Апрель

May 21. Resurrection. Week about the blind. To the glory of God's grace renewing me. Spiridon [Nedelnovich] told me today (October 20, 1872) that I look very young, a young man. This is from communion of the Holy Mysteries, from my constant repentance. In the mountainous part, by the grace of God, I collected thirty-five rubles (excluding beggars) with the life-giving cross (glory to the Cross of the Lord - in addition to countless spiritual blessings, he also gives us food and drink and clothing) on ​​the day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and Archpriest Father Paul collected only 12 rubles in the same part last year. Nowadays in the cathedral part there are 75 rubles, and Father Matthew – 58 rubles. 30 June 72 How exalted and great a priest must be, pure in soul, performing prayers for people before the throne of God and performing the Terrible Mysteries! And how poor and insufficient we are for such a great and sublime task! How poor we have become! How vile and powerless we are! Where is the spirit of the shrine? Where is the spirit of unfeigned love? Where is the spirit of meekness and kindness?.. Where is the pure heart, embracing the love of everyone as brothers, as members of one’s own? Oh, how deeply my nature has been violated by Satan and humanity in my nature! And I myself am despised in my eyes, and people, even high authorities, are like bearers of the same sinful filth! But I am more than all desecrated and defiled in the depths, and the people before me are angels! I must honor and love everyone, especially the high and low authorities, as they are established for my well-being and my Fatherland, for these are instruments of God’s goodness, and in their time and in their place, each of them brings great benefit to me and the Fatherland, and I also bring my share of benefit by the grace of God. August 25, 1872. Friday. While reading the akathist to the Protection of the Mother of God, I felt extreme rudeness and callousness of heart from excessive consumption of veal jelly and minced meat with cabbage and fatty sauce. A thousand times I felt sick after being full! I didn’t feel like myself at home, in church, and in school. September 30, 1872. Eleven and a half o'clock at night. Lord, have mercy! Have salt in yourself [Matt. 5, 13]. Salt is the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies us, and protects us from sins, and makes us worthy of incorruption, and preserves us from corruption. Stop fornication by imagining fiery Gehenna, into which all unrepentant fornicators will be thrown. Strong tea is very harmful - I found out experimentally for the nine hundredth time. May 23, 1873 For health, it is advised that nervous (faint-of-heart) people dry their bodies in the morning with a towel soaked in room water and immediately dry with a coarse linen towel. (Mikhailo Ivanovich Likhachev on May 23rd in church in the evening, in our cathedral.) In St. Petersburg, buy white damask fabric for repairing a casing and a copper censer. Write out the works of the saints. The apostles fasted, preparing themselves for the work of preaching; you too should fast, preparing yourself for the work of catechesis in the coming year 1873. This is necessary. Away with all pretexts, all hellish hooks for enmity with neighbors, especially with relatives 4 . May the name of the Lord be glorified in us. How did I imagine teaching household chores not with words of reason and meekness, but with anger, sullenness, and silence? Is sin corrected by sin? Isn't it true? Tobacco smoking is (I speak from experience) a snare of the devil, the sucker of the evil one, it is a fog of souls and bodies, fouling the air, darkening the mind and heart, a scourge and relaxation of the nerves, deprivation of beneficial sleep and easy breathing, deprivation of the grace of the Holy Spirit, attracting spirits of evil; relaxation of the body, a new, absurd invention of the multi-passionate flesh, useless and harmful to the flesh itself as well as to the soul; inflammation of carnal lusts, daily and countless burnt offerings to the devil, insatiable greed, insane burning of money, these material gifts of God, given to us for direct, essential needs; brazen theft of the property of the poor, for surpluses, if there are any, are the property of the poor; a dangerous and often terrible in its consequences game with destructive and destructive fire, an image of the satanic sting with which the primordial enemy stings and kills the human race; image and forerunner of eternal fire, slow self-immolation; a scourge for innocent, gentle creatures - children, a spontaneous poison, slow acting. – That’s what tobacco and smoking are! Should I smoke tobacco after this? And that everything that has been said is true, there is no doubt: add up everything that has been said and believe me - the result will show what you are looking for. [Appreciate church history and civil history.] We do not notice that in us, in our souls of Orthodox Christians, flows the spiritual blood of our holy fathers and mentors: apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, saints, both glorified and not yet glorified, but guiding us here with their writings, instructions, example. We have nothing of our own: we live on their property, their wisdom, their examples. And in the civil world?.. Legislative and political life also leads its historical existence in a complex historical way. Let not Satan boast, O Lord, that he will tear me away from Your hand or fence 5 (the Church); The enemy separates us from the Lord through the passions of life, through heresies and schisms. Woe to those who have given themselves over to passions with all their souls, woe to heretics and schismatics! Having seen your brother, you have seen the Lord, say the holy fathers (Saint Abba Dorotheos). I thank the Lord, who never ceases to be patient with me and to have mercy on me, the repentant. I sin constantly, damned one. Evil lives and does not die in me, the old man rages in me. Today I performed unction on an old woman, 98 years old, Evdokia Krayushkina. It was extremely difficult during Unction (scrofula before the rain in the insides): intemperance in food and drink and breaking the fast on Wednesday, especially drinking tea and coffee in the morning with cream and eating a very buttery Moscow cake, punished me: in my sides and in my left leg there were like sharp, burning thorns, I was sick in soul and body; I read my prayers with extreme difficulty; I couldn’t finish some words (Most Holy, Most Pure and others). He was also punished for the fact that he angrily drove out a beggar boy of about seventeen from his apartment. I repent before God and ask for forgiveness. An example of amazing simplicity and humility was shown by [the children] before the unction of their mother with holy oil: everyone fell at her feet, asking for forgiveness with tears. So everyone should humble themselves before their parents. Is this true for the people of this century?.. Many, many do not consider it a duty to honor and nourish their parents. The fight against the passion of covetousness: the farewell with the Holy Mysteries was carried out together with the unction, and in the case of union, the money for the work is turned in favor of the parting priest and sexton. I prayed to the Lord to take away from me Judas’s love of money, which is so destructive to the soul, especially in a priest. See, the steward of the estate, who used strangulation for these sake; Flee the unsatiated soul, such a daring Teacher! 6 There cannot be sincere reverence for God and sincere love for one’s neighbor who has love of money in his heart: It is impossible to work truly with God and with mammon: he will either love one and hate the other [Matt. 6.24]. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness [Matt. 6, 33]: sincerely love all your flock and sincerely pray for them, as for your soul, and everything else on earth will be added to you. The Kingdom of Heaven has come near [Matt. 4, 17] – the kingdom of earthly vanity must leave. The shadow of the cross is the shadow of Christ. The cross was typified by the wonderful rod of Moses. The rod turned into a living serpent as a sign that the Cross of Christ will be living and life-giving and that it will put to death our mortifier. Thanks to not eating in the evening, I slept peacefully that night and got up very easily. And from now on you don’t need to eat at night, or in the morning either. April 28. Morning. Friday of St. Thomas Week. Friday. I thank the Lord, who again revived me through the communion of His life-giving Mysteries and healed my mental and physical infirmities, for the Body and Blood of my Lord is everlasting life. I thank the Lord, who extinguished in my heart the hostile disposition and feeling towards my sister Anna Konstantinovna for her excessive demands for services on the part of my wife and for her (Anna Konstantinovna’s) too calm and inactive behavior. I thank the Lord, who extinguishes and takes away the manifestations of passions, for I am often, both against my will and against my will, angry, and envious, and willful, and fornicating, and a lover of money: an instant reason, an instant infatuation with a passionate thought - [and I went] to write evil, and hellish fire and the violence of evil. Alas for me: until now I have not yet begun to restore in myself the features of the image of God, Who is my only, priceless and eternal treasure, eternal wealth. Until now, I have not yet restored in myself Divine meekness and humility, gentleness, truth and holiness, purity and chastity, abstinence and non-covetousness, obedience and complete devotion to the will of God; Until now I am still proud, proud and angry, I do not strive with all my might for truth and holiness in all my life, I am lazy and indifferent to good deeds; Until now I have an unclean heart, deceitful, contemplative, servile to the world, covetous, envious, lustful, greedy, stingy, prodigal, impatient, murmuring, blasphemous, lazy, rebellious. Whose features are these in me? The enemy, the devil and Satan. Oh Lord, Lord! Grant me to love Thy righteousness at least in the end and to hate lawlessness. Grant me to restore, feature by feature, in my soul the Divine features of Your image, distorted and defiled in me by my sins. Give me, Lord, the traits of this image to love more than any corruptible treasure of this world, and most of all give me self-sacrificing love, which is the fulfillment of the law [Rom. 13, 10] and the totality of perfection [Col. 3:14], which is long-suffering, merciful, does not envy, is not conceited, is not proud, does not act outrageously, does not seek evil, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth, trusts in everything, endures in everything, bears everything, has faith in everything and never falls away [1 Cor. 13, 4 – 8]. She is living water flowing into the eternal belly. She is truth, peace, freedom, joy in the Holy Spirit [Rom. 14, 17], without her I am nothing and my whole life is nothing, all my deeds. April 29, 1872. Look at your deeds: you do not spare for your splendor, luxury, decoration, pleasure, not to mention ordinary clothes and ordinary food, housing, tens and hundreds, sometimes thousands of rubles, but for the poor or the poor you spare kopecks or two or three, five or ten rubles. You say: every day many people ask, everyone is almost the same, but they don’t work - I don’t want to give it for nothing. But you yourself are convinced a hundred times that they would like to work, but they do not have a job or have nothing to work with. Don’t judge them, but give them bread, shelter, clothing; The trouble for them is that they are healthy, but there is no work, that everyone condemns them for idleness and laziness, scolds them, despises them, and does not bother about finding work for them. The rich man is always right, the poor man is always guilty - the first because he has predatorily seized the property of the poor into his own hands, for failure to give alms by a rich man is the theft of the property of the poor (for him God fills the bowels of the rich), and because the poor man who does not always seems to him to be a parasite and a sloth; the poor man is guilty because he is meek, humble and silent, not daring to speak much with the arrogant rich man, who is ready to immediately shut his mouth and not allow him to speak in his own defense. Indeed, how can a beggar justify himself? He is a beggar - and this is enough to accuse him without any evidence or justification, while both wealth and poverty are from God: the Lord makes poor and enriches, humiliates and exalts [1 Sam. 2, 7]. You involuntarily recall the words of God’s chosen, humble and poor, who complain in the Psalmist about the oppression of the rich: Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, for we are filled enough with contempt; Our soul is quite saturated with reproach from the arrogant and humiliation from the proud [glory: the reproach of the gobblers and the humiliation of the proud] [Ps. 122, 3 – 4]. I am the first of these gobbling and proud vilifiers of the poor, although I have been giving daily alms for a long time, but often with sorrow and coercion, and not in simplicity and with good will. It's my fault! But please, Lord, don’t be like that in the future and give alms willingly and voluntarily, in the simplicity of your heart. True, there are a lot of beggars, but I give according to my strength. As soon as a beggar approaches you, you look at him slyly, with bad prejudice, with contempt and malice of heart, considering him a parasite, a lazy person, a deceiver, and your ill-wisher. How can you, with such a way of thinking, willingly give alms? what about love and respect for his personality as a person and a Christian? And without these conditions, alms will not be alms and will not be accepted by God, Whom is the whole earth and what fills it, the universe and all who live on it [Ps. 23, 1]. You yourself are crafty, and proud, and angry, and a parasite, and a lazy person, and a fornicator, and a drunkard: why don’t you judge yourself and consider yourself worse than any beggar, but only judge others strictly? Of course, one must have due caution and prudence when giving alms, but one must treat the poor with meekness and condescension, remembering one’s spiritual poverty of all virtues and one’s countless wealth of sins. Judge not, lest ye be judged, for with the same judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged [Matt. 7, 1 – 2]. We are all filled with infirmities and we all need a Helper and a Doctor: let us be lenient with one another. What do you think: the poor and poor are not sons and daughters of God, that they lack everything they need, that they are despised in this world by the rich and noble? Do you really think that they are dogs and worse than dogs, or that they are not the sons and daughters of God, that they lack everything they need, that they are despised in this world among the rich and noble? Don’t you really think that they are dogs and worse than dogs or that they are not legitimate sons, but you, on the contrary, luxurious, satiated, drunken, always playing, adorned, like a church, with gold and silver - you are God’s beloved sons and daughters? Don’t you think that the Divine cherishes you and, like a mother on her knees, consoles you because you are rich and noble, that you live in wealth and pleasure of every kind and know how to live in the wisdom of the flesh, that you despise your brethren and leave them to starve and freeze and vegetate idle? Oh, if the Divine thought the same way as we, sinners blinded and corrupted in our endeavors and in all enterprises, then, of course, we could think like that about the rich and the poor. But the Divine gaze and the Divine judgment are not the same as our gaze and our crooked judgments. As the heavens are separated from the earth, so are our ways separated from the ways of God, and our thoughts from the thoughts of God [Isa. 55, 9]. Has not God chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom that He promised to those who love Him? [James. 2, 5]. The favorites of happiness are for the most part not the favorites of God; these latter live for the most part in poverty, in sorrows, illnesses, reproach, exile, they always bear the cross in this world, they walk the narrow path and enter through the narrow gates! Therefore, you, beloved of happiness, this blind happiness, do not dream about yourself, but come to your senses and humble yourself. The adulterous and sinful world rewards its favorites for their love for it, and persecutes and persecutes those who do not love it. And the world passes away, and its lusts, but he who does the will of God abides forever [1 Jn. 2, 17]. The eternal is, of course, better than the transitory; Let us be zealous to achieve lasting and perfect blessings, despising transitory ones and sharing them with the poor, and especially with those close to us. Looking at the image of the Lord nailed to the cross, remember that you, a man, are nailed to the world, and in this nailing you are pitifully perishing; that in order to please God, your life-giver, and to save your sinful soul, you must renounce the world and cleave, as if nailed, to God with your mind and heart with all your feelings. (I thank the Lord for the good thought). What many-headed beast, what evil hundred-headed monster lives inside me? “This is sin, this is my old man, constantly seeking to kill me and deliver me into the hands of the devil.” God! Before I even die completely, save me. Close to the bottom of hell, Capernaum ascended to heaven [Matt. 11, 23]. This Capernaum is me, because, like him, I received the Son of God into myself through baptism and communion and do not care about repentance filled with the fruits of good deeds. Alas for me! But I tell you, says the Lord, do not resist evil. But whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also [Matt. 5, 39]. Why am I resisting the evil of my sister Anna Konstantinovna, which existed, but which, perhaps, is no longer in her in relation to me? Why do I hold a grudge? Why does the spirit of enmity and revenge towards her and gloating in her misfortune secretly simmer within me? Oh, verily, this is the leaven of the devil within me. May I forget everything and be like a gentle lamb, remembering no evil. Yes, I pray for her as for myself, with the tenderness of a brother and father. God willing. Oh, how the enemy begs me with malice! She has already pitied me twenty times, but I have never regretted it - a cruel heart! God! Take my heart of stone away from me! Have I learned to have such a heart from the Gospel, from the communion of the life-giving Sacrament of unity and love, the Body and Blood of Christ? Do I remember the words of my Lord Jesus Christ: This commandment I command you, that you love one another [Jn. 15, 17 ]? So also My Heavenly Father will do to you (hand over to the tormentors, Dondezhe 8 repay all your debt), if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart for his sins. Matt. 18, 35. Take a book about St. Philaret Metropolitan from the gymnasium 9. The liturgy was mournful and difficult, the only liturgy that the Lord Jesus Christ served before the face of the Heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, at [the Jewish high priests], at Pilate and Herod and on Golgotha ​​- mournful and difficult is the service of the liturgy and those priests of Jesus Christ who, trying to live in His image, serve the liturgy in His image, especially in the presence of a multitude of sinful people. Therefore, do not be surprised and do not be discouraged by the burdens, cramps and sorrows that Belial brings upon you during the service of the Liturgy or Matins. You bear the cross of Christ, the Lord will glorify you in His Kingdom. April 29. Around 6 pm. Because of satiety and excessive drinking, all kinds of infirmities, confusion, and stumbling occur in the service. Out of vanity and pride, I don’t want to admit that Father Matthew is better than me in everything, but he really is better; I must be convinced of this from the bottom of my heart, and I am worse than everyone else, and everyone is better than me. Amen. I am abundant in the Lord for everyone: why do I envy the brethren? No human house was worthy to receive the Divine Infant Jesus Christ - He deigned to choose the manger of the dumb as the place of His birth, because the dumb are meeker than verbal people. And from whom did God incarnate receive worship and congratulations first? – From His humble and poor Mother, Joseph the treemaker [...], from humble and poor shepherds, like Himself who became poor for the sake of our salvation. Let no chamber of men be proud of the fact that they received the Infant of God into themselves. Let not the vanity of man be exalted that it has placed the Lord of glory in its palaces: palaces for kings and princes and for the arrogant rich. A lot of money was lost on them, a lot of sweat and blood was shed and, perhaps, bitter tears during their construction, a lot of poor people were offended because of them. Sin flatters our pride, luring us to ourselves with sinful pleasure. But whoever knows the sweetened deadly poison will pray to God to strengthen his soul in the fight against sin. Life is sweet for everyone, and who doesn’t want to live - to live long, happily, blissfully, in all contentment and without worries and without exhausting labor, to live without end? This is the object of everyone's desires. And this is the kind of life that awaits all who keep God’s commandments. Keep the commandments and you will enter the belly [Matt. 19, 17], because the short-term, preparatory, educational, sinful life here is, in fact, not yet life, but the threshold of life. For many names, words and sayings, prayers, as well as for entire prayers, often used, or for the words of the Holy Scriptures, which should give life to our soul, our heart seems to die, becomes meaningless and insensitive, and these names, words and sayings, prayers seem to die for us, so that in order to revive them in our thoughts and hearts, for their influence on the soul, in order for them to be the life-giving beginning of renewal and activity, an internal struggle with the spirits of evil is required, stealing from us the vitality of these grace-filled words, the fight against fear, demonic fear. Listen firmly, so that your heart does not gradually die for a single word that the Church puts into your mouth. What makes us cold, insensitive, senseless, dead to the living streams of Scripture and church prayers and chants? - Gluttony, frequent satiety, love of money, and in general the passions and addictions of life. It is impossible for two masters to work: for one you will be alive, and for the other you will be dead, you will be zealous for one, and neglectful of the other [Matt. 6, 24]. April 30. Resurrection. Man has become so sinful, seductive, so distorted by sin that the God-created beauty of the members of the human body or some other creature, pure, unblemished beauty, becomes unclean and tempting for his unclean heart, infected with the poison of passions. Without temptation, a person often cannot even look at the beauty of a woman or man. Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart [Matt. 5, 28]. This is how sweets fight in our members! Meanwhile, we add these sweets ourselves, their poison, loving the pleasure of food and drink or the pleasures of the flesh - singing, reading, sight. The Lord commanded us love and communication: how do we preserve this testament of our sweetest Savior? We were all divided, five in one house divided, two into three and three into two, a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law [Lk. 12, 51 – 53 ]; one church to another, or one Christian society to several, not to mention almost every home. In the depths of my heart, lurking passions confuse, oppress, and trouble me during priestly service: they must be torn out from the depths of my heart by the roots by the grace of God. What does hell do in our souls? Terrible forces of evil are rising up against us, seeking to consume us alive. Stay alert, brothers, to yourselves, take courage, be strong. A Christian needs tenderness, subtlety, purity of feeling, clarity and sharpness of thought in order to recognize and feel the truth, greatness and beneficence of the Christian faith, the gospel truth, Christian worship and the full depth of the damage to human nature, its weakness and the abomination of sins. And for this you need abstinence, prayer, reading Scripture, reflection and deepening into yourself. Until mass on Sunday. (Week about the myrrh-bearers.) I served early mass in extreme cramped conditions and confusion from the cunning of evil spirits and from the action of my passions. In the evening I drank half a glass of vodka, a large glass of milk, ate cheese, a baked egg yolk, drank tea, but I didn’t have to eat or drink at all. The thief deserves the flour. The tightness in the sides is extreme, not only during mass, but all day long, at all services. It’s as if my lungs or windpipe are clogged: I speak with extreme difficulty, embarrassment, and nervous irritation. (In the evening.) He received communion without condemnation by the grace of God. Glory to the endless goodness and long-suffering of the Lord! I suffer because of satiety. I concluded the seeds within myself: they torment me, they are my extra caviar. Constant smoking of tobacco without tea, coffee and wine produces unnatural heat and pungency in the blood and throughout the body, and even more so with tea, coffee and wine, and with unnatural heat in the blood and throughout the body it excites and intensifies the effect of passions. Therefore, smoking tobacco is harmful not only physically, but also morally, and a Christian should not smoke tobacco: smoking is at least a whim, and a harmful whim. If anointing yourself with incense according to the judgment of God is a sin, then even more so smoking tobacco, and moreover, constantly or often. For every sip of smoke we will give an answer to God. God gave you air to breathe, not smoke, and you made smoke your element. A Christian must cut off everything unnecessary so that he does not waste his soul with carnal excesses, so as not to make it incapable of spiritual activity: fasting, prayer, reading Scripture. The spiritual rebirth of a person takes place according to the wise and gracious dispensation of God through sorrow, oppression and suffering. Therefore, do not be discouraged and do not lose heart, experiencing frequent sorrows and hardships on the path of life. He who values ​​his salvation and eternal life gratefully accepts from the hand of the Lord all sorrows and suffering as medicine. April 30, 12 am. Priest John Sergiev, by the grace of God. He sinned before God and his neighbors in that, having himself been guilty of violating the honor and peace of his neighbor (for example, his family), he himself, deprived of peace, blamed him for it, and not himself, justifying himself before others (strangers), blaming him, exposing his anger and fervor. Bless, Lord, my wife Elizabeth and my sister Anna Konstantinovna and her husband, Priest Gregory. Prisny (Church Slavic) – always close, dear. Prayer “My many-merciful and all-merciful God, Lord Jesus Christ...” from the sequence of morning prayers. Collector of wealth, look at the one who hanged himself because of them! Avoid greed: this is what she dared to do to the Teacher. On Holy and Great Thursday at Matins the troparion, tone 8. Packs (Church Glav.) - again, again. Dondezhe (Church Glav.) - until. Philaret (Drozdov; 1783 – 1867), saint, metropolitan of Moscow. An outstanding church and political figure. Born in Kolomna, in the family of a deacon. He studied at the Kolomna Seminary, and from 1800 - in the philosophical class of the Trinity Seminary; studied ancient Greek and Hebrew with special diligence. In 1808 he took monastic vows. From the same year - inspector, and from 1812 rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy; Professor of Philosophy and Theological Sciences. From 1817 he was a bishop, from 1826 until the day of his death - Metropolitan of Moscow. An outstanding preacher, his theology was expressed primarily in his sermon, which affirmed the ideals of not so much externally as internally active Christianity, completely following the authority of the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers. He is the author of several historical and theological works. Perhaps the most important work of the saint’s life, as well as his most important contribution to Russian literature, was his many years of work translating the Bible into Russian. Author of the Catechism, a book about the Orthodox faith that has gone through countless editions. In 1994 he was canonized. His memory is celebrated by the Holy Church on November 19 (December 2). To purge (church glory) - to make vain (empty), to deprive something, to leave with nothing. You might be interested in: