7 мая 1862 г.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus [Phil. 2, 5]. If Christ is in you through frequent communion of the Holy Mysteries, then be all like Christ: meek, humble, long-suffering, loving, impartial to earthly things, heavenly wise, obedient, reasonable, always have His spirit in you and do not be proud, impatient, partial to earthly things, stingy and money-loving. Believe firmly that you think, feel, speak, move and act always in God, so to speak, in His very bosom: abides in Me, and I in him [John, 6, 56]; on all sides He encloses you in Himself, penetrates you and knows you from behind and in front, says the holy prophet and King David, You embrace me, and put Your hand on me [Ps. 138, 5]. In God is the Mother of God, all the holy Angels and all the saints. What's closer? Who could be more easily communicated with Christian believers than holy Angels and men? Call with faith, hope and love both the Lord Himself and His saints, ask for their intercession for yourself before God; just as you ask the living for something for yourself, standing face to face with them, so ask the holy Angels and saints to pray to God for you, firmly believing that they are face to face to your heart. After satiety, not to mention drunkenness, fornication, voluntary or involuntary, necessarily follows, in a state of wakefulness or in sleep. This is the close connection between sins. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to avoid satiety, especially drunkenness, so that we do not anger our Master God with our carnal, unclean life. From this it follows that especially monks must consume food and drink extremely moderately, so that Satan does not tempt them with incontinence of the belly and inflame their loins and the outpouring of their secret members and does not defile their souls and bodies dedicated to God, and do not lead their hearts after himself. Sweet foods and drinks, especially sweet tea, closely border on fornication. He who does not move away from sweet foods and drinks will not avoid lustful thoughts, kindlings, unclean night dreams, outpourings and deeds themselves, about which it is absurd to eat and speak [Eph. 5, 12]. God is the most movable and communicable being, that is, for His creatures, especially rational ones. If air and light, by their subtlety, are so easily movable and communicable to everything that is capable of receiving them into themselves, then is the Lord of all, the omnipresent, all-good, infinite, omnipotent Spirit, not more movable and communicable into infinity than these inanimate, unreasonable material creations? ABOUT! How convenient the Lord is to believers and those who seek Him! The Spirit breathes where it wants, and you hear its voice, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes [John. 3, 8]. If human nature is intelligible, then how much more so than God's? If a father and mother give what is necessary for their children - they, humans, are evil by nature, then how much more will the Father... who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him [Matt. 7, 11]. Do not forget charity and fellowship [Heb. 13, 16]. Have fellowship with one another [1 Jn. 1, 7]. Air and light are only a weak semblance of God’s mobility and accessibility to His creatures; However, it’s still a pretty appropriate resemblance. Always have the mood of thoughts and feelings that you are unhappy, and pitiful, and poor, and blind, and naked [Rev. 3, 17] mentally without God and that everything for you is God. He is your truth, sanctification, riches, clothing, your life, your breath and everything. The Body and Blood of Christ are primarily Body and Blood because in every smallest particle of the Body and Blood the whole Christ God rests, fulfilling all parts. This is not the case in the human body. In the Body and Blood of Christ, every particle, drop is the whole Christ, never divided, one and the same. In every family there is some kind of sorrow, sent or allowed by the Heavenly Father for the humility and conversion of this family to God. Without sorrows, people would soon be forgotten. The people, who know this truth from numerous experiences, expressed it with a saying: in every hut there is a misfortune. What is mercy? Mercy is to love our enemies, bless those who curse, do good to those who hate us, those who harm us and drive us out, protect the persecuted, etc. [Matt. 5, 44]. I glorify the Mother of God, the Lady of all, the most swift Intercessor Mary the Lady of God, who twice today clearly saved me from the machinations of the enemy; during the consumption of the Holy Gifts and during a lesson in class. For the first time, the enemy stopped me with darkness of mind and heart and fiery unbelief in the finding of the Lord in the Holy Mysteries - I appealed to the Lady for intercession, and She quickly sent down light and calm, clear, firm faith in the finding of the Lord Himself, as in fact, that is, by deed, and I consumed the Mysteries into the world of my spiritual strength, with unashamed faith and love unhypocritical. The second time - in class, he stunned me with fiery lack of faith and lack of sympathy for the truths being taught, darkness and crampedness; I again in the Holy Spirit appealed to my most swift Intercessor, and the fire of lack of faith, insensibility, darkness and crampedness disappeared: I immediately calmed down, my heart was warmed by the warmth of the Holy Spirit and expanded with lightness and sweetness. I think so. I praise You, most merciful, most swift, most admirable Intercessor. May 8th day, 1862. For a believer, nothing is impossible, and living, unshakable faith can instantly perform great miracles! And often, however, miracles happen even without our sincere and firm faith. Such are the miracles of the Sacraments, for the mystery of God is always accomplished, even if we have little faith when performing it or are unfaithful, for our unbelief will not abolish God's faith and our malice will not overcome the unspeakable Divine goodness and mercy, our stupidity - God's wisdom, our weakness - God's omnipotence. See God firmly with the eyes of your heart and during this time of His contemplation ask what you want in the name of Jesus Christ - and it will be done for you. God will be everything to you in an instant, for He is a simple being, above all time and space, and in moments of living faith, your heartfelt unity with Him, He will do everything for you that you need to save you and your neighbor, and for that time you will be God yourself through sincere communication with Him. Az reh: bozi este [Ps. 81, 6; In. 10, 34]. Just as there will be no gap between God and you this time, there will also be no gap between your word and between the fulfillment itself: you will say, and it will immediately be accomplished, just as God spoke, and was... commanded, and was created [Ps. 32, 9]. This applies both to the Sacraments and to spiritual prayer in general. However, in the Sacraments everything is done for the sake of the grace of the priesthood, with which the priest is invested, for the sake of the Supreme High Priest Christ Himself, Whose image the priest bears on himself. Therefore, although he wears the dignity unworthily, although there are weaknesses in him, although he is suspicious, unfaithful or distrustful, nevertheless the mystery of God is accomplished soon, in the twinkling of an eye. God the Father, acting in our minds and hearts through His Hypostatic Word, expressed in our word, resting by His Holy Spirit in His Hypostatic Word through our word of faith, hope, meekness, love emanating from our mouths, in an instant, once and for all from the foundation of the world, performs the predetermined miraculous deeds of our rebirth, sanctification, strengthening, spiritual nutrition, healing in Christ, although preparatory rites for these actions can also be very long, for God is a simple, omnipotent being. For example, the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is accomplished immediately upon the utterance of the words: create this Bread, the Honest Body of Thy Christ, and in this Chalice the Honest Blood of Thy Christ, translating by Thy Holy Spirit - after these last words and the blessing of the cross-shaped hand, in an instant the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, but not first, for Divine omnipotence awaits the priest’s cooperating word: For God has an assistant [1 Cor. 3, 9]. In this case, the blessing of the cross in the name of the Lord means that the Mystery is performed by the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ and for the sake of Jesus Christ, for the sake of His intercession, with the favor of God the Father. In cases and circumstances of life for which there are no sacraments of faith, for example, in cases of demonic possession, insanity and other diseases of the spirit or body, for example blindness, deafness, dumbness, illness in general, miracles of God are performed only according to the special intention of God: for example, may the works of God appear through a famous person or as a reward and for the glorification of the faith and piety of some saint of God, and therefore sometimes it takes a lot of prayers for a famous person in order to suffer sufficient punishment for this person either to have received sufficient spiritual healing or for the faith of the person praying to be strengthened and elevated through prolonged exercise in prayer for the unfaithful. For everything is possible only to the believer [Mk. 9, 23]. April 8, 1862. The servant of God, when performing divine services and the Sacraments, must have such a mood of thought and a firm conviction that as soon as you thought and said something, it happened. – It is such a convenient thing for the Lord to fulfill our requests, to create or implement something according to our word. And let this conviction be so easy and natural in you, like your breathing with air, like seeing with your eyes, like listening with your ears. You yourself have experienced a thousand times that this is exactly so; I myself experienced that between the words: speech, and was... commanded, and created [Ps. 32, 9] there is no gap that they are true in all their strength. Oh, faithless people! What work do you give to the Lord to do and carry out [Isa. 7, 13 ]? You, servant of God, be simple. Speak more often: speech, and bysha... speech, and bysha... speech, and bysha. Let this conviction be absorbed into you through your food and drink and through your breath. I praise, sing, thank and magnify the immeasurable benevolence of the Trinitarian Master, for he has vouchsafed me, a sinner and unworthy of His priest, to perform the entire Divine Liturgy with heartfelt firmness, ease, calmness and immutability and also to partake of the Divine Mysteries of God and my Christ. After Matins he did not go home, but went to give communion to the sick, and after that he finished reading the prayers for communion. In his service he was simple: he believed that whatever is said, so it is, or happens, or will be, and as easy as it is for me to think, so easy for everything to happen. Another reason was that the day before was a fast day, on which, according to custom, I ate fast, and most of all the reason was the mercy of God. Lenten and fast food have a great effect on the heart, favorable or unfavorable. Milk has an unfavorable effect, especially milk, cream, butter, cheese and eggs. One soup is nothing. They say about a goat that when meat soup or milk gets into its swill, it immediately turns away from it and does not eat. If a dumb animal is so disgusted by meat, then will a person, a rational animal, this image of God, desire meat and, to please God, will not deny himself meat food, butter, milk, cream? The word of God and prayer do not work on a full belly, because a full belly does not feel the power of God’s words and church prayers. A full belly is a persecutor and the scourge of faith, hope and love. A well-fed belly means relaxation of the heart and readiness to every carnal passion, to every sin. Do not please your belly for any guest, because pleasing the belly brings extreme harm to the soul: it produces in it a petrified insensibility towards God and towards sacred things in general, lack of faith, unbelief, hypocrisy, stinginess and pity for material, insignificant sacrifices even for God; love of money, envy, hatred, malice, laziness in deeds, especially in prayer. Beware of pleasing the belly: pleasing it is pleasing the old, carnal man, pleasing the devil himself, who, having captured us through the womb in the beginning, still captivates people most of all through the womb. Especially don’t drink vodka – it soon clouds your heart. Oh, stupid calculation where there is no need to count! Oh, petty hope for money! Oh, Judas' pity for the world or wax! Oh, the pity of the light for the unapproachable Light! An exhorter who is zealous to the point of obsessiveness is like a flattering, insidious enemy: it is pleasant to succumb to him during a treat because of the pleasantness of his caresses and the tempting nature of food and drink, but afterward you often curse yourself and bitterly complain to him for having succumbed to his requests. How many upset their mental and physical health at the table of their obsessive friends, relatives or acquaintances and even went to their graves because of their complaisance or weakness, greed! Don't be at all intrusive about treats. Our sinful nature is weak and lustful in relation to food and drink, and obsession can easily lead it to intemperance in food and drink, and then into carnal intercourse. Money, delicious food and drink, excessive sleep, beautiful or soft clothes (the wearer [Matt. 11:8]) or expensive clothes, looking with partiality at other people’s faces, and idleness turn the heart away from the Lord. By taking away tasty food from the belly, we take away from the flesh the weapon with which it fights against us, we take away the food of passions, their power, for our flesh is strong with its carnal weapons: food, drink, money, rich clothes, a rich and spacious dwelling. The better our external situation, the stronger the war against us by our carnal man. The Liturgy is a supper, a feast of God's love for the human race. (In your loves there is a defiler [Russian: there are temptations at your love suppers] [Jude 1:12].) Around the Lamb of God everyone gathers at the paten: both the living and the dead, saints and sinners, the Church triumphant and militant. The Church is eternal truth, because it is united with the truth of Christ and is animated by the Spirit of truth. I am with you all the days... [Matt. 28, 20]. The Church is His Body, says the Apostle [Col. 1, 24]. Confession is the pain of birth. Just as grandmothers help during childbirth, so that the mother is safely delivered as a baby, so priests must help those suffering from the pangs of spiritual birth, so that they are safely resolved by their sins, these creatures of hell, these Babylonian babies who should be smashed against a stone - Christ 106. Before confession, you don’t need to eat anything hot, so as not to somehow outweigh your carnal life over your spiritual one, but drink cold water, and generally eat as little as possible. If you say to this mountain; rise up and be thrown into the sea... and do not doubt... it will be [Matt. 21, 21]. Man's word is equal to God's word... For every idle word... [Matt. 12, 36]. You, filled with all unrighteousness, thirst to endure all untruth from people, so that the judgments of God’s truth may appear on you in this life. You give the least measure to your Lord and to your neighbor, so that it may also be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2; Mk. 4, 24; OK. 6, 38]. Always keep in mind the example of the greatest Righteous One - Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who, with His righteousness, suffered all unrighteousness from the people of this age and, to complete the endless unrighteousness of people against Him, was lifted up to the cross and killed by the most shameful death. Do not be faint-hearted and do not be discouraged when people hate you for rebuking their ways, but rejoice even more, remembering the words of the Savior: Blessed are you when people hate you... [Lk. 6, 22]. Before serving the Liturgy, always urgently try to strengthen your heart with warm, repentant prayer and do not relax it in the evening with many meals and drinks: excessive food and drink are the enemy and persecutor of our faith and love for God and neighbor. Don’t exercise your mental strength, and they will fall asleep and die out. A man makes a house for himself and lives in it; the animal is a lair and lives in it; a bird is a nest and lays its chicks in it; a bee is a hive with honeycombs and lives in it, preparing honey for itself; The spider weaves webs and lives in them and catches food for itself with them. Will the Creator not build for Himself a house not made by hands - His body, just as He built it in the womb of the Virgin Mary, just as He now creates for Himself a church of His Body in the life-giving Mysteries? Is it the Creator Who has built physical houses for all sensory or sensory-spiritual creatures and is constantly creating them? The priesthood, or saints in general, are sacred reservoirs from which blessed water is carried or spreads to other believers. From the belly will flow rivers of living water [Jn. 7, 38]. What pure, spiritual lips a priest must have, so often pronouncing the all-holy name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Even more: what a spiritual, pure heart must be in order to contain and feel the sweetness of this most pure, magnificent and venerable name! ABOUT! As a priest, he must withdraw from carnal pleasures, lest he become flesh in which the Spirit of God abides [Gen. 6, 3]. Is it possible for a priest to enjoy carnal pleasures, when he must irrevocably enjoy the one and only Lord, may He grant him the petitions of his heart! What about carnal pleasures, when he has so many spiritual children presenting to him their many different spiritual or physical infirmities, in which he needs to sympathize with them spiritually, give sincere and sound advice, when every day he faces a feat with all his heart and with tears to pray for them before the Lord, so that the mental wolf does not run upon them and plunder them, may the Lord give them success in life and faith and spiritual reason! Is it possible for a priest to enjoy carnal pleasures when he often has to perform services in church and stand before the throne of the Lord, when he so often has to perform the Divine, wonderful Liturgy and be a performer and communicant of the heavenly, immortal and life-giving Mysteries, when in general he so often has to perform other Sacraments and prayers? A heart that loves carnal pleasures is unfaithful to the Lord. You cannot serve God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24; OK. 16, 13]. Woe to Christians, especially priests, who have known by experience Who is their life, and for all that they place the hope of their lives in what is not life, but a passing shadow, dust sweet for food or beautiful to look at, and clinging with their hearts to this dust, as if to something permanent, imperishable, reviving. They will receive a share with the adulterers if they do not repent and correct themselves. It would be better for them not to know the way of righteousness... [2 Pet. 2, 21]. Remember that you are a slave of the Trinity, a creature and redeemed from the eternal slavery of the devil and eternal torment. By their fruits you will recognize them [Matt. 7, 16, 20]. From the most sweet, blessed, life-giving fruit of the liturgy - the most pure Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord, we know that they are from God, that they are the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, and this Most Holy Life-giving Spirit breathes in all its Mysteries and sacred rites; what a wonderful living tree this liturgy is! What foliage! What a fruit! Even the leaves of a tree for healing with the tongue [Russian: peoples] [Rev. 22, 2] – not only the fruit. For who has not received great spiritual benefit, peace and joy in the soul from one reverent presence at the Divine Liturgy! And whatever produces good fruit must itself be good. Such is the law of things, such is the creative law! I said this in my heart about the liturgy and defeated the machinations of the liar enemy who slandered the liturgy, and I calmed down. 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, overcome with salt 107 . Just feel sincerely the need for what you pray for, and sincerely believe that all giving? good and every gift is perfect [Jas. 1, 17] comes from God, and not from people, not from chance, not from circumstances, not from fate, that the Master sees and hears your every need, every movement of your heart and your thought, that He is all-good, all-powerful and wise and everything is convenient, in an instant, with a single movement of His thought through His Son in His Holy Spirit, He can do what is necessary for you - and you will receive everything. Just don’t attribute labor to God in anything, in any task, no matter how great and, apparently, impossible it may be. For although many things are impossible with man, they are not with God: for all things are possible with God [Mk. 10, 27]. Trust in prayer is to pronounce petitions, thanksgivings and doxologies with faith in the presence and hearing of God, with the fear of God, and not to doubt or worry about their acceptance and fulfillment, in full confidence that the Lord listened to them and accepted them into His heavenly and mental altar and at the desire of the mother of our Church (if we pray on behalf of the Church), as well as our hearts, as the all-seeing, wise and The Almighty will give what we ask for, and even in excess of what we ask or understand. But a heart addicted to food and drink, greedy for them, pampered by them, does not have this hope, just like a heart in which lies the hatred of the enemy, bound by stinginess, love of money, envy, until it leaves its ailments and improves. Love rejoices when it can and does make some valuable sacrifice to its beloved, and the greater the sacrifice, the happier it is; the more confident it is that its sacrifice is pleasing to its beloved, the more pleasure it feels. So good children rejoice when they have the opportunity to make some important sacrifice to their parents, which cost them work, dedication of their own material resources. Thus, Christians who love their Heavenly Father, worshiped in the Trinity, rejoice when they can make a feasible sacrifice to the Benefactor, the All-Creator, the Provider and the Giver of every good thing. But what kind of people are often like, even among Christians? They regret an insignificant sacrifice for God, for example, lighting a candle in church; during their home prayer, they regret burning a wax candle for a long time or even constantly burning oil in a lamp in front of the holy icons of the Savior Christ, the Most Pure Mother and His saints. Oh, horror! Oh, Judas’ pity for the world for the Priceless One, for the Benefactor, whose mercies towards us are immeasurable and his love for mankind inexpressible! For whom do they spare the light? For living in the unapproachable light, for the uncreated Light, which created and showed us material light in the heavenly bodies and in the light of fire; for the Light that enlightens every person coming into the world [John. 1, 9 ]! He spares light and fire for the One who, living in the unapproachable light and being all fiery love, loved us so much that He did not spare His Only Begotten Son for us (and we spare candles and oil). They regret the exhaustion of the candles for the One who completely exhausted himself and bowed down to fiery suffering, who completely exhausted the cup of heavenly wrath for us, who extinguished the eternal fire for us; they feel sorry for the One whose mercies they enjoy every minute, moment, or, more precisely, whose mercies they breathe continuously; they have pity for Him who is the light of our eyes and who gave us our very eyes. More humane! When you look at the burning candle in front of the icon and gradually melting away from the fire, remember that your life, like a candle, is gradually melting away; that just as wax melts from fire, so should your heart melt from love for God, your Creator; that just as a candle melts from the fire, so your sins melt from fiery repentant prayer, by the mercy of Him who suffered for you to the cross and death. More humane! Rejoice when you make a valuable sacrifice to the Priceless, when you make any sacrifice worthwhile to you to the greatest Benefactor. Do not seek a cheap sacrifice for God - this is unworthy of God, but if you have wealth, offer Him a valuable sacrifice. Do not mock the greatness of His benefits to you. It’s not a pity to burn candles for yourself, for your studies, but it’s a pity to burn candles during prayer, but it’s a pity for God! When depicting the sign of the cross on ourselves, we place three fingers on the upper end of the cross on the forehead - in the image of the Father, Who is the uncreated mind, the lower one on the womb - in the image of the Son, born before all ages from the womb of the Father, and the transverse part - on the shoulders 108, or muscles: in the image of the Holy Spirit, Who is the muscle, or the power of the Lord, or the hand of the Lord, as it is said: muscle of the Lord to whom have I revealed myself [Isa. 53, 1; In. 12, 38], or: the hand of the Lord will be upon me [Ezek. 1, 3], that is, the Holy Spirit. Another image in man of the Holy Trinity is the thinking mind, the image of God the Father; the heart in which the mind resides and portrays itself is the image of the Son of God, the Hypostatic Wisdom of God; the mouth, through which comes out what is in the thoughts and heart, is the image of the Holy Spirit. He blew and said to them: receive the Holy Spirit [Jn. 20, 22]. When evil thoughts come from the heart... adultery, fornication... blasphemy [Matt. 15, 19], then this comes from an evil spirit nesting in a person’s heart, and when a good person brings out good things from the good treasure of his heart [Lk. 6, 45], then this is the image of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son, Man is a small image, a whole, indivisible, living image of the Trinity. Great man! He is a small god. It was not in vain that it was said: I said: you are gods... If He called those to whom the word of God came gods, and the Scripture cannot be broken (that is, what is said is said correctly, not in vain), - do you say to him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world: you are blaspheming, because I said: I am the Son of God? [In. 10, 34 – 36]. Oh, dignity, oh, human greatness! Do not otherwise look at a person, especially a Christian, as a little god, as a son of God, and accept him as a son of God, talk to him, treat him as a son of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Sighing to the Lord. How many times, O Master Lord Jesus, have you renewed my nature, corrupted frivolously by my sins! There is no limit to this! How many times have You taken me out of the cave that was burning inside me, from the cave of many different passions, from the abyss of despondency and despair! How many times by Thy name alone, called upon by me with faith, have You renewed the corruption of my heart! how many times through the life-giving Mysteries of His Body and Blood! O Master, Your mercies towards me, a sinner, truly have no number or measure. What will I bring to You or what will I repay You for Your immeasurable benefits to me, Jesus, my life, my breath, my peace, my joy, my spaciousness and my lightness? - May I be prudent in my ways according to Your grace, for You are pleased with all those who are prudent in [the way], as You spoke through Your Spirit through the mouth of our father David. I will try to be faithful to You, humble, meek, not irritable, kind, long-suffering, hardworking, merciful, generous, non-covetous, obedient. Request for donations. The words: And create this Bread... And the hedgehog in this Cup... have creative, transubstantial, life-giving power, like the life-giving power of the Cross, acting in us and through us on others by faith and holding 109 in the thoughts and hearts of the name of Jesus Christ, and this is always unchangeable, just as the Trinitarian God and His view of us, of our salvation are unchangeable. These words answer for themselves and act like a double-edged sword, which only needs to be struck in order to cut a known thing. Do not rejoice when your face blooms from pleasant food and drink, because then the inner face of your soul is ugly and dead, and this time the words of the Savior Christ come to you: you are like painted tombs, which on the outside seem beautiful, but on the inside are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness [Matt. 23, 27]. All the delicacies eaten are pure delight. Afterwards there is only mental and physical harm. (Experience.) Do not eat what you especially love to eat, so that the enemy of your heart does not stifle your favorite food. When you need to treat one of the brethren, do not spare anything for them, even if she often comes to you, and do not be upset towards them, thinking of them in yourself as parasites. Because of food, because of dust, because of pus, it is extremely sinful to violate the commandment of love for one’s neighbor, in whom God dwells, for one’s neighbor is the image of God, and he who sins in himself is punished internally with fire and oppression. Count all food and drink as nothing for your brother. Amen. When you feel sorry for something for your neighbor, say to yourself: Who is in heaven for me? and with You I want nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart faint: God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26] - that is, I don’t need anything either on earth or in heaven except You, Lord. You are everything to me. God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever. Refuse once and for all to follow the irritation of a blind womb; do not be greedy, money-loving, stingy, envious, hateful, proud, for all these passions more or less come from the womb and for its sake they fight against the soul. An extra meal immediately clouds the heart and makes you sleepy. For God's sake, do not indulge in greed and intemperance in food. A full belly carries within itself an unbelieving heart. The throne of Satan is in the incontinent womb. An ethereal villain, the father of lies - the devil sometimes confuses a priest or layman receiving communion with the false thought that the Body and Blood of the Savior is without spirit and life, or without God the Word and the human soul of Christ. This thought, as a false, devilish one, terribly scorches the insides of those who do not reject the false thought of the devil with the opposite true thought or firm faith in the presence of the Divinity and the human soul in the Body and Blood of Christ. How can I reject it? Very simple. If God rests in the incorruptible remains of holy people and performs miracles of healing through them, for example, through the relics of saints - whole or part of them, if, according to Damascene, God dwells through their minds and bodies, then is it not even more so that God, our Lord Jesus Christ, inseparable from the Father and the Spirit, rests in His Body and Blood and in the smallest part of them! If parts of the relics are miraculous and life-giving due to the power of the Spirit of God present in them, then isn’t the most pure Body and the most pure Blood of the Lord even more life-giving? If God rests in every particle of his relics, then is it not even more so in His most pure Body and Blood, in every particle of it, as He is everywhere and fulfills everything? Whoever wants to be great among you [Russian: whoever wants to be great among you], let him be a servant to all [Matt. 20, 26; Mk. 10, 43]. Thus, the Lady, the highest of all creation, serves everyone more than anyone else. Thus, Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, who served everyone in life with zeal and haste, became a minister of many during his life and even after death. How can you know if you love your brother, your neighbor, as you love yourself? If you do not regret anything that is pleasant and dear to you, and you share with him unfeignedly, disinterestedly, willingly your favorite food (even if it is expensive), your delicacy, your favorite drink, your clothes, your home; if you consistently maintain respect for him as for yourself, even if he is unfair to you and bothers you or has obvious shortcomings, then you love him as yourself. And if you regret for him what you love, or look at him slyly and with hostility, treat him uncordially when he comes to you uninvited to eat your bread and salt, in general when he seeks your hospitality, affection and cordiality, advice, help, when he does something unpleasant to you, or in general he has obvious weaknesses and you do not love him, then you [...] are selfish, then guilty before Divine and human laws. [...] demands that my brother and I have everything in common: they had everything in common [Acts. 4, 32 ]; so that my favorite food should be a common dish with my [needy] brother, and my favorite drink too; my second garment, even if it were very valuable and good, must be given to the poor: whoever has two garments, give it to the poor [Lk. 3, 11 ]; My extra rooms should be given at a reasonable price to my homeless neighbor. If, while pleasing a needy brother, I myself suffer some embarrassment, the greater is my sacrifice of love, the greater is my reward from the Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. The Lamb - and around Him the entire Church redeemed by Him, heavenly and earthly. Oh, what a wonderful phenomenon! Be obedient and quick to help your neighbor, and he will be obedient and quick to help you. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. If I love my brother as I love myself, then I diligently and willingly share with him my spiritual possessions: my mind, education, my knowledge, my spiritual and worldly experience; I don’t hide my words, I don’t bury my talent in the ground, I try to tell the ignorant and misguided people the will of God. Love for God then begins to manifest itself and act in us when we begin to love our neighbor as ourselves, and not spare either ourselves or anything of our own for him, as the image of God; when we try to serve him for salvation with all we can; when, for the sake of pleasing God, we refuse to please our belly, our carnal sight, from pleasing our carnal mind, which does not submit to the mind of God. Without these same conditions, there is no love of God in us. He who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? [1 Izh. 4, 20]. Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]. Why do we love money, be greedy and stingy? Now, today a person is alive, but tomorrow he is dead and will leave everything. Let us grow rich in faith and love for God and neighbor and diligently share bread and money with our neighbor. Our deeds will follow us - the Lord has a reward ready for everything. My reward is with Me, to give to everyone according to his deeds [Rev. 22, 12]. The heart in one minute can change several times for good or for bad, to faith or unbelief, to simplicity and wickedness, to love and hatred, to virtue and envy, to generosity and stinginess, to chastity and fornication. Oh, what impermanence! ABOUT! How many dangers! Oh, what sobriety and attention you need! There is no need, they say, for icons. But David says: Seek His (the Lord’s) face [Ps. 104, 4]. Do you see? The face of God commands us to seek. Today is the Transfiguration of the Lord. From the Transfiguration we will all be transformed, we will be transformed not in clothes, not in anything else, but in our souls and hearts. Create for yourself a new heart and a new spirit [Ezek. 18, 31]. Do not eat milk or anything made with milk or milk, as well as meat. Eat more lean foods. Fast food burdens both the stomach and the heart. Firefighter 110 Vasily Ivanovich, having been mortally ill with inflammation of the stomach for nine days and not having received the slightest relief from medical benefits, as soon as he received communion of the life-giving Mysteries on the ninth day in the morning, by the evening he became healthy and rose from his sick bed. He took communion with firm faith. I prayed to the Lord for him to heal him. Lord, I said, heal Your servant from his illness. He is worthy, and so do this: for he loves Thy priests and sends his gifts to them. He also prayed in the church at the throne of the Lord during the liturgy during prayer: He who has given us prayers that are common and concordant... 111 and before the very Mysteries. I prayed, by the way, like this: Lord! Our belly! Just as it is easy for me to think about healing, so it is easy for you to heal every disease; Just as it is easy for me to think about the resurrection from the dead, so it is easy for You to raise every dead person. Heal Your servant Vasily from his cruel illness and do not allow him to die, so that his wife and children do not give in to weeping. – And the benevolent Lord pardoned. And then he was on the verge of death. He himself admitted on the ninth day before communion that he did not feel any better from leeches and clyster. Glory to the omnipotence, goodness and goodness of the Lord! The infants Pavel and Olga, through the infinite mercy of the Lord and through the prayer of my obscenity, were also healed from the spirit of infirmity that possessed them. Pavel's weakness was resolved by sleep. Little Olga received peace of mind, and her dark face became clear. Nine times I went to pray with bold hope, hoping that hope would not be put to shame, that it would be opened to the interpreter, that at least for persistence the Lord would give me what I asked, that if the unjust judge finally satisfied the woman who was bothering him [Lk. 18, 2 – 7 ], then all the more will the most righteous Judge of all satisfy my sinful prayer for innocent children, that He will look upon my work, my walking, my prayer words and my kneeling, my boldness, my hope. That’s what the Lord did. He did not put me to shame, a sinner. I come for the tenth time - the babies are healthy. He thanked the Lord and the most swift Intercessor. May 13th, 1862 A sweet drink with a tasty snack greatly relaxes the soul and makes it a captive of the devil. Experience. May 7th day, 1862 When during the Liturgy a stranger comes to stand in the altar, do not be angry with him in your heart, do not judge him and do not say to yourself: “Why did he come here? Is there no place for him in the church, along with other believers? He is not worthy to be here,” but judge yourself sincerely and say: I am more unworthy than him for my sins, but the Lord allows me to stand at His very throne, and you will act justly. Your heart will calm down from confusion, and the Lord will give you a testimony in your heart that you have done a thing pleasing to Him, having sincerely condemned yourself. Judge not, lest ye be judged [Matt. 7, 1]. Be patient with everyone [1 Thess. 5, 14]. Almsgiving is good and saving when it is combined with the correction of the heart from pride, malice, envy, idleness, laziness, gluttony, fornication, lies and deception and other sins. And if a person does not care about correcting his heart, relying on his alms, then he will receive little benefit from it, for what he creates with one hand, he destroys with the other. The Holy Apostle Paul, counting the virtues of love, puts in first place the virtue of long-suffering: Love, he says, is long-suffering [1 Cor. 13, 4]. Why does long-suffering come first? Because our nature, corrupted by sin, first and most of all suffers from impatience, haste: everyone is bad, I alone am good, correct, everyone do as I do, everything be my way - this is what the impatient thinks. In second place is mercy: love... is merciful [1 Cor. 13, 4] - because, further, people suffer most from lack of compassion and hardness of heart; then there is unenvy, because, being hard-hearted towards the needy, people, out of their hellish malice, are envious towards the prosperous: they cannot bear other people’s well-being, other people’s joys. I believe, Lord: help my unbelief [Mk. 9, 24]. Priests must help the unbelief of their spiritual children to be born into a living and firm faith, and for this they themselves must certainly be strong in faith, so that in the event of the spiritual drowning of their spiritual children by unbelief, they can be brought to the solid shore of faith with their unshakable faith. But if the teacher of faith is himself unfaithful, where will the one of little faith get help and reinforcement for himself? In the danger of lack of faith and unbelief, he needs [...] a person like him, strong in faith, so that his [weak] faith, especially if it is needed quickly, without [...], and the word of the priest, the word of a calm, sublime and firm faith, will immediately return the wavering one to firm faith. During the celebration of the Liturgy and the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord, as well as during the celebration of other Sacraments and prayer in general [at home or in church], pay close attention to yourself so that the thought of some pleasant thing for you, or a pleasant face for you, or an unpleasant face and an unpleasant thing does not sink into your heart and your heart does not become attached to them with partiality or does not feel annoyance and embarrassment from the memory of them. Then your heart will leave the Lord and the Lord will leave you as an idolater, as a foolish person who, during his very service, preferred His creation to his Creator, preferred dust to the Creator, corruptible to the imperishable, broken reservoirs to the fountain of living water, which cannot hold water [Jer. 2, 13], or to the existing God - himself, his passions; will be indignant as at a mad person who, during his conversation with the king, frivolously and boldly leaves him and talks with his slaves, with his cooks, stokers, sex workers, or turns from the majestic face of the king, breathing love and goodwill, to rattle toys and loves them, enjoys them, and neglects the king who has them, for whom they are nothing more than rubbish. Take precautions in advance in case of approaching foreigners belonging to a different religion or faith, so as not to be ashamed before them of your Christ and His words, the institutions and rituals of your faith, so that Christ will not be ashamed of you when He comes in His glory with His Angels; remember that the world is adulterous and sinful - that is, it has abandoned God and does not know Him, it does everything against His will, and woe to the Christian man who pleases the world. Always try to kindly treat a boy or a girl of another religion or faith when you see them in a circle of Orthodox boys or girls at school, so that by this you will give glory to your meek and humble Christ, and to your faith, which allows for great tolerance of religions and faiths, according to the word of Christ, and do not at all have indignation or zeal in your heart for innocent children, although They are also of other faiths, for example Jews or Tatars. Have the same attention and respect for every word that you have for a living person, [...] firmly believing that the word of God is alive and active, like a living being, like an Angel, and because of its spirituality and subtlety penetrates to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart [Heb. 4, 12]. The Word of God is [...]. So, when you speak, believe that you are dealing with living and not dead beings, with active beings and not with inert and powerless ones. Know that you must speak with faith, with confidence in every word. Words are living beads. Do not... cast your pearls before swine [Matt. 7, 6]. I glorify and extol the all-good, all-loving and glorified name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, our God, as he always listens to my heartfelt prayer and delivers me from my sins and the heavy, soul-suppressing feeling of sorrow and oppression. So, I cry with the lips of my heart, and He, the all-merciful One, hears and saves me: He is God my Savior. I am weakness - He is my strength; I am sin - He is my truth, He is my cover, my refuge, my joy. When I pray to Him with all my heart, He is all my ear, all my eye. He is all with every movement of thought and feeling, all with every word. Therefore, I must be as simple as possible during prayer - just as the thought is simple, so simple. Read: Have mercy on me, O God... [Ps. 50]. Just as the churches of your dwellings are filled with smoke during prayers performed in them, so may the inner churches of your souls be filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit. For the fragrant incense smoke that fills the church is an image of the grace of the All-Holy Spirit, filling the souls of believers with spiritual fragrance. Frugal food makes the heart rough, stony, and insensitive. In prayer now you see the effect of fast and fast food on the heart. That man originated from the word of God, proof of this is the word “man” itself and then the name given to him at baptism or during the rite of naming: as long as a person lives, until then everyone calls him by this name and he responds to it that he is exactly that; he is all about his name; finally, when he dies and his corruptible remains are buried in the ground, only his name remains in memory as evidence of his origin from the word of God - this is an immaterial, eternal, like the soul, heritage of his and ours. If; you pray from your heart to the Lord, or the Lady, or an Angel, or a saint, then you speak to the very heart of the Lord, the Lady, the Angel or the saint, for we are all in one heart of God - in the Holy Spirit. All saints are in God’s heart: He abides in Me, and I in him [Jn. 6, 56]. Have mercy on me - that is, forgive, do not exact from me for my sins (the same as: God, be merciful to me a sinner). Glory to Thee, most beloved, all-saving, life-giving name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! How quickly and graciously You save me, a sinner, Father, Son and Holy Soul! Oh, what a great treasure for me is the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! What a quick-healing plaster for the wounds of my heart - the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! What life is my heart - the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! O great God! Do you heed the prayer of a damned sinner? Oh Love! Love! Love! Twice today (which I firmly remember) I called on the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the sorrow and crampedness of my sinful heart, and soon, quickly my Lord heard me and out of my crampedness led me into space, turning the heavy burden of sin into His light burden! (On a boat.) The enemy severely persecutes my faith, hope and love every day. They are persecuting you, my faith! They are persecuting you, my hope! They are persecuting you, my love! Be patient, faith, be patient, hope, be patient, love! Take heart, faith, take heart, hope, take heart, love! God is your champion! Don't weaken, faith, don't weaken, hope, don't weaken, love! When you pray, firmly believe that the Lord is inherent in every word of prayer and, whatever you ask, He is the fulfillment for you (and for everyone else) of your every request. Honor the faces of living people in every possible way, so that you honor, as you should, the face of God. For the face of the Lord Jesus Christ is the face of a man. He who does not respect the face of man will not respect the face of God. If all your good is common with your neighbor, then all of God will be common with you. Whatever you want, ask, and it will be done for you. All that is mine is yours, and yours is mine [Jn. 15, 7; 7, 10]. Am I not everything for you - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, your God, your life, your peace, your joy and bliss? Your wealth, your food and drink, your clothing and all yours? What are you clinging to? To the dust? What do you regret for Me in the person of your neighbor? - Is it dust? Is it for Me, who created everything, or is it for Me, Who [can] turn earth and stones into bread, and bring forth water from stones? Always be with Me and in Me - and you will always be calm and cheerful. Has your trust in Me ever brought you to shame? Have I not always given you peace and life? The priest will primarily be God's pet, God's eater. Almost every day he attends supper with the Lord and eats and drinks at His table. What should a priest be like? When you rebuke the devil in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, then this very name, sweetest for us and terrible and bitter for demons, itself creates power, like a two-edged sword. Likewise, if you ask something from the Heavenly Father or do something in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, then the Heavenly Father will give you everything in the Holy Spirit in the name of His beloved Son, if you keep His commandments; and in the Sacraments, in spite of your unworthiness, he will give a gift to the believers. Where the name of God is used with faith, there it accomplishes power, for the very name of God is power. Remember, with the concept of a priest, the people are accustomed to connecting the concept of holiness, goodness, meekness and humility, simplicity, calmness and equanimity of spirit and at the same time the greatness inherent in the servant of the living God. Try to be like that internally and externally without the slightest shadow of pride and arrogance. Glory to the sign of the cross, depicted with three fingers in the name of the Holy Trinity. As soon as I depicted it on my chest with faith in the Life-Giving Trinity, existing everywhere and united in being, the embarrassment and oppression left me, my soul became calm and light. Amen. They say: when the poor find out that you give alms to everyone, everyone will come to you and bother you. So what? And great. After all, we, too, knowing that the Heavenly Father gives mercy to those who ask Him, so we all go to Him with faith and hope. We must rejoice that the poor come to us sinners. They are the cleansing of our sins. Moreover, through our alms we have the happiness of becoming somewhat like our Heavenly Father. Be merciful, said the Lord, just as your Father is merciful [Lk. 6, 36]. Thank God that the poor come to us. This means that the Lord is still with us. It would be our misfortune if they ran away from us. Then God’s mercy would have left us too. Judgment without mercy to him who showed no mercy [Jas. 2, 13]. Christ rose from the dead, trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tombs. Moral teaching: I must rise from dead works, having died to sin, and give spiritual life to others living in sins by the grace of God through the preaching of the word of God and the example of a holy life. I praise the Lady the Virgin Mary for deliverance from the fiery burning and oppression of the devil before the service at the cemetery. Oh, how great are the unspeakably mercies of the Queen of Heaven! He extracts my soul from hell itself and [covers] it with His Divine mercy. May 16, 1862. Ask what you want from the Lord: God the Father only has to desire - the Creator Son and the Perfector of the Holy Spirit are always with Him and in Him, just as He is in Them, They are always ready to fulfill the will of the Almighty and All-Good Father, for They themselves are one with Him in goodness and omnipotence. When we stand for prayer, we often feel in our chest, in all our insides and throughout our whole body some kind of coldness, insensibility, numbness, as if petrified to prayer: you speak words without living faith, without strength, without feeling, in a way that is ungodly. What to do then? – We must make an effort: with living faith, depict the sign of the cross, and then pray with raised hands: let men say the prayers, it is said, the venerable one lifting [Russian: pure] hands [1 Tim. 2, 8]. The devil, who strikes our soul with spiritual cold and petrified insensibility, flees from the sign of the cross and from the raising of hands, depicting the crucifixion of Christ and the Divine Trinity (with the middle end and two diameters), not tolerating the power of the cross and the sign of the Divine Trinity, and faith and fervor of the spirit return to us. On great holidays, the Lord sends great crosses of patience, so that the remembrance of God’s great blessings to us sinners is combined with the bearing of the cross for us - internal or external. The cross of patience is imposed on us by the enemy of God and man - the devil, for on great holidays he has the habit of forcing our soul into internal adultery with himself - either with malice, or pride and contempt, or blasphemy, impatience and grief, or lack of faith and unbelief, or love of money and stinginess, or petrified insensibility and laziness. The devil persecutes another suspicious person with suspiciousness to such an extent that he oppresses him with suspiciousness even when eating food. Whether there is or not, the suspicious one thinks; whether it exists or not; whether to eat now or postpone until another time. You need to be blessed, do everything with faith and not doubt, even eat everything that is offered with faith. For he who doubts, if he eats, is condemned, because it is not by faith [Rom. 14, 23]. Eat everything that is offered to you without any examination, for peace of conscience [1 Cor. 10, 27]. Eat and drink what they have [Lk. 10, 7]. I suffered greatly today for being upset with Deacon Peter Alex. during mass for the monotonous and drawn-out reading of the festive Gospel and for doubting the presence of the Lord in His most pure Blood. ABOUT! How the devil pressed and scorched me. The sermon barely spoke in a suffering voice, in a voice of sorrow and oppression. He barely served prayers - he became completely relaxed. What kindness and condescension towards a brother’s weaknesses during service is needed! And the devil provokes anger because of the most plausible pretext. We who are strong must bear the weaknesses of the powerless [Rom. 15, 1]. Words: verbs, even as I spoke to you, the spirit is the essence and the belly is [Jn. 6, 63], refer to the Body and Blood of Christ. This means that the whole of Christ is equally present both in the Body and in the Blood of Christ. Already the very torment of the soul due to doubt in the presence of the Lord in the Blood of Christ serves as proof that this thought is from the devil and is delusion, a lie, a dream. And the words of the Lord: this is My Body, and: this is My Blood [Matt. 26, 26, 28; Mk. 14, 22, 24] – aren’t they the same, aren’t they equivalent? Are not the body and blood one body? - Truly. Moreover, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is a spirit present everywhere. After leaving the church, I looked for reinforcement and consolation. And who taught it to me? One saint on an icon in the house of a poor widow. The monk is painted on glass with his head open, wearing a stole on his neck, in his hand he holds a scroll with the inscription: “Brothers, endure troubles.” The instructions are short, but quite suitable for me. The monk himself fulfilled this instruction and for this he was crowned with a heavenly crown. May 17, 1862. I regretted the chosen meal for my brother, and as soon as I regretted it, God immediately after dinner sent me five rubles for my daily bread for the memorial services and funeral of Konstantinov. O God, generous! I repent again to You: perplexed by any answer, I offer this prayer to You as a sinner: have mercy on me! Not everything in the sky will be night - maybe the sun will shine through. So speak to yourself when you are darkened and cramped by the devil. And indeed, the devil's temptations are clouds that fall on the mental spiritual sky and block the light of the mental sun - our heart. The clouds will pass, and your soul will become light again. The storms will pass and there will be silence. If the devil confuses you during prayer with doubts about something true, handed down by Scripture and the Church, tell him: everything is God: both the words of God and the Holy Church of God, guided by the Holy Spirit, and all the rites and creatures of God - everything is God. There is nothing of yours, devil. You are a lie, but here is the truth. When performing any service or Sacrament, or prayer, believe that they were established and spoken by the Divine all-perfecting Spirit Himself, that their words are spirit and life [Jn. 6, 63]. Therefore, do not doubt a single word. Love for our neighbor does not allow us to think anything unkind about him, for example, so that we do not have a sly suspicion of him, but think of him as ourselves; in general, just as we want others not to think bad of us, but only good, just as they would not speak bad of us or do anything bad, but speak well of us and treat us as if they were themselves or as their own, so we should think only well of others and, without any special challenge from our neighbor, not think bad of them, and also speak well of them and act towards them respectfully, kindly, sincerely, not with feigned love - in a word, to act as we want to be treated. As you want people to do to you, do so to them [Matt. 7, 12]. It is especially necessary to watch so as not to offend the honor of your neighbor and not to betray him in love internally or externally because of food and drink, or because of delicacy, or because of money, so as not to value your neighbor in this way - this image of God, this immortal citizen of heaven, the friend of God, the abode of the Most Holy Trinity, called to eternal unity with God, so that, I say, you do not value your neighbor at the cost of perishability ashes, at the cost of the fact that after an hour or two, the third after being taken inside, it should become a stench, unusable coal. Let my neighbor eat and drink as much as he wants, let him take food, clothes, money from me. But the balm of heavenly love for my neighbor, for this erring image of the immortal [Lord], does not leave my heart: Love never fails [1 Cor. 13, 8]. My neighbor is the image of God, a person equal to me even when he sins: even then I must love him according to the commandment, as I love myself. How many shameless people there were who, as a result of such loving, generous treatment of truly good people to whom they caused harm, were corrected from their mistakes and vices and became honest people. This is what love and respect for one's neighbor does: they raise him in his own opinion, in his own eyes, they make him think, feel, speak and act as those who love and honor them think and act. Remember the apostolic rule: drink more than just water, but use a little wine, for the sake of your stomach and your frequent illnesses [1 Tim. 5, 23]. This is useful. Behold, I send My angel before You, who will prepare Your way before You [Matt. 11, 10; Mk. 1, 2; OK. 7, 27]. The priest is the angel of the Lord Almighty, who must prepare the way for the Lord in the hearts of people in whom He, the Master, wants to dwell and walk, according to the Scripture: I will dwell in them and walk in them... And I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty [2 Cor. 6, 16, 18]. So, the priest must cry often: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight [Matt. 3, 3; Mk. 1, 3; OK. 3, 4], that is, live rightly according to His commandments. They were baptized... everyone... confessing their sins [Mk. 1, 5]. The people must confess their sins themselves. Otherwise, what kind of forced confession is this? Remember the confession of David, Manasseh, and the three youths in Babylon. Jesus rebuked him (the evil spirit), saying: Be silent and come out of him [Mk. 1, 25]. When a priest says to the evil spirit: I forbid you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, then it is the same as if the Lord Jesus Christ Himself forbade him, and this prohibition is effective. Moreover, he who is united through faith with the Lord is one spirit with the Lord [1 Cor. 6, 17 ]; undoubtedly, what that person wants while he is with the Lord is what the Lord Himself wants; whatever he does, so does the Lord. How grateful I should be to my Lord that He has so often driven away and is driving away from my heart the spirits of evil that almost continuously treacherously deceive me! Glory to Your power, Lord! Glory to Your power! Glory to Your name! Simonov's mother-in-law, burned with fire, is my soul, scorched by the fire of passions: how often the Lord has approached her, raised her up, eaten her by the hand [Mk. 1, 30–31], and the fire of passions leaves the soul, and it begins to serve the Lord with righteousness of heart. Morning, the end of the night, he rose up and went to an empty place, and prayed that prayer [Russian: in the morning, getting up very early, he went out and retired to a deserted place, and prayed there] [Mk. 1, 35]. Imitate your Lord too, O priest, O shepherd of the verbal sheep! And you have a great responsibility before God for people. How can you live without prayer early and late, day and night? Last night, you got up from your bed, went to your prayer room at home, and then prayed to the Lord for the salvation of people and your own. Everyone is looking for You [Mk. 1, 37]. ABOUT! If only everyone would still seek the Savior today! But no: many, you see, do not need Him and are looking for wealth, unrighteous bribes, pleasures, luxurious foods and drinks, luxurious clothes, they thirst to lose themselves in wine, they are looking for games, shows, and not even Christ Jesus. We go to the neighboring towns and cities, and there we will preach: for this I have died [Russian: let us go to the neighboring villages and cities, so that I may preach there too, for this is why I came] [Mk. 1, 38]. Likewise, a priest must walk around his parish to preach the Kingdom of God to everyone: for this he died, for this he was appointed by God. The leper (every sinner) came to Him, praying to Him and falling on his knee before Him (as we fall at home or in the church), and saying to Him, if you want, you can cleanse me (we ask for the cleansing of sins). Jesus, being merciful, stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him: I want you to be clean. And I said to him, Abiye [Russian: after this word... immediately] the leprosy (our spiritual leprosy) left him, and he was clean [Mk. 1, 40 – 42]. Oh! How palpably all this happens to us! If in the matter of faith, hope and love we cannot even think of anything from ourselves, but our contentment (ability) is from God [2 Cor. 3, 5], then all worship, all rituals, prayers during the Sacraments, all prayers in general are breath, instruction, the property of the Holy Spirit, who guides us into all truth [John. 16, 13], and the performance of all services, Sacraments, and prayers comes from the Holy Spirit - we have no worries before fulfillment. That is why He is called the Perfecter or the All-Performer. The devil, with one instant turn of his hellish key in the soul, can suddenly disrupt the correct, peaceful flow of spiritual life and, continuing to act in it, upset it more and more to the point that his murderous, fiery arrows can keep it in painful languor for a whole day, another, a third and further. This is because he is a simple, mental being, just as our soul is also a simple, but in itself weak being, and one unclean thought can suddenly disturb the whole soul. Be simple, like God, or holy, like God, and be extremely attentive to yourself, do not violate the simplicity of your soul even for a minute, not for a moment by addiction to anything carnal or sinful, but only cleave to God, your belly. It is good for me to cleave to God [Ps. 72, 28]. ABOUT! How we sin before the Lord! We don’t know how to walk the right way, we don’t know how to say a word to our neighbor or to Him, the Creator, because we speak insincerely, not with pure love, rudely. A truly good man rejoices that others eat from his table, openly or secretly, and only grieves that some do not trust his kindness and generosity and secretly, as if stealthily, eat his bread; The more he eats from his meal, the happier he is, like a father. He does not grieve over the fact that there will be excess, he knows what the largest measure is, how much will come out, and is firmly convinced that it is small; he calculates that if there are leftovers left, they will be eaten by God’s unreasonable creatures: dogs, cats, birds, which God ordered to eat from our leftovers, and the one who does not leave leftovers, is stingy and miserly, is pitiful. The stingy person, or the devil, operating in him, is extremely crafty and, under the guise of frugality, goes to the smallest calculations in food and drink, in clothing, in the whole environment - everything seems superfluous to him. He is especially prudent when it is necessary to give alms to the church of God or to the poor. Remember the bounty of the Lord, and let not your eye be evil from stinginess. Eat and drink to the glory of God, with a spacious and welcoming heart, and give thanks to the common Provider of all. Many who call themselves Christians do not consider eating this or that kind of food, fast or fast, for anything (it’s a matter of indifference, they say: it’s neither good nor bad, neither good nor evil to eat meat or fish on fast days; eat whatever you want: if you want to eat meat, milk, butter, eggs, eat them on Wednesday and Friday without a twinge of conscience): food means nothing in the matter of pleasing God and saving the soul - this is how Christians argue by name, not by name affairs, and are much mistaken in their reasoning. How, brothers! you have undertaken to be teachers of yourself and others, and for you there is no teacher in life with Divine authority - I mean the Church, the pastors and teachers of the Church, about whom the Apostle said: He (Jesus Christ) appointed some apostles, others prophets, others evangelists, others shepherds and teachers [Eph. 4, 11]. But this is destructive, devilish pride, and disobedience, my brothers, mothers of the Church - disobedience to Christ Himself, Who for our salvation Himself was obedient even to death, even death on the cross [Phil. 2, 8]. And if you do not abandon your carnal wisdom, your self-instruction and disobedience, then, without any doubt, you will perish forever. Do you think that much has been said? No, only the absolute truth was said. What destroyed Adam and Eve and subjected them and the entire human race to all the disasters, all the terrible consequences of the Fall? - Inabstinence from eating forbidden food, disobedience to the Creator, who endlessly blessed them, disobedience in an insignificant thing - in food, moreover, when they were allowed to eat the many different fruits of paradise and the tree of life itself. A small, weak creature was given a small and weak test of his obedience, gratitude, love - and he, with his free will, did not want to endure even this test in order to show in practice his gratitude, his love, humility, obedience to his Master. So now your Master tests your love for Him with small and (according to your understanding) insignificant things - food and drink. If you believe in your Lord, in His power over you, if you love Him, if you are grateful to Him for all the gifts of existence and life, if you are humble and obedient to the highest commands - fulfill this small commandment, abstain from a certain kind of food and drink out of respect for the rights, wisdom, good intentions and greatness of the Lawgiver, subordinating your will to His will, the pleasure of a foolish belly - to fulfill the pleasure the will of your Heavenly Father, Provider and Savior. If food is an insignificant thing, you say, and in the matter of salvation it means nothing, then all the easier it should be for you to donate to God an insignificant thing - there is no reason to resist the Church, argue with others, rather show obedience in this insignificant matter, what is eating and drinking, and change the quality of your food and drink (of course, quantity) according to the rules of the Church. But the trouble is that you only say that food and drink are insignificant things for you, but in the thing itself they are not insignificant at all, but very precious for you, very important, charming, attractive, so much so that you need to make yourself a great, difficult compulsion in order to deprive yourself of certain food and drink, which you love as yourself, which you have made for yourself real idols, without which you cannot live. This is where you can see your pride, your self-service, your idolatry of your own belly, your disobedience to the laws of your Creator because of perishable food and drink. Because of such insignificant things as food and drink, Who do you resist, Whose orders do you not obey? You, an insignificant person, in your self-righteousness become disobedient to God, your Creator, Who, as creatures, prescribed His laws for you, requiring indispensable fulfillment. Brother and sister! The holiness, greatness, wisdom, age-old experience of the mother of your Church, always instructed and guided by the Holy Spirit, who cannot sin or be deceived, may replace your own myopic, blind, sinful, unclean, weak wisdom. Rely in everything on the Church for salvation, without any doubt, as all the saints, countless in number, relied on her and were saved into the Kingdom of Heaven, completely pleasing God, the glorified Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity. The Heavenly Father so vigilantly cares for us that if guests come to me or will come today or tomorrow and, therefore, more food and drink are needed, then He, the most generous, sends me almost the same rich mercy for their share on the same day. I have noticed this many times. Be glory and thanksgiving to the fatherly providence of our Lord. And let us be simple and generous to everyone who comes to us. Let us always remember that the Heavenly Father cares and provides for us every moment of life. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need all this [Matt. 6, 32]. A glutton is a slave of his own belly: he eats out of habit, according to an established rule, and when he should not; eats often and always almost as much as common sense and experience do not allow; eats so much that after being full he always almost repents that he shouldn’t have eaten so much. Thus, the glutton stands in contradiction with his reason and experience, not to mention in contradiction with the word of God and the Church. A glutton often directs even his spiritual activity to please the belly: for the sake of the belly he thinks, writes, speaks, and does. The womb controls him like a blind, unresponsive slave; his womb both pleases and confuses him, it both calms him and scourges him. If we could see the thoughts of a glutton, we would see that they are almost at all times directed only towards pleasing the stomach. The pitiful slave is a glutton: he would not like, according to the demands of faith and reason, to eat something pleasant, but the belly requires sacrifice, it is irritated, and so they satisfy him, like an unrestrained dog; a person eats, as if involuntarily, certain food precisely because it is before his eyes and seduces him, but he does not have the strength to refuse due to lack of attention to his salvation. He does not call upon the Spirit of God to help in a good undertaking. Just as God is generous to you with His spiritual and material gifts, so be generous to your servants who work for You; just as you are generous to yourself, so be generous to them, for it is said: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. You are receiving retribution for your labors far from what you deserve - do not carefully weigh the merits of your people, and let not your evil eye be when giving them rewards for their labors, for example, when giving food and drink: with the measure you use, they will measure it to you [Matt. 7, 2]. In particular, do not spare for them the bread and, in general, the food and drink you desire, but what you yourself eat, let them eat too. Tread on petty pride, strengthen yourself in everything, even the smallest, to love your neighbor as yourself. Let not your heart deceive you; be zealous to unflaggingly fulfill the Divine commandments. You love to treat yourself to expensive and tasty food from others - how can you not give your servants the means to have a pleasant meal [...]. Servants are our children, more than that, they are our benefactors, sharing our household labors. Let not your heart deceive you; be especially zealous to fulfill the Divine commandments. The Heavenly Father rejoices when he sees creatures feeding on Him, for He is all love, but it often happens to people that they grieve and are indignant in their hearts when they see those feeding from their wealth and excesses, for people are evil and self-loving, of whom I am the first. There are two lives in a person; carnal and spiritual, lives, one disagreeing with the other, one contrary to the other. If one blooms, the other [falls], and vice versa. The flesh fights against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. They oppose each other, so you do not do what you would like [Gal. 5, 17]. The element of carnal life is bread, the element of spiritual life is the word of God, prayer and the Body and Blood of Christ. The flesh rests its entire life in food and drink, and the spirit in the living and omnipotent and providential God. The instigator of carnal life is the devil with his hasty power; the author, helper and perfecter of spiritual life is the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit every soul is alive and exalted in purity 112. The devil scorches the insides of a greedy person and forces him to greed and drink. When a person, while standing in prayer, thinks about bread with some passion, then the Lord leaves him and says: let your bread, which you are ready to eat and in prayer, or which you feel sorry for others, give life to your heart and your soul: I will leave you - and then the house of the soul becomes empty, there is confusion in the heart and obvious abandonment by the Lord, the source of our life and peace. The human heart is more spacious than the heavens, for He who cannot be contained by heaven and earth is contained in the human heart. Your womb is the most spacious of heaven. The Mother of God contained the Son of God in Her entirety. When we give to others something that is not enough to eat, something that is not tasty, then there is no charm and we willingly part with our giving, even if it is significant; and when we give pleasant food or drink, then their charm produces pity in our hearts, a reluctance to part with them, and we are reluctant, often with sorrow and tightness of heart, to part with our favorite foods and drinks, especially if we ourselves do not eat or drink them. Such is the inconsistency, recklessness, blindness, stupidity of our passions. What is delicious - I would eat it all myself, but nothing for my neighbor. Great and life-giving is the name of the Lord—it is the life of our heart. I sinned [greatly] before the Lord with gluttony and untimely carnal sensuality, having calcified my flesh and my soul. God! Source of mercy, have mercy on me, the repentant, and do not destroy me with my iniquities. I promised You repentance in darkness, Master, but I lied, accursed one, have mercy on me and cleanse me, the most deceitful one, and grant me the rest of my life to walk in Your truth. Here is yet more proof for you that a glutton is punished by the stomach, and that then one must stop eating sweet foods when they are eaten with the strongest appetite. Our nature very often shows a false appetite, demanding when we need to finish the table. So, the carnal sweetness of the womb, which damages the heart, or our spirit, is expelled from the heart and flesh through pain in the stomach or other members guilty of voluptuousness: teeth, jaws, tongue, palate, cheeks. I thank the Lord, for through the prayers of His Most Pure Mother and His saint Saint Alexy, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, miracle worker, he had mercy on me, a voluptuous sinner, and delivered me from a stomach illness at the end of the morning prayers. The whole night I suffered from pain in my stomach and did not sleep. You just had to endure the Lord and sincerely repent in order to receive salvation from Him. When you preach not to gluttony, you become gluttonous. While preaching patience, he himself is impatient. In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word will be established [2 Cor. 13, 1; Matt. 18, 16]. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the entire Universal Church, from the apostles to the saints and righteous and to the last believer, testify to the Divine Mysteries. [...] The Word of God the Word, as an omnipotent and simple being, is equal to Himself. Therefore, He creates with His word whatever He wants, in the Holy Spirit. Large dinners lead to death before you know it. Az reh: bozi este [Ps. 81, 6; In. 10, 34 ]; Think of your neighbor, namely the Christian, as if he were deified and be trusting of him in his deeds. The main thing is not to spare him anything earthly or perishable for his needs. Every person consists of two people: carnal, old, sinful - and spiritual, new, holy. The carnal man is the ever-present enemy of the spiritual, the enemy of his salvation, and he strongly and incessantly tries to hinder him on the path to heaven with many different passions: gluttony, gluttony, drunkenness, love of money, stinginess, pride, envy, irritability, melancholy and despondency, malice and vengeance. Woe to the man who pleases his natural man, who does the will of the flesh and his carnal thoughts: his spirit is dead, and he does not have eternal life abiding in him [1 John. 3, 15]. It is good for the man who resists his carnal man and fights with him, although this war is persistent, difficult, bitter and painful; It is good for him who puts to death the deeds of the flesh with the spirit: he will live according to the immutable word of God 113. It is good when a carnal man becomes embittered by 114 illnesses, troubles and sorrows. Then the spiritual man receives strength and life, while the carnal man is suppressed and killed. If you yourself do not listen to your prayer and do not hear it with your heart, then how can you think that the Master is listening to it and hearing it? That prayer that is performed with pity on the flesh, with tenderness, is an abomination to the Lord. During prayer, crucify your flesh with its passions and lusts. Gluttonous! Look at the end that awaits your body and all food. Miser! Look at what you regret for yourself and others: is it not dust and corruption, is it not stench? For a perishable body do you pity the perishable, for the immortal image of God do you feel pity for the temporary, for the eternal - the transitory? Isn't the whole world just a speck of dust compared to an immortal man? Why do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or do you, husband, why do you know if you won’t save your wife? [ 1 Cor. 7, 16]. The wisdom of God arranges our salvation in such a way that it combines a pious husband with an ungodly wife, or a pious wife with an ungodly husband, so that the Sacrament of Marriage is a great work of God’s goodness, which wants all people to be saved and to achieve the knowledge of the truth [1 Tim. 2, 4]. He is truly an image of the union of Christ with the Church. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church... He is the Savior of the body [Eph. 5, 25, 23]. After communion of the Divine Mysteries, you should not take a laxative at all, even if your stomach is unclean and strong, for taking a laxative soon after communion of the Divine Mysteries is a desecration of them, from which God deliver us and all our enemies. See if the enemy tempts you through your stomach. Lord, have mercy on me, because, without thinking in my heart, I committed a sin by taking a laxative, due to my lack of faith. The Divine Liturgy, all church services and the rites of the Sacraments are the fabric of the Divine Spirit, the life-giving fabric from the life-giving word. Fornication in all its stingy forms, corrupting the body, corrupts primarily the heart, corrupts the integrity of faith and love. The greatest evil is fornication! He is the reason for disrespect for a person’s face and cooling towards him. I thank You, all-merciful Lord, for Your great mercy. Behold, You led me through the fiery suffering of my illness and brought me into the peace of health. Oh, how easy it is for me after my illness. How my body became free and as if ethereal! Everything unnecessary, everything unclean came out, what was left was useful, clean, healthy. I thank You, great and wise Artist and Healer of my body! You turn our illnesses into a lesson for us in patience, chastity, humility and the purification of the soul. I passed through fire and water, and brought us to rest [Ps. 65, 12]. Oh, what indescribable, heavenly peace souls taste after the sorrows and illnesses of this temporary life, if they died in peace with the Church, with their neighbors and with themselves! So, even here our soul feels great peace when, through prayer to the Lord, it is cleansed of its sins and passions, which overwhelmed, darkened, scorched and oppressed it and then, at the behest of the Lord, suddenly disappeared with all their consequences! The soul then tastes great peace and joy. All-Holy Soul! Those who have sinned against Your holiness by untimely eating. Have mercy on me and cleanse me. I became like foolish cattle, and even worse than cattle, for I was enticed by food when my body did not require it. Do not cause me sin, according to Your immeasurable mercy. The saints to whom you so often prayed and called them teachers of abstinence will condemn you for intemperance, while you yourself madly indulged in intemperance. How do we behave before the Heavenly Father? - Treacherous, crafty, insidious, unscrupulous. We rarely deceive people as much as we deceive the all-holy Lord. Long-suffering, have mercy on us! Just as it is easy for the devil to plant false thoughts or passionate thoughts in us, so, on the contrary, it is easy to defeat him or reflect his false thoughts and passionate thoughts, for just as it is easy to think about the truth of any kind, it is so convenient to reject the lie that is contrary to it. The devil will say: this is a lie; no, speak, it’s the truth, but what you suggest is definitely a dream, a ghost, a lie. Never have I served so successfully as on Trinity Day, after a previous serious stomach illness, and on the day after Spiritual Day, after previous abstinence and fasting! He served calmly, with great faith! He received communion, especially in the latter case, with great faith and boldness! If your heart doubts the presence of the Lord in every particle of the Body and Blood of Christ, then imagine the whole world as non-existent, for this is incomparably easier to imagine - all the easier as the world actually passes away, and imagine the only Lord existing and your insignificance, and with the simple thought of the Existing, accept the life-giving Mysteries, believing that their Lord completely penetrates, embraces and contains in the smallest part. Our body is like a leaf of a tree, or like the trunk of a soft plant, or like a fruit of a tree with an inner bone, and as soon as you let it fall, it will disperse and decompose. God! Those who sinned before You are grievous: I laughed at the sin of my brother the priest once and twice; have mercy on me and blot out my sin, and for the rest of my life grant me to be careful in my words. ABOUT! How good it is to be silent more than to speak, because if you speak, you will now sin and anger God. God! My mercy! Have mercy on me. Delicious food and drink are like the body and blood of Satan; when they are received inside with great delight, then the devil nests in them and torments us through them. ABOUT! Servant of Christ! Do not caress or tenderize your flesh: through this you strengthen it against the spirit and make it the most accessible weapon of your incorporeal enemy. Remember: sitting at the table while eating, you are fattening your enemy to your own destruction or at least to your extreme harm. May this encourage you to modesty and simplicity and to abstinence in food and drink. From experience. If the poor and needy ask me every day, and I, being angry and impatient, do not get tired of giving to those in need every day, then will not the all-good Lord fulfill every day the petitions I renew to Him for myself and for people? And since in the church I, moreover, bear the image of Christ, the only High Priest, then there the Lord will fulfill everything for the sake of Christ. In fact: I pray, and the Heavenly Father sees in me the only High Priest of Christ, His Son, who sacrificed Himself for our sins, and fulfills all my church prayers. The womb is the seat of Satan, who reigns in it through our gluttony or human delicacy, intemperance and drunkenness. That is why the life-giving Mysteries are taught to us as food and drink - for the destruction of satanic dominion in our insides, for the reign of Christ in them. Anyone who wants to receive communion must certainly observe abstinence and fasting, eat meager and harsh food. Hey, Christian! Refuse to please your belly. It is impossible for God and Mammon to work [Matt. 6, 24; OK. 16, 13]. When you hear about fires, imagine the last general conflagration. Imagine that then the whole earth and the works that are on it will be burned up, and esteem everything on earth for nothing, for everything will be a victim of fire and corruption [2 Pet. 3, 10]. At every moment, listen to your heart, whether there is a feeling of love for your neighbor in it, and, if not, quickly arouse it. Fight 115 with the carnal man and with the spirits of wickedness in high places to the point of bleeding for this feeling. Conquer feelings of disgust and anger. When you are too lazy to do something, then do it. Force your lazy neighbor to work hard. Tell her: you were made for work. This is not a place of peace - it is promised in eternity. Force yourself to do everything from the heart, with diligence. Always be ready with all your heart, thought, word and deed to serve your neighbor who asks for your service or, although not asking, still needs it. Whoever wants to be great among you... must be a slave to all [Mk. 10, 43 – 44]. Our evil, corrupted heart is indifferent to the services of the gratuitous; proud, lazy and evasive when others ask us for favors. Go and work in my vineyard today, says the Lord to the servant. The servant answers: I don’t want to, and only then, having repented, he went; 21, 28 – 30]. This is how deceitful our heart is! We must force ourselves to provide hasty and cordial service. O great name of the Most Holy Trinity! O, fragrant with holiness, salvation and life, the name of the Most Holy Trinity! O all-saving name! O immutable saving name for all who call on You with faith and zeal! Glory to You! Infinite goodness and mercy - God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Soul! Drown in the abyss of Your goodness and mercy my many sins! Grant to the one who calls upon the abyss of Your mercy the forgiveness of my sins! “I speak these words in my heart, and forgiveness immediately shines upon me from the Trinitarian Lord of my life!” Having sinned, Master, by pronouncing judgment on the Holy Council of the Fathers with foul lips. I thank You, Master, for for the simplicity of faith at communion You have blessed my soul and body with Your life-giving Mysteries! Accept with reverence, simply the Divine Mysteries, as the Existing Christ Himself, without hesitating for a moment, and you will be blessed, peaceful, joyful, heavenly. Your faith has saved you, says the Lord in the simplicity of faith to the one who receives the Divine Mysteries, go in peace [Lk. 7, 50; 8, 48]. I cover you with My merits and decorate the church of your soul with My shrine. Just be faithful to Me in the future. May 31, 1862. Money, food, drink, clothing, books, houses are the food of fire and decay. Isn’t it reckless for a person, an immortal being, to become attached to them, to be friends with them? Well, is it a couple - he and this decay? Isn’t food taken into the stomach so that it burns? Isn't it firewood? So, burn wood. That's why they are firewood, to burn. That food and drink, as well as money, clothing, luxurious housing, and other things, are food of fire and corruption, this is also proven by the fact that the devil, with his attachment to them, always scorches and smolderes our souls and bodies. Yes, and before our eyes they are exposed to decay. Do not spare any food or drink for your neighbor. (God, help!) The Lord's earth and what fills it [Ps. 23, 1; 1 Cor. 10, 26, 28]. Don't be greedy yourself. Do not lay down life in bread alone, rejecting hope in the word of God and the Body and Blood of Christ. I thank You, all-merciful Master, for through my prayer you have yet taken away my iniquity and have had mercy on me. I thank You, for You did not allow me to fall into the pit of despair. I thank You, for through those darknesses You deliver me from my passions and save me from their harmful consequences. I thank You, for You have not disgraced the face of my madness 116 [Ps. 37:6], but you saved me from my free madness. Consider as happiness the day when one of your brethren eats or drinks from your meal: a brother was - it’s the same as the Lord was, For a brother is the image of God. Bear each other's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ [Gal. 6, 2]. Jesus Christ bore all our burdens on Himself - we must bear each other's burdens without complaint. This is the law of love of Jesus Christ. 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]. What separates us from God and from each other? - Money, food and drink - this dust, this decay, pus. Why? Because there is no living, Christian hope in God; we do not know or forget that the true life of a person is love for God and neighbor. By laying down our lives in the dust and relying on it, we do not give the Heavenly Father the appropriate glory by placing all our hope and all our sorrow on Him, as should His faithful children in Christ. If I am the Father, then where is My glory? [ Small 1, 6]. Where is your hope in Me? Where is your love for Me? Where is the impartiality towards the earthly, perishable and the all-soul desire for the heavenly, spiritual, eternal? I am in God and one with Him; I and my neighbor are one in God. Love, says the holy Apostle Paul, no longer falls away [1 Cor. 13, 8]. And we fall away from love for our neighbor for the sake of bad breath, for the sake of any shortcomings, physical or mental, moral or natural, even - alas! - because of the illness of a neighbor, when one should love him all the more; we fall away from love for our neighbor for the sake of any of his mistakes against us, even - alas! - because of - for food and life! What baseness! Away with all selfishness! Let the commandment of the Lord be fulfilled: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 19, 19; Rome. 13, 9]. What? On the day of disaster, on the day of fire or flood or the rampage of evil people, does your property help you? Does it relieve you of fears? No, alas! One true friend then is God, who even then delivers us from fears if we call on Him with faith. Then a friend from among people, acquired by our bread and salt or kinship, means a lot. Sugar, everything sweet and pleasing to the flesh is deadly to my soul. (Experience.) – Relaxes and pampers the heart, depriving it of faith and hope in God, true love for God and neighbor. So, sweet tea with white bread, especially with modest bread, is nothing but relaxation of the soul and body, not strengthening. Black bread with water or plain white bread is what strengthens. And the only nourishing bread for soul and body is the Body and Blood of Christ. How long until you get better? How long will I bear with you? How long will I feed you in vain with Myself, My Body and Blood? How long will it take you to limp on both knees? [ 1 Kings 18, 21]. If your belly is God, follow it, and if Heavenly God, the infinite Spirit, is that God, then serve Him with all your heart, understand that it is impossible to please God and your belly together. How long will you be neither warm nor cold, but stupefied? 117 Until you learn from the bottom of your heart to value mental, spiritual goods most of all and despise visible, material ones? It seems that you have already sufficiently learned that those blessings are the life of the spirit, and these are its sorrow and ruin, oppression and fire? Temporary, sensual benefits, although sweet and tempting, are fleeting, like a shadow, and invisible, spiritual benefits, being infinitely sweet, are at the same time eternal and imperishable. 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 ]! Strive hastily for the invisible, and despise the visible. Notice what drives your thoughts, desires, words, and activities: whether it is carnal lust, lust of the eyes, or worldly pride [1 Jn. 2, 16] or spirit, stomach or heart, sensual or spiritual nature? Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on carnal things, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on spiritual things [Rom. 8, 5]. The more refined and varied the food, the more it relaxes the body and along with it the heart; and the simpler and rougher it is, the stronger the body and together the heart. Experiments. Trouble for people comes from the womb: it has a strong hold on them, to the detriment of soul and body. It controls them through greed and greed for food and drink, through satiety and drunkenness, through smoking tobacco, through love of money and covetousness, through stinginess and envy, through murder, fornication and adultery, theft and false witness. Many were and are being removed from God; many were destroyed by the womb and cast into eternal fire. Because of it, many do not know peace in life; it leads many by the nose day and night, like its low, despicable slaves. What should we do with the womb? How to master it? We must firmly believe and always remember that the life of our soul and body is God, and not bread alone, according to Scripture: man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord [Deut. 8, 3; Matt. 4, 4]. When, with a good story about the good qualities and deeds of your neighbor, your heart is confused and bound by the envy of the devil (for we are so proud and evil that we secretly think that we alone are good), then say in your heart about a brother who has a good reputation, the following words of Holy Scripture: that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work [2 Tim. 3:17], and fill your own heart with this good will. Our flesh becomes depressed and hangs its head when it is exposed to infirmities, but when it is healthy and tastes carnal pleasures, then it delights, jumps and loses its temper. There is no need to pay attention to the deceptive feelings of the flesh and generally neglect all carnal games, carnal delights, complacently endure the sorrows and illnesses of the flesh and be courageous in spirit and place trust in God. Servant of Christ! Put to death the life of the womb, so that the spirit may come to life and be renewed in your womb. Give the womb only what is necessary, take away everything unnecessary. How many times has death entered my heart, imparting its first fruits to my body (and there is no count), and the Lord delivered me from all mortal cases, had mercy on me with unspeakable mercy and revived me. ABOUT! What gratitude to the Lord should my heart be filled with! If the Lord had not been in us... in the small [Russian: soon] my soul would have entered hell [Ps. 123, 1; 93, 17]. When I am alive, then the flesh is mine, because my spirit lives in it, but when I die, it is no longer mine, but the property of God and the earth. The earth is the Lord's and what fills it [Ps. 23, 1; 1 Cor. 10, 26]. The earth is ecu, and you went into the earth [Gen. 3, 19]. Eat My Flesh and drink My Blood [Jn. 6, 54, 56 ] - these words mean the same thing: I Myself entirely abide in these two types of communion - in Flesh and Blood, they are Mine in close communication with Me, like the flesh and blood of a person with the soul of a person living in them, for the soul penetrates the whole body and all the blood. For excessive kindling by carnal passions, the Lord punishes us with material fire in order to awaken us from sinful, destructive sleep; He kindles trouble around us, saving us with fear from being thrown into eternal trouble. Let's stop visiting theaters and circuses, let's stop spinning madly in pleasure. Let's give up luxury in clothes, in the table; Let us strive for simplicity in everything, and take care of the poor and needy. Let us appease the Lord by correcting our corrupt morals. The basis of prayer, every word of prayer should be meekness, humility, patience, kindness, and sincerity. Listen to your heart when you pray. About trusting in God. Trust in God in times of trouble, give due glory to the Heavenly Father in your difficult circumstances, prove by the calmness of your spirit and the calmness of all your actions that you believe in the vigilant Providence of the Heavenly Father, who cares for us more than we ourselves, and who knows our needs, troubles, misfortunes and sorrows better than us. Cast your sorrow upon the Lord [Ps. 54, 23]. Do not be faint-hearted, do not grieve, like others who have no hope [1 Thess. 4, 13]. Remember the extraordinary heavenly protection sent down from God to Elisha. The king of Syria wanted to take Elisha captive. The king said that the prophet was in Dophaim. This town lay north of Samaria, not far from it. The king of Syria surrounded the city with a large army at night. Early in the morning, the servant Eliseev left the house and saw enemy troops, cavalry and chariots around the city; running up to Elisha, he cried out: “Ah, sir! What will happen to us? Elisha answered: “Don’t be afraid, he is more with us than with them.” The prophet prayed, and the Lord opened the eyes of Elisha’s servant: he saw that the whole mountain was occupied by horses and chariots of fire that protected Elisha. Meanwhile, the Syrians came to Elisha. The Prophet prayed that the Lord would strike them with blindness and said to them: “You have come along the wrong road and to the wrong city; follow me, and I will take you to the person you are looking for.” And he took them to Samaria, to the Israelites. Here Elisha again prayed that the Lord would restore correct sensation to their vision, and the Syrian soldiers would see that they were in the midst of Samaria, in the power of the Israelites. The king of Israel wanted to exterminate the entire detachment, but Elisha presented to the king that these were not prisoners of war, but, on the contrary, offered to treat them and release them to their sovereign. Joram king of Israel did just that. This time the Syrians left the Israelites alone [See: 2 Kings. 6, 8 – 23]. This is how the Lord protects those who trust in Him! When praying to the Lord, or the Lady, or the Angels, or the saints, do not give any work to the Lord (or the Lady, Angels and Saints) to fulfill your request or the request of believers, but believe that just as it is easy for you to think about any good, so it is easy for the Lord to bestow it on people through His prayers to His Most Pure Mother, Angels and Saints; in addition, since God is overflowing, infinite goodness, He wants and always seeks to communicate His blessings to His creatures, if only we turn to Him with faith, hope and love, like children to their father, realizing our sinfulness, poverty, poverty, blindness, weakness without Him. Look at the actions of the deacon serving with you as if they were your own, say: what my brother does, I do (it makes no difference). Me and him are one. Reason with yourself this way, for example, when he distributes prosphora. Rely on him completely in this matter, and do not intervene in it yourself. Serving meals is the job of deacons, but your job is to remain in prayer, the ministry of the word [Acts. 6, 4] and worthy performance of the Sacraments and communion of the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord. It is extremely sinful to be indignant at the deacon for distributing prosphora without your knowledge, especially during the sacred service and communion. Remember the words of the Savior: Try (take care) not for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you [Jn. 6, 27]. The Lord also says: I did not tell you about bread: beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees (that is, hypocrisy in prayer and in all life) [Matt. 16, 11]. I have sinned before You, Master of the Trinitarian Ones, for, having You within me, the ever-present life, I cared for perishable bread; Having You within me, sweetest food, I cared about the chosen fleshly food. Have mercy on me, Infinite Mercy! Behold, I repent to You! Why is impatience in a small, insignificant matter, one simple movement of the heart towards impatience, already a sin and is punished internally immediately? Likewise, why is any instant movement of the heart towards sin considered a sin and punished immediately? – Because impatience in small things is a precondition of impatience in many and great things and leads to impatience in great things, for the human soul is a simple being and one instant movement of the heart towards sin is already sin. So, since every small sin leads to a greater one, it is always punished at the very beginning and must be crushed, like the babies of Babylon on the stone of Christ [Ps. 136, 8 – 9]. You have been faithful in small things, I will put you over many things; enter into the joy of your master [Matt. 25, 23]. How big is this? The eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and the things that God has prepared for those who love Him have not entered into the heart of man [1 Cor. 2, 9]. When praying, try your best to feel in your heart the truth, or the power of the words of prayer, feed on them like incorruptible food, water your heart with them like dew, warm yourself with them like blessed fire. Always sincere prayer is needed, by the way, so that we constantly remember that the author of all spiritual and physical blessings is God - infinite goodness, omnipotence and wisdom, and, remembering this, we humble ourselves before Him at all times, turning to Him with requests for everything, thanking and glorifying Him. The devil often floods his belly with a carnal fire of bliss and peace, which predisposes him to inaction, laziness and sleep. How varied are his temptations! Christian brothers! Don't forget what the Son of God did for your salvation. Run through the Divine Liturgy in your mind every day, attend the Liturgy with attention and meditation, and be afraid of your indifference to the work of your salvation. The Liturgy, or the Sacrament of Communion, is performed for this purpose in words taught by the Holy Spirit, in order to create a daily remembrance of the sacrament of our redemption by Jesus Christ. Remember also the vows you made to God at Baptism, birth by water and the Spirit and adoption to God, the seal of Confirmation, the intention to correct your life accepted at the Sacrament of Repentance, union with Christ in the Sacrament of Communion and your justification by His infinite righteousness. Remember all this and for God’s sake correct yourself, so that no worse person will be rewarded with torment for trampling upon all such generous benefits of faith. Love your neighbor as you do yourself, respect him as yourself, and be patient with him, seeing his shortcomings, remembering that you yourself have great shortcomings and willingly want others to be patient with you and look condescendingly at your weaknesses (for you cannot tolerate even a penetrating, denouncing, reproaching glance). Especially love your wife as yourself or as your body: he who loves his wife loves himself [Eph. 5, 28]. The Lord is everything to me: He is the strength of my heart and the light of my mind; He moves my heart to every good, He strengthens it; He also gives me good thoughts; He is my peace and joy, He is my faith, hope and love; He is my food, my drink, my clothing, my habitation. Just as a mother is everything to a baby - mind, will, sight, hearing, taste, smell, food and drink, touch, clothing, hands and feet, so the Lord is everything to me when I completely surrender to Him. But - alas for me - when I fall away from the Lord, then the devil takes possession of me, and if I had not turned the eyes of my heart to the Lord, if in the cramped conditions of the enemy I had not cried out to the Lord for help, then the devil would have been all kinds of evil for me, as sometimes happens: malice, and despondency, and relaxation perfect for all good, and despair, and hatred, and envy, and stinginess, and blasphemous, crafty and nasty thoughts, and contempt for everyone - in a word, it happens with my mind, my will, sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, hands and feet. So, trust in the Lord, He is present and infinite in holiness, power, goodness, mercy, bounty, and wisdom. The human soul is a free force. Look at what your strength is, for it can become either a good or an evil force, depending on the direction you give it. Lord, almighty power! Strengthen my weak soul in all virtue! Strengthen my heart, weak for all good, on the immovable stone of Your commandments! God! Behold, I experience every day that without You I am nothing, I cannot do any good without You, without You there is only evil in me in its various forms. Without You I am a perishing son. O innumerable Grace! Fill my heart with Your goodness! Most of all, I pray: grant me to love You with all my heart and my neighbor as I love myself. May I not be angry, proud, contemptuous, disobedient - but gentle, humble, respectful with tenderness and obedient. Amen. Just as there is no partiality with God [Rom. 2, 11] and how He, the most insignificant, low-born, humiliated, much-sinful, generously rewarded you with all spiritual and material blessings, formed you and nurtured you (in three spiritual nurseries 118), and to top off the immeasurable gifts of His goodness, elevated you to the highest degree of priesthood and Himself most sincerely unites with you almost every day in His the most pure and life-giving Mysteries of Your Body and Blood, so you also do not have the slightest contemplation of the most base and base and poor and sick and ugly and evil person as noble and high and rich and healthy and comely in Christ Jesus our Lord. Just as the Lord does not tire of His good deeds to you, but always accepts you with love and generously bestows His benefits upon you and pours His love into your heart - so do not you tire of your good deeds to your neighbors, but always accept them with love and do good to them, and love them all the more, the more you do good to them, merging with them, so to speak, into one soul, according to Scripture: The multitude of those who believed had one heart and one soul... [Acts. 4, 32]. Father Archpriest Trachevsky is dignified, intelligent, kind, kind, indulgent, and edifying. And I am nothing before him. Gryaznov, the caretaker, is a kind, sedate, intelligent and forgiving person. Any unkindness towards one's neighbor for no particular reason, sullenness towards him, disgust - from the devil. Equally from the devil is unkindness towards God, our Heavenly Father, and aversion from Him, and from His holy word, and from His Holy Church. Make every effort to be kind to both God and people. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, love His word, His church, worship, conversation with pious people. Your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 37, 39; Luke 10:27]: kind to himself as well as to his brother. Whatever calms me in my thoughts and in my heart, let it be written down as a memory for me and for the constant peace of my heart amid the worries and vanities of life. What is this? This is a Christian saying, full of living hope and wonderful, calming power: the Lord is everything to me. What a priceless treasure! Here is a jewel with which you can be at peace in any condition, with which you can be rich in poverty, and with wealth generous and kind to people, with which you cannot lose hope even if you sin. The Lord is everything for me: He is my faith, and my hope, and my love, my strength, my strength, my peace, my joy, my wealth, my food, my drink, my clothing, my life, in a word - everything that is mine. So, man, everything is the Lord for you, and you be everything for the Lord; and how all your treasure lies in your heart and in your will, and God demands your heart from you: My son! give your heart to me [Prov. 23, 26], then to fulfill the will of God, good and perfect [Rom. 12:2], refuse to fulfill your corrupt, passionate, charming will. Don’t know your own will, know only the will of God; say: not my will, but Thine be done [Lk. 22, 42]. The earthly father is the image of the most generous Heavenly Father; for him (that is, the earthly father) we should not spare anything, but willingly sacrifice everything, even our lives, so that we may make a sacrifice to the Heavenly Father. In love for your father, brothers and sisters, do not go back, but advance in it day by day. There are people with a Judas-like mood of soul who sell their brethren for pieces of silver, who value them lower than food and drink, clothing, money and their homes. Truly so! God! Have mercy on us! A Christian man is an heir of God in Christ Jesus. How should we treat every Christian? You will say: not everyone is an heir of God. And I will say: there is no need to despair of anyone. The Lady Theotokos is holy, just as the Lord our God is holy, for the commandment of the Lord is: You shall be holy, for holy am I the Lord your God [Lev. 19, 2], She performed perfectly. She is equally merciful, just as the Heavenly Father is merciful, for She again fulfilled His commandment just as perfectly: Be merciful, therefore, just as your Father is merciful [Lk. 6, 36]. What a huge difference there is between a fasting and a non-fasting womb! One day I ate Lenten food, and this immediately responds favorably to the heart, especially during prayer: the heart is so clear, light, so easy to believe, so touched, so weeping before the Lord who created us; and when you eat fast food, especially meat, even if only a little, then it is difficult, difficult to pray from the heart. (In the evening before prayer there is no need to eat - long before it, eat a little and take a walk.) My arrogant disposition is also visible when boys give unsuccessful answers in an exam: I get irritated because they don’t answer well, while it’s my own fault for not having prepared them well. I think that they must certainly tickle my pride here too with wonderful answers. (But whatever a man sows, that he will also reap [Gal. 6:7]. I want to gain the laurel of glory for myself also in testing the disciples, whom I myself did not sufficiently prepare for the answer.) Who will separate us from the love of God [Rom. 8, 35 ]?.. (On the day of the chief apostles Peter and Paul.) What are we doing? “We eat, we drink, we walk, we chat, we fuss. Where is the concern for eternity, the constant concern? - She doesn’t exist. Holy Father! keep them in Your name... While I was with them... I kept them in Your name [Jn. 17, 11 – 12]. And now I commend you...to God and to the word of His grace [Acts. 20, 32]. We, who are many, are one body [Rom. 12, 5]. Just as a person nourishes and warms his body, without neglecting any of its members, so we must provide for each other, bearing each other’s burdens, without neglecting any of our neighbors. Food is for the belly, and the belly is for food; but God will destroy both [1 Cor. 6, 13]. Remember these words when sitting down at the table or treating guests, and be extremely abstinent in eating and drinking. Look: because of gluttony you lose all your good deeds. Whoever keeps the whole law and sins in one point becomes guilty of all [Jas. 2, 10]. It’s scary to say: God is a glutton’s belly [Phil. 3, 19]. When offering a meal of treats to your friends and neighbors, remember that God is generous, and treat them with a generous soul and a generous table. May your eye not be deceitful and envious: just as you do not regret anything for yourself, so for others. At the table, be with everyone as one person, one heart, one soul, one mouth. I have sinned, Master, before You: in the person of my brother, I have regretted corruptible food and sweets for You. Forgive me again and again! I sinned, Master, by intemperance and greed in food and drink after Your numerous admonitions. Have mercy on me, for Your name is merciful, generous and long-suffering. Loving to accept the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, love and suffer with Him, that is, generously and patiently endure the sorrows and illnesses that the Lord sends, without which salvation is impossible for us. Through the cross, the Head of our faith, Jesus Christ, entered into glory through the cross, and we must clear our spiritual path to Heaven. When your flesh suffers from illness, remember that the first enemy of your salvation suffers, who is weakened by illness, and generously endure your illness in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who endured the cross and death for us. Also remember that all our illnesses are God’s punishments for sins, cleansing them, reconciling us with God and leading us again into His love: Thy peace, it is said, and grant us Thy love: for He has given us all [Isa. 26, 12]. Remember that in sickness the Lord is with you: I am with him in sorrow [Ps. 90, 15], and that it came from the mania of the Master, fatherly punishing us. Believing in prosperous times, be careful not to fall away during adversity, but, like a martyr, be constant in faith, hope and love. Just as the air we inhale and exhale, we borrow from the air that surrounds us everywhere, so we borrow the thoughts and words we pronounce from God, and when we speak the word of God or serve a service, perform the Sacrament, then our hearts are moved and our lips are performed by the Holy Spirit. Those who sinned towards the Lord during prayer were the false shame of strangers who prayed, impatient indignation and anger towards them. Lord, he said, forgive me my sin - and You, generous and merciful, forgave it, through the prayer of my repentance. Lord, give me patience, generosity and meekness. O my all-evil, all-cursed, all-evil flesh! How, through your five senses - sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch - distract me from love for God and neighbor and plunge me into self-love, pride and anger! How I need to crucify you, my five senses! Smell! I must crucify you with stench, so that the incense or unpleasant stench from your neighbor or from anything else does not become the cause of hatred and contempt for your neighbor or impatience and irritability. God! For the sake of an unpleasant stench, I sinned with anger against my wife! Blot out the guilt of my malice! Behold, I repent before You, Lord of my life! My womb! I must crucify you, not giving you pleasant food, and not allowing you to be satisfied, and to endure your pains with joy, for satiety strengthens the passions of the flesh! Vision! I must crucify you! For you draw me into a thousand evils with your evil eye for faces and objects. Hearing! I must crucify you! For you hear wickedly and evilly and bring death into my heart! Touch! I must crucify you! For you often produce unclean, sinful movements in me. All five senses! You are my enemies more than my friends! Through you and for your sake, I so often anger my God and insult the dignity of my neighbor as the image of God! God! Sinful, sinful, sinful, sinful, sinful I am! Have mercy on me and correct me! Reverend fathers! You teach nature to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to be diligent about the souls, things without mortals. Vouchsafe me through your prayers to be like you in serving God to the best of my ability. I become ossified, I become ossified from frequent and contented consumption of food. I know this by experience, then my heart says to me: I am like the foolish cattle and become like them [Ps. 48, 13]. Oh, priceless treasure for the soul - fasting! What man who is wise about Christ would not be jealous of you? What spiritual treasures are you not the source of? Lord, give prayer to the one who prays [1 Sam. 2:9], gave the very words favorable to Him and propitiating Him. Liturgy and Divine Mysteries are an eternal, indestructible stone. She is one and the same, always unchanged in her fruit. One and the same Christ in Body and Blood. ABOUT! How carefully the devil and the world sow with their tares the field of Christ, which is the Church of God. Instead of the word of God, the word of the world, the word of vanity, is diligently sown: literary, musical, fashion magazines; instead of churches, the world invented its own churches - churches of the vanity of the world: theaters, circuses, meetings; instead of holy icons (in the church), which peace lovers do not accept, in the world there are paintings and photographic portraits, illustrations and various other types; Instead of God and saints, the world reveres its celebrities to the point of adoration: writers, actors, singers, painters, who have public trust and respect that reaches the point of reverence! Poor Christians! They have completely fallen away from Christ! Instead of spiritual clothing, all the attention in the world is paid to physical clothing, fashionable dresses and various exquisite jewelry, which turn out to be splendid and expensive. Remember that you are not the father, not the owner, not the trustee in the house, but the Lord God is the father, and the owner, and the trustee. Always look at Him with intelligent eyes and cast all your sorrow on Him. He has never cheated on you in his entire life. Will it change now? Be carefree, be like one of the family members, like a son who relies on his father for everything. God, speak to David: my hope is in You [Ps. 38, 8]. Do not regret anything, but be kind and generous, like the Heavenly Father. While you yourself freely benefit from God’s spiritual and material mercies, do not hesitate to offer the gifts of God’s goodness freely to your brethren, for we are members among one another. Is your brother a parasite? - Yes, and you too. Remember the words of the Lord’s prayer: forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors [Matt. 6, 12]. The Most Righteous Lord, who is present in one’s neighbor and especially in a Christian, will reward for everything. Blessed will you be that they cannot repay you, for you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the righteous [Lk. 14, 14]. But what a pleasant sight it is to see a Christian, and especially a priest, not caring about the flesh and waste and having due respect for the human soul, created in the image of God, showing royal honor to man as the visible representative on earth of God, as His vicegerent. The Lord punishes a greedy and stingy person with diseases of the belly or teeth: with what one sins, he is punished [Wis. 11, 17]. I am proud - I need to trample on my pride and resist it to the death. God! Help. Those who feed others are God... helpers [1 Cor. 3, 9]. What a great honor! God created His creation; He needs food to support his life, and we feed His creatures from His bounty, from His sweets. How stinginess exists in people after this! O seduction of passions! Oh, the contempt of every human being worthy of contempt! Do not spare your neighbor the chosen, expensive food and drink for the entire duration of his life. Man is dear and beloved by the Lord, therefore he has grown and grows many different, precious and tasty foods for him and nourishes him with them. Be you an instrument of the Heavenly Father for your neighbor. But especially for your father, do not spare anything, do not consider anything valuable to offer him, but place everything at his service. If you respect and love him unfeignedly, then you will not spare anything, you will not regret anything for him. Look, God tests your love for your father every day: is it hypocritical or do you have any kind of love for him? You give to the poor and poor and donate to churches - good; but if you do not provide for your own or feel sorry for your own, then you have renounced the faith and are worse than an infidel [1 Tim. 5, 8 ], you are a hypocrite. God directly directed you to nourish and warm three for His glory: a father and his two daughters, 120 making this an indispensable duty for you to caress, nourish and warm from a good heart. And there is no need to give to others: your will is good: if you want, give, if you want, don’t. Honor with all your heart the title of 121 father in your earthly father, so that you honor as befits the name of the Heavenly Father; love him with all your heart, so that you may love the Heavenly Father with all your heart; Spare nothing for him, and spare no sacrifice for the Heavenly Father. Without honoring your earthly father, you cannot honor your Heavenly Father; Without loving him, you will not love the Heavenly Father; Sparing perishable blessings for him, you will spare them for the Heavenly Father - from which save, O God! The Lord has given you everything - and you be ready to give everything to Him at all times. The earthly father gave you everything: a daughter, a place, a home, land, a means of living - and you are ready to sacrifice everything for him. How long will you be deceived by the filling of your belly? Do you not see that the Lord of your belly teaches you extreme abstinence and fasting through illnesses of the womb? Be jealous of fasting. How long to ground the immortal spirit, how long to prevent it from ascending to God? Eat once a day, and in the evening only tea with a slice of white bread. Food and drink are nothing; the person who feeds on it is infinitely great, for he is the immortal image of God. Everything visible will pass away, and no traces will remain, and man will exist forever. And the world passes away, and so does its lust, but he who does the will of God abides forever [[1Jn. 2, 17]. 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]. The human body, its needs: food, drink, clothing, shelter, pleasure, as well as its illnesses, hunger, suffering are temporary, but the soul (and then its body) with its spiritual needs, love and good deeds are eternal, just as the future torment of the soul along with the body for unrepentance in temporary life is also eternal. The Lord is everything for a plant, for a bird, a fish, an animal, a domestic animal, for an insect, a reptile; especially everything for a person. Human! Surrender yourself entirely to the will of God, so that you yourself may become a god. I should not begrudge my neighbor food and drink, even if he begins to eat and drink for the third time in a row, and I am not responsible for him - my neighbor has his own free will: everyone will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5]. My only hospitality. But beware of stinginess and pride. If your brother asked you to eat ten times in one day, do not spare him, for the food intake is not the same, the person and his work are not the same. Be simple regarding your frequent guests who eat your food, seeing - not seeing. The enemy, under the guise of just indignation, arouses in you hostility and enmity towards people and stinginess. Rely on the conscience, on the will and needs of everyone’s nature. The Lord with a generous hand scattered and scatters His gifts in nature, but He left them to be used according to the will, reason and conscience and love and sociability of the people who use them. A greedy person would eat everything himself and leave nothing for others. God! Grant me to sincerely rejoice in the pleasure of my neighbors as if I were my own. I truly cannot do anything without You. My heart is evil and stingy. Always be sincerely glad when guests come to you, just as others are glad to see you when you come to them; or be as kind and gentle with them as you are kind and gentle with the owners in whose houses you visit. Wake up, wake up! Imagine that you receive mercy from the guests, and not they from you, for indeed Christ Himself in their person visits you: we are members... of His flesh and of His bones [Eph. 5, 30]. And Christ is the giver of life and every good we have, for we are nothing in ourselves. Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I will return [Job. 1, 21]. What do you have that you did not receive from God [1 Cor. 4, 7 ]? You are lenient towards yourself, you forgive yourself willingly for your mistakes, weaknesses, bad habits, vices - be lenient with love, prudence, meekness and patience also towards others who sin against you; forgive others generously and willingly, correcting their mistakes with a gentle word filled with love. Where is your memory of your countless sins? Why do you see and deceitfully consider other people's debts? Look at yours and count them. Where is your hope for future reward for providing free food to your neighbors? Remembering your sins, shouldn’t you rejoice at the orphans, widows and poor who come to you! They are your friends who will take you to eternal homes. And in general, for everyone who did not repay you here, the Lord will reward you with His mercy on the day of His righteous trial. Blessed will you be that they cannot repay you, for you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the righteous [Lk. 14, 14]. For us, the womb is such a cruel god that, out of slavish obedience to him, hardly any of us spends as it should any fast of four fasts a year, or even fasts on Wednesday and Friday. Out of obedience to God the womb, we refuse to obey Christ Himself and His Church. How disastrous this is for the soul! How does such disobedience threaten us, we Christians, who can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven only by obedience to the commandments of Christ and His Church! - Eternal torment. Why are you proud of the title of Christians, and even Orthodox? Yes, you are worse than infidels, worse than Jews, Mohammedans and pagans, who have more respect for their faith, for the decrees and rituals of their faiths, although they are untrue, than you have for your faith, for its decrees and rituals, although it is true and immaculate! Believe me, it will be more pleasant for them at the Judgment than for you. Look around what you are doing. Is this a Christian life: caring only about everyday things and almost nothing about heavenly things, caring about food and drink, clothing, enrichment, and all kinds of pleasures? False oath, deceit, flattery, lover of money. covetousness, bribery or bribery - aren't these the deeds of the pagans? No, brothers! Do not flatter yourselves, do not be deceived, do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor wicked people, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God [1 Cor. 6, 9–10]. But in the name of God I beg you to take care of the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven, prepared for us even before the Creator created this beautiful world [Matt. 25, 34 ]; take care with all your might to avoid eternal torment, also prepared from the end of the world for the devil and his angels, and then for careless and unrepentant sinners. To her, we assure you by the word of God: there will undoubtedly be true bliss for the righteous in heaven and eternal torment for unrepentant sinners in hell [Matt. 25, 46; In. 5, 29 ], Or: believe it or not, without your faith or disbelief all this will happen. If you are unfaithful, then God is always true to Himself, for He cannot deny Himself [2 Tim. 2, 13], and will fulfill everything that he predicted. Remember, brothers, who you are, how insignificant you are. You have only recently existed in the world, and you have been given a very short period of time of existence by the goodness of God the Creator, and you will soon have to leave this world, as your fathers, brothers, and friends, and those you know left it - you will not be again. Take advantage of this moment of life given to you by God, use it for what it was given for: preparing yourself for eternal bliss in Jesus Christ. Do not hide the talents entrusted to you by God to increase and increase your future bliss in the earth. The feeling of love for people of other faiths, His Grace Joseph, Archbishop of Lithuania 122 said in his homily, is a vow of my whole life (despite their hatred of the Orthodox), and cowardly hatred will not touch my heart even if I had to imprint this spiritual disposition with blood. Since our soul is a spiritually simple being, one crafty, self-satisfied glance at a spacious, comfortable and well-decorated apartment can turn our hearts away from the Lord if we do not pay attention to ourselves at every moment of our lives. The same can be done by one crafty one, with a heartfelt passion (or at least a desire) [look] at a beautiful woman’s face, at his beloved, pleasant food, at a pleasant drink, at elegant clothes. My God! How many networks for the soul! How many pleasant fetters there are for her, which, so to speak, are asking for you! How carefully a servant of God must use the blessings of this world! You have to treat them like fire. Not fire - but they burn and scorch the insides; without teeth - but they gnaw greatly at the heart; not stones - but they suppress worse than any stones. We must try to love the one and only Lord with all our hearts and already in the Lord and for the Lord, to please Him, to enjoy all the benefits of His vain age. As long as we stand in fervent prayer, our souls remain calm, warm, light, and light because then we are with God and in God; and as soon as prayer left, temptations and various embarrassments came. O blessed time of prayer! You ask the Lord to love Him with a love like death, strong, or unto death. Listen: the Lord is sending you a fierce internal illness, bringing you closer to death itself. Do not murmur against the Lord, but endure it courageously, with thanksgiving to the Lord for this fatherly visit of Him - and this will mean what you call love for God, like death, strong [Song. 8, 6]. Even during strong blows or writhing illnesses, trust that God is able to deliver you not only from illness, but also from death itself, if He pleases; do not spare, do not love your corruptible body for Him, but give it voluntarily and wholly to the Lord, like Abraham his son Isaac, as a burnt offering to sickness, to the will of the Lord who punishes you, without losing faith in the goodness of God, without losing heart, without giving madness to God with your lips [Job. 1, 22], allegedly unjustly punishing you so much - and you will make a great sacrifice to God, like Abraham or like the martyrs. There is absolutely nothing to be proud of for a Christian who does works of righteousness, for he is saved and is constantly saved from all evil only through faith alone, just as he does works of righteousness by the same faith. By grace you have been saved through faith, and this (and faith itself) is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God: not from works, so that no one can boast (so that no one can be proud of anything) [Eph. 2, 8–9]. God is a simple, most perfect being, that is, the purest holiness, the purest good and truth, and in order to be in unity with God, in order to be one spirit with Him (for we are from Him), we must, by His grace, acquire in ourselves the perfect simplicity of goodness or holiness and love. All the saints who are in heaven have been cleansed by the blood of the Son of God and the Holy Spirit and do not have a shadow of sin in themselves; For this reason they themselves labored in this life, for this they suffered in the flesh, in order to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit and to create holiness in the fear of God [2 Cor. 7, 1] to unite forever with that all-blessed Being, whose being is a shrine. For this reason, even now, the Holy Church stands in the world with all its institutions, for this purpose the divine services, the Sacraments, the rites, the fasting, in order to purify and sanctify the children of God for the sake of union with this all-blessed Being, glorified in the Trinity by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Thee, Father Life, Son Life, Holy Soul Life, a simple Being, God, who ever delivers us from spiritual death caused by passions to our souls. Glory to You, Trinitarian Master, for from one invocation of Your name you enlighten the dark face of our soul and body and bestow Your peace, which surpasses all earthly and sensual good and all understanding. June 13th, 1862 Pray unceasingly, calling on the name of the Life-Giving Trinity, so that your soul is not suddenly struck down by any passion: pride, or envy, or malice and hatred, or stinginess, or love of money, or gluttony, or anger and irritability, or condemnation and contempt, or lies and slander, and the like. For we all walk among networks every hour, every minute of our lives. Let the eyes of your heart be on guard every minute, let your heart be not only during the day, but also at night, according to the Scripture: I sleep, but my heart is awake [Song. 5, 2]. God is everything to the saints. May God be all in all [1 Cor. 15, 28]. We must love our neighbor even more when he sins against God or against us, for then he is sick, then he is in spiritual trouble, in danger, then we must have mercy and pray for him and apply a healing plaster to his heart - a word of affection, admonition, reproof, consolation, forgiveness, love. Forgiving mutually... as Christ forgave you [Col. 3, 13]. All sins and passions, fights and quarrels are truly mental illnesses: that’s how you need to look at them. Or all passions - a fire of the soul, a great fire raging inside, a fire emerging from the hellish abyss. It must be extinguished with the water of love, which is powerful to extinguish every hellish flame of anger and other passions. But woe and misfortune to us, to our self-love, when we increase this flame with a new hellish flame - with our own malice and irritability, and will thus be assistants to the spirits of malice, who are intensifying at all times to produce all sorts of spiritual inflammation in poor people through various passions. We ourselves will incur the fire of hell, and if we do not repent and continue to be wise for good and simple for evil [Rom. 16:19], then we will be condemned together with the devil and his angels to be tormented in the lake of fire. So, let us not allow ourselves to be overcome by evil, but let us overcome evil with good. We are damned people! How have we not yet learned to consider every sin a great misfortune of our soul and not to have spiritual, sincere, loving compassion for those who fall into such misfortune! Why do we not feel sorry for ourselves when we are exposed to any sin? Why don’t we cry before the Lord who created us? Why don’t we run from it, like from poison, like from a snake? Why are we stuck in it? In order to accept God into your soul and unite with Him, you need to repent of your sins and cleanse them from God (If your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow; if they are red like crimson, they will be white as wool [Isa. 1:18]). For there is some fellowship between light and darkness [2 Cor. 6, 14]? What fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? - None. Therefore, before the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Forerunner was sent to the people with a sermon about repentance and baptized those who repented in the Jordan into repentance (as a sign of cleansing by repentance); That’s why Jesus Christ Himself preached: repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is drawing near [Matt. 4, 17] - it has just come, he says, because it comes after sincere repentance of sins. Without cleansing sins through repentance, salvation with God is impossible. Therefore, at all times, the Church has demanded from those who receive Baptism repentance and faith in Christ, who cleanses our sins. Therefore, before union with Christ in the Sacrament of Communion, heartfelt repentance and a firm desire for correction are required. Therefore, the clergy, before each celebration of the Liturgy and the reception of the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, must sincerely repent of their sins through prepared prayers and know from experience that the Lord will not unite with them if they fall, willingly or unwillingly, into any sin before communion during or before mass and do not repent of it with all their hearts, while it was inherent in their consciousness, or if at least one with the thought of momentary doubt they will offend the faithful and true Lord. So He is holy. That is why it is said: Holy is our God, and you rest among the saints. Now apply this to the Mother of God and to all the saints. They are one with God, are in close and eternal, unchanging communion with Him. How holy they must be, especially the Lady, for in heaven there are degrees of holiness, although everyone is holy and in no way involved in sin. The Lady, from the essence of the matter itself, is called the Most Holy, and other saints are called only saints. This is the price at which - the price of repentance, purification and sanctification - a blissful union with God is achieved. What kind of reverence and reverence do saints deserve? Who will harm you if you are zealous for good? [ 1 Pet. 3, 13], A truly good person is not offended by anyone or anything, because he is good in himself (the thought of my father). Be trusting of people and do not offend them with mistrust, just as you trust them. Say: my neighbor is the same as me. Be like a guest in your home, and not like a host. The thought of oneself as a master, as an owner, gives a lot of pride and stinginess. Caress your child... and he will make you sad [Sir. 30, 9]. Caress the womb, and it will certainly also sadden you. The single word of a Christian, with living faith in Jesus Christ, can produce great miracles, because in this word the Hypostatic Word (as simple as a simple word) of the Father without beginning acts (indwelling everything), the Word by which the Father created everything, Who spoke, and was... commanded, and was created [Ps. 32, 9]. I gratefully glorify with my unworthy heart and lips the Most Holy, Most Good and Life-Giving Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who has now clearly saved me twice through my prayer: the first time - from sorrow and tightness of heart due to the evil, unfaithful, alien trust in God, pity for earthly blessings and, secondly, from hellish oppression and evil despondency due to internal malice and disgust to your neighbor. I cried out to my God with all my heart, I said with the lips of my heart: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Soul, Holy Trinity, God, have mercy on me, save me from my stinginess and from my malice - and He saved me, expanded my heart, gave it living hope in the one God the Father and vigilant Provider and, driving away the stench of malice from my heart, filled it with the incense of love and goodwill towards one's neighbor. Glory to the goodness of the Lord. Glory to His bounties, glory to His good obedience - but to me, a sinner, shame on my face [Dan. 9:7 ], as this day is for those who have sinned and committed unrighteousness and unrighteousness, and have always committed unrighteousness before my God. Do not humiliate or dishonor your neighbor, lest you be humiliated, lest you be dishonored internally by the Lord: he who humiliates another exalts himself, and everyone who exalts himself, it is said, will be humiliated, and he who humiliates himself and exalts another will exalt himself [Lk. 18, 14]. Be forgiving of your neighbor's weaknesses and shortcomings, remembering your own weaknesses and shortcomings and the truth that we are members of one another [Eph. 4:25] that dishonoring a brother is your dishonor. For humiliating my brother, I myself experienced extreme inner humiliation from the Lord and inner tightness, from which I only with difficulty got rid of through persistent prayer. Thank you, Lord, who saved me through my persistent prayer from spiritual distress for the sin of humiliating my neighbor. ABOUT! How cramped it was! And how easy it became after prayer and God’s mercy! Glory to Thy love for mankind and long-suffering, O Lord! Be afraid to somehow humiliate your neighbor! My hope is in God. He surrounds me from all sides: from above, from below, from the sides, from the inside. Where will I go from Your Spirit, and where will I flee from Your presence? [Ps. 138, 7]. One God and Father of all [Eph. 4:6], from whom are all things, and we are for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we through Him [1 Cor. 8, 6]. All care for me and all of us lies with the Heavenly Father. We must live without sadness. Nan has cast away all your sorrow, for He cares for you [1 Pet. 5, 7]. When the flesh rises up against the spirit with its passions and lusts, then we must immediately call on the name of the Divine Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, or one of the Trinity, Jesus Christ the Son of God and say: Most Holy Trinity, have mercy on us; Lord, cleanse our sins; Master... Holy... or like this: Father God, Son God, Holy Soul God, Trinity One, have mercy on me; or: Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me - and then cross your womb with faith. Then, bless yourself, drink holy or plain water and, if you want to eat, eat simple black bread with salt, no more. And thus pacify your flesh, imagining a coffin, and your corruptible body in the coffin, and worms in your entrails, and the dust to which it will turn. When giving alms, always remember that money is dust, and the beggar is a man, the priceless image of God, redeemed by the priceless blood of the Son of God, and do not despise the beggar because of your ashes, even if you gave him a whole mountain of gold. That is alms when you give with a sweet heart and appearance and with faith in the recipient of Christ, and not with rudeness, not with negligence, like a dog, not out of decency, not reluctantly, not with bitterness and annoyance, just to get away, for this will no longer be alms pleasing to God. God loves a cheerful giver [2 Cor. 9, 7]. Do not serve the devil even in the best of deeds. In order not to remember evil towards our neighbor, who often annoys us, we must look at him as a guest who arrived to us yesterday, to whom we owe love and affection. For aren’t we all guests in the world, who yesterday came to live in this hotel called the world? Demonic scum in the heart and mind. Clean it daily. Scum in relationships with family. Those who have sinned: I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord: from the one who took what you have, do not demand it back... whoever wants to sue you and take your shirt, give him your outer garment too [Lk. 6, 30; Matt. 5, 40 ] (give more than what they demand) - and because of this, how many strife and quarrels he created, how much abuse, anxiety, anger! Have mercy, Lord! Give the last, but keep peace and love, of which there is nothing more valuable in the world. They take the rest of your silver - give it back. Oh, foolish me! Oh, I'm stingy! What is the fear of God? Pious fear lest any sinful thought enter the mind, lest any lawless thought take root in the heart: lack of faith or unbelief, hatred and malice, stinginess, love of money, etc. The Lord allows us to be overwhelmed by various passions in this life, so that we would hate these same passions with all our hearts and consider everything earthly as nothing, no matter how precious and pleasant it may be, and so that with all our hearts we would desire a quiet heavenly refuge, so that with all our hearts we would desire the one God, the source of silence and life, and cleave to Him alone, value Him alone above all else, His holy will, His peace and joy. Everywhere on earth is cramped for you, everything betrays you: relatives, friends, people you know, wealth, sensual pleasures, your body; change all the elements: earth, water, fire, air, light - cling to the one God, with whom there is no change and not a shadow of change [Jas. 1, 17], which alone is love. What have I come to, a great sinner? Contrary to the words of my Savior, I have loved my soul in this world [Jn. 12, 25]: he cherished his flesh with a good, nourishing, tasty table, long sleep, and avoidance of work that should have been undertaken and performed for the benefit of the Church. Go ahead and change your life according to the words of the Savior. Anger, accumulating in the heart, finally bursts, like a malignant abscess, and then fights and quarrels occur. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul [Matt. 10, 28]. Stingy, covetous, money-loving, gluttonous - heed these words of the Savior and place them on your hearts. Suppose that someone [...] kills you in any way whatsoever your money, food, drink, clothes, books, household utensils, and other things; Let us assume that you have lost your health due to the injustice of [...] people, even your physical life itself, but you are not a loser: your immortal soul will remain intact and will inherit eternal life, so that all earthly loss will mean absolutely nothing and will even constitute a gain for the soul. So, no one should be afraid of deprivation of earthly benefits, deprivation of health, of physical life itself: people can take away our money, food, clothing, housing, health, physical life, but they cannot kill our soul. Everything will pass away like a shadow, except the soul, which is immortal. Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you [Matt. 5, 44]. Does the Lord require much from us? No, very little - only what we ourselves desire from God and what He actually constantly does for us. Love your enemies, says the Lord, just as I love you, My constant enemies, and, loving, I do everything good for you: I created you, I renewed and renew your nature corrupted by sins, I nourish, clothe, illuminate, revive, and delight. Bless those who curse you, just as I bless you with everything, although you often murmur and blaspheme against Me. Do good [glory: do good] to those who hate you, just as every moment of my life I do good to those who hate Me, and pray for those who offend you and persecute you, just as I prayed for My very enemies, My crucifiers the Jews, who persecuted Me until the end of their lives and killed Me with a shameful death. How much do I demand from you when I command you to pray for your enemies, who do not know what they themselves are doing, just as My enemies themselves did not know what they were doing to Me? If I myself fulfilled this commandment and, commanding you to fulfill it too, will, without a doubt, help you fulfill it, then what work is there in fulfilling it? And you complain that it is impossible to love our enemies, bless those who curse, and do good to our haters. How is it impossible? Was it not through human strength that I fulfilled this commandment? Is it not your soul? Isn't it in your body? No, only pride, pride and your evil disposition claim that this is impossible; on the contrary, this is a possible and easy matter for those who believe in Me. We only need to believe from the heart that the enmity of our enemies against us is their weakness, their illness, which torments, torments, darkens them, causing them themselves thousands of involuntary evils, and that through love for them, charity and prayer for them we can save them from this illness, which so terribly envelops, scorches and devastates their souls. We just need to believe from the heart that they are our weak members or, better, members of Christ Himself, about whom we must take active care, as about ourselves, in order to correct, heal them and restore them to proper health and strength. If you do not love your enemies... then God will not love you. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. Know or believe that no matter how many times a guest comes to you in the person of a brother or someone else to eat from your meal, or a beggar accepts alms from you, the Lord Himself comes and tests you to see whether you are constant in your feelings of love for Him. So, accept everyone as Christ, including those closest to you with whom you live. Amen. Let your silver perish with you, because you thought to receive the gift of God with money [Acts. 8, 20]. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are priceless and untradeable. Likewise, the human soul is priceless and unsaleable. Spare nothing for a hungry soul; ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million times, throughout your life, do not regret anything for your brother, for your brother’s soul is priceless. It is worth every earthly, transitory treasure, being itself eternal and of Divine origin. Leave him his debts without number, and you too will be left with countless sins. For it is said: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. Just as light, air, and water will not be scarce for you from the Creator, so, believe me, food and clothing will not be scarce for you from the Creator. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. Whose words are these? You value me little, dear brother, when you, without sparing for me two or three loaves of bread, two or three glasses of sweet tea or two measures of wine, spared a third slice, a third glass or a third measure. So he has the right to say, and another guest, friend, relative, acquaintance will tell you, noticing your stinginess, your greed, your change in face due to the fact that he consumes a lot of the gifts of God from your meal with appetite. Think how offensive it would be for you if they treated you like that. But whatever you want people to do to you, do so to them [Matt. 7, 12]. Do not spare decay and water for your brother. You care and fuss about many things, it must be said to everyone who is overzealous, fussy, stingy, covetous and money-loving and gluttonous and envious, but only one thing is needed [Lk. 10, 41–42]. What is this? - Lord our God. He is the source of living water. His acquisitions are in the heart. Whatever your family asks you to do, even if it involves costs, do it willingly. In any case, love your neighbor, even when your heart yearns for anger, vengeance, and suspicion; loving, punish, loving, save the inveterate sinner. Endure everyone with love. The disease came out. Mental illness, like physical illness, hiding inside for some time and, so to speak, accumulating more and more, finally comes out. And this way out can be very beneficial for the soul. It happens like this. Let us suppose that a person is angry and irritable. His irritability is so strong that one unsmooth word, one ambiguous glance from another, one insignificant obstacle from any person, thing, circumstances of time or place drive him crazy. Isn’t it true that this person is internally sick, that his insides are filled with spiritual leprosy and it must be brought out and thereby destroyed or at least greatly weakened? For such cases, you don’t have to go far to go outside. They often introduce themselves. Look: two irritable personalities come together. Here one of them puts a spark into the heart of the other, igniting his pride. The spark ignites, counteraction begins - the fire of irritability increases, two personalities breathe fire, their insides are on fire. But let their illness scourge itself, let them get excited and lose their temper as much as their heart desires. Let their internal illness go away without a trace. They will get excited, fight, but finally calm down and feel the need to make peace. And here it is imperative to reconcile them and show them from experience how bad it is to be angry and irritable, how one must henceforth restrain oneself from the slightest feeling of anger and irritability: I walk by my kindness [Ps. 25, 1] ​​- and everything is possible to accustom your heart to goodness, meekness and humility. Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart [Matt. 11, 29]. What is the meekness of the Savior? - He will not contradict, he will not cry, and no one will hear His voice in the streets; he will not break a bruised reed (a sinner with a contrite and humble heart), and he will not quench the smoking flax (a human soul smoking with some fire of faith and virtue) [Matt. 12, 19 – 20]. What else? - Being slandered, He did not slander each other; while suffering, he did not threaten, but handed it over to the Righteous Judge. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree [1 Pet. 2, 23 – 24]. It is remarkable that irritable people, after the agony of strong and prolonged anger and after experiencing all its torment, become, as they say, silken, meek and meek. What has been said about anger and irritability should also be said about other passions. The Lord Himself indicated the punishment for them in themselves, in their extreme agony. This is how pride, envy, hatred, stinginess, and the love of money are punished. Each passion is its own teacher and at the same time the executioner of every person possessed by it. Do not caress the flesh, lest you arm it firmly against yourself. Do not feed her with pleasant and stimulating foods and drinks, do not amuse her with pleasant, seductive and funny views, and so on. Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors [Matt. 6, 12]. Leave small debts, for example, a debt in money, bread and salt, so that the Lord will leave you your big debts. Leave the grievances caused to you, the sins, the faults against you, so that the Lord will leave you your grievances to Him, your faults. Try to have peace with everyone and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord [Heb. 12, 14]. Do not disturb the peace because of the corruptible and transitory, because of your sinful pride. Love the world above all else, as the Lord Himself. May nothing be more valuable than peace and mutual love. Let us love the world. Peace, peace! Do not take revenge on anyone for anything. God is an avenger. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord [Rom. 12, 19]. Keep peace and love with all your might. Be as careless about external goods as a child. All are Christ’s, and everything that is done freely for Christians goes to Christ. But you are Christ’s, says the apostle (1 Cor. 3:23). I will repay [Rom. 12, 19; Heb. 10, 30]. You are the body of Christ, and individually members [1 Cor. 12, 27]. It will be, God willing. Eat and drink as much as you like. So tell your guests cordially, although you will have the last thing on the table. Remember how the sick servant of God Ignatius and his wife treated you cordially from the last time, and the best, with generosity and cordiality. I am horrified, Lord, of my covetousness, my greed and stinginess. I become Judas. Stretch, Lord, Your high arm and save me from the jaws of the hellish serpent. May the extreme of evil turn me completely away from all acquisition, and may I consider everything as rubbish. I have nothing of my own, but everything is God’s. Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I will return [Job. 1, 21]. We brought nothing into the world; It is obvious that we cannot take anything out of it [1 Tim. 6, 7]. So, let everything be common. Since the throne of the carnal man, or the throne of the devil, is in the womb of man (here are all carnal passions, especially the passion of gluttony), then God in Jesus Christ deigned to establish His throne also in the womb of man and in his heart through the ingestion of animal bread - the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ, for man was deceived by bread, was deceived and is constantly being deceived now. ABOUT! The depth of wisdom and goodness and all the power of God! Ole of extreme indulgence! Instead of the fruit of the tree of life and the forbidden fruit, the Immortal Fruit itself is given to us. You do not tolerate untruth and are ready to take revenge for it now. Tolerate untruth, be thirsty to endure it, drink it like water [Job. 15, 16]. Remember that your untruth and the untruth of all people is tolerated by the All-Holy Lord, but who are you? - Sinner, unpaid debtor. In public, generously endure debts of all kinds, spiritual and material, because the Lord also tolerates the darkness of sins or debts of all kinds on you. (Chrysostom means spiritual and material debts.) So, a brother or a neighbor in general came to you for three or four days or a week in a row to eat from your table - feed him cordially, do not be sad, do not despise him. He has it himself, you say, and goes idly to eat others. Look at yourself: you have it, and others treat you with pleasure; and you often spend your time in idleness, and yet the Lord pleases you with everything. So leave your debts without counting them, and the Lord will let you go without counting and vouchsafe the Kingdom of Heaven. Where are we not haunted by enmity or delusion, the enmity of our flesh against the spirit? They invite me to correct my duty - the demands, in my opinion, are not on time, and I have a hostile, hostile attitude towards my neighbor, for whom I have been appointed a servant by our Savior; From somewhere I feel laziness, a reluctance to perform a holy task, even an aversion from it. ABOUT! How much and constantly I need to force myself to be hasty in correcting any and all matters of my ministry at all times. For this is what I was sent to do, that is my position, that is my title. Tell me, how will you look at the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, having hated, despised your neighbor, pitied his rubbish, exchanging him for the dust of the earth - money, food and drink? Tell me, how will you look at the face of the Lover of Mankind, who deigned to become the Son of Man to redeem you and the whole world from eternal torment? Tell me, how will you look at the face of the Lover of Humanity? Behold, God Himself has the very face that you hated and despised in your brother because of dust, because of decay. How will you ask Him for forgiveness of your sins when you yourself do not forgive your neighbor insignificant, material, perishable debts, which, like your body, must sooner or later pass away? You yourself ask for forgiveness of great spiritual debts, which can remain on you forever in case of unrepentance and non-correction and become the cause of eternal misfortune, eternal torment, but you yourself do not willingly forgive small debts, completely insignificant due to their transience. Why, I’m surprised, don’t you deliberately make yourself into as many debtors as possible without the hope of ever getting your debts back from them? Then you would have the consolation of hoping to receive forgiveness for your great sins. I thank and glorify the all-saving and life-giving name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, [my] God, who saved me through my prayer. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Soul, have mercy on me from the distress of my soul, which has reached me for the pity of corruptible, tasty and expensive food ([...]) for my neighbor (my brother), who supposedly has to come, for this [empty] concern for bread. July 16th day, 1862 All for me is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, thinking about Him and calling on Him; Caring about bread, thinking about it does not give life to the heart, and indeed to the whole being - on the contrary, it oppresses and torments. Experience. It is necessary that nothing separates us from love for our neighbor (so it must be firm and constant), no kind of self-love: not sparing pleasant and expensive food and precious and sweet drink for my brother who often visits me and eats my bread, not money, not clothes, not home, no earthly things - for all earthly things are insignificant compared to my brother, not my pride, not envy, not malice, neither laziness is anything. You think you have no pride. Isn’t it pride that you have no or very little hope in God and want to arrange all your affairs yourself, especially housework? What can you do without God? - Nothing. Rely on God in everything, in all your work, in your whole life, down to the smallest circumstances. Ask God for everything. Watch carefully, so that you do not despise in your heart one single child [Matt. 18, 10], for some reason you don’t like. You will despise the Angel of God assigned to him. You will despise the child of God, you will despise the Lord Himself, the Father of all babies par excellence. Today you saw in a dream how the enemy laughs at us through our greed and through our inclination to laugh. Oh, ethereal villain, destroying the human race, by the way, with greed and ridiculousness! Christian brothers! Let us come to our senses and not be, like animals, greedy for food and drink and passionate lovers of laughter. Let us look at the works of the Lord. We will say to food and drink: we despise you, pus and dust; and to laughter: you are sinful and you are guilty of eternal tears. It’s our misfortune that, while we ourselves change every day in thousands of ways, we dream that the sky changes with us. We attribute our impermanence to the permanent sky, our impurity to the most pure sky. ABOUT! How unclean we are! Do not be a fan of people's opinions, but, recognizing the correctness of your words and actions, be bold, decisive, enterprising and important in your words and actions. Try, with the help of God’s grace, to reach such a level of contempt for the flesh and its passions and lusts that you can speak with firmness from the bottom of your heart in the case of sinful desires of the flesh: I despise you, my flesh, and your rebellions. Despise the flesh, it passes away, but be diligent about the souls, things that are more immortal. A Christian needs the spirit of courage in the wiles of the devil, troubles, sorrows and illnesses and the many different labors and temptations of this life. Without this virtue (courage), he can easily become weakened and despondent. Let us not become weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up [Gal. 6, 9]. Strengthen drooping arms and weak knees. Heb. 12, 12. Lady Theotokos of unimaginable holiness, goodness, humility, wisdom, unspeakable power... The Lord Jesus Christ bore the burden of the sins of the whole world; we, for our part, must endure troubles, insults, faults, even of our relatives, friends, acquaintances, children, subordinates, flocks, and servants. Bear each other's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ [Gal. 6, 2], the law of leniency and long-suffering towards the infirmities of others. In the name of Jesus Christ and spiritual salvation, despise all sensual sweetness and not be carried away by its pleasantness, so that Jesus Christ alone may delight me in my heart. Remember that every sensual sweetness, with which the heart is carried away to the point of addiction, is enmity against God. Let the heart love nothing more than God. Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world... For all that is in the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life [1 Jn. 2, 15–16]. Think deeply about these words and experience their truth in your heart. How necessary it is to fulfill them! Our eternal good requires this fulfillment. The heart completely agrees with them, feels their truth. From life experiences. If you regret any sensual sweetness or food and drink and money for your neighbor, especially for your loved ones, then remember with what terrible generosity God gave us His Son, giving Him over to suffer and die for us and finally giving Him as food and drink to us sinners, out of His endless, ineffable love. Especially a priest should not for a moment spare for his neighbor anything pleasant or expensive that can delight his neighbor without harm, for he himself often delights in the Body and Blood of his Lord. A full belly does not feel the power of the words of prayer, the greatness and severity of its sins; there is no sweetness of prayer for him, there is no feeling of reverence for him before the God of all and before the Lady, before the Angels and saints. Anyone who is well-fed feels extremely ill during prayer. Well-fed flesh strongly fights against the spirit. Abstinence is necessary for a Christian. Especially, in particular, it is necessary to go to services and especially to the liturgy without eating or drinking. During fasting you should not drink tea, but something cold. Tea especially relaxes the heart and pampers the soul and body. Was there at least one day when I was not carried away by the enemy with food and drink? And this is when my body is filled with pus and exudes pus, when I see with my own eyes the corruption of both the food I eat and my body. What foolishness! 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 [Matt. 6, 24]. For example. If you have an addiction, greed for food and drink, then you cannot love your neighbor more than your food; your treasure will be food, but you will neglect your brother, this image of the immortal King of God, and will be ready to sell him for money, for food, many times over. Thus, a glutton who is addicted to food and drink cannot, cannot love God: truly his God is his belly [Phil. 3, 19]. He pleases him, not God, and with his belly he is constantly captivated by sweetness. Experience confirms this every day. I need to show the fruits of repentance and especially communion of the Divine Mysteries of the Body and Blood. God! Give me the strength to bring You fruits worthy of Your care and mercy. I want, Master, to curb my belly, which is so hostile to You, me and my neighbor. Remember often that you are a slave and you have a Lord, to whom you are called to work with all your soul, with all your zeal, all your life. A carnal man does not tolerate it when others take something of ours, but our spiritual man is willingly and joyfully ready to give everything, and even himself, his soul, if only it would be for the benefit and salvation of his neighbor. So, Moses was ready for God to blot himself out of the book of life, just to save the Jewish people from extermination [Ex. 32, 32]. What about us? We do not regret laying down our souls for our neighbors, but we regret our money, our food and drink, although we see those in need. If you love those who love you, what gratitude do you have for that? for sinners also love those who love them. And if you greet only your brothers, what special thing are you doing? Don't the pagans do the same? [ OK. 6, 32; Matt. 5, 46 – 47]. Our proud heart usually loves only those who love us; lips that speak from the abundance of the heart also love to greet only those who are on good terms with us, who caress our pride - and, on the contrary, both hearts and lips are reluctant to open to greet people who are on unfavorable terms with us. Since the source and cause of this evil is our heart, corrupted by passions, our old man, who still lives in us [and is not killed] by us, we must certainly overcome our hearts with the help of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who is earnestly called upon by us for help, and mercilessly trample on our self-love, pride and malice. Yes, we must force our hearts to love even our enemies, although this is difficult for the old man; we must also greet our ill-wishers, although our hearts and lips are not ready to dissolve for these greetings. Otherwise, what kind of Christians are we, what kind of followers of Christ (who suffered such reproach from sinners), who endured the cross and death for His enemies and prayed for them and did them every kind of good, like Judas, although He foresaw his fall? What kind of disciples are we of Him who, being slandered... did not slander each other; while suffering, he did not threaten, but handed it over to the Righteous Judge [1 Pet. 2, 23] and Who commanded us to bless those who curse us and do good to those who hate us and pray for those who harm us [Matt. 5, 44]. You will say: it is very, very difficult to love your evil enemies; it is very, very difficult to speak with them with an open, loving heart, to greet them, to serve them - or, moreover, it is completely impossible for you. - For your own strength, perhaps, it is impossible, but not for your Christ: with Him all things are possible for you. So, call on Him for help, call on Him immediately, internally or in mental prayer, when you are face to face with your ill-wishers and enemies: “Jesus, my strength, my fortress! Help me to fulfill Your commandment about love for enemies, about friendly greeting of enemies. I myself find myself powerless to fulfill this commandment, my heart is bursting with anger, my lips are ready to sting the enemy, my eyes are ready to throw the hellish flames of malice at the enemy, my hands are ready to strike the offender with strangulations and beatings. So, help me, my Savior! Without You, according to Your word, I cannot do anything [John. 15, 5]". “And I assure you that if you sincerely ask for help from above, it will certainly be given to you, and you yourself will learn from experience how, with the help of Christ the Savior, it is easy to love even your enemies, and to sincerely greet your most ill-wishers. And without prayer, without the help of the Lord Jesus, believe me, you will always be carried away like a leaf by a wave, with heartfelt malice towards your neighbor, for the enemy is stronger than you. If you love your enemies and greet those who are your most enemies from the heart, then you will be a true Christian and you will have a great reward from the Lord; otherwise, there is no reward for you and you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, then you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 5, 20]. Be at peace with each other. 1 Thess. 5, 13. Be patient with everyone. See to it that no one repays evil for evil; but always seek the good of each other and everyone (ibid., [14–15]). Remember these words of the apostle. Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult [1 Pet. 3:9], remembering the words of the prayer: forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. The more you forgive others of material or spiritual debts, the more the Master will forgive you, for with the measure you use, it is said, with the same it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. The word of all our Lord and God is true. Moreover, the Lord is able to make all grace abound in us (and always provides bread for food). Become rich through poverty. Love is long-suffering, merciful, love does not envy, love is not exalted, is not proud... does not seek its own (...everything is common [Acts 2:44; 4:32], is not selfish, not self-loving), is not irritated, does not think evil [1 Cor. 13, 4–5]. Remember: the human soul is of infinite value and dignity, and everything earthly, all riches, all sweets are insignificant in comparison with it. The Lord Jesus Christ, who passed from the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and after His birth from Her, always fulfills Her with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Let us come to him and make our abode with him [Jn. 14, 23]. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you... [1 Cor. 6, 19]. Or do you not know... that Jesus Christ is in you? [ 2 Cor. 13, 5]. If this applies to simple believers, then even more so to the Mother of the incarnate God of the Word. She carried Him temporarily in the womb and became His Mother, and He, the eternal God, who is everywhere and fulfills everything, will carry Her forever in His bosom. The rector ordered. You need to do it (for example, write a task, a sermon, study a lecture, or not go to town, or go without lunch). Otherwise, they will be expelled or punished with rods, etc. The Lord commanded - and it must be fulfilled. Otherwise, they will be excluded from the book of life and sent to eternal fire. The Word of the Lord is true: what is said must certainly be so or will be, if we do not change; for example, Gehenna will be for sinners if they do not correct themselves here. Or they say again: the king - or the governor, or the manager, or the commander - ordered this and that to be done, and immediately their will is carried out, the work is done without delay, without beating around the bush. And when the Lord commands, the Lord of our life, the Creator of heaven and earth, the true, all-righteous and all-powerful and all-good Judge, the deed stands still and is not fulfilled. And what is the reason? Lack of faith or unbelief, unforgivable laziness, incomprehensible coldness and carelessness, addiction to earthly things and all our varied passions. In addition, the enemy of God and man, the devil, begs us with our pride, our addiction to earthly things. That is why, in order to be unhindered, to be ready and comfortable to fulfill the commandments of the Lord, one must deny oneself and crucify one’s flesh with its varied passions and lusts. If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and come after Me [Matt. 16, 24; Mk. 8:34], that is, let him live according to My commandments, let him look to the example of My life. Just as a mother carries a baby in her arms, so the Lord carries us with His word every moment of life and supports us in being. Thus, the apostles, prophets and holy fathers carry our souls with their writings and nurture us, so that they may grow us to Christ. When you are going to write a sermon, concentrate entirely on your subject, give yourself entirely to it. And for this, be sure to establish a specific object that you are talking about, and examine it from all sides in order to present it, if possible, as it is. In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word will be established [2 Cor. 13, 1]. The devil often blasphemes one of the saints in us or slanderes some truth. Servant of Christ! You have the entire Church of Christ as a witness to the holiness of God’s elect or the truth of a certain dogma, decree, rule, ritual, Christ Himself and the Spirit of God. Who else should you listen to? Is this the creeping killer serpent in the darkness? Is it his noxious breath? By its fruit you will know it [Matt. 7, 16, 20]. God! Grant me every care, so that I may not bring into Your church, the church of my soul, the alien fire of passions, but may I always maintain in it the fire of love for You. May I pay attention to myself and be sober with all diligence. If someone who harms you and has not left his hatred towards you asks you to pray for him when he sees you going to church, or [having] to pray at home, then do not let your heart become embittered and do not say in your heart: here again, for you, my offender, my hater, I will pray; how I will pray for you when you tore my heart to pieces with your insults, when you disgusted me with your malice and hatred; You are still laughing at me, apparently. Do not say this in your heart, but remember immediately the word of the Savior: pray for those who use you and persecute you [Matt. 5, 44], and immediately, in the twinkling of an eye, subdue your evil [...] heart to your Savior, and immediately bow your neck under the good yoke of His commandments, and be sure to immediately pray for your hater, so that you may be truly a Christian, that is, an obedient and zealous servant of Christ, doing the commandments of your Lord without laziness and diligence. (Behold, I come quickly, My reward is with Me... [Rev. 22:12].) If, having known the will of your Lord, you do not care about fulfilling it, but act according to the blind attraction of your heart corrupted by sin, you harbor hatred, malice, envy and other passions, if you do not have the fear of God’s commandments and do not correct yourself, then believe: you will not escape Gehenna. The servant... who knew the will of his master, and was not ready, and did not do according to his will, will receive many stripes [Lk. 12, 47]. Many people say: we cannot eat lean food. Why? - Because we’ve lost the habit. Try to get used to it, and believe me: if you want, you will get used to it. How can we not get used to something that is not at all contrary to our nature, but, so to speak, is innate to it? For fasting is characteristic of man. People who do not consume meat, milk, eggs, but eat plant, flour, and fish foods, are healthier, more cheerful, and lighter than people who eat lean food. How can one not get used to lean food, which is not at all contrary to our nature, when one gets used to smoking tobacco, which is outside the requirements of nature and is disgusting to it, how one gets used to many things that are not the need of nature. No, brothers. It is a lie that you cannot eat lean food, it is an unpardonable weakness to always eat only lean food; admit that you don’t want to part with the pleasure of a simple table, you don’t want to deny your belly pleasant food. You are pleased to make daily sacrifices to your god - the womb, and do not want to follow the example and commandment of the Savior, who fasted for forty days and nights for our salvation and thereby showed all the need for us to fast. You do not want to be Christ’s slaves and obedients, although you falsely call yourself Christians. For those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts... [Gal. 5, 24]. So, we are slaves of the flesh, not of Christ. But he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption [Gal. 6, 8]. (If we live by the spirit (of God), then we must walk according to the spirit [Gal. 5:25].) How long will we worship idols under the guise of Christians? How long will we live our carnal life, how long will we not take care of pursuing our spiritual life? Brethren! Our God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth [Jn. 4, 24], that is, one must lead a life of fasting in order to pray to Him spiritually and with a true heart, for without fasting there is no spiritual prayer. Our God is spirit. This obliges us, as children of God, to become spiritual and try to nourish ourselves with pleasant and varied food and drink, and various other carnal pleasures. All wisdom, all Christian philosophy lies in despising the flesh, all its pleasures and loving Christ with all your heart, diligently striving for the salvation of the soul, the most immortal thing. That is why the most uneducated and simple people can be true Christians and great servants of Christ. On the contrary, people with a secular education and earthly wisdom are most incapable of being true Christians. Truly, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God [1 Cor. 3, 19]. Let the abomination of desolation not stand in its holy place - in my heart; Let no foreign fire be brought into the tabernacle of God 124 - that is, the fire of passions, the fire of worldly cares, worries about food and drink, the fire of gluttony, love of money, avarice, envy, hatred and other sins should not be brought into my heart, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. My son!.. Guard your heart above all else, for from it flow the springs of life [Prov. 4, 20, 23]. Moses fasted forty days and forty nights before God appeared to him at Sinai. Shouldn't the New Testament priest, who so often unites with the Lord of Moses in the life-giving Mysteries, observe constant fasting in his life? Shouldn't we be constantly abstinent, as a child of the Lord's Supper, in living hope of the Kingdom of God, which is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14, 17 ]? Should he not be inspired in the likeness of his Lord? What will separate us from loving God and neighbor? – Excessive consumption of food or tasty food, that is, gluttony. Meanwhile, the commandment of love is the only commandment in which the whole law is 125. So, despise the belly and every delicacy. For through the womb the enemy always conveniently captures Us. Lord, help me! Do not count any food and drink as anything, no matter how expensive and sweet they may be, but willingly share them with your brother. Another shouts: why circuses and theaters, why free houses, why houses of feasting and music 126 - but he himself is nothing more than a circus of the devil, in which it is not horses and other animals that amuse the spectators, but demons prowl and ride on the poor soul, having human passions in their hands with the reins and bits. Some fight against theaters, and he himself is nothing other than the devil’s theater, in which demons act out the tragicomedies of human passions: pride, pride, love of money, stinginess, envy, malice and hatred, guile, doubt, unbelief, despondency, blasphemy, laziness, idle talk, gluttony, debauchery, lies and deception and other human passions (in theaters specifically this is what is being played out, for these are demonic schools; the theater is a school of vice, although it is given the plausible name of a moral institution). So, someone shouts against free houses, against houses of feasting and music, but due to his many different passions he himself is a true free house or a house of rich feasting and music of evil spirits who commit adultery with his soul and are consoled at the table of his passions and form their infernal music from them. Whoever you are, an imaginary zealot for the glory of God, a blind Pharisee, rebelling against the destruction of theaters, circuses and other places of public entertainment, undoubtedly harmful to human morality, but first destroy in yourself the demonic circus, theater, first destroy in yourself the devil's meal and the demonic music formed from your passions, and then be most strictly, relentlessly zealous for glory God and about the salvation of human souls, about the destruction of circuses, theaters and other places of entertainment, and the Lord... will fight for you [Sir. 4, 32]. Also: don’t you often turn your house into a real theater, don’t you play out the bustle of life in it? Don’t you often see here tragicomic forms of addiction to clothing to the point of some kind of slavish worship of fashion, color, etc.? Don't you see here the greed for food and drink, for money and for the pleasures of the flesh? Don't you see tearing [scenes] of hatred, strife, quarrels over the most empty objects? So, turn your house into a school of piety and then be zealous about the destruction of circuses, theaters and other entertainments. And the Lord will soon fight for you. Although praise in the mouth of a sinner is not red, yet out of gratitude I will glorify Your all-saving name, Lord Jesus Christ, as you transformed spiritual passions into the health of the soul, a storm of passions into peace that surpasses all understanding, and the death of the soul into life. Another, tempted by some passion as a result of a vision of some person or object, blames this person or this object for his passion, sometimes madly curses him and says: ah! If it weren’t for him or if it weren’t for this object, not this case and circumstance, I would never have committed this sin, I would not have been subjected to this passion! Reckless! Neither a person, nor an object, nor other circumstances are to blame for your passion - you yourself are guilty, gifted with intelligence, the priceless gift of freedom and knowing well the commandments of God and tempted by many different experiences on how to avoid a certain passion when an enemy or a person tempts you. One means of salvation is sincere self-condemnation and repentance of one's [sin], evil deed or word, or passionate indignation. Experience what fills and fills your skin - your body - every day and every hour! What kind of stench is there: animal, or the stench of the Holy Spirit, or the mortal stench of passions, the stench of attachment to the world. Is it the stench of zeal for God and for the salvation of one’s soul and the souls of other brothers - or the stench of zeal for the flesh, the stench of covetousness, love of money, stinginess, gluttony, envy, ambition, pleasing the flesh in all forms. There are people who are physical but have no spirit [Jude. 1, 19], - isn’t that exactly what you are? If so, then woe to you: from your flesh you will suffer incorruption and eternal torment. Just as a vessel filled with incense leaves in itself, even after the ointment is exhausted, 127 for a long time, and often for the rest of the time of its existence, a pleasant smell, and all the stronger, the more fragrant the ointment was in it, so the bodies of holy men, in which the Spirit of God dwelt, and after their death emit a wonderful fragrance from themselves and, hidden in them, by the life of the all-filling Spirit of God, remain incorruptible, emanating healing human souls and bodies. But especially this likeness must be applied to the immaculate Mother of God. Having been the womb of the Divine Incarnation, the vessel of the Divine and His church, the receptacle of Him whose name alone is the poured-out myrrh [Song. 1, 2], She, even after the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ from Her for the entire subsequent life, until the most sincere communion with His Son by way of death, preserved in Her entire being the ineffable fragrance of the holiness of the Divine and was all the fragrance, all the light, because the Son of God incarnate from Her, leaving Her most pure womb in His flesh, left in Her forever the fragrance of His all-fulfilling Deity. Eyewitnesses of the Dormition of the Mother of God told us that after Her glorious Dormition, the room in which Her God-bearing body was located was filled with a wonderful fragrance that remained in it for a long time. So it is good to cleave to God [Ps. 72, 28 ]! Let what was spoken by the prophet be fulfilled, or: let the Scripture be fulfilled... Why are these expressions often used in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels? In order to see that Jesus Christ is truly the Divine Person, the Son of God Himself, that His incarnation is the work of God, predestined from eternity, that He is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. These expressions are also used for the purpose of tangibly assuring all well-intentioned and right-thinking people that in the same way all other prophecies of the Old or New Testament about Christ that have not yet been fulfilled will certainly be fulfilled to the last iota, namely: prophecies about the conversion of pagans and Jews to Christ, about the circumstances of the last time, about the second coming of the Son of God to earth, about the resurrection of the dead, about future Judgment, future bliss and future torment. Just as all the prophecies concerning His first coming were fulfilled, so all the prophecies concerning His second coming will be fulfilled, because the Executor is one and the same, the Existing One Himself, for Whom everything is as one present. We leave our debtors (their debts) [Matt. 6, 12]. Because the debts of our neighbors are nothing other than delusion, lies, dreams in their relations towards us? So, if they are aware of their delusions, mistakes, the falsity of their relationship to us, or even if they are not aware of it, then we will forgive them their debts against us out of compassion, out of pity for their delusion, dreaminess, we will impute them to nothing, just as they really are nothing. But if they remain in a lie, in a dream, then they themselves are to blame and will perish if they do not convert, because they did not accept the love of the truth for their salvation [2 Thess. 2, 10]. I would be everything to everyone, and I would save everyone [Russian: I became everything to everyone, in order to save at least some] [1 Cor. 9, 22]. The priest must adapt to the diverse characters of people, patiently enduring their weaknesses, passions, bad habits, obstinacy, ardor, etc., so that he can save everyone. Therefore, what is primarily required of a priest is meekness and humility, kindness, long-suffering, mercy and compassion. Our old, proud man does not tolerate obstacles to his thoughts, desires, words and deeds, and when he encounters them from people or from circumstances, things, place, time, he becomes impatient, ready to crush and destroy everything that stands in his way to his goal. Such is the pride and malice of the old man! What can serve as a cure for this disease of pride, anger, impatience? – You must humble yourself in the depths of your heart before God and people, recognize your weakness, your insignificance, powerlessness, and decide to calmly endure all kinds of obstacles from people, circumstances, things, time and place, if there is no need and opportunity to overcome these obstacles; we must decide to be ready to be crushed physically and spiritually, so that our old man—soul and body—will receive due punishment in this life for his countless sins. We must decide to be ready to endure all kinds of mental and physical bitterness. We sing at the prayer service to the Most Holy Theotokos: Look with mercy, O All-Sung Mother of God, upon my fierce body of bitterness, and heal the illness of my soul. This embitterment of the body and illness of the soul is allowed to us by God as retribution for the sins, passions and all the evils of our old man. My brother came to me, and a fiery hellish anger sank into my soul: it became cramped, cramped. The enemy, you see, immediately struck the strings of pride, covetousness, greed and stinginess and whispered: look, a brother has come to you, who often comes to you for free to drink and eat. He is despicable, he is impudent - hate him. But in my distress I remembered the words of Scripture and said them in my heart: we are one body of many [1 Cor. 10, 17], and this spiritual, sincere wisdom immediately drove out anger from the heart along with their inseparable companions - fire and tightness, and it became so peaceful and light, easy on the soul. Glory to spiritual wisdom! According to the apostle, it is life and peace! Dishonor, destruction to carnal wisdom! According to the apostle and from experience, it is death for the soul! 128 And this is in every man. Glory to Thee, Lord, for Thou hast told me the ways of life. Direct my steps according to Thy word [Ps. 118, 133]. Oh, always feed your hungry brother with pleasure, even if he comes to you every day due to his insolvency or other valid circumstances. Again brother Konstantin showed his conscientiousness today. But I thought about him differently. I sinned. A priest often has to confess his faith outside the church before people of all nations, religions, classes, ranks, and morals. How should you confess? – Through carrying the Holy Gifts, the Holy Cross, and holy icons into homes. Here he is the confessor of the Lord Jesus Christ, the life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, the confessor of His redemptive merits for us, the confessor of the dogma of the veneration of saints, especially the Most Pure Mother of God, and the dogma of the veneration of holy icons. May your heart be firm in holy reverence for the borne Holy Gifts, for the Venerable Cross and the holy icons, and may you not be ashamed of the shrines of faith before any human faces, but graciously embrace them in your heart with faith and love and firmly believe that with the procession of the Holy Gifts, the Venerable Cross and holy icons, the air and the earth along which they are carried are sanctified. Do not allow the devil to touch your heart and enter into it by irritation with the faces asking you to make a procession of the cross with images into their home, do not despise their pious desire, from the simplicity of faith of what is happening, on the contrary, learn from them the simplicity, zeal and fervor of faith. Especially do not allow yourself to become blind and evil irritability and blasphemy against the most holy icons, firmly believing that the icons are, as it were, the most holy, for example, the icon of the Mother of God as if the Most Pure Mother of God, and placing your special happiness in accompanying them to the place of zealous and pious Christians and back. So, do not be ashamed to confess the crucified Lord for us in the life-giving Mysteries and in His Cross; equally, do not be ashamed to confess the holy saints of God in their honest icons and, as if they themselves, honor their images. Pay attention: do not love your wife more than the Lord. For example, if you are fasting for the Lord’s sake, do not decide to eat a modest meal because of your wife’s kind request; or, if you decide not to have dinner in the evening or not to drink tea, do not sit down at the table and do not change your pious intention. Blaspheme God and die [Job. 2, 9]. Job was forced by his wife to blaspheme the Lord in physical illness and spiritual sorrow; This is an image of the fact that the devil always forces us to blaspheme the Lord and His Most Pure Mother in bodily illness and in mental sorrow. Say some blasphemy against the Lord and His Mother - and die. Hey, it happens. Know and be strong. Be patient and pray. Know that without God’s permission you cannot endure even a moment of suffering. Mental and physical suffering is the will of God. Pray: My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me: not as I will, but as You [Matt. 26, 39]. Remember also that bodily and spiritual suffering is sent for the benefit of the soul. The guarantee of this is the simplicity, goodness and wisdom of God and the state of soul that follows illness or sorrow. He who suffers in the flesh ceases to sin [1 Pet. 4, 1]. Don’t be cowardly and don’t indulge in impatient moans and cries. The devil kindles blasphemy against the holy thing in the heart, especially before and on holidays: on the feasts of the Mother of God - against the Most Holy Virgin, on the feasts of saints - against them. The hellish dog barks out of spite when we praise the Mother of Light and the children of God - the saints. Temptations are allowed by God to test our faith, hope and love for the Lord, to ignite, strengthen or cleanse them. Therefore, fight courageously, knowing that temptations are sent according to your strength, and not against your strength, and that God looks at your struggle and is preparing crowns for you if you endure temptation courageously. Look at food like the ground you walk on. Just as you don’t worry about what you should walk on, so you shouldn’t worry about what to drink and eat. Food is the same dust. In church or in the company of people, we mostly appear with bright faces, encouraged, having recovered from our spiritual weaknesses and passions. And what do we experience in our souls at home, in the silence or anxiety of home life, how we are weak in ourselves, in our homes, when prying eyes are not directed at us, and in front of our family we do not find the need to hide our weaknesses, when often only God and the celestials look at us, whom we, however, very often do not remember? Only the Knower of the Heart and the Seer of all secrets knows what abyss of infirmities often suppresses our soul. How we are forced to shed many tears from the deep feeling of our imminent destruction, our greatest poverty and wretchedness, and the internal temptations of the enemy! God alone knows how accommodating we are to any sin, but especially to laziness, to despondency, murmuring and blasphemy, to stinginess, malice and envy, to pride and pompousness, to rudeness and cruelty, to satiety and drunkenness and carnality in all forms. In church or in society we appear already pre-prepared, having recovered from sinful relaxation at home. But in reality we must behave at home, as in church or in society, because our God is with us and in us. Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? [ 1 Cor. 3, 16]. Miriam kept all these words which she put in her heart [Lk. 2, 19]. Why do you call Me: Lord, Lord, and do not do the things that I say, says the Lord [Lk. 6, 46]. But the Lady was the first to keep the words of the Lord, laying them down in Her heart. If you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments, says the Lord to one lawyer [Matt. 19, 17]. The Most Holy Virgin Mary, as can be seen from the words of the evangelist shown above, had an always wonderful mood of spirit to keep all the verbs, all the commandments of God, placing them in Her heart. If you love Me, keep My commandments, the Lord said to His disciples [Jn. 14, 15]. The Divine Mary was the first to keep these commandments. And could the deepest, purest humility be guided in anything by its own, and not by the Divine will? Truly not. Composing in Your hearts. Oh, a wonderful custom - to compose the words of God in the depths of the heart! Oh, wonderful, priceless treasury - the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary! What spiritual treasures of saints, collected with intelligence and good will, was not She filled with! But do we, brethren, keep all the words of God, laying them down in our hearts? It’s easy to say: keep all the words of God; but it is not easy for us, many sinners, proud, who willingly do the will of our flesh and our thoughts, to fulfill the words of God. And who among us can boast that he keeps all the verbs, all the commandments of God, laying them down in his heart? There is hardly one such person among us, and in all likelihood there won’t be. And can we, without great faith in the Lord, without firm hope in Him and the most zealous love for Him, keep the words of God, putting them in our hearts, when our hearts are devoted not to the Lord, but to the world, to the many different worldly concerns and the vanity of the world, when there is no place in our hearts for the words of God. ABOUT! How unclean and many sinners we are, unworthy and insignificant before the Lady Theotokos, Whose whole heart was given to the Lord without reserve, Who loved Him as Son and God with all my soul, all my heart, all my strength and all my thoughts. Therefore, in retribution of such faith and love, the Trinitarian God forever sanctified and adorned and glorified Her, becoming Her fullness, one spirit with Her, as She surrendered herself completely to Him. Thus, we do not try to keep God’s commandments by laying them down in our hearts. We do not lay down the commandments of God in our hearts in order to act according to them rightly, like David: I have hidden Your words in my heart, lest I sin against You, said the holy prophet and king David [Ps. 118, 11]. And where should he be? What should you do when you don’t read the Gospels, when many of you don’t know the commandments at all? Also: do we observe all the verbs of the Lord’s Prayer and other prayers, trying to compose them in our hearts, and not throw them into the air, as usually happens, and not make empty flowers out of them through our negligence and inattention? Your faith and fidelity to the Lord, His Most Pure Mother and the Holy Church are often tempted by the devil, who rushes to your heart with a river of blasphemous and nasty thoughts. Be strong and take courage: this is a time of confession and martyrdom for you. From the fruit you will know the devil. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? [Matt. 7, 16]. So, by the blasphemy of everything holy, by the confusion of the heart, [...], the crampedness and confinement of your whole being, you will recognize the devil nesting in your heart, this father of lies. When blasphemous and nasty thoughts attack the soul, we learn how firm, pure and reasonable our faith is. Oh! Sometimes it is like a reed shaken by the wind, even for me, a sinner. If God’s grace had not supported me, I would have fallen into demonic darkness. Love the communication of love with good and well-intentioned people, so that you will be rewarded with the community of Angels and holy people in the next century. If we pray sincerely, with all zeal, bringing every word to our hearts, then we notice that the Lord fulfills every word of our prayers, giving us all the requests for salvation. And if it is insincere, without sympathy, then it deprives us of many spiritual and even material benefits. With the measure you use, He says, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. In your hands, so to speak, all the blessings of the Lord are in your hands, and through fervent prayer you can receive everything. If the Lord, through our prayer, provides His spiritual and material blessings in this temporary life, then, without a doubt, He will also provide future blessings if we diligently desire, ask and seek them. We ask for them in all our prayers. So what? And we will receive them through the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son [1 Cor. 1, 9]. 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 (do you hear!) receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened [Matt. 7, 7 – 8]. And then there is even more encouragement and consolation for those who pray for anything. 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 (if you are, you, being evil), being evil, know how to give good gifts to children, how much more will your Father in heaven (is it not incomparably more?) give good things to those who ask Him [Matt. 7, 9–11]. So what? Ask with great faith and with a fervent desire to receive what you pray for. Let the words of prayer be for you the makings of the benefits that they signify. Just as it is easy for you to think and talk about these blessings, so it is easy for the Lord to bestow them. So, be simple-hearted in prayer, when you ask, think that you are already receiving what you asked for, and it will be done for you. This is what the Lord Himself says [Mk. 11, 24; 1John 5, 15]. Do you not know, writes the apostle to the Corinthians, that your bodies are members of Christ? [ 1 Cor. 6, 15]. Stingy! You who spare money, food, clothing, housing for the poor, for whom do you spare these ashes? – For Christ Himself, your Creator, Life-Giver and Savior. Stingy! Unhospitable to guests because of your addiction to perishable food and drink, to whom are you unwelcoming, for whom do you spare your food and drink? – For members of Christ. ABOUT! What a joy it is to nourish the members of Christ! What happiness it is to treat the members of Christ with respect and cordiality, as with Christ Himself, for Christ is one and the same in everyone and wholly in everyone. You are Christ’s, the Apostle Paul also writes [1 Cor. 3, 23]. Or do you not know...that Jesus Christ is in you? [ 2 Cor. 13, 5]. ABOUT! How precious is the feeling of love! More valuable than any property I have. If I give away all I have... but do not have love, I am nothing [1 Cor. 13, 3]. For the sake of a small waste of your property, for the sake of your brother's destruction of food and drink, which were given for this purpose, you often turn away from your brother and harbor hatred towards him. Oh! How mistaken you are! All your possessions, no matter how huge, are nothing compared to love. To acquire love, do not spare anything: neither gold, nor silver, nor food and drink, nor clothing, nor housing, nor yourself: all the insults inflicted on you by your neighbors, impute them for nothing and forgive them with joy, in order to love them; Forgive all his mistakes in order to love, remembering that you too have mistakes. Do you have this spiritual wealth called love in your heart? Acquire it if you don’t have it: it is in your power, in your good will. Spare nothing to acquire it: no money, no food, no drink, no clothing, no abilities, no jealousy. ABOUT! I see another wealth in your heart - the wealth of pride, love of money, love of food, love of books, love of peace, love of fame. Woe to you! You will perish if you do not correct yourself! Take note of the assistant postmaster's story about his predecessor Vlasov. Copy from me. Truly, Master, I am the first of sinners and the last person in the world. Most educated people keep a keen eye on the political events of the world, but they won’t even look into their inner world - it’s none of their business. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? or what ransom will a man give for his soul? [Matt. 16, 26]. When you pray for something, ask, thank, glorify the Creator with words of petition, thanksgiving and glorification, then believe that in the very words of the petition you already have the benefits you asked for, you receive them from God; that words of thanksgiving, spoken from the heart, constitute a pleasant aroma to the Lord, as well as words of praise, for words correspond to real things. Just as in the name or names of the Lord God Himself is one and the same Lord, so in the words meaning known objects, there are either the makings of these objects, or the objects themselves, if they are spiritual. When asking for any blessings, believe in their speedy acceptance, for the Lord, who exists and is above every creature, is everything to everyone, the giver of every good, whether material or spiritual. He who did not spare His Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also freely give us all things with Him? [Rom. 8, 32]. We must be one heart and one soul. The experience of life convinces us of this unity. I use the works of my spiritual fathers and brothers as if they were my own. When speaking, for example, of someone else’s sermon, I am one heart, one soul with the writer, and many think that this is my sermon. Such unity! Such communication! If I use the spiritual works of others as if they were my own, is it great if others use my material goods as well? Isn't this a natural thing? If I daily use the priceless mercy of the Lord - the gift of life (although I am unworthy to live), forgiveness of sins, enlightenment of the mind, strengthening of the heart, health of the body, air, light, warmth, water, earth - then isn’t it great, isn’t it natural for my brother to mutually benefit from me, although they belong to me, but from God? We, who are many, are one body [1 Cor. 10, 17]. The more the soul and body endure the fire and oppression caused by the devil, the more chaste both soul and body will be, the more humble and meek the soul will be, the weaker the passions of the flesh will be. Experience. Thus says the Lord God of Israel: The jar of flour will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, until the day when the Lord gives rain on the land... The jar of flour will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, according to the word of the Lord, which He spoke through Elijah [1 Kings. 17, 14, 16]. When you break bread for guests, or brothers, or the poor, or servants, break it generously and distribute it with a good and generous heart, as for yourself (love your neighbor as yourself [Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31]), trusting in the Lord that your bread will not become scarce and your oil (or, today, tea-sugar) will not will diminish. For the same Lord is with us even now, who was with Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. The Master himself says: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. the Kingdom of God and His righteousness - that is, peace and mutual love, long-suffering, merciful, not envying, not being conceited, not being proud, not being outrageous, not seeking one's own, not being irritated, not thinking evil, not rejoicing in unrighteousness, but rejoicing in the truth, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, never falling away from love [1 Cor. 13:4–8], - and all this will be added to you, that is, bread, and drink, and money. Remember also how the Lord broke five small barley loaves for five thousand people, although, in our opinion, they were not enough for twenty people exhausted by prolonged hunger. Believe and hope that the Heavenly Father cares for us and the message we demand before our petition. There is nothing more foolish than to rely on soulless dust, called bread, and not on the all-good, all-knowing, all-wise and all-powerful Lord, who feeds our body with this dust. What, the Lord does not provide for us? What, either does not see us, does not care about meeting our needs? And yet we are so blind that we trust in this dust, and not in the Lord, the Nourisher of every creature, and are ready to exchange our brother’s soul for this dust. Members of the highest family are the pillars of the Russian kingdom. The kingdom is great, and God has set many pillars. This is the highest goodness when, in extreme need, a request is submitted quickly, generously and completely or beyond our aspirations. Such is the goodness of the Lord, such is the goodness of the Lady. She gives us blessings in our dire need quickly, generously, beyond expectation. God! Grant me the privilege to renounce all my possessions, with which the devil is so powerfully fighting against me. The carnal man trusts in money, in food, drink, clothing, in property, in books, but the spiritual man places his trust in the one God, he hopes for everything from Him, and his hope will not put him to shame: God adds life to his heart, he is well with his God; he despises the sweets of brashen and is ready not to eat or drink for fourty days. My review is about food and drink. There is only one harm to the soul from food and drink when we take it not simple, but refined and, moreover, often. The body is not so much nourished as it is relaxed. For a person who is pursuing spiritual life, one must eat food very rarely and very moderately, no more than twice a day - at lunch and dinner or at evening tea. (True.) If he takes food and drink three or four times, albeit in moderation, then he will not escape the passions and wiles of the evil one: he will torment his soul and body, just as kites or crows tormented the man who covered his body with meat and went out into the open sky 129. Just as flies flock to honey and sugar and suck it, so demons flock to the soul of that person who loves to drink and eat pleasantly and a lot. There are people who speak with ridicule of people who are occasionally subject to fits of anger; they talk about convulsions on their face or about the expression of anger on the face itself, about the color or pallor appearing on their face under certain circumstances, and so on. But I feel sorry for such people (both of them), slaves of demonic cunning and their passions, and I am ready to quickly pray for them as weak, for both those who are angry are weak, and those who condemn too: both of them sin [by enmity]. I confess that the waters of anger often reach my soul [Ps. 68, 2], impatience and irritability, and I am ready for no reason to be angry in my heart with my brother, even sometimes with a baby, or because of some stupid reason. Who are you, my brother, who judges another man's slave? [Rom. 14, 4]. Aren't you the son of Adam and Eve? Hasn't the damage affected your being? Are you not corrupted by all sorts of passions? Don’t you see a bitch in your brother’s eye, but in your spiritual eye you don’t see the whole log that has piled up and darkened your soul? So, friend, first remove the log [Russian: log] from your toe, and then see clearly to take away the knot from your brother’s toe [Lk. 6, 42]. Remember what the Lord said about all people: you have evild beings [Matt. 12, 34; OK. 11, 13], or that no one is good except God alone [Matt. 19, 17; Mk. 10, 18; OK. 18, 19]. Listen also to what the Lord said: the rain came down, and the rivers came, and the winds blew, and they asked [Russian: they lay down] in that church [Matt. 7, 27]. Do you know what this means? But here’s what: rain and rivers are the many forms of the devil’s malice, constantly rushing towards our hearts due to our inattention and oversight; it is called rain because of its frequency and insight into our soul, and a river because of the great washing away power with which the devil’s malice rushes to our hearts. Winds are the name given to the heavenly spirits of evil, which, like stormy and crushing winds, howl and roar in our soul in the actions of various passions. Questioning that church: these rain, rivers and demonic winds unanimously rest on our soul, which is likewise called the church. So you see, friend, what happens to a poor person: how can he firmly resist such strong temptations if he does not have firm faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and has not learned to overcome demonic temptations through sincere prayer? Shouldn't we feel sorry for him, shouldn't we pray like brothers? Isn’t this what the Lord points to when he says: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who abuse you [Matt. 5, 44]. How much gloating about human sins is there in people’s speeches, how much humiliation of others, self-justification, self-joy (joy about one’s imaginary perfections), Pharisee self-exaltation! ABOUT! How seduced people are in their everyday life! ABOUT! What a chilling lack of love for one’s neighbor is visible in human life! So much self-love and pride! Some people, as if pious, often put candles in front of images or make silver vestments on icons, pray fervently, and it cannot be said that it is always hypocritical, but often from the true heart, sometimes with ardor! But what do we see in this man at home, among his family? My God! What contradictions a person can fall into! So a relative or acquaintance comes to this man, who often visits him and seeks his meal, or the beggars, who often stretch out their hands to him, and our pious man, putting candles in front of the icons, allows the unclean hellish fire of stinginess, ill-will and indignation towards his brother to kindle in his heart; he who dresses icons in silver robes regrets giving the poor man unnecessary rags or giving him decent alms, or indignantly sends him away from himself. What does this pious man do in this case? - A Pharisee and a hypocrite, having only an image of godliness, but having rejected its power [2 Tim. 3, 5]. He makes rich sacrifices to hand-made images, but to unmade, living, priceless images of God he spares an insignificant sacrifice, he spares food, drink, clothing and money; he himself seeks spiritual, priceless pleasure with Divine love, but he would not want to please his brother with material, low-value food; He himself wants God to be generous to him in gifts of grace: in the forgiveness of sins, in peace and joy and material ones, while he himself is unusually stingy towards his neighbor. O Christ God! You Yourself come to us in the person of your brother, worthy of us, unworthy, with Your favor, You Yourself partake of our meal: or do you not know... that Jesus Christ is in you? [ 2 Cor. 13:5] - and we, through blindness of mind and heart, do not see You through faith in our brother and insult You with stinginess and hatred! What kind of piety is this? Doesn't it cast a shadow of suspicion over all our other good deeds? Are not all our good deeds hypocritical, selfish? Is it not because of our own benefits - spiritual or material, temporary or eternal - that we do them, and not out of respect for You, our Creator and Lawgiver? Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith [2 Cor. 13, 5]. We must firmly remember the words of Christ’s Apostle Paul about love: if I give away all my possessions... but do not have love, it will do me no good... [1 Cor. 13, 3]. And again: I count all the rubbish of being, so that I may gain Christ [Phil. 3, 8]. Judas, under the pretext of giving alms to the poor, out of love of money and stinginess, spared the precious world for the Lord; and we often act no better than Judas, when, under the pretext of giving to the poor, we spare sweet food and sweet drink for our closest relatives and benefactors, who have more rights than the poor to our precious myrrh, to our sweet food and drink. If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those at home, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel [1 Tim. 5, 8]. Out of habit, due to baseness, inconstancy and changeability of character, we should not become conceited with the brothers who often come to us and our neighbors in general and put them on the same level as food, drink and money. This is blasphemy, for a brother is the image of God, and blasphemy, for the person of a neighbor is always sacred, as the spiritual church of God. We must always have the same respect for him, for he is always the image of God, a child of God, redeemed by the precious blood of the Son of God. You were bought with a price [1 Cor. 6, 20]. ABOUT! How little is needed to satisfy a brother, to offer him a sacrifice of love! What an infinitely small, insignificant material gift can one acquire the affection and love of such an infinitely high being as man! And we, stingy with love and affection for our brother, are stingy with material gifts to him! For material gifts serve as an expression of spiritual disposition, spiritual generosity or stinginess. Oh, damnation! Oh, poverty! Oh, the poverty and blindness of our pitiful, sinful being! ABOUT! Truly, Holy Master, we are an abyss of evil. So, lying in the abyss of sin, we call upon the unsearchable abyss of Thy mercy: from aphids, O God, lift us up! 130 Let all the delights of food, drink, clothing, housing, money and everything worldly become disgusting in our eyes; May the Lord alone be precious to me, and then my neighbor, my brother, my friend. We are often not at all what we seem to ourselves and what others think of us. We are often proud when we think we are humble; stingy then, as we and others think of us, that we are generous; angry when others think we are good; inactive and lazy, while others think we are hardworking; It is hypocritical when we and others think that we are truly pious. The name imashi (gained glory) as he is alive and dead ecu [Rev. 3.1]. Someone who gives alms to a beggar must say angrily: Why are you selling the soul of a beggar? Why do you value her so little, you cheap hypocrite? For many, when giving alms, swear at the dignity of man, at the immortal image of the Heavenly King, at Christ the Lord Himself. ABOUT! How cheaply, cheaply they sell Him, the Giver of Life! For pennies and pennies! What's in the heart? – Judas’s hypocrisy and kissing. ABOUT! How infinitely guilty and ungrateful we are before You, Holy Father! You want to unite us all in Yourself, and for this you gave Your Only Begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life [Jn. 3:16], but we do not want to unite with each other with the help of Your grace. And what divides us? Transient decay, called money, food and drink, clothing and housing. We don’t want to impute him to nothing, we pull him towards ourselves and feel sorry for our brother, becoming attached to him, and not to our brother and to You, we don’t rely on You. God! We are unpaid debtors to You! Enlighten, enlighten, strengthen us with Your Holy Spirit in Your love! He who loves someone sincerely, ardently, generously gives him all the blessings that he can and that can sweeten his life, and does not spare himself for him; This is how a mother loves her children: she does not spare her health and peace for him, she does not sleep at night, does not spare her breasts, does not shy away from his uncleanliness, endures his restless and restless cry. So the Son of God loves us to an infinite degree, Who gave us life, breath and everything for the renewal of our nature, corrupted by sin, and for our eternal blessing, for communication with Him; He did not spare Himself, but gave Himself up to suffering and death for us, and with mind-boggling generosity He gave Himself to us as food and drink. What kind of people are we, what do we deserve, when, feeding ourselves on the Flesh and Blood of the Son of God, for our brethren we spare not our own flesh and blood, but food and drink, money, clothing, housing? What are we worthy of when we not only do not suffer or die for our brethren, but do not want to suffer from them a minor insult, a sly glance, an ambiguous word or rude treatment? What answer will we give for our stinginess and our impatience, for our irritability? for lack of meekness? Every day we turn to God with countless petitions, in which we ask for countless benefits, and we wish that God would give us everything we ask, so that He would be generous to us in giving spiritual and material gifts. What is your attitude towards the brethren? Stingy, calculating, alien to trust in God and love for one's neighbor. We forget at every step the commandment: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. If a brother wants to be generous at our expense, then we either stop him, or cowardly compete with him, so that we don’t fall behind him, and thus we reveal our greed, carnality, and self-love in general. Look with the eyes of your heart at the apostles, saints, martyrs, saints, unmercenaries, who despised the red and sweet world and are now eternally rejoicing in eternal abodes and helping us fight the delights of the world. With the fire of the Lord's love, we despised the fire, and like the Divine coal, we kindled the honor of the martyr in Christ, burning the boastful flattery of the vacillation: but we blocked the mouths of the beasts with an honest invocation, and cut off the heads of the enemy, cutting off all the enemy's militia and shedding streams of blood patiently, the Church was filled with the faith of the enlightened 131 What are we like? For the sake of the love of the Lord, we do not want to despise the dreamy fire of passions, not only the material fire. We are not set on fire like coals, but we ourselves voluntarily ignite ourselves with insane passions into death; The martyrs stopped the mouths of beasts with prayer, but we do not want to stop the mouths of passions, these fierce carnal beasts, with prayer; They don’t cut off our heads, but we don’t want to cut off our carnal wisdom, our pride and arrogance, our malice and stinginess! the martyrs patiently shed streams of blood - we do not want to patiently shed streams of our generosity on our brethren. Fast, oily and meaty food, especially with wine, devastates the soul and makes it like a reed shaken by the wind. Evil spirits conveniently take possession of her. He who thinks himself to be something when he is nothing (everyone) deceives himself [Gal. 6, 3]. To spare something eaten for your neighbors means to wound, to slowly cut your insides with a dagger, or to burn them with slow fire. Experience. We must give up our entire estate. You have to say to yourself: you are not there for me and I am not there for you. If a brother deliberately steals your property and even laughs at your embarrassment and pity, then he does this at the suggestion of the devil, and not on his own, and in any case does you good, because your property is harmful to you, since you become attached to it in your heart and worry about it. Well, do you feel sorry for the sugar? Isn't it the least useful for our body and the most harmful for the soul? Our life does not depend at all on it, for man lives on bread, not on sugar. Too irritable consumption of sugar means that it is the life of our carnal, old, passionate man, that it feeds his passions. Let us not skimp on sugar, but let us remember the words of the Savior: give us this day our daily bread [Matt. 6, 11]. Giving to those who cannot return to you, or feeding those who will not repay you in kind, believe without a doubt that you are giving your property only in interest to the Master, who will repay a hundredfold in the next century, and often here. Blessed will you be that they cannot repay you, for you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the righteous [Lk. 14, 14]. You have made it for me... to inherit the kingdom [Matt. 25, 40, 34]. While standing in prayer, remember that the Heavenly King, the Mother of God, the Heavenly Powers and all the saints are looking at you. How you should stand! What a soul you must have! What sobriety! What humility! God is not a man, that He should lie, and not a son of man (man), that He should change. Will he say it and not do it? will he speak and not fulfill it? [Num. 23, 19]. Remember these words when performing all the Sacraments. Consider love as truth, enmity as a dream. Generosity is kind; stinginess is stupidity. For a carnivorous person, it is not the Lord, not His endless perfections, not the Mother of God, not Her wonderful life, not Her indescribable benefits to the Christian race, not the Angels, not their orderly ranks and standing before the Creator, not the beauties of the visible world that constitute his delight, but his delight, like that of an animal, is food and drink, clothing, an earthly dwelling, tastefully decorated, all earthly things. things and nothing heavenly. He who trampled the womb trampled the old man with his passions and carnal lusts, he destroyed the mediastinum of enmity between himself and his brother. The Lord often sends my brother to me to eat bread and salt and drink tea and sugar so that he can crucify my pride, my stinginess. He is my benefactor; Only my carnal, sinful man can be embittered at him, but the new one, Christ’s, should rejoice as an opportunity for a saving struggle and an effort to overcome carnal passions. In fact, he strikes my heart like a flint with his willful use of the goods that belong to me and knocks out the fire of passions hidden in my heart. They are detected and come to the surface - cut them off. So, consider those who take yours without permission as benefactors, and not as enemies, although they may do it cunningly and with evil intentions. Tolerate them generously, warm their hearts with cordiality and love, and do not prevent them from taking what is yours. Yes, and uproot from [your] heart this word “mine” - this root of self-love; let the word “God’s” and “common” always take its place, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. When your brother comes to you for the hundredth and thousandth time to borrow bread-salt, tea-sugar, that is, to eat and drink, and it will be unpleasant for you, then remember the countless number of your debts to the Lord, remember that you use life for free every moment, breathe air for free every moment, are illuminated by light, walk on the ground, eat and drink for free, dress for free, have a friend of life for free - wife, this priceless treasure given to us by God, you freely approach the terrible and all-saving table of the Lord and sup with the Lord for the remission of sins and sanctification, freely you have countless blessings... Remember your morning and evening prayers, canons and akathists, the canon and prayers for communion, the sequence of vespers and matins, the liturgy, the sequence of the Sacraments and various prayers - which you ask the Lord for countless blessings, what countless blessings you are worthy of, what countless benefits you owe to the Lord - and stop considering your neighbor a debtor for anything, leave him, according to the word of the Lord, his debts up to seventy times seven, that is, without number [Matt. 18, 22]. Finally, learn this Christian wisdom, leading to an inheritance of eternal blessings, for the merciful, it is said, will receive mercy [Matt. 5, 7]. If you forgive a person their sins, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you [Matt. 6, 14]. And if he lets you go, then he will have mercy, and if he has mercy, then he will save you. Are you not a constant debtor to the holy men of God, with whose prayers you daily appease the Master, who is irritated by your sins? Tell me, how would you, perplexed by any answer, begin to beg the Lord about your immeasurable sins into which you fall every day, hour, minute? In addition, with their own words you thank the Lord for the countless benefits He has shown and not shown to you, and with their words you glorify the Lord of glory. Tell me, how would you, dumb due to the multitude of your sins, begin with your unclean lips, from your vile heart, to thank and glorify your Creator, Whom, due to His heritage, the pure Heavenly Powers cannot thank and glorify? And after this, will you not leave debts to your debtors - small, insignificant in comparison with your debts to God and His saints? Tell me again: aren’t you in debt to the apostles and prophets, whose writings you read for sweetness, who enlighten, enliven and strengthen you on the path of this dark, multi-passionate life? Christ's servant! Rejoice that this saying of our Lord Jesus Christ is over you: And a man’s enemies are those of his own household [Matt. 10, 36]. Do not be cowardly and do not indulge in impatience, anger and irritability. Any pity on something material for a brother, for example, food, sweet drink, money, clothes, books, paper, is from the devil: he forces him to do what the consequences show in the soul of the pityer, namely: fire, cramped conditions, confusion. That is why the Lord says: from the one who took what you have, do not demand it back [Lk. 6, 30] - do not get involved, that is, with the devil, but renounce what he uses to fight against you. And in fact, is material possession really your life? Look: fires sometimes destroy all of people’s property, and yet they live, and they often live internally better than before. Truly the Lord said: a person’s life does not depend on the abundance [glory: from the excess] of his possessions [Lk. 12, 15], that is, it is precisely then that a person does not live a true life when he is in excess, and when he suffers deprivation in food, in clothing, in money - then he truly lives. For then the soul conveniently enters its true element, when the material element becomes impoverished. Addiction to food, drink, and money distances one from love for one’s neighbor and drives Divine love out of the heart. Experience. Therefore, one must certainly hate every addiction to money, food and drink. God! Help! See every brother as a member of Christ and spare nothing for him. Do not heat your insides with wine or tea and consume enough food, lest you help Satan himself kindle a murderous, hellish fire in your insides. Experience. The Heavenly Father, as I have noticed many times, will always give relief when there is temptation (and temptation is necessary), so that we can endure it [1 Cor. 10, 13], and does not allow himself to be tempted beyond his strength. Only we must stand cheerfully, only we must endure long and not think evil, not repay evil for evil or curse for curse; on the contrary, to bless, knowing that we are called to this, that we may inherit the blessing [1 Pet. 3, 9]. Before a temptation begins, do not consult with your own flesh and blood on what to do, but immediately turn your thought to the Gospel and look there for guidance on how to act in temptation; and in general, for all your spiritual dispositions, desires, feelings, for all words and deeds, seek guidance and foundation in the Holy Scriptures or in the secret places of your conscience, and whatever the word of God or conscience does not approve of, do not have or do. The Word of God is the light of our spiritual paths [Ps. 118, 105]. Strengthen your strength to fulfill not your own will, but God’s. Others become irritated because something is not kept clean, or because something is broken, or because something is spilled, or because something is not sewn together. But what is more expensive? Isn’t it more valuable to maintain the purity of your soul, to preserve the integrity of your soul and spiritual peace? Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and the platter, while inside they are full of robbery and unrighteousness. Blind Pharisee! Cleanse first the inside of the cup and the dish, so that the outside of them may also be clean [Matt. 23, 25–26]. When we are tempted, the devil seeks his fruit in us, and God seeks His. The devil writes our internal dispositions in his book, and the Angel – in his. But, alas! the devil always finds more of his fruit in us than the Lord; the devil inscribes more dispositions, thoughts, words and deeds corresponding to himself than the Angel of God - corresponding to God. Alas for us! Alas for us, brothers! The devil is cunning and strong: he will come by surprise, put a burning brand in the heart - ashes for himself, ashes his soul, and he will run away on his own. That’s why it is said: Be sober and watchful, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour [1 Pet. 5, 8]. Why did all the ascetics fast so much? In order to more easily fight the devil, who conveniently defeats those who eat and drink through the flesh’s addiction to food and drink. The saints, since they are one spirit with the Lord, like the Holy Spirit, are omnipresent; therefore, those called with living faith in the Holy Spirit who exists everywhere and fills everything and with the confidence that they are in Him and He in them, as one Spirit, appear with the speed of lightning to help, especially the Most Holy, Most Wonderful Lady of us all, the Lady Theotokos. If they are as simple and omnipresent in God as God is simple and omnipresent, then they are holy, just as the Spirit of God who sanctifies and contains them in holiness is holy. So, O Lady, You are holy, just as God the Father, who sanctified You by His Spirit through His Son, is holy. Holy men of God! You are all holy, as holy is the Spirit of God, as much as your souls could contain the immeasurable holiness of the Spirit. You are omnipresent in the Holy Spirit and, called with faith and love, like God in the Trinity, you quickly come to our aid. Speak to the thought of stinginess when frequent guests eat from your table: this is not mine, it is God’s: naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I will return [Job. 1, 21]. The earth is the Lord's and what fills it [Ps. 23, 1]. Others labored, and you entered into their labor [Jn. 4, 38]. We are reluctant to allow others to lend us, say, money, bread and salt, tea and sugar, especially if they often come to us for a favor, while we ourselves are very often lent by others in many cases of life and enjoy the gift of many pleasures prepared for us by others. For example, I am walking in a beautiful garden with many trees, adorned with many flowers and interspersed with wide, clean, dry paths. I get great benefits for the body and great aesthetic pleasure in this garden. Have I not done this first of all to my Lord, Who grew this garden, and then to the good, hardworking people who took the trouble to plant this garden, sparing no expense or labor for the benefit and pleasure of society, and especially to these people in the low birth, who, like bees, work not for themselves, but for the benefit and pleasure of others? So, I feel very much indebted to them and am ready to pour out my feelings of gratitude to kind people. But this is not enough to plant a beautiful garden: large expenses were required for the purchase of trees and work in the garden. I must give thanks, fairly and materially. But they don’t demand or accept material gratitude from me. So what? Is it really possible to remain completely ungrateful? No, don’t stay, but generously endure the debts of your debtors, who as guests, or as relatives, or as the poor come to you to borrow your bread - salt, your tea and sugar, and not only be patient - completely forgive them their debts, do not consider them owed to you, consider their visit, their eating and drinking from you as an ordinary everyday matter, as you You consider it an ordinary thing that does not require remuneration to visit other people’s or public gardens, or to breathe the air, to use the light, for everything is God’s, not ours. But the favor mentioned is an insignificant favor in comparison with that which we serve the Lord in His Church, in His holy word, in the Sacraments, in worship, in the works of the holy fathers. The Church is the Garden of Eden, it is an earthly paradise; and in this paradise we are allowed to walk several times daily, inhale its spiritual fragrance and pick its fruits: forgiveness of sins, sanctification, strengthening, spiritual food and drink, healing of ailments of soul and body. In this paradise we are allowed to pluck and eat even the fruits of the animal tree, that is, the Body and Blood of Christ the Giver of Life. Besides all this, let us also remember our service to the civil society in which we live, as we owe it: to its beneficial laws, institutions, especially educational institutions - and all this is mostly for nothing; and after all this, shouldn’t we willingly lend to everyone who seeks our favor, to the extent of our ability, and for the ordinary course of business, have debts forgiven to our debtors in the force that we ourselves owe a lot freely to private and public institutions and especially to the Lord God in His gracious means of enlightenment, purification, sanctification, consolation, strengthening, healing and salvation. If the devil disturbs and oppresses and burns your heart with blasphemy against the Mother of God and the saints, remember that they are in heaven, where nothing bad or unclean can enter [Rev. 21, 27] and where the devil’s dreamy abomination, for example, his blasphemy, does not extend. For he is not omnipresent, but only the prince of the power of the air, only on this earth and in this age does he act and defile the unwary with his abomination, all kinds of sin, and all those who have reposed holy are completely free from him and are alien to all sin, and can no longer sin [1 John. 3, 9]. Glory to You, Lord, for You have enlightened me, the dark one, and You have delivered me from evil and blasphemous thoughts. I kill my body and make it into slavery, says the apostle [1 Cor. 9:27], and we say by our deeds: I caress my body in every way and make it master over my soul. What are we? - Pagans, not Christians. In order to easily, life-givingly and reverently stand in church, you do not need to stand with an idle mind and heart, but tune your thoughts and heart to at least this prayer: Lord! I live by You, breathe by You, think, feel, believe, hope, love by You. I hear through You, I see through You, I move through You, I am enlightened by You, I am peaceful, I am cheerful through You; rich or I live in contentment, fed and clothed by You. Everything I have is yours. Therefore, I thank You for everything, I glorify You, I magnify You and I pray to You: because of my sins, do not deprive me of Your mercies, but turn me to the path of repentance and grant me to completely please You, my Creator, my Father, my Benefactor. Man will not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God [Matt. 4, 4]. And experience tells us that man will not live on bread alone, for life from bread is a lower, sensual life, of little benefit to the soul, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And how can a person still live from the word of God! Filled with life, so that in the abundance of this life he says: What am I in heaven; and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26]. So, do not worry about what you will eat and drink: for all of these the pagans [Russian: pagans] are looking for [Matt. 6:32], people who do not know God and have no hope. You need life - behold, I am your life. The Supreme Lady of the world - that is, the Supreme Cherubim and Seraphim, for by heaven we mean the Heavenly Powers. The Church, like a body of water, is filled with the Holy Spirit, or like the upper room of Zion, filled with stormy breathing - a symbol of the Holy Spirit - and descending tongues of fire [Acts. 2, 2 – 3]. This also differs from ordinary human dwellings. In the Church, so to speak, you float in the grace of God, you are clothed entirely with the grace of God, you are carried around like a child in [the mother’s] arms, by the grace of God. There is vanity in the world, the fullness of the prince of air power. Therefore, those who say that it makes no difference whether you pray to God at home or in church are unfair. How easy malnutrition is for both soul and body! How little sleep is required! What sobriety of soul! The Holy Scripture speaks only about love for God and neighbor and nowhere does it say that we love money, food, drink, clothing, housing or anything else; on the contrary, love for the blessings of this world: food and drink and others - is directly condemned and given over to fair ridicule. A rich man with his thoughts about enjoying earthly goods and with the words: soul! you have a lot of good things lying around for many years: rest, eat, drink, be merry - condemned and called crazy: crazy! this night your soul will be taken from you; who will get what you have prepared? This is what happens to those who store up treasures for themselves, but do not grow rich in God [Lk. 12, 19–21], that is, he does not grow rich in love for God and neighbor. The Apostle Paul ridicules the addiction to food and drink of people who do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die! [ 1 Cor. 15, 32]. You see: thinking only about food and drink, only eating and drinking is the work of a pagan who does not have the hope of eternal life. Just as Christ is everything to you, so be everything to your neighbors, and especially your own, and spare nothing for them. The one who trusts in God and gives alms left home - but as if he had not left, because he left Christ as the keeper of his home in his place. Such a Guardian, Who is a thousand times better than himself. Unless the Lord guards a city or a house, the watchman watches in vain [Ps. 126, 1]. So, he goes calmly to another city or village and says: I left at home a glorious guardian - the Lord; He manages my house. 1 Cor. 8, 12. By sinning... against your brothers and wounding their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Beware of sinning in any way against your brothers and offending their conscience - you see, you will sin against Christ Himself. Moreover, do not sin against your father and mother. The Lord is good to those who trust in Him, to the soul that seeks Him. It is good for him who patiently waits for salvation from the Lord [Lamentations. 3, 25 – 26]. “Let us, like the heathen, like foreign tribes, serve wood and stone” [Ezek. 20, 32]. We have something similar to what happened to the Jews. And among us Christians serve the tree, only in the form not of idols, but in the form of excellent furniture - mirrors, tables, chairs, cabinets, chests of drawers, pianos. Stone is also used in the form of various statues, precious stones, luxurious stone palaces, and carved marble objects. For everything to which we attach our hearts is our idol. Ezek. 20, 32. When you consider yourself the worst, the most disgusting of all, then you will not be angry with anyone, but you will be glad that they look at you favorably and talk to you. Anger comes from pride and exaltation, from the fact that we see in others light sins, or twigs, that is, small weaknesses, but we do not see the logs in ourselves, that is, many, important and serious sins. ABOUT! Every Christian, try to humble yourself, and through humility you will conveniently avoid all sin and conveniently ascend to the heights of virtue. Look upon the humility of His Servant [Lk. 1, 48]. Consider the prayer of the humble and do not despise their prayers [Ps. 101, 18]. There are strange people who consider it a sacred duty to visit strangers when they are ill, while they do not consider it a duty to visit their own during their illness; they help the poor of strangers and do not help their own; affectionate towards others and cold towards their own. What does it mean? What kind of transformation of the moral order is this? What kind of hypocrisy is this? The Apostle says: If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those at home, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel [1 Tim. 5, 8]. What does this strange behavior mean? The action of hidden malice, perhaps, towards one’s own? Is it a habit to them and, as a result of habit, neglect of them? If there is malice, then we must try to immediately eradicate it from the heart, for malice is a property of the devil and no evil person or man-hater has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God. I tell you: evil! tear out of your heart the malice towards you or yours; you are torn away from them 132 by the devil's malice and the fear of getting close to them heartily, from the soul, with the voice of the heart, to speak to them: do not be afraid, approach them, caress them with at least one word, a look, courtesy of movements, an offer of services - and you will see in reality how good, peaceful, delightful your soul will be from this [mode of action] instead of the previous embarrassment, heaviness, crampedness, discontent myself. This is a clear sign of God’s favor towards you, as well as disfavour. If coldness towards your own people comes from habit and neglect, give up the bad habit, this is the devil’s deception. A Christian man is always the image of God, always a member of Christ, a temple of the Holy Spirit, always a priceless being, worthy of all respect and care. Remember Christ, who said: I was sick, and you visited Me [Matt. 25, 36]. You see, Christ is in every sick person, no matter who he is - one of our own or a stranger. Are you neglecting yours? Sin to you! If you give alms to strangers, how much more to your own, who are from the same womb as your wife? And this is not every day. If anyone, then you and They are one body. We are many in one body [1 Cor. 10, 17]. They can tell you: if others have power over you, don’t we? [ 1 Cor. 9, 12]. Who blasphemes against the Lord and His saints? - Full belly. Who exudes evil and evil thoughts? - Full belly. Who is insensitive to prayer? - Full belly. Are we indignant at those who, in the imminent danger of sinking a ship, come to the rescue - throw away its excess cargo and thereby save it from sinking? These are the ones who take our money and come to us to drink and eat; if we are money-loving and stingy, they are our great benefactors, for they save our soul, which is plunged by love of money, greed and stinginess into the abyss of eternal destruction. Are we indignant at those who, seeing that we are standing over an abyss on a rotten board, show us a strong bridge built over this abyss, along which travelers can safely pass on their way to the mountain dwelling? - No. And these are precisely those who take away our perishable property - our money, food and drink, to which we become attached in this life and on which we rely, like on a rotten board thrown over an abyss. Through pity and tightness of heart due to the loss of our property, they lead us out of the blindness in which we find ourselves, hoping for money, food and drink, and show us a reliable bridge to the eternally blessed, heavenly dwelling - the commandment of the Gospel. Truly, money, food and drink, property are rotten planks lying over the abyss, on which we walk, on which we rely, instead of relying on the only Lord, and which are soon ready to break and cast us into the abyss of hell. Take heed to yourselves, so that your hearts are not weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life [Lk. 21, 34]. Those sown among thorns mean those who hear the word, in whom the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of wealth and other desires, entering into them, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful [Mk. 4, 18–19]. You see what trouble comes from wealth. Cravings for food and drink suppress God's word. Whose? - God, the word of the Eternal Life. Are not money, food and drink the worst enemies if we are partial to them, and all the more dangerous because they are flattering? In the order of Christian life, temptations, trials or tests of our mental state are necessary, and, as it, in the likeness of the things in the house, is covered with a kind of uncleanness, to cleanse it. Just as to test any things, for example, silver, tools are needed, so to sample or test the soul, people are needed (for similar things) who, willingly or unwillingly, intentionally or completely unintentionally, by their actions towards us, would make it clear to us and to others whether we are obedient to God’s commandments announced to us in the Gospel or not, whether we live in the spirit, putting to death the deeds of the flesh, or in the flesh, obeying, like slaves, the will of the flesh and carnal thoughts and passions. Having learned that we do not live according to the will of God, not according to the commandments of our Sweetest Savior, but according to our sinful and blind will, we would soon correct ourselves and hastily and diligently follow the commandments of the Divine Gospel. Deep is the heart of man [Russian: human] more than all [Jer. 17, 9]. At the bottom of this heart lies a lot of different evil, often invisible to the person himself. So, for his own salvation, it is necessary to scoop out this evil, this spiritual uncleanness and dregs, and more often, as often as possible, because the well of the heart soon becomes clogged again. Soon you will learn that there is one. This means: we are all one body in Christ, and therefore we must all be one and in all good things, that we may be one with God, that we may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so that they also may be one in Us [Jn. 17, 21]. Let each one therefore strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace [Eph. 4, 3]. Let us love peace: the Lord has called us to peace [1 Cor. 7, 15]. The source of life for soul and body is the following heartfelt conviction: 1) in relation to God: God is my life and every good thing for me and 2) in relation to our neighbor: we are many, one body [1 Cor. 10, 17]. Embed these words deep in your heart and hold on to them firmly, justifying them in your life by your very deeds, and the Kingdom of God will come to you and dwell in you. Let nothing separate me from the love of God and neighbor: neither self-love, nor covetousness, nor love of money, nor stinginess, nor gluttony, nor envy, nor malice and hatred, nor lack of faith and unbelief, nor carnal impurity. If your eye is simple, your whole body will be light; if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark [Matt. 6, 22 – 23 ], soon, soon it will darken - immediately as your spiritual eye deceives. You yourself know this from experience. If there is darkness in the light that is in you, then how much darkness is there? [Russian: then what darkness] [Matt. 6, 23] - that is, is not darkness itself tangible, terrible darkness? Truly, the words of Holy Scripture are the words of God, life and peace for our soul. Yesterday the spirit of malice and stinginess stole into my heart, and I felt cramped; but only my heart sincerely said: we, many, are one body [1 Cor. 10, 17] - the tightness left the heart and there was space in the soul. Be faithful to the Lord in small things, and he will place you over many things [Matt. 25, 21, 23]. Love your neighbor as you love yourself, even in food and drink, and you will love him in the matter of his spiritual salvation and, by the grace of God, you will save many. Otherwise, if you do not want to make him a sharer of food, money, clothing, then will you want to arrange for his spiritual salvation? If you are not faithful to the Lord and your neighbor in little things, will you be faithful in many things? Isn’t your love of voluptuousness, your love of money, your stinginess a strong fence that prevents you from sincerely caring about the spiritual salvation of your brother? Believe that physical mercy leads to spiritual mercy. And you have probably experienced this yourself and are experiencing it. The soul and power of Christian unity is love, or these three: faith, hope and love [1 Cor. 13, 13]. Achieve throughout your life the simplicity of faith, the simplicity of hope and the simplicity of love. Be simple in faith, hope and love - and you will always be carefree, calm and cheerful. If your eye is pure, then your whole body will be bright [Matt. 6, 22], then your whole life will be bright and cheerful. Fight with the strongest, unflagging wisdom against the evil enemy, valiantly defending yourself with all spiritual armor, and especially with faith and the word of God, in order to destroy all the demonic strength and snatch your soul and the souls of men from the jaws of the devil. A lover spares nothing for his beloved and considers everything earthly as nothing, if only to satisfy his hunger or thirst, if only to clothe him or bring him safety, peace and pleasure; the lover does not spare even himself for the beloved. Thus, God spares neither heavenly nor earthly gifts for man, just to save him. So He did not spare His only begotten Son for him, but gave Him to death for us in order to save him. But we are commanded by the Gospel to love everyone as ourselves, sparing nothing for him [See: Matt. 19, 19; 22, 39; Mk. 12, 31]. And in fact, every person is priceless and everything earthly is insignificant before him. Is not everything earthly insignificant before the one for whom the Son of God came to earth, suffered, shed blood and died, and to whom He gave His Flesh and Blood as food? The Epistle of the Apostle Paul to Philemon. If you have fellowship with me, then accept it as you do me. If he offended you in any way, or should, consider it on me. I, Paul, wrote with my hand: I will pay; I’m not telling you that you owe me yourself [Phil. 1, 17 – 19]. This is what Christ the Lord tells us, if any of His members, as all Christians are, offends us in any way or owes us something. If you, He says, have fellowship with Me, then accept the brethren who come to you as Me. If your brother has offended you in any way or should, consider it to be Me, I will pay, for he is My member, for I am in him, as in My image and as a Christian. I’m not telling you that you owe Me with yourself. July 15th. In a dream today (on the 15th) I was with the king. He spoke to me kindly, even friendly. The thought came to me that I was the king’s brother; but if so, then, given my insolvency, why don’t I use the treasures of his royal treasury, and expressed this thought to him. He agreed with this and immediately gave me the rest of the money from his pocket, namely: three rubles. I took them and soon left. I come home and find brothers Peter and Konstantin there with their family. What does this dream mean? He teaches the lesson that we are all royal brothers, that is, brothers of the King of Heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ: He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: I will proclaim Your name to My brethren [Heb. 2, 11 – 12], and, therefore, we have every right to use the benefits from the rich royal treasury - the Church and nature. The gifts of the Church and nature are the gifts of our Lord Jesus Christ; they should be generously offered to the royal brethren - your neighbors, especially from the rich to the poor, from their own. As royal brothers, Christians, especially the poor, have every right to our benefits, hospitality, courtesy, to our readiness to satisfy their spiritual needs, etc. There are, as it were, two poles in a person: flesh and spirit, or two ends of the scales. The tyrannies that were done over the martyrs, we are sometimes forced to do over ourselves, over our flesh and heart, so that we do not become servants of the devil. I pacify and enslave my body, so that... I myself do not remain unworthy [1 Cor. 9, 27]. Why is this so? Because the flesh is the enemy of us and God and the servant of the devil. I paid the devil heavily for eating meat after I wanted not to eat it and did not eat it for quite a long time. He conveniently overthrew me with malice, hypocrisy and false shame and tormented me with severe cramped night and morning of July 16th. I didn't sleep at night. We must remember that this generation of the devil does not come out except through prayer and fasting [Matt. 17, 21], and includes intemperance, non-fasting, consumption of animal food and wine and sweets and tea drinking, and in general abundant consumption of all kinds of food. At the same time, as we trust 133 in food, hope for food and love it, faith in God, hope in Him, love for Him certainly falls in the heart, according to the singularity and inseparability of our heart. That is why it is said: No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24]. It is good to strengthen hearts with grace, and not with foods from which those who engage in them do not benefit [Heb. 13:9], read in yesterday’s Sunday Apostle (Seventh Week). Do you hear? This is coming to you. If you remembered this, you would not strengthen your insides with meat. Truly I am meager and poor in love for God and my neighbors. I am poor in love for God, for I cleave to this life and to the blessings of this world: to food, drink, money, I love a comfortable and spacious home, beautiful clothes, etc.; for my God, especially for my own good, I don’t want to fulfill His commandments as I should, I’m not zealous about fulfilling them, I’m not ready to shed my blood and lay down my soul for them, I’m stingy with love for my neighbor, because I don’t care with all my might about the salvation of his soul, I don’t care, as I should, about satisfying his bodily needs, I’m irritated with him, I have anger towards him, and so on. Remember David and all his meekness [Ps. 131, 1], remember how Saul was angry with him, how he persecuted him, and how kind David was to him, how he protected him. Be like this towards your enemies, be kind to them and take care of them in their malice, for they are sick. There are physical illnesses and there are mental illnesses. Nothing hinders the infusion of the Spirit of God into a person more than addiction to food, drink, money, clothing, a decorated home, as well as arrogance, anger and irritability. Our liturgical books are the living water of the Holy Spirit, according to Scripture: Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture says, from his belly will flow rivers of living water. This He said about the Spirit, which those who believed in Him were about to receive [Jn. 7, 38 – 39 ]. ABOUT! How I need a little food and drink, and at the right time! What am I doing? I eat a lot and at the wrong time. Listen to the voice of your nature: it will tell you when you need to eat and drink and when not. Overeating causes insomnia and thinness and dark, spoiled blood. Great is God, great is man! Keep these words in your heart and feel them! Teach your heart not to spare at all for your neighbor, and especially for God, nothing material, no treasure, and to serve him with all zeal. Do not spare for God any thing of value, no sacrifice that is difficult. Remember that everything earthly is decay and soulless dust, that everything earthly is temporary and transitory. Remember that God is infinitely great as the creator and artist of everything; remember that the human soul is great and the whole world is worth nothing in comparison with it. For the Priceless, bring something precious, for the unapproachable Light - the light of matter. The devil deceives us with dust, falsely shows us life and preciousness in that in which there is no life and preciousness, and in clinging to which there is only death. Remember that our soul is a simple spiritual being and lives by God; it must cleave to Him alone and not to anything earthly. She must be ready to part with everything earthly in a minute, even her body, if God demands it or if she wants to make a worthy sacrifice to Him. Do not hesitate to drink a laxative at night before communion, if illness or insomnia due to a clogged stomach requires it. For it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, that is, evil thoughts and so on. [Matt. 15, 11, 19]. Experience has proven it. After such an incident, the Lord vouchsafed me to receive communion with dignity. I served early on July 20, and on the night of this date, suffering from insomnia from a stomach blockage, I drank (at two o'clock in the morning) a glass of seltzer water, which had a beneficial effect on me, clearing my stomach. Do not enjoy prolonged sleep, but get up when you want to sleep: complete saturation with sleep is harmful both to the soul and to the body, just like always completely saturating the body with food and drink. Do not pamper your sinful body with frequent baths. They relax the body and soul. In general, do not feast on sleep, food and drink, pleasant clothing, frequent baths, spacious and beautiful housing, beautifully printed and bound books, excellent furniture - nothing corporeal, nothing perishable and fleeting, [or] do not cleave to the body, nor to anything material - it passes away, but be diligent about the souls, things that are immortal. Tell your soul: what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world [Matt. 16, 26]... On the 22nd of July, I was struck down by a sweet pie and a generally hearty, delicious dinner: the devil easily captivated me with my passion. We must leave a delicious table. We must renounce our dependence on food, we must free ourselves from shameful captivity. We must reject childish amusements, for I am now a husband. When he became a man, he left behind his children [1 Cor. 13, 11]. Let us hasten to perfection [Heb. 6, 1]. What is all sweet and expensive food and precious drink in comparison with man? – Zero. Say it in your heart. The Apostle taught us how to look at every Christian: as at our own heart. You, that is, my womb (that is, my heart), accept him [Phil. 1, 12]. It rained, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew [Matt. 7, 25, 27]. Why comparison? The greatness of man. He put everything under his feet: all the sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea... [Ps. 8, 7–9]. A person who is fickle in respect and love for his neighbor will be even more fickle in reverence and love for God and His saints. He who is unfaithful in a little is also unfaithful in much [Lk. 16, 10]. When the devil plants blasphemous thoughts in your heart, oppressing and burning your innards, then say to him: I know in whom I have believed [2 Tim. 1, 12] and from whom I learned to honor the Lord, or His Most Pure Mother, or the holy and holy one with due reverence, and I do not heed and do not follow your dream, the enemy; I laugh at the cramped conditions and your flame that kindles within me. Our sinful flesh must be despised, and with it food and drink, that is, we must not have the slightest attachment or greed towards them, with which the devil tries in every possible way to bind us. The soul receives the Lord into itself in the life-giving Mysteries with the thought of faith and the heartfelt consciousness that the Lord Himself is truly present in the Mysteries, and our body receives the Lord with its lips and belly. When the soul accepts the Lord with firm faith, then the Lord passes through in one instant both the soul, as a simple being, and the entire body, all its components, due to the filling of the entire body with the soul and due to the all-filling nature of the Divinity. Remember that God the Father is our Spirit and that we need to please Him spiritually, with a pure, heavenly life on earth. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth [Jn. 4, 24]. Sensual pleasures are insignificant because they pass away extremely quickly: a few minutes, let’s say, even a few hours of pleasure - and suddenly it’s gone, for example, the pleasure of food and drink, and so on. The holy Apostle John proves nothing better than the insignificance of everything visible than by its passing: And the world, he says, passes away, and the lust thereof, but he who does the will of God abides forever [1 John. 2, 17]. The Apostle Paul says: 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]. So, isn’t it foolish to be seduced by what will soon, soon pass without a trace? A Christian must be zealously zealous about goodness and generosity towards his neighbors in everything, because God himself, as well as to every creature, is endlessly good and generous: good and generous in his creation from nothingness, in the granting of countless blessings, especially in the generous forgiveness of countless sins, in the gift of His Only Begotten Son for suffering and death, in giving us food and drink of Himself the most pure Body and Blood of the Lord and, which is higher than words and reason, in granting us future bliss that has no end. When your heart regrets something for your neighbor from clothing, from bedding, or from furniture, or from dishes, or from something else, then ask yourself mentally: how much do you need when you die? Wouldn't it be enough for you, instead of all the clothes, furniture and bedding, to have five boards and instead of a spacious apartment - one narrow coffin box? Then judge yourself for your pride, which does not tolerate the slightest self-sacrifice, and ask yourself: what, what kind of torment do you deserve for the fact that not only do you not want, according to the Gospel, to lay down your life for your neighbors [John. 15, 13], even for loved ones, but also to sacrifice some of your comforts for them? Don’t trust your heart, don’t follow it, but live according to God’s commandments, exposing yourself to hardships for your neighbor. Be careful not to follow your heart, but trample on its (whims) self-love. Let it be done, say, Lord, Thy will, and not mine. Do not hesitate to subject yourself to any constraint for your neighbor. How long will you not philosophize about things above, despising those things that are below? How long will you not despise the flesh (the natural man) and all things carnal as transitory? Under no circumstances compare a person with food and drink, or money, or clothing, or anything else. For everything earthly is nothing in comparison with man, zero. What is it good for a man, it is said, if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? [Matt. 16, 26]. Do not spare anything for a person. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God [Matt. 4, 4]. Why? Because by the word of God everything was created and exists, lives. Every word of God is being, life. Whoever does not wish for his neighbor what he wishes for himself regarding earthly blessings, how can he wish him from the heart for heavenly blessings? A stingy person who spares food and drink, clothing, housing and money for his neighbor will also spare future bliss for him. Wish earthly blessings for your neighbor with all your heart, cordially sharing with him, and then from your heart you will also wish heavenly blessings. If you are unfaithful in little things, how will you be faithful in many things? - Impossible. There is no communication between the Holy Spirit and the evil spirit. One is the Spirit of truth, and the other is the spirit of lies; one is a good Spirit, and the other is a spirit of evil. The spirit of lying cannot speak the truth, because then it would have something in common with the Spirit of truth and would lead to salvation - no, as a simple being and completely opposite to God, it cannot speak the truth one iota, nor stand in the truth for a moment. Its name is lie, slander, flattery, dream. There is a lie, says the Lord, and the father of lies [Jn. 8, 44]. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life, the Life-giving Spirit, and the evil spirit is the spirit of death, or having the power of death. This one is the Comforter Spirit, this one is the spirit of despondency. By their fruits you will recognize them [Matt. 7, 16, 20]. I thank You, Master, for You brought me from non-existence into existence, You raised me, You raised me, You grew me. I thank You, for You nourished and watered me, for You gave me air for rest. I thank You, for You have sent me kind, respectful and intelligent leaders and mentors; I thank You that You gave me good and pious parents, in whom You formed me and through them You brought me into this world. I thank You, for You saved me from illnesses, needs and troubles; I thank You, for You have not repaid me for my sins; I thank You, for You saved me from death and even until these days You have made me worthy to live 134; I thank Thee, for Thou hast vouchsafed me the dignity of the priesthood, for this equal-to-the-apostles service on earth and standing with the Cherubim and Seraphim at the terrible throne; I thank Thee for Thy grace that is all-pervading in me, with which I serve Thee pleasingly with reverence and fear; I thank You for delivering me from the countless snares of the enemy and from the bitterness of wicked people; I thank You, for You have often transformed my fierce sorrows into great joy; I thank You, for You did not despise me, a great sinner, but You graciously accepted my repentance. I thank You, for You have generously enriched me with sources of spiritual wisdom and multiplied my books; I thank You, for You helped me in preaching and granted me with my unclean lips to proclaim to Your people the truth of Your Gospel. For everything there will be thanksgiving to You. My Savior, kind, generous and long-suffering. Woe to you who are now saturated [Lk. 6, 25 ], - sated with the word of magazines and all sorts of other things and filled with the word of God; grief and those who are satiated with the word of God and those who pray and neglect to fulfill it; woe to you, who are now filled with bread, money, exquisite dwellings, various sensual pleasures and do not eat the bread of animals, who have rejected the inexhaustible treasure - Christ, the magnificent church not made with hands - the Trinity (we will come to him and make our abode with him [John 14:23]), who have rejected spiritual pleasure, righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14, 17]. He who speaks in his heart or mouth blasphemy against the Lord or against His Most Pure Mother or against His saints pronounces his own, based on nothing, judgment against the Lord and Judge Himself and against His servants, whom He Himself justified and made saints. Blasphemy is a sign of the devil's malice and pride and ignorance and carnal lifestyle. He who feels blasphemy in his heart and thoughts must deeply humble himself, read the word of God with full attention, and embrace fasting. Amazing. One sick woman saw Christ the Savior behind me when I came to give her communion. She told me herself. All-Seeing Eye! You see everything. What an incongruity! How absurd! The immortal spirit of man, which comes from God and lives by God, for in Him we live and move and have our being [Acts 17:28], hopes in the earth, in dust and manure: in food and drink, money and so on. Even if flesh still hoped for flesh, there would still be consistency, otherwise the spirit hopes for a substance that does not give it life at all, but rather, on the contrary, causes death, as regular experiments say! Ole foolishness! Ole madness! Ole nonsense! My soul! What are you making of yourself! Note: the sermon should be dominated by simplicity and unity of the main thought, around which all private thoughts would revolve, like planets around the sun. God is a simple being, just like our soul. Therefore, the main quality of a sermon is simplicity, on which depends the warmth of the heart, clarity of thought and words, and a strong effect on the hearts of the listeners. The Savior's word is incredibly simple. It is also apostolic, which is why it is presented in the form of letters, in the form of a conversation between a father and his children. Away with the dead dust and ashes that possess me! Let each one not only take care of himself, but each one also of others [Phil. 2, 4]. This, by the way, means: not only correct and save yourself, but also your neighbors; Do not only give instructions to yourself, but also to your neighbors, especially in church. Overcome heaviness, despondency and melancholy and relaxation of the heart, which prevent you from doing the things of your calling, which require your initiative, your mind and your heart; be always ready for a word of edification in church, in homes and in every place; be quick for love and sluggish and immobile for enmity. So, remember that all evil mental heaviness, all despondency, melancholy and relaxation of the heart are from the devil. Try your best, constantly, to cultivate the fields of human souls. This is your position, your indispensable duty. Lord, help me! Where I would eat everything offered with thanksgiving and humility, but I am disdainful and say: this is luxurious and sweet, sometimes it is bad and tasteless. Oh, my darling! And I’m at enmity, alas! because of food and drink! And to whom? To my wife, to a being equal to me, whom I must love as my body. Alas for me, a sinner! Alas for me, the well-fed and satiated! Don't get annoyed about anything. Do everything with love. Wake up, wake up! We forget that we need to do God’s will urgently and urgently. And the devil does not for a moment forget to seduce us into doing his devilish will and not fulfilling the will of God. Let us be awake and sober. Upon communion of the Holy Mysteries with faith and love, the soul and body are penetrated, as it were, by air - Christ, or, better, the communicant puts on Christ, just as someone puts on an outer garment over a lower one, with the difference that Christ penetrates the whole person, like fire through hot iron. Whoever does not renounce all his possessions cannot be My disciple, says the Lord [Lk. 14, 33]. Why? - Because worries about property, about preserving and increasing it, crowding into the heart, bother him, break his thoughts, preventing them from being occupied with the only thing needed - the Lord, Who alone can replace everything for us. One who has not renounced his property cannot yet be a disciple of the Lord for the reason that the love of property, having strengthened in the heart of a carnal man, stands firmly for itself and the beloved person, like the one who loves God, says: what will separate us from the love of property? Tribulation, or distress, or trouble, or persecution, or a sword? 135 And thus, a loving or covetous person has no place in his heart for the love of God, or has very little room in his heart for this love, while the Lord demands complete love for Himself, with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the thought, with all the strength, without the slightest lethargy, like the Lord of the heart, like a simple Being. Oh, how true are the words of our sweetest Savior, that we cannot serve God and mammon [Matt. 6, 24; OK. 16, 13 ]! Our heart is simply by nature and cannot be divided. That is why it is said: either it will hate one and love the other; or he will be zealous for one and neglectful of the other [Matt. 6, 24]. Either he will love God and hate wealth, or vice versa. So, if you want to please your Lord, you, whether you have great or small property, look at it as someone else’s, and not as your own, or sell it and give the money to the poor. This is your only salvation! What if there are many spiritual fathers? - Christ is alone. In Christ let all be your children; Be jealous of everyone as if you were your own, especially when you see that other shepherds, like mercenaries, leave their sheep and run away! Hold firmly with your mind and heart to the word of God and tradition, truly life-giving and saving, so as not to follow the dreams of your own heart and imagination or the devil’s delusion, which are always deadly and destructive. When you are very hungry, do not eat hastily and greedily, otherwise you will unnoticed eat a lot and harm yourself. Mirrors are harmful for a Christian because they force one to focus on appearances and distract attention from the inner face of the soul. Many people learn to be hypocrites in front of the mirror. Don't eat fish, it is directly harmful to you both physically and morally. Experience. Having eaten once in the evening, do not eat unnecessarily the next. Hard. Love. God is love. Love is God. Love babies as living, pure images of God, shining with primitive innocence, as the Angels of God, as your pure members, as your heart, as yourself. Drinking wine makes your legs hurt. Experience. Pies and pancakes are enemies. Experience. Go to the bathhouse less often. The bathhouse is of little use. It just relaxes. However, it is occasionally useful. Not sleeping during the day is a great benefit. A wonderful, healthy sleep at night. And a short sleep perfectly restores strength. Cook oatmeal jelly with full 136. Beans, oatmeal. Eating rarely, but eating too much is harmful. Especially at night. My back hurts. But don’t worry when something hurts: pain is of benefit to the soul, just as deprivation of the flesh and its suffering are in general. In all fairness, without any exaggeration, consider yourself the last of God’s servants. Oh, what a multitude of wonderful people the Lord has! Oh! How many virtues are there in this, and the other, and the third, and in the tenth, and in the hundredth! And I have so many sins, vices, passions! How lazy I am, how little zealous I am for the glory of God, for the salvation of myself and others! Living confidence that he who is united with the Lord is one spirit with the Lord [1 Cor. 6, 17], there is life and peace for the soul, and doubt is death, oppression and confusion, especially when these words are applied to the Mother of God. Truly She is one spirit with the Lord. What? - and I, filled with countless sins, after communion with faith and heartfelt contrition of the Divine Mysteries, become one spirit with the Lord. And all pious Christians are one spirit. Do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? [ 1 Cor. 3, 16]. Spring is approaching - a dangerous time for those suffering from internal scrofula, especially if it [gives] to the stomach. Eat in moderation and be careful not to clog your stomach. Don't eat a lot of cucumbers, especially with fish. They clog the stomach. A clogged stomach is perfectly cleansed and cured by cold (moderate) water with a bite of sugar. Don't drink champagne; don't eat sweets. When the blood is agitated by something sharp or irritating, then it is good to soften it with milk or butter, Those who have sinned, O Savior, by eating; have mercy on me, O Lord Almighty, and grant me to bear fruits worthy of repentance. Unless absolutely necessary, you should not sleep during the day. Harmful. Do not drink vodka, especially in the evening. You are completely unable to study when you drink, and that’s what makes you sleepy. Do not eat milk, butter or meat at night. Drink more water or tea. In general, eat as little bread as possible with butter. Eating cold fish soup with perch at night is good, that is, healthy. In general, it is good to consume cold stew or drink in moderation. Do not eat porridge with butter or milk, especially with milk. Especially rice is extremely difficult for the stomach. It clogs up the stomach unusually. Onions are also harmful to eat. Fastens. Eating rice porridge with milk, raisins and milk completely dulled my heart and drowned out religious feelings, created a blockage in my stomach and almost killed me in bed. There were cramps and writhing in my right arm and right side, and I could hardly move away. Drinking cold water on an empty stomach with a bite of sugar in the morning before tea and in the evening before tea (one cup of tea) is very beneficial: it cleanses and strengthens the stomach, lungs and the whole body. And one tea relaxes the body and soul. It would be better not to drink tea at all, or if you drink it, do it very moderately. February 8th day, 1862. Not drinking wine with tea is harmful for scrofula. Cold water is my healthy drink. Your will be done, not mine. - Inscribe these words on your heart. A restless, longing urge for food after recently eating it is considered demonic flattery. Experience. The verbs of life must be composed not in a book, but in the heart. Since I am in some way taking your father’s place and have given you almost everything, let me inform you of your entire dowry. To ask the Metropolitan for assistance. Only the poor are happy today, for they know God more than anyone else. They are humble, meek. For a prisoner - a helpful book. Do not demand back from the one who took what you have [Lk. 6, 30]. Have in your mind and heart the commandments of the Savior and His entire life on the cross from the swaddling clothes to the tomb, and try with all your might to order your life according to the commandments and example of your Savior, your Giver of Life, remembering that His commandment is eternal life [Jn. 12, 50]. In the face of evil, unfaithful and blasphemous thoughts, remember what you would have been like when you were six or seven years old and beyond, how simple, trusting you would have been and how you looked at everything with a bright gaze, and humble yourself like a child. Then your wickedness, your lack of faith, your blasphemies will leave you. Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 18, 3]. You see, children are greater than us in the eyes of God. For we, according to the word of the Lord, must reach them. Rebellion in response to the words of the Lord. Sinful. Wed: Daughter of Babylon, devastator! blessed is he who repays you for what you have done to us! Blessed is he who takes and dashes your babies against a stone! (Ps. 136:8–9). Wed: Salt is a good thing; but if the salt loses its strength [glory: possesses], how to correct it? not suitable for soil or manure; They throw her out (Luke 14:34 – 35). Ramena (Church Glav.) – shoulders. Obsession (church-glorification) - glorification. Fire chief (obsolete) – fire chief Prayer of the third antiphon at the liturgy. Compare: if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if you put to death the deeds of the flesh in the Spirit, you will live (Rom. 8:13). That is, he suffers evil, “bitterness”: oppression, disaster, oppression. Ratouy (Church glory) - fight, wage war. That is, my madness (the word “face” is not translated in such phrases). Warm – hot” ebullient; icy – ​​cold; stupefied (Church Glav.) - lukewarm (neither hot nor cold) Wed: 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). Theological School, Theological Seminary and Theological Academy. Evil (Church Glav.) – with evil intent, bad. Father-in-law, wife and sister-in-law. Titlo (Greek) - here the same as title, designation according to rank, honorary title. This refers to Joseph (Semashko; † 1868), Metropolitan of Lithuania. In the depths (Church Glav.) – inside (in the chest), in the depths For the Old Testament Jews, the Tabernacle of God was the place where the Lord testified about Himself to people. The tabernacle consisted of a courtyard where there was an altar, a sanctuary where the incense altar was located, and the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was located. At the first sacred rite of Aaron, a sacred fire descended from heaven onto the altar, which was subsequently continuously maintained; It was forbidden to bring any other fire into the tabernacle, Wed: the whole law is contained in one word: love your neighbor as yourself (Gal. 5:14). Mast (Church Glav.) – fragrant oil. Wed: To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace (Rom. 8:6). Ancient Patericon. Chapter 6. About non-covetousness and that one should protect oneself from covetousness. Irmos of the 6th song of the Sunday canon, tone 2. Sunday of All Saints, at Great Vespers I cried out to the Lord. Tears off (Church Glav.) – pushes away. Entrust - entrust yourself, your thoughts, feelings to someone; rely on someone. Dospeti (Church Glav.) – to achieve. Compare: Who will separate us from the love of God: sorrow, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? (Rom. 8:35). Syta (obsolete) – water sweetened with honey; honey infusion on water. You might be interested in: