Май

I thank the Lord, who saved me from tightness in my heart due to smoking tobacco in the evening. As soon as I cried out to Him, waking up and getting up, He saved me. Glory to Your quick mercy, O Lord! In a dream in the morning I saw that Anna Konstantinovna gave birth to her child in my apartment, or as if in mine, because the arrangement of the rooms seemed not to be my apartment. And that it was resolved in St. Petersburg with Al. Yegor, it all seemed like a deception. I congratulated her, she remained silent. A person's birthday is a celebration in the world for parents and for the one born. Sincerely rejoice, you too, who are not entirely a stranger to the mother and born child Elizabeth. But even more solemn is the day of birth for eternity, or the day of the death of a person, if this death is not shameful and peaceful. Act in God's way, and God acts in such a way that where sin abounds, there His grace abounds [Rom. 5, 20 – 21 ], as for example in me. And do good especially to those who do not favor you, so that with good you will win them over to you, and with good you will overcome evil [Rom. 12.21]. But be careful that the evil is not only apparent. Evening. He was visiting Vasily Aleksandrovich Volkov and Favsta Aleksandrovna, his sister, for charitable purposes. A wonderful story about a modern rich father of a family who gives his children the opportunity to experience all sorts of pleasures of this world and does not in the least instill in them the fear of God, who shouts to the children on a holiday in the morning: children! don’t you dare go to church today, the weather is bad, you’ll catch a cold, - and who in the evening takes them to a club or to the theater. But he himself admitted that the children did not like him at all and even hated him. Why? Because it educates them incorrectly, spoils them, corrupts their souls. A story about one philanthropist who had a book in which blasphemies against the holy saints of God were written and the funny sides of the simple-minded superstitions of our men were exposed. What could be (after this) sacred for such flighty people? What is their spiritual sphere? It's scary to think about. Oh, in what a pernicious, infectious spiritual atmosphere the students of predominantly higher secular educational institutions live! And after this they also want to connect our theological academies with universities! But in whom then will we have faith? Who will be the shepherds? Who are the hierarchs? God! Don't let your faith die in Russia! Bring back the old system of academic education, sacrilegiously destroyed by modern wise guys and zealots beyond reason. Don't allow a general retreat. Behold, those who wear soft things (softly, flatteringly speaking) are in the royal houses. Of course, court flatterers and those living luxuriously. What did you go out into the desert to see?.. was it a man dressed in soft clothes? [ OK. 7, 24 – 25]. (And the Forerunner wore rough clothes made of camel hair and a leather belt, as if a sign of his harsh and strict life and strict and seemingly harsh truth.) The truth is rough, but it is sweet to God. I thank the Lord, who has prospered me in establishing a brotherhood to care for the poor and who has won the hearts of my parishioners towards me. I dare in the Lord. In the sixth grade of the gymnasium today I read the letters of Blessed Jerome of Stridon 11 to Eustochia the virgin; By the way, he describes the harshness of his life, bread and water, and sometimes after a week, reclining on the bare ground, unceasing prayer. I do not imitate, damned one, any saint and do not work for the sake of the Lord and the salvation of my soul. Today, two beggars who worked in my garden were given 22 and a half kopecks to one, and 17 and a half kopecks to the other (the guy from Klimov’s house) so that they would work and not come to me. But why am I angry over the ashes? Why am I mourning? Am I embarrassed? God! give me love, silence, meekness, gentleness and complete dispassion! telegram from Ruza about the death of father Grigory Ivanovich Tsvetkov; at six and a half o'clock in the evening I served a memorial service in the cathedral for the repose of his soul. Man is the image of God, and the priest is purely the image of God, as bearing the dignity and image of Christ - a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. May the Lord Himself have mercy on His priest, forgiving him every sin, voluntary and involuntary. And may the Lord give to our poverty the grace and strength to love our deceased brother sincerely even after his death, remembering him with zeal in prayers. Grant, Lord, to honor and love every person as created in the image of God, so that we may love with all our hearts the Primordial One Himself. He who says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, is a liar: for he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? [ 1Jn. 4, 20]. With all my soul I thank You, Most merciful, gentle, sinless, long-tempered Lord, for Thou hast had mercy three times quickly on me, a great sinner, when I, in cramped conditions and sorrow of sin, with contrition of heart, cried out to Thee for mercy and salvation. You healed the burning ulcers of my soul, took away my tightness and my confusion, and revived me entirely with Your grace, Your mercy. I praise Your mercy, which is not overcome by my malice; Punishing me righteously, please quickly when I sincerely acknowledge my sins and repent of them. Glory to You! Be so merciful, Lord, to all sinners who repent! Rejoice that you have the opportunity to do good to someone every day and consider the poor or anyone else to whom you do good as your benefactors 12. For mercy is the true acquisition of the soul. What is our greed or greed? (Say it in your ear or publicly.) We often eat and drink too much just so that we don’t leave it for others, or so that what’s left doesn’t spoil or be thrown to animals, or so we don’t leave too much. It’s better, more pleasant, you see, to load yourself to the brim and barely move your vessel overflowing with food and drink, than to put a moderate load into it, corresponding to the capacity and needs of the vessel! As if it were better to spoil yourself than for food to spoil or be thrown to animals. Oh, senselessness, oh, blind passion, oh, swinish greed! Christ the King! We have sinned before You beyond measure! We are unrequited! Your compassion and long-suffering are immeasurable, but our sins have multiplied more than the sand of the sea! But may Your immeasurable compassion overcome the immensity of our sins; only grant before the end that You truly repent and bear fruits worthy of repentance! (Yesterday in the evening I ate too much cream precisely so as not to leave too much for the servants, who allegedly steal the cream and give it to others; I ate ham so that the rest would not spoil. Yes, let him give it to himself, and thank God! This is relief from excess burden for both body and soul!) It’s better, you see, to drown out every good, bright thought and feeling in yourself by eating and drinking a lot, than not to satisfy your insane greed! It is better to eclipse, disfigure, suppress, trample on the image of God in oneself, than to be left behind by an extra piece and an extra sip! For the same thing, we get it right from our invisible enemy! That's why he bullies us, and that's why he laughs at us terribly! But we still feel itching. He will let you go - and again for old sins! O man, man! How beloved you are, exalted by God, what extreme, amazing care of God you have been awarded, and how you neglect this care! How senselessly, ungratefully, impudently you push away the hand of heavenly love and help! The Son of God clothed himself with you, because He took upon Himself entirely your nature, except for sin; you are deified, you are invited to a holy, heavenly, angelic life, you are given all the Divine powers for life and piety, and you are attached to the senseless cattle and become like them yourself [Ps. 48, 13 ]! Silverstov has Ambrose of Milan 13. May 2, 72. Beyer has Saint Philip, Metropolitan of Moscow 14. Instead of moving forward from perfection to perfection, as befits the children of God, in order to succeed in all virtues, we succeed in wordless passions: envy, pride, anger, intemperance, carnal passion, greed; We want to acquire the treasures of the whole world, only to destroy our soul! Like crayfish we crawl on the ground and back away, and not like eagles we rise to the skies, where our true fatherland is! Oh, nailing to the ground, strange and terrible! Oh, the disease of mankind due to the eating of the forbidden fruit! God grant that our fraternal union with our deceased relatives and those we know does not cease beyond the grave, so that love does not go out after death, but burns with a bright flame and the everlasting, sincere memory of the deceased remains in us until our death. With the measure we use, it will be measured to us [Matt. 7, 2]. Passionate flesh strives with zealous malice to stop giving to the poor - this is the sowing of goodness and mercy for the future life, in order to accumulate gold and silver in our treasuries - and the spirit wants to constantly do good, to constantly sow and seek fruit for salvation, in order to appear unashamed at the last judgment, in order to gain mercy by grace. When there are a lot of beggars, it’s sickening; when there are none, it’s boring, because there is no medicine, cleansing, or food for the soul. With the passions and pleasures of life, like butts, the enemy daily incites us to all passions or, like stings, stings us. Be above earthly desires, soar with your mind and heart, and the demons will have nothing with which to sting us, and there will be no pretexts for anger, rage, malice. With all my soul I thank the many-merciful Lord, who quickly heard me in my sorrow and distress during the inflammation of sin, when I cried out to Him with all my heart for mercy and healing of me, many-passionate. The Lord saved me with His mercy many times in one evening, not to mention the whole day - he saves me in church, on the road, at home and in the houses of parishioners. So, this evening he saved me in the house of M.O. Britnev, when I, feeling in my heart the attraction of enmity towards my sister Anna Konstantinovna, repented before God secretly, admitted my guilt and asked Him for forgiveness. Soon the Lord gave tears of tenderness, took away my sin, forgave my guilt, took away sorrow and oppression from my soul and gave me peace. Glory to Thee, Lord! But give me, Lord, generosity and meekness and perfect kindness with patience. I thank the Lord, who again took away my sinful corruption and spiritual death during the evening tea and snacks at home, when they were talking about Anna Konstantinovna being sick and I did not sympathize with her. I looked up to the Lord in repentance, was touched and shed tears about my disastrous state of mind - a state of insensibility and hard-heartedness and even gloating, and the Lord took away from my soul death and the shadow of death, the darkness of demons, confusion and oppression. I calmed down. Glory to the Lord, who revives me, a spiritual dead man, reeking of all sorts of passions, and who gives me the fragrance of His grace. Ten and a half o'clock in the evening. In the disastrous circumstances of the lives of our neighbors, and our own, the thoughts, feelings, dispositions, aspirations of our hearts are revealed, namely: towards whom we are sincerely disposed - towards God or towards the world, whether we love our neighbor or only ourselves, whether we feel sorry for him or money; food and drink, clothing, generally necessary things for him or items of luxury and pleasure; whether we are God-loving or money-loving, stingy or generous, evil or kind, hypocrites or sincere and fair, etc. The hours of daily eating and drinking also show whether we are greedy or abstinent, selfish or love others sincerely, whether we regret or do not spare them a sweet piece, whether we have God or the Lord Himself in our belly, gratefully or ungratefully, like animals, we accept the gifts of God every day. And the fulfillment of a task or requirement, for which a monetary reward follows, often reveals in the person who fulfills it a money-loving or selfless disposition. Giving alms, the spirit with which we give it and the amount of it also reveal either selfish or selfless character, the degree of love for one’s neighbor and its very character or degree of self-love. In various everyday circumstances, the properties of a person and the disposition of his soul are constantly tempted. Each person, his heart with all his thoughts and twists, is fully known to God, who tests hearts and wombs. Man sees on the face, but God looks on the heart. May 4, 1872 The day of the burial of my brother-in-law, father Grigory Tsvetkov in Ruza. May the most merciful Lover of Souls rest the soul of our brother and forgive him and our sins. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not the God of the dead, but of the living [Matt. 22, 32 ]; The God of brother Gregory is the God of the living, and not the dead - for he too is alive. May the union of Christ's love unite us after death. In misfortunes and sorrows, the disposition of a person’s soul is also known: does he believe in God as the most perfect good, as the perfect truth, wisdom, power, or does he imagine Him to be not completely good, unjust, cruel and gives madness to God 15 . We often suffer righteously for our sins and dare to think that God is unjust, cruel to us, or many think that He is not wise, not righteous, not holy, not humanely governing people, making some rich or noble, and others poor and low, some healthy, and others sick, giving some success in everything, and to others, as it were, failure, dooming some to hard, incessant labor, and others, as it were. to idleness, laziness, bliss, inaction with ready, rich means for life and for every pleasure in life. In order to say any litany worthily, one must oneself be great, exalted, just as great is the Church of God, how great were the saints: the apostles and holy fathers, who composed the litanies and church prayers by the Holy Spirit. You yourself cling to earthly things: you are voluptuous, you love money, you are ambitious, and that is why earthly things are so embedded in your heart, that is why you turn away from heavenly things; you suffer from earthly addictions; fast, despise earthly things: sweets, money, honor and glory. Worldly addictions greatly inhibit the soul. The more the enemy laughs at me, the more painful it is for me, the more I eat, the more intense the agony of passions in me. From what important thoughts, from what important general prayers does Belial distract me through his addiction to perishable bread (prosphyra during proskomedia and liturgy), which I often do not eat! I please people by sending prosphyras, but what do they do to me? Something for temporary life. But this must be done. What heavenly joys and joys a Christian is deprived of through addiction to earthly pleasures! God in Christ forgave us all our sins: how can you be angry and embittered with your neighbor for his sins against you? Are you perfect yourself, never making mistakes? But if you are not perfect and you often make various mistakes yourself, then don’t you want them to forgive you? Aren't you the one who says: sorry, sorry! Farewell to others too. It was burdensome for my soul to drink tea in the morning and eat prosfirka: it was hard for me at mass and it was difficult to pray. Only Divine grace, this life-giving power of God, defeated the deadening power that raged within me. (And he only ate half a prosphyra.) At lunch I ate roast meat with rich gravy and salad, and then noodles, and it was also hard for me after lunch: the green salad was probably hard on the stomach - powerlessness in walking. All human evil is by nature: the evil inflicted on us by people, perhaps through our own fault, we remember for a long time and, on occasion, are ready to avenge it, to gloat when an attack befalls them; and the good that they have done to us, as well as their good disposition towards us, we soon forget, whereas if we ourselves cause harm to someone, we forget it and want others to whom it was done by us to also forget, and we want to perpetuate the good, although small, that we have done to our neighbors in ourselves and others and, on occasion, we remind it, we put it on display. Such is our pride and our anger! Why don’t we treat our neighbors the way we would like other people to treat us? Let us be fair and not remember the evil done to us by our neighbors, but let us remember the good that they have done to us many times, and even if they haven’t done it, we will not demand it, considering ourselves unworthy to receive it from them, and we will do them every kind of good, so that we may be the sons of God, His sun shining on the evil and the good, sending rain to the righteous and the unjust [Matt. 5. 45 ]; Let us love our enemies as morally sick, just as we love ourselves, filled with all kinds of sins, so that we may receive forgiveness of sins for love. For love covers a multitude of sins [1 Pet. 4, 8]. Sins and evil dispositions of the heart eat at us and prevent us from looking at the commandments of the Lord and fulfilling them. Let us not, like the pagans, love only those who love us and welcome only those who are favorable to us, for otherwise we will not enter the Kingdom of God. Having achieved perfection in a short time, he fulfilled long years; for his soul was pleasing to the Lord, and therefore he hastened from the midst of wickedness. But people saw this and did not understand, did not even think that grace and mercy are with His saints and providence for His elect [Wis. 4, 13 – 15]. The text of the Holy Scriptures, which came to mind when I thought about the death of my dear brother-in-law, Father Grigory Ivanovich Tsvetkov. Didn’t the Heavenly King Jesus Christ often appear to me in a dream, especially after giving kindly to the poor or fervently praying for the king, and communicate so kindly, closely, and in a friendly manner with me? The special emotional pleasure during and after this dream proves the validity of this assumption. So, let me not be discouraged and let me not be irritated when I give to the poor. The Lord Himself accepts what is given. I thank the Lord for His miracles in me of goodness, good obedience, strength, manifested in me today, May 5th, in the morning, when I was going to the gymnasium and was in the governor’s office: I pushed a beggar for deception, real or imaginary, and for that I myself was deeply wounded, my insides were inflamed as if from poison, it became cramped, heavy, diarrhea. But when I cried out to the Lord, when I cried out and knocked on the doors of His mercy with faith, boldness, reason, and hope, then the Lord had mercy on me and gave me health of soul and peace. And in the evening the Lord also delivered. Yesterday (Saturday evening) I had a lot of fussing with myself, how much I needed to exercise a lot in the fresh air so that my favorite cheesecake with cottage cheese, eaten with appetite in the proper quantity, would be cooked properly and turn into a benefit. And how much tightness, coldness of heart, confusion, and mental fears because of her during the all-night vigil! That's how harmful all sorts of excesses are! My sheep - the beggars - scattered with the onset of summer and few ask me for alms, but some resort to blatant deception (a forged letter from Kirilyuk, written to the beggars), perhaps due to our hardness of heart. Need forced them to gather at the Cathedral and at our church house, and not laziness, not idleness. Yesterday I received a letter of love and affection from Anna Konstantinovna. God bless! May our hearts be united by brotherly love. Some people are constantly drawn to destruction by gluttony, others by love of money, others by ambition, sometimes the same person by all these passions, others by fornication; although they pray, their prayer is insincere, hypocritical, shallow, not spiritual, not fruitful, for it does not change or renew them; although they give alms, but not from the heart, not with love, not willingly, not with zeal, not with affection, but according to established custom, coldly, carelessly, insensitively, sometimes sternly and gloomily, as if thereby losing a lot - and this alms does not expand, does not enliven, does not renew their hearts with love, but, on the contrary, often narrows, freezes and hardens it. A true Christian must be free from all passion and perfect in every virtue. Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect [Matt. 5, 48]. Do you deny Satan and all his works, that is, do you sincerely desire to abandon your will, your sins, bad habits, vices, passions? Are you compatible with Christ, that is, do you desire with all your heart to fulfill the will of Christ, His commandments? Pampered, spoiled by various carnal pleasures, satiated, you will be subjected to torment the more, the greater your luxury and delicacy. Should sinners lead such a life? Or should we lead a difficult, sorrowful and harsh life? He who was no longer among those born of women, the Forerunner of the Lord, what kind of life did he lead? He was a holy prophet, angel and martyr, a neighbor's friend of the Lord - and lived like that. And how do we sinners live? What can we expect in our lives? We have taken it all in here. If we do not subject ourselves to labor and deeds for our sins: we do not watch, we do not pray, we do not give alms, then the more severely the Lord, the Righteous Judge, will punish us, the more torment we will suffer at the Judgment. A bird, if only its toenail gets into the bird-catcher's net, is caught. So, because of one weakness, because of one worldly addiction, a person becomes a victim of the fisher of men - the devil and is in extreme poverty. A Christian must be perfect. Guard your heart above all else, for from it are the springs of life [Prov. 4, 23]. Before we begin to work for the Lord, the passions in us are often silent, as if they do not exist, but as soon as they begin to work, they arm themselves against us, like hidden robbers, or attack us like animals, captivating and killing the poor captive of sin - the soul. This is the experience. Appearance seduces us because even a person with an ugly face seems very pretty and handsome and is ready to admire himself, looking at himself in the mirror several times a day and preening himself like a groom - but about the soul, good-looking or ugly, there is little grief, and yet it is always almost disfigured by the passions nesting in it and corrupting it. So, cleanse the inside of the glass, so that the outside will also be pure and beautiful [Matt. 23, 26]. Turn your gaze inward more often than outward, do not deceive yourself. Why the idolatry of gluttony, love of money, ambition? Why anger, deceit, hardness of heart, pride, stinginess, despondency, fornication, negligence, laziness? Why hasn’t Christianity penetrated the mind, the heart, the will, the body, the flesh and blood, the brains, the bones?.. My mental distress was great on Sunday morning (May 7) after drinking plenty of tea in the evening sweets and wine (he was 16) and after eating cheesecake at dinner greedily (it was fatty and difficult to cook). Like rivers of destruction, they came to my heart and carried me into the abyss of hell, into destruction; Evil spirits strongly opposed me to pronounce the words of prayer and captivated me, not allowing me to pronounce many sayings, especially in the Kalashnikov store; Neustroev had the same thing, but God helped me make an effort and break the enemy’s resistance: it became easier and more daring in my soul. Otherwise, the villains were completely surrounded - you couldn’t see the light, but all because of gluttony and satiety. God! What troubles! During mass I was in terrible trouble! All God's help has left me; I was all mental suffering, illness, sorrow, cramped conditions, dumbness and powerlessness. Serves it right. This is for satiety and drunkenness! The extreme painful shock of the soul and body and the clogging of the insides during mass, before it and after it, occurred from a large accumulation of scrofulous matter, which, thanks to God, finally flowed like lava through the ear and relieved me. (I drank Ryabinovka at the station, snacking on some caviar on a slice of white bread: good, healthy.) Today (May 7) on the ship, the Lord sent me as if manna from heaven for the benefit of the poor: one pious merchant, who trades against the Council, said that after his illness he became very easy on money and is ready to give to anyone who asks. I said: if you are simple, then give us a brotherhood for the poor. He said: I won’t give it to the brotherhood, but I’ll give it to you at your discretion: give it to whoever you want, even to your clerks, by the way. And then he left me. Soon he comes out again, comes up to me and gives me something wrapped in a piece of paper. I thought, I must have rolled back twenty rubles; then I’m curious - luxury! - 50 rubles and several 25 rubles! Glory to You, God, who sent me this treasure as a consolation! We must always pray to God for such a merciful giver, Ivan A... Give my sister-in-law, widow Anna Konstantinovna, 25, sextons Kutuzov and Andreyanov 5 rubles each. Anna Andreevna Uvarova... to the Verkolskaya Church. What is facial beauty, what is blush, what is eyes, what is eyebrow? Everything is rot and dust. What does a person do and is proud of? - Chimera, dream. Like Job, the enemy drowns me in pus. Grant me, Lord, patience for Job and blessing for Job. The body is drowned with pus, and the soul, and the heart is drowned by lawless thoughts and feelings, passionate excuses, insurance, and fear. Strengthen me, God, in the fight against the enemy. My strength, Lord, has depleted! There is nothing for me to stop at! Rivers of temptation carry me away like a piece of wood! I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me, with greater calm than before (that is, yesterday), to perform the Divine Liturgy with the prayers of the Most Pure Theotokos and the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, and to partake of the life-giving Mysteries without condemnation. Yesterday I ate and drank less; drank rowanberry to strengthen my nerves; the scrofula flowed from the inside out - it relieved. For everything, thank God. I did not serve Matins. Yesterday I was in the seminary church in St. Petersburg. The seminary choristers sang beautifully, especially the magnification, Praise the name of the Lord and the Easter canon. Well done, Mikhail Porfirievich. When scrofula came out of the ear, by the grace of God, he very easily and cheerfully served prayers with Nikitin in the shop and with N.M. Semenov all-night vigil with prayer service. Thanks be to God. Scrofulous lava continues to flow from the ear. Yesterday at home I drank a raw egg and had a bite of black bread - this is unnecessary, after a snack and drink at N.M. Semenov; I drank a glass of tea and had some more at home - and that’s unnecessary. Avoid excess in future. Glory to the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Through their prayers I have received health and courage. Glory to God, marvelous in His saints! May 9. Morning. in the evening after the all-night vigil at N.M. Semenov and snacks with wine and tea at Iv.T. Sidorov served the prayer service not with the ease, freedom, and peace with which Semenov had before the snack: that’s what a harmful effect food and drink have on the heart! How it fogs, burdens and deprives the soul of boldness! On the day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, he served the prayer service perfectly, easily, and ran like an eagle flew. He served thirteen prayers. But the pies are fatty from the elder of the Assumption Church N. Sidorov and N.M. Semenov's food spoiled me somewhat: it was difficult to cook, heartburn, my heart became clouded. Exam. What I was afraid of, that’s what happened: the meeting with Father Pavel Lamanov, through the action of the enemy, completely spoiled me: the enemy confused and wounded me terribly, deprived me of peace, tranquility, boldness, freedom, bound, shamed, darkened, instilled in me something that was not even in Father Pavel’s thoughts, that is, that he was neglecting me, carelessly giving me his hand. I explained after the exam: it turned out that all my torment was the work of a slanderous enemy. For three whole hours the villain tyrannized me. There was no need to drink tea or have a snack in the morning. The pie is anointed with oil - and a true Christian is anointed with the Holy Spirit. It’s good for those who keep this suit of the Holy Spirit within themselves. The basis of the countless number of our deeds lies our addiction to this temporary, corruptible life and disbelief or lack of faith in eternal life after death, beyond the grave, in the resurrection of the dead and in righteous reward for the deeds of everyone. All our worldly addictions are rooted here: covetousness, voluptuousness, ambition, envy, enmity and hatred. A storm uproots trees - temptations and demonic dirty tricks tear words out of the heart, from the mind, from the lips. Desecrated by unplaceable deeds, accursed, says the canon for communion 17. These deeds are carried out continuously within us, in the inner church of our soul. These are nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts, these are pride, malice, envy, hatred, love of money, gluttony, gluttony, fornication, murmuring, blasphemy, foul language and the like. These things continually defile us. From the heart come adultery, fornication, blasphemy, the evil eye, madness, pride, theft, false witness, blasphemy; This is the essence that defiles a person. The Word of our Lord Jesus Christ [Mk. 7, 21 – 23; Mk. 15, 19]. Drinking tea and heavy cream separately is very harmful: the heart feels heavy and tight the next day; fatty meat broth is also very hard on the stomach; everything indigestible and heavy for the stomach and soul brings melancholy and melancholy; In addition, it clogs the larynx and makes breathing, speaking, or reading and singing difficult. God! So You tempted me and made me know that I am proud and vindictive, angry and unkind to my enemies or those who have ever insulted me, and when they are exposed to misfortune and misfortune, I am sick with malice and gloating and am like a murderer, breathing malice at his victim. O fellow humans and fellow members! How intertwined we are and become akin to malice, which should be alien to us! Shouldn't love be akin to us? O holy, saving faith! I praise your strength and salvation; I glorify You, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who works savingly in us through faith, for how many times today have I hurt myself with sin - rage and anger at the poor, how many times have I kindled the fire of hell within myself, but, sincerely repenting before You and asking You for mercy and peace, I received and was healed from heart wounds, and gained peace through You. Glory to You! I myself get angry and shout at the beggars, and when one poor bourgeois woman came with a letter from me to Marya Alek. Bluebellied to St. Petersburg, was almost driven out by her, and I was cursed by the rich woman - I was offended by this and called upon her the wrath of God and wished her poverty, so that she could experience again what poverty means! God! Have mercy on me and let her go, for no one knows what he is doing: it is the charm of wealth and the spirit of malice that flatters the entire universe that spoke through her! I thank the Lord, who has now made me worthy to perform the liturgy without stumbling and to speak freely to the entire royal house at the great entrance. Glory to You, who has made me worthy of heavenly peace and heavenly life in the communion of Your most pure and life-giving Mysteries. Renew me, my Belly, and grant me to despise corruptible flesh and seek incorruptibility from You. Saturday. I thank the Lord, who has revived me and now through the communion of His Holy Mysteries and has taken away sorrow with oppression and thorns. I thank the Lord, who had mercy on me when I, angry with the peasant who had lost his ticket, and having scolded him in my hearts, repented with all my soul and diligently begged His mercy to forgive me my sins and heal me. He healed and had mercy. Glory to His long-suffering and unspeakable mercy. Five and a half o'clock in the evening. Priest John Sergiev. Don’t eat sugar buns: they are tasty, but of little benefit, they strengthen your stomach. Because of the meat food and fatty sauce today during the all-night vigil I felt extreme nervous irritation and mental weakness, and at night I slept hard: I tossed and turned from side to side. Meat produces heat in me, drinking coffee is also harmful for me: it produces heat and nervous irritation. I, scrofulous, need refreshing foods and drinks, also low-fat. Don't eat at night. There was an excess of food and, as a result, blood spoilage and scabies. The Inconceivable One was contained on the Cross and the Sinless and Holy One suffered and died on it for us sinners - therefore the Cross is Divine power for believers; the infinite and omnipotent and all-good God defeated the devil with the Cross and destroyed hell - therefore the Cross is an ulcer and fear for demons. Briefly: Divine power is inseparable from the Cross, because the Incontainable Lord of glory was nailed to it, and the stronger and more painfully He was nailed, the stronger and more inseparable His power in the Cross and with the Cross, the more painful and terrible it is for demons and for all villains. Amen. Glory to the power of Your Cross, Lord! Understanding ourselves and what we think, feel, intend, say or do is very important in human life: it awakens dormant thoughts and imparts a true view of everything. We get used to everything, our thoughts seem to fall asleep, our feelings become dulled both for the good, high, wise and holy, and for the evil, low, stupid and sinful. I often ask myself: who am I, what am I for, what does my rank mean, my title, position in the world, where am I (for example, a priest at the throne of God during worship), what does what I do mean? - brought many to a clear consciousness of their purpose and the importance of the actions performed or words spoken and brought into deep feeling and tenderness. So, in order to awaken the dormant spirit, the thinking ability, dull and calloused feelings, to cut off the corrupting will or bad inclination, one must ask oneself more often sobering questions for the soul about its purpose and everything that surrounds it and is revered by it: who am I, what am I for? For what does this and that mean? Peklevanny 18 semi-white bread is good with butter. Through vindictiveness, malice grows in us and takes deep roots in us, therefore we must soon forget the insults and evil done to us, and not become infected with malice - the disease that is the most contagious of all mental illnesses; may the goodness of God protect us from it. Since the time of the first sin, the devil has clothed us with corruption instead of the original incorruptibility, instead of an incorruptible body he has given something corruptible and destructive, instead of an incorruptible soul he has been corrupted by sins: we think about corruptible things, we desire corruptible things, we are seduced by corruptible things, we cleave to corruption, we diligently burden ourselves with corruptible things on all sides; We take decay inside ourselves without measure, we put on luxurious and beautiful decay on ourselves and are proud, puffed up by it; out of decay we build tall, numerous, intricate chambers, give them all sorts of grace, fill them with all sorts of shiny and not shiny, elegant vanity, countless trinkets, expensive and cheap, by selling which, sometimes it would be possible to do good to thousands of unfortunate people with the money raised. And alas! We add madness to madness: we boast and are vain about these trinkets, we put them on display as something important and worthy of general attention, but we completely ignore the only things we need, or we engage in them only lightly, for entertainment. A woman sometimes spends all her precious time on dressing up. Sometimes a man does not lag behind a woman; he who loves silver and gold wastes time and energy to acquire it; an ambitious person strives all his life for distinctions: he has received one thing, expects and seeks another, but about the correction of heart and character, about Christian improvement in all virtues: in abstinence, purity, chastity, meekness, humility, gentleness, obedience and devotion to the will of God, about alms, etc. – doesn’t think. The brevity of life, death, resurrection, the future judgment of the Terrible is overlooked: all attention is absorbed in the present, perishable, changeable, fleeting. Pathetic blindness of humanity! I marvel at the saints of God, how they ascended above everything corruptible, despised everything earthly and desired and achieved the heavenly! They are worthily and righteously glorified and blessed in the Orthodox Church, for their glory is holy, eternal from God, who glorified them. Morning. I commemorate two great blessings of God that have been revealed to me this day (Resurrection). Twice I became angry with the beggars, and I myself was greatly wounded in my soul, I lost peace, freedom, space, light, boldness, but through warm and soulful repentance I was pardoned by the Lord and again received peace and all the blessings of my soul. The name of the Lord, fervently believed and invoked, saved me from trouble. And he celebrated the Liturgy safely, and received the Holy Mysteries without condemnation into peace and joy of soul and body. The stomach was very strong, the chest was clogged, the voice was unclean, weak, forced. If you want people to honor you, sincerely honor every person yourself, especially those worthy of respect; This is what the apostolic word requires of us: Honor everyone, love the brotherhood [1 Pet. 2, 17]. Honor in every person the image of God, the sonship of God, the union of Christ and your own, for we are all 19 of Christ and of each other, branches of the one Vine - Christ [Jn. 15, 5]. This is how a Christian, taught by the word of the Gospel, should philosophize and act, and blessed is he who philosophizes and acts in this way: such a one will be blessed in his deeds. He laid the first fruits for creation, an incorporeal being, more creative than the angels, Thy most pure throne surrounding, call You: holy, holy, holy ecu, God Almighty 20. The Lord contemplates His Divine Goodness and Beauty, His Holiness, Wisdom and Power in the faces of the Angels - for they are created in the image of God. And in holy people the Lord also contemplates His Kindness, Holiness and Wisdom, for man was created in the image of God. What incentive is there in this to strive to become like the Prototype of God unceasingly, unremittingly, day and night, for the righteous will see God and God will see them unceasingly, intoxicating and delighting them with His all-reviving vision forever and ever. How many blessings we lose by not striving for God and clinging to earthly things! Wise and blessed are the saints who have despised all worldly beauty, all earthly wealth, all earthly sweetness for God. I felt sick before the wedding when I became angry with some beggars for frequently asking for alms; I was all in an irritated, painful state, especially because the scrofula inside me intensified and stung me; his stomach was as strong as a rock; I was completely on fire. Before the wedding, I walked around the church to have fun and secretly pray to the Lord together, to repent from my soul in private of my sins; in church he fell for a long time with fervent prayer at the throne of God, wresting mercy from the Lord. The marriage was celebrated with difficulty - barely a word came out of the tongue; There was definitely something stuck in my throat: I could barely clear my throat - it was from a clogged stomach! After marriage, he was baptized by a shoemaker in Ekaterininskaya Street; his chest was also not entirely free, but he spoke boldly and clearly. I couldn’t utter a few words because of the devil’s obstacle. After the christening I drank a glass of sherry. I ate marmalade and raisins, drank a glass of beer and honey. This was very useful: I felt encouraged, there was a slight upheaval in my stomach; then he went to the widow M.M. [...] and ate an excellent fish pie and a sweet pie; then I drank coffee, perfectly prepared, with cream - and it all worked great - it resolved when I got home. I've recovered. I thank the Lord, who once again extended His life-giving and all-powerful hand to me, to have mercy and save me from the aphids of sin, when I sincerely, from the depths of my soul, cried out to Him in my distress. Behold, secondly, the Lord saved me this morning from my guilt (angry words to the poor) and gave me space in sorrow, peace in confusion. Well, I literally tinkered with my stomach this evening after treating the monk to tea and whatever God sent: I myself filled my belly with tea and bread and butter until I was satiated and burdened, when the lunch food had not yet boiled down and had not settled into its groove. What did I do to normalize my stomach? I walked and ran for at least three hours: from 8 to 11 pm; and even then I still felt excess in my stomach, tightness. The brown bread was especially heavy, like soft butter, and especially the fatty sauce of the beef roast dinner. I have sinned before God and myself! Don’t eat soft black bread in the evening, or fatty sauce or meat in general. I walked with an amazing man, a man of truth, a man of the word of God, who sees grief; He expressed many, many bitter truths for the world, especially about dogs: one lady was kissing a dog on the face, another was leading it on a chain, suddenly a dog ran at her, and they crossed each other: the lady threw both the dog and the chain and went to run. Do not be deceived by someone else’s face or your own: it is a deceptive and fleeting color; look more often at the face of the soul, how ugly and unclean it is from the sins nesting in the heart. By filling your stomach with excess food and drink, you fill your soul and body with prickly and burning thorns, and you put shackles on yourself. This is the true word. Father Vladimir is a monk from the Zolotnikovsky Monastery. He commanded me to pray for him: the humble servant of God is sick in his feet, and he carries out obedience with obedience, humbly and patiently. I have a lot to learn from him. Remember him, most merciful Lord! I thank the Lord, who gave me tears of tenderness at evening prayer while reading the canon to the Holy Forerunner, and today at prayer during the remembrance and invocation of the names of the saints who are usually and daily remembered by me. Again and again yesterday I learned the insignificance of earthly food and drink and remembered how precious and life-giving the heavenly food and drink, the Divine Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ are: those burden and darken the soul, but these bring lightness, light, life, peace. Students study the Law of God in order to get a good mark from the teacher, and not in order to fulfill it. Resurrection. Morning. I thank the Lord, who continues my existence in prosperity. I thank the Lord, who gave me tears of tenderness during yesterday’s all-night vigil while reading the prayers for communion and the akathist with the canon to the Sweetest Jesus. At the beginning of the all-night vigil I felt mental and physical relaxation, coldness, lethargy, aversion (apathy) to prayer, heaviness and pain. After tears of tenderness, I seemed to perk up, come to life, and be reborn. Glory to the mercy of the Lord, who continues to show me His ineffable mercies and His miracles of healing. I praise the Lord, who resurrects me from spiritual death. May the Lord do this to all sinners like me. May the Lord fulfill all my requests for good, may there be a House of Diligence and a Trade School in this city of beggars for the sake of people. Yes, Lord. Amen. Wake up. The day is clear, warm, east wind - from St. Petersburg. Thank the Lord for the goodness of the air. God! Forbid the demon to confuse and weaken my heart when pronouncing prayers and certain names, so that I will not give Your people temptation through my weakness. Wake up! Amen. Mrs. Vladimirova reported that Anna Konstantinovna, my sister, even when Grigory Ivanovich was at school, was very pleased with me, compared me with my own father and prayed for me, sending me to take out some of the prosphora. Thank you for the memory, for the good consciousness and for the feeling. Grant me, Lord, the feeling of my wretchedness, the poverty of all virtues and the feeling of love for every person. Hey, Lord! Wake up. I thank the Lord, who punishes and has mercy on me; The service of the early liturgy today was sorrowful and painful for me due to the blockage of my stomach and tightness in my sides and the resulting irritability; I had difficulty saying exclamations; but the Lord comforted me, my Life-Giver revived me, my Savior saved me immediately, in the moment when with faith and with every affirmation I partook of His divine, holy, immortal, life-giving and terrible Mysteries. Afterwards, at the prayer service for the Mother of God, the enemy kicked me in the prayer service, especially when reading the prayer of the Mother of God by heart, but then I strengthened myself by fighting and resisting him while reading the prayers and dogmatists, or Mother of God, and firmly pronounced all the words that the blasphemer of the name of God and His saints opposed. I praise the Lord, who has shown His saving right hand on me! At the prayer service in Gostiny Dvor near Mogilev and on the mountain at the fisherman’s, the enemy strongly opposed me, especially the fisherman: here he caused such aching in my legs during the prayer service that I could not stand on my right foot, such was the pain; I barely served the prayer service. After the prayer service, he took off his boot from his right foot, then his sock, wiped off the sweat with the sock, and put on one boot. Without a thread sock, the pain went away, thank God. The severe pain did not last long, but I, cowardly and impatient, internally grumbled and was insolent. I repent to the God of my belly. I did not act like Job. Do we really receive good things from the hand of the Lord, and will we not endure the evil ones? [Job. 2, 10]. I did not have the patience of Jobl. I thank the Lord, who gave me tears of tenderness at the memorial service for Evdokia Krayushkina, an old woman of over ninety years old, at the thought of her simplicity. I asked the Lord for simplicity of heart, so that I could live in simplicity of heart with everyone all the days of my life, for hitherto I had learned all wickedness, all malice, envy, pride, fornication, intemperance, impatience, cowardice, self-will and other sins. That's why I teared up. I thank the Lord, who controlled my mind and heart and tongue during the celebration of the memorial service. Real life is war and struggle, a narrow and sorrowful path, constant dying (I die every day [1 Cor. 15:31]), sorrow and illness; it is preparation and training for eternal life, and not life itself. Therefore, no one should be discouraged by the misadventures and misfortunes that befall them, but surrender themselves to the will of God and thank God for everything, who directs everything for good. May 21, 1872 One o'clock in the morning. The day was very hot. 22 degrees. The Lord strikes us with sorrow, but even more comforts us (as he often does with me); strikes with severe illness or pain, may it cleanse the sin nesting in our hearts, and may it teach us to value the gift of health all the more; shows the stench, ugliness and horror of the decay of our sinful bodies, stricken by death, so that in the whole world it will show the superiority of the righteous, whose bodies even after death are fragrant and adorned with incorruption, showing life and life-giving power - before sinners, whose bodies emit a stench, let it show that the path of faith and virtue is the path of the belly, and the path of unbelief and vice is the path of death, and may it teach us to give due honor virtues. May 21, one and a half o'clock in the morning. The monk of Athonite said: the demon who appeared in reality told him that they would have killed the sovereign long ago if they had not prayed for him, and him, if there had not been an Angel sitting on his neck. How much, then, is the unceasing prayer of the Church for the sovereign, and how carefully the Guardian Angel protects us. Glory to the Lord Provider and common Guardian of all! Without His all-good, wise and all-powerful Providence, demons would turn the whole world into a lifeless desert. He would be a spectacle of horror and death in all its forms. The Lord allows them to do great dirty tricks now, but this is only to intimidate the careless and for our caution in life. Write a request to the Governor for the Workers' House to take fatherly participation or to invite all military personnel, at least the year, to participate in the Brotherhood. generals, colonels, lieutenant colonels, captains of the 1st rank with sufficient allowance. May 22, 1872 Remember that earthly things belong to the earth, and spiritual and heavenly things belong to the Spirit of God, heaven. It talks about the soul and body of a person when he dies. What do you need to take care of? What to prefer? I did terrible harm to myself today by eating at 11 o’clock in the morning smoked white fish with soft black bread, stale cheesecake and undercooked meat soup, and, moreover, drinking a glass of sherry and a glass of vodka. I caused the greatest heaviness and weakness to my soul and body. In class I felt very difficult, my tongue changed due to weakness, I was in an extremely tense position; I didn’t sit through another class and dismissed the 2nd grade students from rehearsal twenty minutes earlier than usual. The lesson is not to eat anything early, especially heavy foods such as salted fish. When he came home, he sinned: he became angry with his brother Alexei and cursed and reproached him with harsh words. Forgive me, Lord! Correct me, Lord, proud, proud, impatient, evil. What did I hear today, what tempting story about the beggars living in Kronstadt? Young women get drunk, become debauched because they have nothing to do, send children to collect alms, and drink what they bring; girls are deprived of their chastity in early youth. (On a merchant's wall from one woman.) Check the truth of what was said. Look, is the woman you are talking about pregnant?.. And the city grandmother must examine the girl. The governor about this. Oh, how we need a Workhouse and a Trade School. And many beggars also drink. (The armless guy also [gets hurt]: he has money for everything - both wine and cigarettes.) They have made thousands and hundreds of thousands of capital with unjust profits and think that all this wealth belongs to them, and not together with the poor, they think to be content with tiny sacrifices to God and dream that they have fulfilled all their debts, cleared away all their iniquities, covered their covetousness. Tuesday. He served the cathedral mass outside the city: Father Archpriest V. Saltykov, myself and Father Theodore. Extreme physical and mental weakness; fatigue from walking, from little sleep, and perhaps partly from food (sour cream and bread): he almost fell asleep, dozed while standing at the throne; exclamations were spoken with difficulty and did not finish; two names of the royal family - and I couldn’t pronounce them properly. After communion, he perked up, thank God, and finished the service safely, reading the prayer of permission quite firmly. In the evening he united the maiden Olga from the schism to the Holy Orthodox Church; everything went well, but during the anointing, I was embarrassed by a sly glance at my naked breast and was stung by sin due to the impurity of my heart. For a long time then I prayed to the Lord with all my heart to forgive me my weakness and cleanse my sin, and the Lord had mercy. Woe to me, a sinner. Flow, O schismatics, into the motherly embrace of the Church, into the embrace of the Lord, His Most Pure Mother, the holy apostles, prophets, hierarchs, martyrs, saints, righteous people and all the saints from whose bosom you have fallen, although through error you consider yourself to be in communion with them! Oh! This is a pitiful and destructive delusion - to think that you are in the fence of the Lord and among His chosen ones, when you are completely alien to God and His saints in the spirit of your rebellion and delusion, self-will and stubbornness, in the spirit of division and enmity! Spiritual rebirth is always accomplished through sorrow and hardship, and so the Lord cleanses and corrects me every day in this way. I thank the Doctor and Savior of our souls. The old man must die so that the new man can live; carnal pleasures must be healed by the bitterness of temptations; they must disappear so that there can be a place of spiritual sweetness in the soul, for both are incompatible. Carnal food that is too pleasant relaxes and mortifies the spirit - only the incorruptible food of the word of God and the life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord strengthens the soul and body. I have to eat and drink a little, that is, just a little, because I often partake of the Holy Mysteries. How true is the word of the Apostle that the soul that feeds extensively dies alive [1 Tim. 5, 6]. I experience this myself all the time. And I dare to inwardly repent that I maintain chastity, that it feels like it’s making me cramped, that it’s healthier for me to corrupt myself with fornication... O Righteous God! What do Your eyes see, O Lightest One more than the sun, in the depths of my soul! Merchant Gerasim Murashov is a very daring person; he said that I could not be his mentor because I did not have children. And how he holds his children! How does he live with his wife? I’m not saying this as a condemnation, but as a keepsake. On the way back from Raivolov 22 in 1867 by water on a fishing boat, when a strong storm arose and a terrible squall hit, the Mother of God saved us through Her miraculous Tikhvin icon in a small form - I thank the Benevolent and All-Powerful Intercessor from the troubles and evils that befall us. Her icon was then in my chest pocket. May the memory of this be preserved by me and my family until the grave. She, the Merciful One, also delivered me from a sore throat (I almost choked) that I got in St. Petersburg around Christmas. Thank you. My heart is corrupted, and because of its corruption I have offended and continue to offend many, causing trouble. Morning. 5 o'clock. God bless! A magnificent day begins: clear, warm. Help me, Lord, our Life, to perform the early liturgy without stumbling. The sleep was calm, healthy due to the fact that I drank only tea, hardly eating anything; I used very little cream - fatty foods are bad for me, my stomach has a hard time coping with it, I have to eat and drink carefully. Fat is a burden and struggle for the heart. It is not for nothing that fasting food is prohibited: it is fatty and heavy. I need to preach original sermons, that is, my own compositions, without dozing or sleeping. I thank the Lord, who made me worthy, dead in sins, to perform the Divine, life-giving Liturgy, although with difficulty and with extreme struggle, and with crowding, and sorrow, and fear from the slander of the evil one, but savingly at the end, or after communion of the Life-giving Mysteries, for, having tasted, I saw that the Lord is good, I calmed down and revived, although soon I again fell into struggle out of envy and the malice of the evil one. The more and sweeter you eat and drink the day before, especially wine, the weaker my spirit is the next day, and with it my body. Damned, until now I live like a pagan, not in words, but in deeds saying: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die!” [Is. 22, 13]. Addiction to earthly things brings into our soul the most severe war, sometimes to the point of bloody sweat, and this war happens most especially when we serve God, we dare to approach Him out of obligation and duty. Then the enemy raises a terrible war against us, ready to devour us in rage. The more you arm yourself against invisible enemies, the stronger and more furiously they arm themselves against you and sometimes make you a bloodless martyr, suffering mortal internal torment. You recognize another lover of God by the fact that he is publicly beaten and deposed by demons, for example, during a divine service, because they, the accursed ones, know how dear it is to a lover of God to be unstumbling and perfect in standing and serving God. This is exactly what they don’t want to allow, but they do everything they can to stop him, confuse him, crowd him, press him, confuse him, darken him. Today, during the all-night vigil (on Ascension), I was lifeless, lethargic, cold, lazy, as a result of an angry refusal of alms to a beggar; The beggar was supplied with everything and sent to work, but he did not want to work and again came to beg. We imitate each other in evil and even surpass each other in this: is someone evil towards me, and I answer him with evil, thinking evil about him. Why don’t we conquer the evil in ourselves, as well as the good in others? God! Help us to improve. May 25. 5 o'clock in the morning. Ascension. Let us ascend from passions to dispassion, from earth to heaven. Woe is our heart. May there be glory to You, Lord, from us, the glory of good deeds, and not just words. Wake up! All-good, all-pure, all-powerful, all-wise Dominion - Our Lady Theotokos, help us in all good deeds, and moreover, teach us every good deed. Amen. Ascension. This is my wish and my heartfelt prayer on this day. He served early mass, with God's help, quite well, but in cramped conditions and sorrow; the voice was forced, quite loud, even very, very loud, but not clear from the clogging of a stronger stomach, and perhaps from satiety from the evening, although it seems that he ate very little (black bread with white fish and dried herring, he drank tea with jam). I took communion with faith and hope, without stumbling, into the peace and silence of my spiritual powers. I thank the Lord. After an early mass, a water-blessing prayer was served in the church for the holiday in front of a multitude of common people, then on two military ships - the monitors “Sagittarius” and “Unicorn” - two parting prayers with significant boldness. Glory to God for His grace, strengthening me and saving me from weaknesses. Ascension of the Lord. Eleven and three quarters of an hour before noon, May 25th, 1872. How corrupt is my heart! Walking in the garden (in the park and then in the engineering garden) and talking with Father Porfiry Vasilyevich Nadporozhsky, I felt and allowed for a moment gloating and ill will in my heart towards him when I saw that he was pale and thin, and yet he did nothing bad to me; I immediately felt sick in my heart about my malice, repented and prayed to the Lord to cleanse my sin, remove my guilt and grant me sincere love and goodwill towards my brother. And in fact, food alone will inhabit the earth [Isa. 5, 8 ]? Am I the only one who will gather the good food of our God? And I secretly wished ill-will out of envy towards my brother, for he enjoyed and continues to enjoy large incomes in the city to the detriment of the cathedral clergy, and therefore of me, the last of all. But are we poor? Are they deprived of anything?.. Oh, the womb is an idol! Because of him, all the passions take up arms against us: anger, envy, ill will, pride, fornication, rage, rebellion, covetousness, unbrotherly love, deceit, and deceit. Oh, I must immediately crucify my evil flesh with its passions and lusts! I must not follow the evil and earthly inclinations of my heart. I must love my neighbor unfailingly, forgiving him of insults against me, weaknesses and mistakes, especially to cherish love for my family, who eat from the same meal with me, against whom the enemy especially arouses pride, anger and envy because they allegedly destroy my property, and not God’s. If there is anger and envy or pride in your heart that has grown old against them for these things, then immediately uproot them and love them with selflessness, regardless of the fact that they take advantage of my goods. I need to rejoice about this, because because of them the Lord will show me mercy at the trial. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy [Matt. 5, 7]. Is the Lord God a stepfather and not a father for some people who are not worse than you, when you have a lot of everything and live in every pleasure, while others have almost nothing, are deprived of everything and live in tears? Do they not expose you with their poverty in your hardness of heart, and through them does not the heavenly Judge, who has to judge the entire universe, pronounce His eternal righteous sentence on you here? How many gifts were poured out on you from heavenly goodness and how did you use them? Did you use them for deeds of Christian love and mercy? Did you remember about your poor brethren, about the needs of the churches of God? Have you neglected and forgotten them? Judgment without mercy to him who showed no mercy [Jas. 2.13]. Oh, how many beggars will cry out against you before the face of the Righteous Judge on that terrible day of Judgment! What will you answer Him? So, while there is still time to do works of mercy, do them. The night comes when no one can do [Jn. 9, 4]. Morning. Six o'clock. The day is clear and hot. The earth is dry: we need rain, we really need it. Rain, O Lord, on Your land and on this city in which we live. Wake up! The enemy constantly tries to sow enmity between me and the brethren of the church and between me and my family and turns all sorts of little things into pretexts for it: the inferior brother’s faults, the elder brother’s wealth and stinginess towards the poor, his solidity, and even his calmness, and at home bread and salt, clothes, housing - all the little things: an unpleasant word, an unkind look, some kind of prohibition, etc. The earthly church prays to God in the image of the heavenly one, who prays 23 for us and for the whole world. Clothe me with the robe of incorruptibility, the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation. Hey, Lord, wake up! Sincere 24 reveal that we only wear the mask of virtue, and do not have virtue itself: our left side then shows out! How wise is a man, always sincerely kind, in whom there is never any guile! He will never be put to shame. Before the Cup of life I always drink the cup of death, before the Cup of joy - the cup of great sorrow and oppression and difficult struggle with insolent and violent passions or with the principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spirits of wickedness in high places. Since we are not interested, due to our passion for earthly things and the impurity of our hearts, in the highest Treasure - God and eternal life, we are interested in vain toys, like children: earthly rewards, wealth, fleeting power, corruptible food, the beautiful appearance of people, the beautiful furnishings of a home, etc. things - theaters, circuses, etc. Is this necessary for our soul, is it useful? Does this lead us to eternity, to God, to eternal bliss? Isn’t it more likely to nail you to the ground, to a place of exile and wandering? May 26. Eight o'clock in the morning. Hot day. 24 degrees. Give me rain, Lord! God! Give me the grace to always despise all the sinful impulses of my accursed, multi-passionate flesh and my all-passionate heart and to do the opposite to them, that is, to do Your will; not my sinful, passionate will, but Yours, holy and perfect, be it done, Lord! The history of Christian charity in the time of the apostles, during persecution - Archdeacon Lawrence 25, during the triumph of the Christian faith - Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Nicholas the Wonderworker, Peacock, Bishop of Nolan 26. (Correct, but controlled assistance to the poor; need, necessity, is obvious to everyone; many homeless people with strength, skill, many play pranks; government support - we are all brothers, we must encourage each other [for good deeds]. Will motivate. The Most Pure Sacrifice of the Son of God. To the Governor a petition for the House of Workers.) How good and quick the Lord is to all who call on Him with faith and hope! This morning, getting out of bed and going to wash, I knelt down and prayed to Him to give rain to a thirsty land - and in the evening He brought up the rain clouds, and now it will rain (it didn’t). Glory to You, Lord, who does not disgrace my faith and hope! I also asked the Lord to encourage the mighty and strong people in the city to establish a House of Workers and a Vocational School, and so the Lord did. I did something disgusting, asking for a fish dinner with black and white bread in the evening: this dinner made me sleep badly at night - I was perspiring heavily, there was bitterness in my mouth (mustard), pain in my back; no need to eat at night. And how easy and good it was for me before this snack, especially in the engineering garden! Grace! How much we harm ourselves through intemperance! O for all useful abstinence! Be a constant companion in my life! Amen. May 27. Saturday. The hot day begins. At dinner I drank half a glass of vodka, ate fatty roast meat, then drank two glasses of sherry, and this made me quite drunk - it was difficult to serve Vespers, that is, to speak; nervousness, fear, embarrassment, reticence of words. After Vespers, I walked for an hour in the engineering garden, then served the All-Night Vigil in a state of nervousness, fear and demonic confusion in some places of the service, but at the same time in a state of grace, which I forced from the Lord during the reading of the Six Psalms; and until then I felt a great heaviness inside me, I felt that the wine was weighing me down, and I became convinced that I didn’t need to drink vodka at all. The Lord gave a high prayer during the kissing of the Gospel by the laity. Thank you for the gift. Christ, the true Light, spoke out everything, but overwhelmed by some demonic fear. 27 I again complained to the Lord about the House of Workers with great faith and boldness. I hope it will. I thank the Lord, who quickly listened to my inner prayer after the all-night vigil and after drinking cream and eggs, when, returning home from buying provisions, I angrily poked a drunken beggar in the stomach with a cane so that he would quickly move away and not bother me; after tightness and confusion, the Lord gave me peace. May 27. You are a perverter of God's order and law, O Satan! Therefore, from your absurd dirty tricks I learn the opposite virtues, in which I must constantly practice; from disordered carnal love I am convinced that there is spiritual, holy, eternal love; out of a passion for shiny metals or generally for earthly treasures, I am convinced that man was created to seek spiritual treasures, heavenly, imperishable, etc. Shame on you, Satan is a perverter of God's order. May virtue rise and establish itself among people. Wake up! I am yours, save me [Ps. 118, 94]. Here's to you eating meat, drinking cream, eating eggs, that is, everything beyond bodily needs! Yesterday during the all-night vigil there was spiritual impotence and demonic fear, although not without a feeling of grace, and today - severe hiccups at a prayer service in a tavern outside the city near the Krause house. Here's a lesson for you - don't get fed up. I should have drunk one glass of tea in the evening and not eaten anything! Resurrection. I thank the Lord, who, after all the sorrows and cramps and fears and fears of demons, has enabled me, the accursed, to receive communion of the life-giving Mysteries and to partake of them into the peace of my spiritual strength and into peace and joy. I will say again: the food and drink of this world is decay, burden, crampedness, disease; only true bread - the Body of Christ and true drink - the Blood of Christ - my life, my peace, my freedom, my space, my strength, health of soul and body. For this glory be to the Lord! How much time, golden time, our flesh is devoted to eating, drinking, smoking, playing cards, to the theater, to reading vain, flattering 28 worldly books, such as novels, plays, etc. books, chasing after fashions in clothing, sewing and embroidering according to fashion, cleaning heads, etc. All this golden time given to us for the highest purposes of existence, for correction, purification and improvement of ourselves, should be devoted to our soul, which has a constant need for spiritual contemplation, meditation, reading the Gospel and other sacred books, private and public prayer, repentance, and communion of the Holy Mysteries Christ, in good deeds for the benefit of others. We will once bitterly regret the lost hours and days on vain and useless things. With great joy the righteous will remember all their good deeds done during their lifetime, all their shameless struggles with sin, their tender prayers, their tears of repentance, their exercise in reading Scripture, their standing and psalmody during worship, their frequent communion of the Holy Mysteries - because all this brought them the sweet fruit of salvation. Wonderful are Your works, O Lord, You have done all things with wisdom ec and 29. Everything was wisely and purposefully created by the Creator of the universe and man: in all creatures the wise, good laws of the Creator are constantly fulfilled: in all the suns of the universe, in all the stars and planets, in all the elements (their agreement and opposition, their beneficial effect on animate organic and inorganic life), in all animals, in organic, inanimate, and inorganic creatures, in humans, in their the dual nature of physical and spiritual; all creatures are appointed one for the other, and man is the crown of creation - both for himself and for the Creator, as His image. But what especially amazes me with their greatness, infinite wisdom and goodness are the moral laws given to rational creatures, the purpose of which is the public good, the constant and endless improvement of man, union with the Creator and endless bliss. But physical laws, that is, the laws of bodily nature, also amaze me with the wisdom of the Creator: the laws of mutual copulation of the sexes, the desire of one sex for the other within the limits of these laws as a powerful means of the birth and reproduction of the human race, without which there would not be this diversity; the laws of development, maintenance, renewal and strengthening of the vital forces of each individual through food, sleep, labor, movement, without which our earthly life would soon fade away, as soon as a person was born into the world. I am especially surprised by the law of mutual love given to us from the Creator and explained by the Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles and the Church, especially love for enemies and generally for sinners, on which the good of individuals, families, the whole people, all peoples and the entire human race is based; I am surprised by the law of love for children innate to fathers and mothers, according to which the life of a person is guarded from his very birth, from his birth into the world at a tender, unconscious and helpless age, in infancy and adolescence, and so on, without which myriads of lives would have extinguished at the very bud and then upon birth into the world. I revere the works of wisdom and goodness of the Creator, who acts in all things! And oh, if only man would fulfill the moral laws of the Creator freely, willingly, constantly, as the Lord commanded, as it is said: Thou hast commanded Thy commandments to be preserved strictly [Russian: firmly] [Ps. 118, 4 ]! Oh, tear-worthy damage, corruption of human nature! How little and carelessly we fulfill the wise and good laws of our Creator, and sometimes we completely neglect them! But how we suffer both from the righteous wrath of God and from the natural consequences of our passions! There is no peace in our bones because of our sins [Ps. 37, 4 ]! Our misfortunes are innumerable. Do you tolerate anything? If you endure without complaint, that is, some kind of punishment from God: illness, sorrow, humiliation, etc., then you are Christ’s servant, as it is said: just as you have kept the word of My patience, then I will also keep you from the time of temptation that will come to the whole universe [Rev. 3, 10]. If you do not endure, that is, you shirk patience for the sake of righteousness, you grumble while enduring temptation, then you are not Christ’s. For Christ left us the commandment of patience: with your patience save your souls [Lk. 21, 19]. If everything is done according to your desire, if you are rich, live in pleasure and luxury, if you fulfill all your whims, then you are not a servant of Christ, but a slave of the flesh, of this adulterous and sinful world, and of the prince of this world. Do you do works of mercy? If not, then you are not a follower of Christ, for Christ commanded mercy to His followers. I want mercy, not sacrifice [Matt. 9, 13]. If you love to judge, if you are stingy and hard-hearted, lover of money, unyielding to alms, harsh, a murderer, then you are not Christ’s. Since you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me [Matt. 25, 45]. Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels [Matt. 25, 41]. Do you have peace with your neighbors and holiness? If not, you will not see the Lord: Have peace and holiness with everyone, and no one else will see the Lord [Heb. 12, 14]. Are you humble, do you cry over your sins, are you meek, do you hunger and thirst for truth, are you pure in heart, do you love truth? If not, you are not a disciple of Christ and have no hope for future incorruptible blessings, for there, in heaven, only those conformed to Christ will dwell. So, act while you still have time. As long as we have time, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who belong to the faith [Gal. 6, 10]. After the Lord, the apostles, hierarchs, martyrs and saints are the creators of our new, grace-filled, heavenly life; They gave birth and give birth to us with their teaching, their life, the sacraments into a new, spiritual life and through this they give us an inheritance of eternal blessings. Glory to the Lord for this! I insulted human nature in my face in my youth, and now I sin incessantly, both through the actions of the devil and through conceit, I do not publicly ask for forgiveness from the faithful standing in the church, even if there are two or a hundred or more! May I not be afraid of the dirty tricks of the demons, his confusion and fear, planted in my heart, and may I humbly ask for forgiveness from the faithful. May the Lord help you! May 29, 1872. Monday. I thank the Lord, who made me worthy of His heavenly help during the service of Matins, for the temptations of the devil were fierce, the struggle with me, many-passionate, was fierce, and the Lord delivered me from them when I with all my soul cried out to Him for help. God! In order not to forget me, remember in Your Kingdom Your verbal creation, adorned with Your name and image, my spiritual child Gerasim, who is struggling with lustful passion, and deliver him from this shameful passion and return him to You and his family! (May 29, 1872). He commanded me to pray for him. God! Conquer in me too, disgrace in me too our common enemy, the scoffer of our nature, the devil! For I, too, was deeply defiled by it even in my youth and now I feel this stench of prodigal. God! You are good and merciful and omnipotent. You will do this! With an unworthy thought, an unworthy heart and an unclean hand, I thank the Lord my God, who has deigned me, indecently, to perform the Divine Liturgy without stumbling and to partake of the life-giving Mysteries into the world of my spiritual powers. At the beginning of the liturgy, or during the celebration of proskomedia, I felt extreme violence and the wounding of spiritual snakes and repeatedly touched the life-giving throne with a prayer for healing me from these all-destructive snakes. The Lord has mercy. After mass, I went to the park and there I found Vasily Fadd., Colonel Kuzmin - ktitor of the 30th Epiphany Monastery; I went with him to the birthday boy, Father Ioann Konstantinovich Tsvetkov, and got almost drunk. Is it really possible after communion of the Holy Mysteries to treat yourself like that, with such greed, with such indiscriminateness? This is worse than Esau's greed. God! Have mercy on me. How harmful it is for me to drink sherry - wine! My head hurts. You should drink Sauternes: it doesn’t give you a headache. And best of all, water is a harmless and sober drink. I forget, accursed one, that my prodigal flesh is alive: why do I revive more and more its abominations, its outrages, its passions? Why do I drink wine in excess? Why do I eat sweets? How true it is that the soul that feeds extensively, while alive, dies [1 Tim. 5, 6]. In a gluttonous person, faith, hope and Christian love die, the mind becomes dull, the heart hardens, the will conveniently bends towards everything bad; the heart and will become extremely weakened for prayer, contemplation of God, for all that is good - a kind of paralysis of the soul occurs; the glutton is deprived of grace for his intemperance (the thorns of sin prick and burst apart the soul and body). He who walks a lot and often uselessly along the street is scattered and also deprived of grace, for whoever does not collect, according to the word of the Lord, wastes [Matt. 12, 30]. Moreover, prolonged walking exhausts your bodily strength and relaxes your nerves. How good it is for a Christian to sit more at home and read the Holy Scriptures, the writings of the holy fathers, the lives of the saints, reflect on what he has read and on the works of God, pray, remember his sins, repent and cry. This is the good part that will never be taken away, which will bear the fruit of the eternal life. And I, the accursed one, eat and drink a lot, and walk a lot in vain, for health, for digestion of food, in a word, I live like a pagan, contrary to God, for the flesh, for this life. God, have mercy on me, correct me. May 29. One o'clock in the morning. The earthly king is the image of the Heavenly King - Christ, the King of kings; the queen is the image of the Heavenly Queen. What reverence the children of the Orthodox Church should have for them! Other faces of the reigning house depict the highest worldly powers of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. What reverence should be shown to the children of the Orthodox Church and to these highest persons! May the Lord give this to all of us! And the Lord grants them to sit on His highest thrones for the good and prosperity of the people! My God! How strong are our everyday attachments and passions! Sometimes I pray at home: [before] me, in my eyes, are the life-giving Mysteries in the ark for the sick - here is Christ the Lord Himself hypostatically, with His Face - and I fall into extraneous thoughts, into dreams of what is especially dear to my earthly heart! Then you will wake up, awaken from this slumber (we all doze during prayer, we say our slumbers, because we do not fulfill the spoken words) and for a minute, for a few minutes you will revere such a wonderful, most blessed, wise and terrible Sacrament, and then again - earthly slumber. Oh, damnation! How harmful is the increased thorn of passions in the heart! How harmful is this constant gluttony, this vanity, this vain adornment with clothes, gold and silver, this charm of self-love, pride and ambition! These are our idols in the heart, placed in the place of the true God in the sanctuary of God - in the soul of a Christian! What is required is self-sacrifice and contempt for earthly blessings as perishable and clinging with all your heart to God and spiritual, eternal blessings. Lord, guard our hearts yourself, direct them to the things above, for we are nailed to the earth, we are philosophizing on earth; have eaten from heaven the power of Thy grace, to shake off the earthly vanity from our hearts, to despise the corruptible and love the incorruptible, to love You alone with all our hearts, and not to divide our hearts between You and creation, and to love our neighbor, his soul especially, and not just his flesh, as himself, not to look for the carnal in him, but to seek the salvation of his soul, as well as his own, to pray for him ardently, as for himself, in moment of trouble and adversity, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep [Rom. 12, 1]. For my heart has become hardened and petrified and does not sympathize, does not have compassion for those who suffer, does not rejoice at the sight of the joy of my neighbors, unless I also receive something from their joy, for example, food and drink or money. It is not the cleansing of sins, not the correction of life, not the holiness of morals, not a pure heart that interests us, who bear the heavenly name of Christians, but service to the belly, our passions, our passionate flesh and belly, this stinking idol, this corruptible digestive cauldron, given for a time for the sake of the continuation of life here, and not there; serving mammon, collecting decay in order to quickly suppress and corrupt one’s heart and not allow it to love God and neighbor in the least. We are interested in external purity, external grace, although the internal is full of all kinds of impurity; We are not concerned or saddened by the destruction of our soul, which died in sins, while the slightest disorder of health plunges us into despondency and sadness. God! How we deceive and rob ourselves! And we are still amused by this, we are amused by our misfortune, our wounds, our inflammations, our illnesses and deaths, for we constantly die for God - oh, if only for the world! Worldly addictions darken the lamp of my heart - my spiritual mind and, like a dark cloud, cover my soul: because of them I often do not see the light of God, the Sun of Truth, Christ my God. You say: Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come. So you live here among different tribes: Jews, Tatars, Germans, Poles, French - is the name of God and Christ sanctified and glorified? Do you set everyone an example of Christian, holy, Orthodox life: abstinence, purity and chastity, honesty, justice, mercy, love for God and neighbors? With external beauty surrounding us everywhere, we do not notice the ugliness of our soul; with physical wealth, we do not notice spiritual poverty and poverty, dreaming that if we have collected piles of money, then we are already kings of the earth and do not need anything; with constant bodily satiety, we do not notice or feel the terrible spiritual hunger; With constant pleasures, we do not notice the bitterness of passions and alienation from God. We were so charmed by the feelings! So we are mired in sensuality! With the ever-present earthly joy, we forget about the horrors of eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth! With the constant reading of secular books, with this imaginary satisfaction of the hunger of the soul with pig acorns, we forget about satisfying the hunger of the soul with the word of God. But all this lovely 31 surroundings will soon be taken away - and then woe to the inattentive and careless souls, mired in sensuality! He who sows to his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life [Gad. 6, 8]. Lord Knower of Hearts! If I am the cause of my relative Anna’s deep dislike and enmity towards me, her rudeness and disobedience, allow me to humble myself before her in the depths of my soul and love her sincerely, firmly, persistently, as myself. September 29. Friday. St. Isaac of Dalmatia 32. Cathedral mass. During mass I felt a strong heaviness, a tendency, barely overcome, to sleep, a coldness in my heart and hesitations and hesitations or backlogs that did not allow me to pronounce words at the great entrance: darkness, oblivion, inability to speak. It’s the same at the prayer behind the pulpit; in the procession of the cross, resistance to the steward, the archpriest; Upon arriving at church, I repented before the throne in the chapel of Peter and Paul, and the Lord had mercy. I received communion well. I thank the Lord, who worked in me during the morning service, when I appeared before His throne, a miracle of His mercy and salvation, when I was embarrassed because I was not invited to carry out the deceased servant of God John Kiselev, a local merchant, although other brethren were invited. By quickly turning to God and trusting in His ever-present providence for me, I was soon saved from further embarrassment; Silence and calm reigned in my heart, and my weak body was healed from the action of God’s grace, merciful, cleansing and saving. I sinned yesterday when talking with Father Vasily Ch., idle talk and blasphemy of the authorities and ambiguous words. Forgive, Lord, my sins. I thank the Lord, who has vouchsafed me to perform a conciliar service for the deceased servant of God John Kiselyov (hairdresser) and, after bitter temptations and anxieties, to partake without judgment of the Divine Mysteries. At the funeral service the cry was said firmly with God's help. At the wake at the end, when the merchant Sizov started talking about Eutychius, who unfortunately fell deeply through drunkenness, and the archpriest began to accuse me in front of everyone that I had previously known him, considered him a saint and released him from the police, into which he was taken on the orders of the archpriest’s father, I loudly denounced him for his own failures and left the table without saying goodbye. Jerome of Stridon († 419), blessed, one of the famous teachers of the Western Church; wrote interpretations of sacred books, denounced the Pelagians and Origenists; in addition to many letters on modern issues, translations and interpretations of sacred books, he collected information about famous men and writers of antiquity; wrote about piety and virginity. Tune (Church Glav.) - for free. Ambrose of Milan (c. 339 - 397), saint, one of the great Western Fathers of the Church. Since 374 - Archbishop of Milan. Although at first not very knowledgeable in matters of theology, he diligently began to study the Holy Scriptures and soon became one of the best exegetes and preachers in the West. He fought intensely against Arianism. He wrote an interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, three books about the Holy Spirit, a book about the Sacraments and the offices of ministers of the Church. Philip, Saint of Moscow (Kolychev; 1507 – 1569). He came from a noble family of boyars; at the age of 30 he went to the Solovetsky Monastery; in 1548 he became abbot and brought the monastery into a flourishing state. The fame of him as a man of holy life and an exemplary owner spread throughout Rus', therefore, at the Council of 1566, when choosing a metropolitan for the Moscow see, Saint Philip was indicated as the main candidate; but the saint made the condition of his consent to this election the abolition of the oprichnina, and only after much “coercion” from the tsar and the bishops did he accept the election. Saint Philip could not indifferently endure the fury of the oprichnina and two years after taking the throne he turned to Tsar Ivan the Terrible with an exhortation to stop the bloodshed. The king demanded that he remain silent and not contradict him. For denouncing the oprichnina, Saint Philip was deposed and imprisoned in the Tverskaya Otroch Monastery. On January 9, 1568, he was strangled by Malyuta Skuratov. In 1584, his relics were transported to the Solovetsky Monastery; In 1652, by decision of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Patriarch Joasaph, a solemn transfer of the saint’s relics to Moscow was arranged, where they were placed in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin. That is, he says something unreasonable about God, His properties and His Providence for the world. Wed. In all these things that happened to him, Job sinned nothing before the Lord, lower than his lips, and did not give madness to God (Job 1:22). Rogo'm is a sweet wine, a variety of French Cahors. Troparion of the canon for Holy Communion. Song 1. Peck - finely grind and sift. Ouds (Church Slavic) – bodily members. Service by Archangel and Angel. Troparion of the canon for Matins, canto 1. In the hedgehog (church glory) - in order to. Raivola is a village in Vyborg province; since 1948 - the village of Roshchino, one of the largest villages on the Karelian Isthmus. Vynu (Church Glav.) - always, incessantly. Sincere (Church Glav.) – that is, close ones, relatives. Lawrence of Rome, martyr, archdeacon († 258), associate of the martyr Sixtus, Pope of Rome, who suffered from the persecutor of Christians, the Roman ruler Valerian. Led to prison, Sixtus predicted to Lawrence, who wanted to share his fate, that in three days great torment and exploits for the faith of Christ awaited him and that he needed to manage during this time to distribute church property to the poor and needy. Saint Lawrence, listening to the advice of the pope, brought a lot of silver and clothes to the house of a widow at night; at the same time, in humility, he began to wash the feet of all Christians; At the request of the widow, he cured her of a severe headache by the laying on of his hands. That same night he gave away many church treasures to Christians in the house of a certain Narkis and here he performed a miracle of healing a blind man. Three days later, as Saint Sixtus predicted, after severe torture, Saint Lawrence accepted martyrdom on a red-hot grate. His memory is celebrated on August 10. Paulinus, saint, Bishop of Nolan the Merciful (353 - 431), spiritual writer, originally from Southern France; senator, consul, converted to Christ by Saint Ambrose of Milan; from 393 presbyter of Barcelona, ​​from 409 bishop of Nola, in Campania. He wrote hymns, decorated churches with images of saints, and was famous for his almsgiving. He is credited with introducing the ringing of bells during worship. Captured by the Goths, he served as a gardener at the court of King Ataulf; when he was recognized, he was released with honor. His memory is January 23 (February 5). Stuzhati (Church Glav.) - bother, disturb, bore. Flattering (church glory) - deceitful, deceptive, harmful to the soul. The opening psalm from Vespers. Ktitor (Greek) – investor, benefactor, trustee of the church, church warden. Charming (Church Slavic) – seductive, deceptive (from “charm”, “lytsenie” - delusion, lie, cunning). Isaac of Dalmatia, reverend († 383). From the life of the Monk Isaac, who lived in Asia Minor, it is known that he received a vision from God, in which he was ordered to go to Constantinople to fight the heresy of Emperor Valens (364 - 378), an adherent of Arianism. According to ancient historians, he was very bold for his faith before the emperor and predicted his death. In the capital, the saint had many disciples, and one of them built a modest dwelling for him on his estate, and then transferred the rights to all the adjacent lands. Here the Dalmatian monastery arose, located outside the city, whose abbot was the Monk Isaac. You might be interested in: