dumb and humbled and kept silent [Russian: how long is the wicked before me. I was dumb and voiceless and silent] [Ps. 38, 2 – 3]. But as if I were deaf and did not hear, and as if I were dumb and did not open my mouth [Ps. 37, 14]. It is impossible for the powerless and tormenting lies of the devil to stand in the church or take up residence in the heart of a pious person, sincerely devoted to God. It oppresses, weakens, torments the heart, poisons it. Like poison, it stings and gnaws like a snake. Therefore, the words of the Lord - the word of God, Divine services, prayers of the Sacraments, the writings of the holy fathers - words are pure, silver is kindled, tempted by the earth (lies), purified by the sevenfold [Russian: cleansed from earth (lies) in the crucible, refined seven times] [Ps. 11, 7]. I will write a note of gratitude to my Lady, the Most Holy Theotokos, that in the throng of the enemy, during the distribution of the Holy Gifts, she solemnly delivered me from their impudent blasphemer - the devil; when I looked up to Her with the eyes of my heart in my cramped state and said to Her in my heart: Most swift Intercessor! Intercede quickly with me in my sorrow, in my distress! - I got rid of the cramped conditions and calmly distributed life items to the 75 Vladychna. Glory to the Lord, who pacified me, although unworthy, with the Mysteries of His Body and Blood through the perception of heartfelt faith in the Lord, truly and essentially present in every part of His Body and Blood, able and unable to share. Glory to the Existing One, who fulfills everything and is not contained in anything, but who essentially exists and is contained in the Holy Mysteries, just as the soul is contained in the body! Amen, amen, amen. March 24th day, 1862. Whoever loves father or mother more than Me, says the Lord, is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves a son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me [Matt. 10, 37]. If those who love parents and children more than Him are unworthy of the Lord, then how unworthy are those who love money, food, drink, clothing, precious jewelry, attire, their honor, and the pleasures of the world more than Him! What are they worth? – They are worthy only of this corruptible world, but not of God. He who loves the world does not have the love of the Father [1 John. 2, 15]. If the enemy overwhelms you with carnal passions, addiction to money, to food and drink, remember how the Heavenly Powers live, the Lady Mother of God, our Intercessor, us, apparently alive, but dead sinners, who delivers many times from spiritual death, and the saints of God, our helpers and prayer books, who have settled in heaven - they live by God and in God. So you too are jealous of them: live more by God, by prayer, contemplation, by reading the word of God, and not by food and drink. The bread of life is Christ - let us put aside other concerns about bread. The Lord, who gives us the Flesh and Blood of His Son for food and drink, will all the more give us natural bread; He who clothes our soul in Christ will much more send us material clothing; He who deigns to dwell in us himself will not deprive us of a perishable dwelling. The Lord called me into existence - He will support this existence to the end. In every word, God is the Word, a simple Being. How carefully one must pronounce words, with what humility and prudence, so as not to anger God the Word with the Father and the Spirit. To my Lady Theotokos, that you have got rid of the evil ones, I will sing victorious and grateful, O most unworthy and sinful servant. Glory to You, Most Offering and Most Quick Deliverer, for You saved me from the demon of stinginess and hatred, who burned me with hellish fire and made my life unbearable. March 25. To doubt the Divinity of the Holy Spirit means to doubt one’s life, for the Holy Spirit revives and nourishes everyone spiritually and serves as a kind of spiritual sun, air, food and drink for the soul; means giving up prayer, for we pray with the Holy Spirit; from truth and holiness, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and all that is holy; from all spiritual consolation in sorrows and illnesses, for the Holy Spirit alone is the true and only Comforter with the Father and the Son; from faith, for faith is given by the Holy Spirit; from hope and love, for hope and love are also given to hearts from the Holy Spirit: the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, given to us [Rom. 5, 5 ]; from spiritual and physical strength, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of strength and strength; from wisdom and reason, from the fear of God, from one’s breath, for He is the breath, the air of the soul - in a word, it means dooming oneself to moral insignificance and killing oneself. Do not pay attention to doubts about the truth: they are the breath of the spirit of the evil one, the spirit of lies, the murderer. By their fruits you will recognize them [Matt. 7, 16]. Doubt about the truth is always deadly to the soul. All truth is the breath of the Spirit of God - the word of God, the creations of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church, words and creations, the deeds of every pious person who loves the truth. The devil tempts us at all times in every possible way: in church, during services and the Sacraments, with impatience, irritability, doubt, lack of faith and unbelief, relaxation or lethargy and laziness and drowsiness, contemplation, pride, hypocrisy or approximation [Matt. 15, 8 ], envy; at home - love of money, stinginess, enmity towards neighbors, eating from our table; He stumbles into all possible sins at every opportunity, seeking to consume us with this or that passion. Oh, many-headed monster! Oh, all-consuming mouth! Oh, bottomless abyss! Be sober and watchful, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour [1 Pet. 5, 8]. Don’t think, don’t desire, don’t say, don’t undertake, don’t do anything that is not commanded or indicated in the Holy Scriptures. Only it leads to true life, for by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, it is said, man will live [Matt. 4, 4]. If the Lord gave you the grace, according to the desire of your heart, to pray in church with all your soul with fiery love for the people of the Lord, for the salvation of their souls, then expect from the devil, the envious man of fiery prayer, cruel to fall [...] the time of the same, then another service, that is, if you pray [...], then he: will attack you during the liturgy [...] will greatly hurt and weaken you, no matter how fiery and strong you were your prayer for the Lord's people. How can he hurt us so much, [and then] during the service? [...] today he stunned me with a denial of the Divinity of the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity - the Spirit of God, the life-giving Spirit, by whom we believe, and pray, and are quickened, and strengthened in the service of God: when the enemy sows doubt in the heart regarding the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, then the foundation of all spiritual life, strength and strength will be destroyed, and we become lifeless, constrained, exhausted, burned by internal fire. But to doubt the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, especially for a priest, is a grave sin, for the priest, more than others, has experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, as having the grace of the priesthood, performing wondrous deeds with his hands and lips. The priest, by the Holy Spirit, performs all the Sacraments, and so often: the mysteries of the life-giving Body and Blood of the Lord, the fruits of which he so often experienced on himself, the mysteries of Baptism, Confirmation, Repentance, Marriage, Blessing of Anointing. By the Holy Spirit the priest is strengthened in the non-judgmental and shameless performance of the holy Sacraments and all services; The Holy Spirit will help in teaching the people; By the Holy Spirit, through the sign of the cross, he often drives away opposing forces from his heart and from others; He is strengthened by the Holy Spirit in every good work; He is illuminated by Him, is at peace, rejoices, breathes and lives - without Him he does not have a moment of spiritual and righteous life. So, it is crazy for a priest to doubt the Divinity of the Holy Spirit for one minute, and if he doubts the action of the evil spirit, then he will suddenly lose all his spiritual treasures and powers: faith, hope, love, truth, holiness, spiritual consolation and joy - and will become a victim of fierce heart torment, his face will be filled with dishonor, shame, fear: there he will be afraid of fear, where there is no fear [Ps. 13, 5]. Here he learns from experience who the Holy Spirit is and how bitter it is to live without Him for even one minute; here he tastes what the torment of sinners will be like in hell, where there is no Spirit of God. These are the temptations that exist! Glory again and again to my Lady Queen Theotokos, who delivered me from violence and torment of the devil, who removed the dishonor of sin from my face and gave me the strength to utter a word to the glory of Her Annunciation. March 25, 1862 Came home with a free heart. During early mass, the enemy stammered and weakened my heart; He served vaguely, without sympathy, hastily, condemning himself until communion. He took communion with unashamed faith and calmed down. Love for God and neighbor in the present [...] state cannot exist without self-sacrifice; whoever wants to fulfill the commandments of love for God and neighbor must doom himself in advance to exploits and hardships for the sake of his loved ones. (Amen.) We know love in this, that He (Christ) laid down His life for us [1 John. 3, 16]. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends [John. 15, 13]. God is eternally cheerful, therefore one must always pray to Him with a cheerful and sober mind and heart; Be vigilant in prayer, it says [1 Pet. 4, 7], and drive away self-forgetfulness and laziness. Do not let your prayer evaporate and only dry words remain, but let it breathe the warmth of the Spirit, like moist and warm bread taken out of the oven. Teach Trinity and incarnation. The Lord's solemn entry into Jerusalem is a prefiguration of His solemn entry with believers into Heavenly Jerusalem at the end of the ages. Then we will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, bearing signs of victory, and so we will always be with the Lord [1 Thess. 4, 17]. Love your neighbor as yourself [Mk. 12, 31]. Many people pray hypocritically, and their hypocritical prayer has become a habit, so that they themselves do not notice and do not want to notice that they are praying hypocritically, and not in spirit and truth, and if someone told them in reproof that they are praying hypocritically, they would be angry with the one who dared to say such, in their opinion, inconsistency. A person does not reach hypocrisy suddenly, but gradually. At first, perhaps, he prayed from the heart, but then, since praying always with the heart is a significant work, to which one must always force oneself (the Kingdom of Heaven, it is said, is forced [Matthew 11:12]), he begins to pray more with the lips, superficially, and not from the depths of the soul, for this is much easier; and then finally, with the intensified struggle between the flesh and the devil, he prays only with his lips, without bringing the power of the words of prayer to the heart. There are a lot of such people; The Lord says about them: this people draws near to Me with their lips, and with their lips they honor Me, but their heart is far from Me [Isa. 29, 13]. What has been said about prayer should also be said about the communion of the Holy, Immortal and Life-Giving Mysteries. Often, at first, a person receives communion with living faith and with a feeling of love and reverence, and then, with the constant opposition of the flesh and the devil to the truth of God, he yields to them victory over himself and receives hypocritical communion, not of the Body and Blood, but, according to his thoughts of the heart, of bread and wine. The essence of the Mysteries is their spirit and life [John. 6, 63], as the Savior said, does not fit in him, he is internally stolen by Satan. Save, God, everyone from such communion, from such blasphemy against the Lord. The same happens with the Sacrament of Penance. The enemy stunned my soul twice today (March 28): once with impatience and irritability towards my wife, another time upon entering the church with contempt for a beggar and stinginess; but I prayed with zeal for my first sin at home before the holy icons at morning prayer, and the Lord took away my sin from me, brought me out of cramped conditions and placed me on my spacious nose [Ps. 30, 9 ]; about the second sin, I fell in the church to the throne of grace and to the Lamb of God resting on it, with repentance and a contrite heart, saying: Lamb of God, take away the sin of the world, have mercy on me, I have sinned before You: I have despised the poor. And He again removed the heavy burden of sin from me and laid His peaceful, light, sweet yoke on me. Glory to Your mercy, Lamb of God! March 28th day 1862 Relying on wealth, on food and drink, on clothing, housing, on people is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, for we live by the Holy Spirit, and not by food and drink, or clothing, or a house, or a person. A brother will not deliver, will a man deliver? [Ps. 48, 8]. In a brother who owes you something: for example, if he has offended you with something, or if he doesn’t eat your food and drink your drink, or took money, contemplate yourself, who daily causes countless insults to the Heavenly Father and, therefore, owes Him a talent of darkness and to whom the most merciful Father daily forgives many sins. Also: in the brother who comes to you to eat bread, see yourself as one who eats animal bread 76 - Christ the Lord. Find in this case a reason to rejoice in the goodness of the Heavenly Father and glorify His generosity. He (the devil) was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies [Jn. 8, 44]. The devil was at first created entirely true, but did not persist in the truth and deprived himself of all truth, becoming a lie, that is, the direct opposite of the truth. The Spirit is truth [1 Jn. 5, 6], says the Master, that is, the essence of the Spirit of God is truth, because the Spirit of God is and from Him everything, together with the Father and the Son - the mental world - the spiritual and the sensory, material world. The devil is a lie, that is, having transformed himself from truth into a lie, into a dreamy being (although he himself remained real, that is, with his own being), and from himself produces everything dreamy, seductive, non-existent, or false; only from Existence is true, only from Life is life. The devil, having become not what he was (out of truth - a lie), and produces from himself what is not, that is, a dream, a lie, not life, but death, for the tree is known from its fruit, and cannot in any way produce the truth, because he has completely fallen away from it and turned his being into a lie, into the denial of all truth, and what he does not have in himself, he cannot produce from himself - only from the Existing and the True the existing and the true. As long as we stand in the truth, in God, we produce what is true: true and good thoughts, holy feelings and good deeds; and since we stand in a lie, we produce from ourselves the opposite, the devil, the Lord calls it not existing, but existing [Rom. 4, 17 , and the devil exists - non-existent. Oh, denial of being and life! Oh, spiritual ghost! O dreamer! Therefore, he deceives people and makes them, if they believe his dreams as truth, his accomplices. The Spirit of truth is life: the Spirit gives life [to them. 6:63], says the Lord; on the contrary, the spirit of lies - the devil - is death, because our life is one - God, and what is opposite to Him is death. Life lies only in truth, because truth is God, the author of all that exists and lives. Oh, Kronstadt! Kronstadt! In it, along with shops and benches, taverns, taverns, clubs, theaters, confectionery shops, wine cellars, there are also fornication houses, like some kind of shops, to which dissolute youth go to satisfy the criminal greed of their passionate flesh! ABOUT! What a zealous servant of Satan Kronstadt! Oh, what evil are these houses of prodigals! I said: they stand on the same level as the benches. This is said correctly, without exaggeration. Just as anyone in need of food and drink enters a shop without a twinge of conscience, or anyone who drinks wine or is a hunter of wine-related fun comes into a wine cellar, so all hunters of Jupiter’s adventures go into houses of fornication with impudence and some kind of legality, not at all ashamed of the vileness of their actions and demanding for themselves miserable creatures in human form, but not people in business, like a bottle of wine or honey. Isn’t this paganism, isn’t this worse than any paganism? What did the members of Christ, annual partakers of the Divine Body and Blood, do for themselves? What a reproach to the name of a Christian! What a desecration of the Holy Mysteries! How long will lawlessness continue to spread - drunkenness and fornication? How long will these theaters last? How long will these treats last? Is this diligent service to the womb? Carnal life has reigned in our city, service to the devil has assumed enormous proportions! What to do? – According to the instructions of the apostle, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering [2 Tim. 4, 2], not to be dumb dogs that cannot bark [Isa. 56, 10]. Oh shepherds! Shepherds! Shepherds shepherd themselves, they only make money, they fill their pockets, they play cards, and they are jealous of amusements - but they do not shepherd the sheep of the Lord! They dress in waves of them, but do not think about protecting them from the mental wolf. A hireling, not a shepherd, whose sheep are not his own, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and runs; and the wolf plunders the sheep and scatters them [Jn. 10, 12]. Which of you will convict Me of unrighteousness? - says the Lord. If I speak the truth, why don't you believe Me? [In. 8, 46]. You see, sin is a lie. This means that virtue is truth. Rejoice, bringing peace and consolation to your family and all your neighbors. The Lord created everyone for joy and bliss. When your neighbor comes to your table, rejoicingly say to yourself: The Lord has sent me mercy - He ordered me to show His love for my brother in treating him. Oh, life-giving, most merciful and most quickly obedient to the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Soul! How quickly You deliver me from my sins and sorrows, how quickly You take me out of cramped conditions and bring my soul into space! So I cried out to You in the oppression of sin: Father, Son, Holy Soul, have mercy on me, and You immediately had mercy on me: my heart felt sweet, calm and easy. And now, out of the abundance of my heart, my lips glorify You, O most gracious Father, Life-Giving Son and Soul. Glory to Thy mercy, glory to the goodness of Thy obedience, O praised and exalted forever our God! Glory to Thee, great and wondrous God, who grants us to lead Thee with our hearts and converse with Thee as with the most merciful Father. Glory to Thee, our God, God of our mercy and salvation. Amen. Oh, malice! Anger at a fellow employee and boss! How bitter she is, even under a plausible pretext! Walk with kindness. Do not owe anyone anything except mutual love [Rom. 13, 8]. Throughout confession, the devil tormented me out of anger. Public confession for a priest is a school of self-sacrifice. How many reasons for the priest’s pride to become impatience, irritability, laziness, contemplation, negligence, and inattention! Here is a touchstone 79 of the priest’s love for his parishioners! The priest should by no means live in bliss and especially cherish himself with sleep and pleasant foods and drinks: otherwise the devil will easily stifle his heart with some passion and plunge him into crampedness and relaxation. Crucify, be sure to crucify your belly! Confession for a priest is a feat of love for his spiritual children, not looking at faces, long-suffering, merciful, not arrogant, not proud, not looking for one’s own (one’s own peace of mind, self-interest), not being irritated, not rejoicing or not condoning untruth, but rejoicing in the truth, which covers all, endures all, and falls away in no way [1 Cor. 13, 4 – 8]. Here he sees, the priest himself sees, his spiritual children see: he is a shepherd or a hireling, a father or a stranger to his children, whether he is looking for his own or even Christ Jesus [Phil. 2, 21]. My God! How difficult it is to confess properly! How many obstacles there are from the enemy! How gravely you sin before God by confessing improperly! How the word becomes impoverished! How the source of the word is blocked - the heart! How language changes the mind! ABOUT! How much preparation is needed for confession! How much you need to pray for the successful completion of this feat! And what ignorance of spiritual children! Day and night you need to sit with them, teach each of them with calmness, meekness and long-suffering! What a cross for a priest to make a confession based on the consciousness of the ignorance of those confessing, their coldness, all kinds of sinfulness and the consciousness of his own wretchedness, his own weakness, lethargy, the inertia of his heart towards sympathy and zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of his neighbors as his own! And how many crosses the devil puts on you during confession! He transforms the work of love, the work of a conversation between a father and his children, into the work of a slave or into the work of a mercenary with slaves, reluctantly paying them back! Every week of Lent one must prepare daily for confession. Oh, how great are Your mercies, Master, Lord Jesus Christ! The enemy has cruelly embittered me since the evening and this morning burdened me with his burden, imposed since the evening during confession. But with all my heart, in the hearing of the people, I read the prayers for communion, and - oh, goodness! You took away from me the heavy burden of my sins and calmed and sweetened me with Your love. So, You gave a sign in my heart that You accepted my warm confession, surprised me with the abyss of Your bounties, covered all my sins, very fierce and heavy, no one remembers them 80. I praise You, Your bounties are immeasurable, My Savior, for You have cleansed my sins, lifted up and strengthened my fallen weakness! gave joy to my heart. I praise You, for You have confounded the ethereal enemies and did not allow them to completely triumph over me. And how yesterday they triumphed over me, a sinner, when I was embarrassed, darkened and lost in confession! I prayed before reading the prayers for communion to the Mother of God, calling Her the most swift Intercessor, and She, being most merciful, tangibly sent down strengthening grace in the heart and crushed the demonic machinations. Glory to Thee, Lady! Amen. An evil spirit sometimes moves into a person, and then the person becomes one spirit with the devil: one of you is the devil [Jn. 6, 70]. If the devil inhabits a person, then what is surprising if Christ inhabits him, the Prototype in His image, if the Sun of Truth is reflected in His splendor, one spirit becomes with him? If the devil enters an animal icon [Rev. 13, 14–15], so that the icon speaks and does one thing with it, then what is surprising if the Lord dwells in bread and wine and becomes one with them, transforming them into His Body and Blood? Sincerity or hypocrisy in our faith and sincerity or hypocrisy of love for our neighbor are revealed in us when someone from some error, for example, the pagan, Mohammedan or Jewish faith, converts to our holy faith or from the Roman, Lutheran and English confession to our Orthodox. If he unfeignedly loves his faith and his neighbor, then he sincerely rejoices at his conversion and willingly talks with him about faith, sincerely wishing him those benefits of faith that he himself enjoys; and if he is cold to faith and to his neighbor and is self-loving (he seeks his own), then he reluctantly accepts such a person and talks with him and internally desires that he remain in his faith, not imagining that his faith is destruction for his soul, that person. Test yourselves to see whether you are in the faith [2 Cor. 13.5 ], has it evaporated from your heart. Rejoice for the conversion of the lost. My Lord Jesus Christ - life, light, peace - made me glad today with His Holy Mysteries, having cleansed all my sins, and in the image of confession, 81 stained my soul. All day I remained heavenly, holy, calm, joyful in my Christ. Glory to Thee, O Innumerable Grace! Establish, O God, the hedgehog, the hedgehog you have made in me [Ps. 67:29]. How wonderfully the Lord rewarded me today for my almsgiving! I gave one poor woman a ruble, and another ruble, and a third, and the Lord returned all three rubles to me in the evening. The servant of God brought three rubles for confession. Our Lady, the Most Holy Theotokos, is an overflowing blessing and shrine. When an evil, blasphemous spirit rejects the Divinity of the Holy Spirit in your thoughts, tell him: Do you deny the Existence? Is it a shrine that sanctifies everyone? Is it true? Is it the power that accomplishes everything? Is it the life that gives life to everyone? Is the world ours? Is it our comfort, our peace? The Lord Jesus Christ, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is so everywhere that there is no person or object [small] or great in which He is not entirely: everything is filled with God, every creature - air, water, light, fire, earth, every living creature; Angels and holy men are one spirit with the Lord. But if, through the action of an evil spirit, you have lost for some time your heartfelt faith in the Holy Spirit, then at that time there is neither the Son nor the Father for you, for faith is given by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, that is, the Spirit of Christ, Who said about Himself: I am... the truth [Jn. 14:6], or by the Spirit of the Father: The Spirit of your Father will speak in you [Matt. 10, 20], or by the Spirit of the Son: God sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts [Gal. 4, 6]. About the post. If, through delicious food and drink, our flesh did not take precedence over the spirit and did not subjugate it to itself, then no one would demand the observance of fasts for the salvation of the soul. If, through delicious food and drink, the flesh did not distract us from love for God and neighbor and did not put them, their soul, spiritual salvation in the background, did not count it as if for nothing, did not place its heel on them, then everyone would eat whatever he wants for his health. But the flesh is the enemy of our soul, the enemy of God and neighbor. The more you caress and pamper her (not just with food and drink, but also with clothing, and a comfortable and wide apartment, and the amenities in her environment), the more she is at enmity with our spirit, with God and our neighbor. You cannot cleave to both God and carnal comforts and pleasures at the same time. If you fell in love with pleasing the flesh, then you certainly became at enmity with your spirit, with God and with your neighbor, that is, with the true spiritual interests of your neighbor, with his eternal salvation. About the word. In the word there is an image of the Holy Trinity. In the word there is thought, and word, and spirit. When you pray truly, from the heart, you feel that you are praying with the Holy Spirit - the words are imbued with such warmth from the heart; and sometimes not by the Holy Spirit, but by the spirit of lies: the mouth says one thing, but the heart feels something else, often completely opposite: for example, you pronounce words with doubt, in the spirit of impatience, indignation at someone, anger, or in the spirit of pride, arrogance, failure to recognize oneself as what one should recognize. About anger. If you are angry with your brother for his sins, let’s say, even tempting ones, then you yourself are not without sins, also tempting, although perhaps of a different kind; and how you yourself want your tempting sins to be covered by the condescending and all-covering (sins) love of your neighbors - how grateful you would be to them, with what love you hugged and kissed them for their all-enduring love! How this condescension would ease your already heavy grief over sins, encourage and strengthen your weakness in the fight against them, strengthen your spirit with hope in God’s mercy! But whatever you wish for yourself in such cases, wish for your brother. He is your member and the member of Christ; love, it is said, your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. Always remember, when your heart condemns and is angry at your brother for his sins, that you yourself are not without sin. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not feel the plank in your own eye? [Matt. 7, 3]. Hypocrite! You are truly a hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see to take the speck out of your brother’s eye [Matt. 7, 5]. Moreover, his brother stands or falls before the Lord [Rom. 14, 4 ], and not for you. And if your brother has sinned against you, then you must certainly forgive him for the offense he caused you, or for his sins against you. You yourself daily strongly need the forgiveness of your sins from the Heavenly Father and pray: forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors [Matt. 6, 12]. And if you want your sins to be forgiven, forgive your brother his sins against you. For if you forgive people their sins, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not... [Matt. 6, 14–15]. Our soul is a simple being, therefore it cannot at the same time love God and, for example, money, food, drink, or a neighbor and money, food and drink together. That is why it is said: No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate one and love the other; or he will be zealous for one and neglectful of the other. You cannot serve God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24]. Therefore, the psalmist says by the Holy Spirit: when wealth increases, do not put your heart on it [Ps. 61, 11]. Thus, every Christian should be afraid to attach his heart to money, food, drink, elegant clothes, an elegant apartment, books, secular music; Yes, he does not love, does not caress his flesh with anything: whether with amusements, elegant views, food and drinks, sleep, idleness and laziness, shameful deeds, games, idle travel, empty books and shows. Love the one God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 37 – 39], and be indifferent to everything else in the world, do not be partial or greedy to anything. Be zealous for simplicity in everything, so that you will be loved by a simple Being - God. Take away guile, doubt, lack of faith and double-mindedness from your soul. Polyeating leads to drowsiness, and drowsiness leads to loss of the Holy Spirit and faith; the heart of a sleepy person is a nest of evil spirits. In proportion to the rest, you must certainly tire the body, otherwise it will take precedence over the spirit, and then grief. You will never lose by eating and sleeping little, neither for body nor for soul - on the contrary, you will attract the Holy Spirit abundantly. Commandment of the wise: Guard your heart above all else [Prov. 4, 23], especially must always be kept in mind and actually fulfilled by a priest who so often performs services to God and the Sacraments, and especially the Divine Mysteries of the Body and Blood and partakes of them. The heart is the church of God, but it can easily become a cave of evil spirits. God is a simple being; just as God is a living being, a simple being, may you also be completely simple in wisdom and in faith, and not wicked. Christ God laid down His life for us; look, and be ready to lay down your life for the brethren [1 Jn. 3, 16] - not only your property, your peace of mind, your labors. God is life, giving existence and life to everything. He is the Existing One and the Almighty, for from Him are all things and by Him all things are supported. Let us know Him, the only Being. The devil is death because he arbitrarily deviated from the belly - God, and just as God is the Existing One, so he, the devil, due to his complete falling away from the Existing One, is the culprit of the non-existent, the culprit of dreams, delusions, for truly he cannot bring anything into being - in a word, he is a lie, just as God is the truth. When we want to do something, we call on God for help. For He works in us. Serve your neighbor with all your readiness in his needs, especially your family, if not for their sake, then for the sake of your Christ, for the sake of His commandments. Welcome the opportunity to show brotherly love to your neighbor, so that you may please your Christ, who loved us to death, death on the cross. Do not be upset with your neighbor when he, apparently, bothers you at the wrong time with some request: you know your time, but he does not know, and therefore boldly expects the participation of love from you. The duty of love obliges you to take part in sympathy even in unimportant things that do not interest you, but occupy and delight your neighbor, as if he were still imperfect. Others build houses with unjust property, and build them, and live in them, and let in tenants; and the righteous Lord, in retribution of unrighteousness, destroys the physical, not made by hands house of his wife or exposes him to illness; from another, who has unjustly enriched himself and lives by unrighteous profit, the Lord takes away the children: no matter how desired children were, these new olive trees [Ps. 127, 4], but the Lord does not allow them to live and, as it were, says to father and mother: it is enough for you alone to live in unrighteousness, and I will not let you make these chicks participants in your unrighteousness and I take them to Myself as innocent of the abomination of unrighteous wealth. Zizhditel (Church Slav.) – Creator, Creator. Prayer 5th of the morning prayers, St. Basil the Great Belly (Church Glorious) – life, being Tatba (Church Slavic) – theft, theft. A dream (dream) is an obsession, a ghost, a lie. To the extent - to the extent (Church Glav.) - since (how much) - to the extent (so much) Gennady II (Georgy Scholarius) “On faith and Christian life.” Article 41. M., 1855. p. 23. Gennady II Scholarius (1403 – 1473) occupied the patriarchal see in Constantinople from 1454 – 1456 and from 1464 – 1465. The first patriarch after the fall of Byzantium in 1453. An outstanding Byzantine theologian, writer and public figure, a learned man of his time. He participated in the Council of Florence (1438–1439) and advocated union with the Latins, believing in the possibility of dogmatic unification on the basis of truth. Subsequently, I became convinced of the impossibility of such unity. He wrote a number of anti-Latin polemical treatises. Obuyati (Church Glav.) – here in the meaning of “lose strength, deteriorate”; overwhelmed - spoiled, good for nothing, useless. Lovitva (Church Slavic) - here in the meaning of “prey from the hunt.” Ouds (Church Slavic) – members of the body. Prelest (church glory) – deception, seduction. From those who do not exist, everything brought, created by the Word, accomplished by the Spirit, the Most High Almighty, confirm me in Your love (Russian: Who brought the world out of non-existence, created by the Word and completed by the Spirit, Master Lord, confirm me in love for You) (irmos of the third song of the Sunday canon, voice 3). Sy (Church Glav.) – Existing, Eternal (one of the names of God). Landsknecht is a type of card game. Yako (Church Glav.) – for, since. Ever (Church Glorious) – always, continuously, unceasingly. Contempt (Church Glorious) – arrogance, contempt He who spares his rod hates his son: but he who loves punishes diligently (Russian: He who spares his rod hates his son; but he who loves him punishes him from childhood) (Proverbs 13:25). A name sign is a blessing from a priest, in which the fingers of the blessing hand form the letters of the name of Jesus Christ: IC XC. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not feel the plank in your own eye? (Matthew 7:3). Nadolze (Church Glav.) - for a long time. Tune (Church Glav.) - for free. I will write a letter of thanks (church glory) - I give thanks. That is, she put it in a spacious place, brought it out of the cramped space and into the open space. Wed. Ps. 30, 9. Tread on the asp and the basilisk, and cross the lion and the serpent (Ps. 90:13). Tempt (Church Glav.) – here in the meaning of “to know, to experience.” Extensive (Church Glorious) – twice as large. double. Brashno (Church Slavic) – food. Archangel (Greek) – lit.: military leader, that is, the chief of the fallen angels Rejection (Church-Glav.) – rejection, alienation Prayer of Simeon Metaphrast “As in your terrible...” from the follow-up to Holy Communion Darkness, darkness (church glory) - ten thousand; talent (Greek) – monetary unit. Wed: Matt. 18, 23 – 34 Kokosh (Church Slavic) – mother hen How much more (Church Slavic) – here “how much more” Wed: If you see iniquity, Lord, Lord, who will stand? (Ps. 129:3) Prayer of St. John of Damascus from following the future to sleep. Memorial service. Troparion, tone 8. Compare: My word, which proceeds from My mouth, does not return to Me empty (Church glory: lean), but fulfills what I please, and accomplishes what I sent it for (Is. 55:11). Phati (Church Glav.) – push, push. Compare: Yet all these things are done by one and the same Spirit, distributing to each one individually as He pleases (1 Cor. 12:11). Manie (Church Glav.) – a wave, a sign expressing desire or will Wed. The Great Penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, hymn 7, troparion is Trinity: The Trinity is simple, inseparable, consubstantial, and the nature is one, Light and Light, and the Holy Three, and God the Trinity is sung in one holy way, but sing, glorify, the Belly and the Belies, the soul, of all God (Russian: God the Trinity is sung as the Trinity simple, inseparable, consubstantial, one nature, like Lights and Light and - Three Holy and one Holy Face; but, soul, sing, glorify Life and Life - the God of all. P. Yungerov translated this verse as follows: “Now I will rise... I will be salvation, I will reveal myself in it.” Elika (Church Glav.) – what. Gregory (Postnikov) (1784–1860) – since 1856, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg. He was distinguished by his tirelessness in preaching and worship; was zealous about the conversion of schismatics, wrote a book as an exhortation to schismatics: “The truly ancient and truly Orthodox Church of Christ”, founded the magazines “Christian Reading”, “Orthodox Interlocutor”, “Spiritual Conversation”. Participated in the opening of the relics of St. Mitrophan of Voronezh Stichera on Praise at Matins of the Feast of the Annunciation. Kolmi more (Church Slavic) – here in the meaning “even more.” Drachma (Greek) – silver coin. Know... even imashi, the essence is to commit. If not... - Find out... if you have how much you need to complete. If not... Wed: Which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the costs, whether he has what is needed to complete it, so that when he lays the foundation and is not able to complete it, all those who see do not begin to laugh at him (Luke 14, 28 - 29). Dennitsa - lit.: morning star or dawn; Lucifer, the chief of the fallen angels, was so named from the brilliant perfections with which he was endowed by God. Symeon Metaphrastus (10th century) – saint of the Greek Church. Metaphrastus is known for the “Lives of the Saints” he compiled on behalf of the emperor, which he not only collected, but retold or transposed, which is where his nickname Metaphrastus came from (from the Greek “to retell, transpose”). His memory is celebrated on November 27. Prayer 4, Simeon Metaphrast “For in Thy fear and impartiality the Judgment Seat will stand...” from the follow-up to Holy Communion. You are not looking for what pleases Jesus Christ, but for your own (Phil. 2:21) Today (Church Glorious) – now, today. Vospyaschati (Church Glav.) – distract, divert. If you don’t claim (church glory) you don’t demand. Irmos of the 6th song of the Sunday canon at Matins, tone 2. Primrak (Church Slavic) – here “darkening”. Akathist to the Sweetest Jesus, Kontakion 8. Feigned, temporary (Church Glav.) – deceptive, fickle, short-lived. Wed. the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19 – 25). Clever (church glory) – spiritual, mental. Seduction by food and drink. Prayer “As in Thy terrible...” from the follow-up to Holy Communion. Cold (Church Slavic) - tired, bothered, burdened. As always, now and before - as always, so in the future. Region (church glory) – power. Vynu (Church Glav.) - always, incessantly. Irmos of the first song of the canon of the Nativity of Christ. Sunday stichera on the Lord I cried, voice 3 Zhitomerie (Church Slav.) - an assigned measure of bread distributed on time. Animal (church-glorified) having life in itself, giving life Jupiter (lat.) is the supreme god of the Roman pantheon, famous for his numerous love affairs. Volna (Church Slavic) - animal fur Touchstone - a stone for testing precious metals To whom (Church Glorious) – henceforth, more Okalyati (Church Glav.) – to desecrate, to stain with mud or manure. You might be interested in: