Январь 1860 г.

Today my heart was extremely wounded by the sting of silver, that is, the enemy through the sting of silver. Away with all hunger for Judas's pieces of silver, let them be counted as money 53, as nothing. Lord, help me! The Holy Spirit is the life principle for my soul, and through the Son of God we are brought to the Father in the Holy Spirit. With all the strength of your soul at all times, almost the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes from the Father, and we are created from the Father by the Son in the Holy Spirit. Satan strongly and vigilantly delays our complete and eternal turn to God. It becomes a strong barrier between God and us. Oh, if only I could learn to love everyone as I love myself, and endure everything, and not be irritated by anything. May the Lord help you! May the evil of the devil find no place in me! And the very image of the Lord is greater than me, because He is my power, my strength, my carrying. The same goes for the cross. So one shadow of my Lord, like the shadows of the apostles Peter and Paul, has great power over my heart. The eyes of the Lord are in every place [Prov. 15, 3] (and on the image). The Lord took upon Himself the whole man; May I be completely true, like Him: in thought, in word and in deed, imitating Him in every virtue, especially in meekness and humility and patience. God! Grant me to see in each of my brothers, in all his needs and wants, physical and spiritual, You, who took upon Yourself everything human, and to endure all the infirmities in my neighbor, as You took upon Yourself all his infirmities; grant me to see You in every neighbor. It’s good in the theater - there is something to look at, there is something to amuse the soul: a lot of people of the elite society, smartly dressed, and a lot of lamps, and the harmony and entertaining actions of the actors. But what should it be like in heaven - in the light of the face of God, in the presence of luminous Angels and saints? A word is a combination of articulate sounds, therefore it is necessary to read it separately, giving each sound its due. Everything should be gradual and in order. The Lord himself created the world gradually, and not suddenly, although he could create it in an instant, giving us a lesson so that we would do everything gradually, and not suddenly. The essence of my soul and the goal of my life should be love - everything else should be considered insignificant in comparison with love. Jesus, You are our love! You are a creature of love! You dwell in our hearts and make them loving. If my heart is so conveniently corrupted, despite the fact that I often partake of the life-giving Mysteries and strengthen myself with daily prayer, then how easy is it for Christians who so rarely partake of communion and pray so little to be prone to and actually possess all sorts of vices? And how should a priest pray for such people? We must be faithful to God. What does it mean to be faithful to God? – It means to be faithful to God’s holiness, love, truth and truth. Hope, as usually understood, is the hope of life and the blessings of life, and Christian hope is the hope of eternal life and pleasure, a promise for us [spiritual blessings] in heaven. We are temporary and, if I may say so, ephemeral on earth, if we take our life on earth in comparison with eternity, if we pay attention to how little we live here in the proper sense in harmonious satisfaction and in the peace of all our spiritual powers, how little we taste the peace of the heart in the one Restorer of all - God. The future peace of our souls, restless and groaning here visibly and invisibly under the burden of sin, peace as a result of complete liberation from sin, from death (the last enemy will be destroyed - death (1 Cor. 15:26)), or corruption of the soul and body, the achievement of perfect satisfaction and tranquility of the heart and mind and ineffable spiritual blessings promised from the foundation of the world to the elect in Christ Jesus - this is the essence of Christian hope. What is our hope based on? On the immutable legends of God Himself in the Holy Scriptures, on the mystery of our redemption by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is therefore called our hope, and on the experiences of this life. Let's explain. Let us go to the beginning of human existence: what he was destined for, how he deviated from his purpose, and how he was returned to it and by whom. If anyone does not want to work, he should not eat (2 Thess. 3:10). These words do not apply to our enemies even when our enemy is looking for our food. If your enemy is hungry, it is said, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink [Rom. 12, 20]. Always imagine God as nothing other than an all-perfect Personal Being. It is God who is, to an infinite degree, that limited but purified “I”: that is, He has, to an infinite degree of perfection, mind, heart and will in the unity of the personal “I”. So imagine both the Lord Jesus Christ and the All-Holy Spirit and, like the Lord in Three Persons, try to be faithful in every possible way. According to the greatness of the disaster, the greatest mercy from the Lord. The sevenfold enemy kindled his furnace in my insides, and his flame raged painfully in my insides, killing all the strength of my soul and body. But - oh, miracle! – The life-giving mysteries, taken inside, extinguished the flame and calmed me down, revived me, granted freedom to my soul, and I rejoiced at the ineffable mercy of the Lord. Glory to my Lord, Savior and my God! What will I repay to the Lord for all His good deeds to me? [Ps. 115, 3]. May I find myself faithful 54. Let me see my Savior 55 before me, 56 as he is at my right hand 57 [Ps. 15, 8]. May I always remember my faithful friend: both at home and outside, and sitting, and walking, and lying, and standing, and eating and drinking. My most ready Savior, glory to Thee! In the classroom, the evil one scorched my insides, severely constricted my heart and tied my tongue, but, leaving the classroom and going to the church, I raised my eyes to heaven with a prayer for help - and he left me, and it became easy. The Lord is always with me: He supports my entire body; my soul is His breath and in Him it finds light and tastes peace, and only by being separated from Him by wrong thoughts does it experience sorrow and oppression. For it’s all about thoughts - our soul lies in them. Likewise, through thoughts of faith, she is united with God. Remember your end, and you will never sin [Sir. 7, 39]. The Word is God, and God is unchangeable—that means the Word is too. If the Lord were not faithful, firm and unchanging in His words, then how could the world stand, created by the word of God and held together by the word of God? How would everything that was promised and predicted be fulfilled exactly? How could I exist if the word of God were not immutable? I stand by His word. He was dead, and behold, he is alive forever and ever [Apoc. 1, 18], says the Lord in the Apocalypse, and His word is the truth, the deed. Being alive forever and ever, He saved in all ages those who turned to Him with the prayer of faith, and He constantly saves now. So, if you, let us say, suffer death for His [name], for His [cause], then you, having become dead for a while, will also live forever and ever. Oh, how limitless and life-giving is Your power, Lord! You daily - and often many times in one day - revive our souls, killed by sins and the devil; Your power is especially palpable in Your life-giving Mysteries: You are obviously God here, the Lord of our life, and You transform the death of our souls into life, sorrow into space, despondency into joy. For the Lord, the walls are transparent, and in the depths of the earth he sees everything hidden, and by Him all thoughts and feelings in the souls of men are numbered. The hairs of the head are all numbered [Matt. 10, 30]. Every day the Lord allows me, unworthy, to His meal, and I must certainly allow people to my meal, even if they are not worthy of it. When eating perishable food, remember the incorruptible food of the most pure Body and Blood of the Lord, and do not be seduced by the sweetness of the food of the perishing. The Lord is our peace. When and where can He not be with us? The Lord is our righteousness. When can we not be righteous and where can we not be righteous and holy? And this means that the Lord can always and everywhere be with us. What people call a heart is one and the same with my heart. All people, one might say, my heart, as if they were talking about one beloved person, say: you are my heart, and in their hearts, just as in me, Christ lives. Hence the love for everyone as for yourself. Your brothers are one with your wife and with your father 58 - how can they not be with you often, how can you not love them? Truly. What is Christian hope? And what is the greatest good for us, which we do not yet have, which we do not possess, but which we hope for, for hope presupposes precisely that we have something. We don’t have anything very important for us, but we hope to receive it. Let's take a closer look at our life. Union with God is the subject of hope. Show every class and rank hope in Christ. To the shepherds - the Chief Shepherd, who has to reward them for their shepherding (the Chief Shepherd will appear... 59). To the kings - the King of kings, and so on and so forth. To the poor - us for the sake of the poor, so that through His poverty we may be rich (2 Cor. 8:9); rich - the Heir of all the Father's property, in whom the worlds were created [Heb. 1. 2 ]; scientists - Hypostatic Wisdom, in which all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden [Col. 2, 3 ]; for virgins - the Highest Virgin; those in marriage - the Creator of the male body and the female; to the warriors - the Winner. Our hope in this life is the Body and Blood of the Son of God and prayer to the Lord, cleansing us from sins. The name of the Mother of God is the name of an unparalleled shrine, the name of goodness and mercy. Get rid of eternal death, I will praise Tu. Your kingdom has given to us the future, the day without evening, the life that never grows old. The Lord is a mental Being. Look at the mental in people and love them with all the strength of your soul: the Author and King of thoughts and words is united with them, the Trinitarian God of spirits and all flesh dwells in them. Let us come to him and make our abode with him [Jn. 14.23]. Since the Lord is Thought, Word, Spirit, then faith, or the conformity of the heart with God, unites mentally, verbally the spiritual with God; That’s why faith is the means to receiving all the benefits from God, that’s why the prayer of faith does miracles with our soul, as well as with others. That is why faith of the heart is the greatest treasure in a person, that is why lies and deceit are the greatest evil and destruction for a person, because the father of lies - the spiritual father of spiritual evil - is the devil and Satan, who deceives the entire universe [Rev. 12, 9]. The Christian faith is wonderful and full of miracles: one sign, one shadow of the cross has, with faith, the miraculous power to tame the passions and sorrows of the heart; the material image of the cross has the same power, the image (shadow) of the Savior has the same power, and His sweetest name, Jesus Christ, has the same power. Since the devil is a mental being, deceitful, evil, having in his very being a spiritual, deadening fire, just as the Holy Spirit is a life-giving fire, then touching the soul of the devil brings with it a surge of anger, doubt, unbelief, lies or slander and blasphemy against God and people and everything of God, restless impatience and painful, scorching fire. And this is what it means: and the rain fell, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house [Matt. 7, 27], that is, on the human heart. The worship of the Orthodox Church, the Sacraments and all prayers are the path of spiritual life, which the saints of God walked and were saved and which now turns out to be the path of life for all the faithful. If your heart and your thought are in agreement with the universal faith and with the commandments of God, then you certainly have a close connection with God and identity with Him, because God is a spiritual, mental, personal Essence; but if your heart and thoughts consciously change in any way the universal faith and commandments of God or the words of the Gospel that prescribe the rules of Christian life, then your connection with the God of life is severed, and your heart enters into a disastrous connection with the enemy of truth and life - the devil. Just as indoor air, not communicating with the outside air, burns out, is filled with many extraneous principles harmful to life and loses its life principles, so the soul, separated from God through deliberate doubt, unbelief and lawlessness, loses its life principle and lives only a physical, lower life. Just as in order to refresh the air in the room, to fill it with vital principles, it is necessary to bring external air into the room, so into the soul - this, as it were, air enclosed in the church of our body - it is necessary to bring through faith and love the life-giving breeze, or breath, of the Divine Spirit, and then each time it will be revived, will receive new strength for faith and love. Every soul is alive by the Holy Spirit. For what is a person if not a glass 61 filled with the breath of God, or with a soul in the image and likeness of God? It is necessary to change the air in this glass, especially since in us it is naturally corrupted - from the very first perpetrators of sin, and is spoiled by our passions and lusts, and is often infected with the poisonous breath of the devil. The Lord is everywhere - what prevents His shadow from being everywhere? And this shadow, or His images, can perform miracles everywhere: they are all filled with His grace. If the shadows of the apostles Peter and Paul healed the sick, then why not the image of the Savior? The same goes for other images. The food passes into the belly and is expelled [Matt. 15, 17]. Look how close the purpose of food is: it passes into the belly and is expelled with a stench. Look further: here is the body of a dead man, lifeless, cold, rotting - here is the last end of all food; no food extends further, this is where all delicacies, all satiety, drunkenness, all intemperance of the flesh come to an end. What do you value in food? Why are you attached to her? Why do you care so much about her? Madness. We all live in hope and we all know what hope means. A merchant, crossing the seas, lives in hope and, while still on his native land, mentally sees in advance the land to which he needs to go, and imagines himself in advance as the owner of those goods with which he needs to stock up. The farmer lives in hope (if he did not hope that he would reap the [produced] fruits, he would not endure the labor): he, having sowed his grain, hopes that the earth, according to the word of the Creator, will bear for him the former grain, and his seed is in it [Russian: in which his seed is according to his kind] [Gen. 1, 12], and he imagines in advance a happy harvest and harvesting of grain and the pleasant pleasure of seeing home-grown bread on his table, obtained by his own labor, and living with it in the fall and winter in contentment of the heart, with thanksgiving to the Lord. The wanderer is guided by hope and, crossing vast spaces with fatigue, during the journey he has the pleasant hope that he will worship the shrine he reveres and thereby satisfy the unearthly desire of his heart. Accordingly, what is Christian hope? Wonderful thing! When the heart, through living faith, is connected with the life principle - the Holy Spirit, then it is calm, spacious, and the thought is then free and bright, and the tongue is free and smoothly even; but as soon as a person mentally regrets something material for his brother at this time, for example, food, money, remembering some brother looking for his food, his heart is instantly struck by spiritual apoplexy 62, he is bound, dejected; thought is also bound due to damage to the heart - the source of thought - and darkens; language too; the blood takes on increased circulation, and there is a rush to the head; the whole person is in a shy, abnormal position. Our attachment to materiality is so worthily punished! Thus our neglect of the spiritual side of our brother is deservedly punished! Glory to Your righteousness, Lord! (Sunday School.) January 15, 1861. Just as indoor air has an identity with the outside air and comes from it, so our soul has some identity with the Spirit of God and comes from Him; indoor air necessarily presupposes external air, diffused everywhere; So our soul - the breath of the Spirit of God - presupposes the existence of the omnipresent and all-filling Spirit of God. The parallel between material churches and spiritual churches. Once and forever, know that in the Church - in all its services, Sacraments and prayers - the spirit of holiness, the spirit of peace, the spirit of life and salvation breathes - and this is characteristic only of the Holy Spirit. Holy thoughts or words of life and truth are easy to distinguish from thoughts and words of lies and death: the former bring peace and life to the soul, the latter - languor, anxiety, spiritual death. To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace [Rom. 8, 6]. Since God is a mental Being, one can extremely quickly lose Him from the heart, just as quickly one can regain Him in the heart through decisive repentance of sins. Dear brother! When you administer the Sacraments of Repentance and Communion or Blessing of Anointing to a sick person, gather all the strength of your mind and heart, all your faith in order to convey to the soul of the sick person your faith and your trust in God; let your living faith and your hope shine in your eyes and on your face; let the peace of your heart be heard in your words and in the words of prayer; Use all your strength to pour into your spiritual child your faith, hope and love, which he will look for at this time in your gaze. Ah, brother! These, perhaps the last, hours are extremely precious for both you and him. For you - because they will decide whether you were a good shepherd for this sheep of the verbal 63 flock of Christ, laying down your life for the sheep, or a mercenary, not caring about the sheep, leaving them and running away from them when they were attacked by a mental wolf. For them - because perhaps their decisive fate for all eternity depends on this hour, depending on how [they] receive the Sacraments of Repentance, Communion and Holy Anointing. During all services, do not forget to strain your whole heart towards faith and hope and show to all those praying in the church that you are a true believer and truly have hope for future blessings. Let your gaze and your face be a mirror for the people of God, in which they would clearly read your faith and your hope and love. The almighty power of God, existing and active throughout the world, is concentrated, so to speak, just as the rays of the sun are collected in a focus or in glass, in holy icons, in the holy cross - material and in the sign 64 (and in the church the Lord lives like a king in a palace). The concentration of the power of God especially occurs in the rational image of the Divine - in man, and precisely in his heart, filled with faith, hope and love, as the focus. It is in it that the Sun of Truth, our Trinitarian God, is reflected with His light with the abundance of His gifts according to the faith of each, warming and sanctifying the soul of each. Such an opinion, such faith was completely life-giving for me in prayer. This means that it is true and not false, for it is said: wisdom descending from above is first pure, and then peaceful, meek, and submissive [Jas. 3, 17 ] and so on. Time, like a river, flows and carries us all on its ridge - where? - into eternity. What a river and an ocean are in the material world, so are time and eternity in the spiritual world. What will happen to us in eternity? This is an important question to think about. Are your children sick or close to death? Or are you yourself sick and close to death? Have Christian hope, do not be faint-hearted and do not grieve like others who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13). Are you experiencing intense grief? Hope that they will pass, believe that they are for the cleansing of your sins, for attracting the grace of Christ into your heart, for converting you to the hope of eternal life. Everything passes away, and you are with your body, but not with your soul - think about this. Is your heart not attached to earthly things, and that’s all? He needs to find the heavenly treasure - Christ and cleave to Him. Have you seen how the human face in a broken mirror is reflected in many faces according to the number of broken, separate pieces of the mirror, or how in every water bubble or in every drop of dew and in every pupil of the eye a human face is reflected? If this is such a possible and ordinary thing in nature, then why should we, Christians, not allow numerous images of the same person, say, the Lord, or His Most Pure Mother, or a saint, and in each image not see the Lord Himself, or His Most Pure Mother, or a saint, just as in a drop or in dewdrops we see numerous images of the same face, and not honor them with the honor characteristic of them? Isn't it nature itself that in some way teaches us to adopt something from it? what contributes to our piety? The inequality of the fate of people on earth: hence it is necessary to hope for another life, where persecuted virtue will receive reward, and the now triumphant vice will receive punishment (luxury and all vices). ABOUT! How blessed You have been to me, O Christ, with Your life-giving Mysteries now, January 17, during the Liturgy. O my blessedness, O my abundant life, O Christ! I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly [Jn. 10, 10]. Oh, how You have calmed, sweetened, relieved me! My soul! Do not forget the blessings of your Lord! The sick woman felt melancholy and deathly before communion - may the works of God be revealed to her! Oh, how she suddenly rejoiced at receiving communion! (Elena Fed.). Out of gratitude to my Christ that He gives me peace, joy, and life, I must tell you about the Christian hope, what treasures are hidden for all of us in Christ, so that you too may be rewarded with them: and you are exactly the same as I, a sinner; If I, who am no better than you, am rewarded with such benefits from Christ God, then why not you? ABOUT! Let me tell you the wonders of my God, my Lord and my Christ in me! Deliverance from corruption is a matter of hope. If the Lord makes us so blessed in the Mysteries, then what is His bliss and what will our bliss once be, after the most sincere communion with Him in the non-evening days of His Kingdom, when faith is replaced by vision, impurity - purity of heart, when nothing will hinder the closest unity with Him, bliss in Him. If the Jews in the desert, looking at the image of the serpent hanging on a tree, were healed, then will we not be healed in our hearts, looking with faith at the image of the Savior crucified on the cross or at His most pure image? And if the Lord Himself commanded to make a copper serpent to look at in the spirit of faith, then is it not the commandment of the Lord, given by the Holy Spirit to the apostles, to make images of the Savior, His Most Pure Mother and the saints? And don’t we have every reason to worship them with the prayer of faith, lifting the eyes of our hearts to the prototypes? How much paternal long-suffering does the Lord show daily in renewing my soul, weary, burdened and disfigured by sins, in order to blot out the alien features in it, which are constantly being written, and write His own? The mind is amazed at the greatness of beneficence and patience. And how does He renew my soul and restore His features in it? - By the life-giving Mysteries and, when I do not receive communion, through my faith, when He fatherly condescends to my fervent prayer and gives me the grace of the Spirit, cleansing the defilements of the heart and filling me with the gifts of the Spirit: righteousness, peace and joy, whitening of the robe of the soul, meekness, humility. Just as through sleep and eating the Lord restores and renews my bodily strength, which is daily exhausted and spent, so He predominantly does the same with my soul, only incomparably more often, because sometimes in one day I many times blot out the features of the image of God with various sins, and through my prayer, He each time again blots out the features brought into His image by the hand of the enemy, and writes His own; sometimes every day He many times with His finger, that is, His Spirit, writes in me the distorted or lost features of His Divine image. My clear consciousness tells me this, I feel it in my soul. Oh, how long-suffering and abundantly merciful is the Lord! How little attentive we are, and sometimes even inattentive, to our immortal soul, to its spiritual benefits! How easily we disfigure our souls with sinful thoughts and dispositions of the heart, and sometimes with sinful deeds, and we daily give the Lord the work of restoring and correcting what has been damaged by our malice and inattention to ourselves. But the Lord is not burdened by this, if only we would not be burdened daily and sincerely to turn to Him, the Doctor and Renewer of our souls! And even then, many, many do not have this: they are stuck in their sins, in their spiritual death, live unrepentantly, do not enter into themselves, do not see themselves, do not sigh for themselves, do not pray, run away from communion of the Holy Mysteries, or come only out of duty and habit. When you speak the truth of God in church or at school or anywhere in the house, speak it with heartfelt conviction and firmness, without hesitating or weakening your heart in the least, being far from thoughts of doubt and from any selfish thought: where the truth of God is, there is a stronghold, there our glory must be completely trampled upon. Don’t think about how or what to say, but say completely artlessly what God puts on your heart, in complete hope in Him. And for this, be all in your heart, talking with the God of your heart, loving Him and being zealous for His glory. The devil, sometimes presenting to a person his many weaknesses and shortcomings and his inner powerlessness for good, thereby plunges him into despair and severe despondency; but may God save [you] from such despondency of spirit. You have weaknesses and shortcomings - but is it impossible on your part to correct or change for the better, and are all people perfect? Oh, may I never despair: the Lord my God is my strength, and will make my troubles to commit [Hab. 3, 19]. When dealing with people, the enemy tries to push us away from them with feelings of malice and wickedness, which are deadly for ourselves and plunge us into despondency. But you don’t need to pay attention to this hellish smoke in your heart, spread by Satan, but you need to talk with people with love, simplicity and trust. Speaking about hope, first of all it is natural for me to ask myself: do I myself have hope? For the success or failure of my conversations depends on whether I myself have or do not have heartfelt Christian hope: for how can I forcefully teach others what I myself do not have? And on the contrary, if I have it, then it is easy to teach me what you yourself are rich in. Thus, someone who talks about Christian hope must first of all have it in his heart. My Christ! Verbs of my mouth! You are my hope! Everyone strives to enjoy earthly goods. The falsity of this aspiration; give him direction towards spiritual benefits; let them wait: the highest pleasure awaits them all. There is an innate desire in everyone for bliss; the enemy distorted this desire through envy, turned it to objects of sensuality, outside of God. But Christians will be given blessings that eye cannot see and ear cannot hear... (1 Cor. 2:9). Just be patient: with your patience save your souls [Lk. 21, 19 ]; do not give up for a while the sufferings of the sinful flesh, from some temporary hardships: you will receive a hundredfold for your sufferings: the present temporary sufferings are worth nothing in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us [Rom. 8, 18]. Ah, people don’t know what they are doing, they don’t know themselves, what a high creation they are with God, what a high purpose they have, how God loves them: God so loved the world, that is, people, that he gave His only begotten Son, so that everyone... might have eternal life [Jn. 3, 16]. Oh, get to know yourself, put in your ears the Divine promises regarding you in the future life: you are destined to be sons of God, citizens of heaven, fellow-fellows of the saints and close associates 67 of God, you are temples of the Holy Spirit, members of Christ, and where Christ is, there will be His members, if only we hold fast the boldness and hope in which we boast, firmly to the end [Heb. 3, 6]. If only we could endure everything to the end, we would be saved, without a doubt. We have little patience, the desire for pleasure is strong and impulsive, but it is too early to enjoy here: here is the time of exploits and struggle with sin and with all the enemies of salvation, but is there any time for pleasure during war? No, if we were so unreasonable that we turned real life into pleasure, we would thereby harm our soul in its most important purpose towards heavenly, spiritual, eternal bliss; we would receive our consolation, according to the words of the Savior 68, here on earth, completely at the wrong time, in the wrong place - and would lose it forever there, in heaven. Oh! My beloved brothers, be patient until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth and for it he endures for a long time until he receives the early and late rain. Be patient also [Jas. 5, 7–8]. [...] Everything is done for our good, and He commands us to endure for our good, to increase our future reward, and delays His coming for the common good, not wanting anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9). Be patient: the Lord is not in a hurry, but apparently will stop 69, because with Him it is not like with us: in everything - both in the creation of the world and in the management of the world - the strict, wise Divine gradualism is a sign of His limitless omnipotence and wisdom, because He sees first what everything must come to, to what end. No one will change anything in the order that He ordained: the time in which death, our last enemy, will come; The kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world will be: ... The kingdom of our God [Rev. 12, 10 ]; The union of the elect, who have prepared themselves for the marriage of the Lamb, with God will follow, and God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Let us take care to acquire Christian hope. The subject, as you see, is worth all our attention. People are unreasonable, ignorant children (they don’t know what they are doing [Luke 23:34]). This needs to be applied to many things in life. They need to be brought to reason, to be taught more often, to be told more often about what a high creation they are with God, what a high purpose they have, what ineffable, undoubted benefits await them, how insignificant are the transitory blessings here that ground us. Otherwise, they live in ignorance, and while we, shepherds, are silent about the dignity of their nature, deified by the Son of God and ascended to heaven, the enemy blinds them with his hellish darkness, closes their eyes, seduces them with the pleasures of light, plunges them into all kinds of sins - and destroys them. And how many are dying! And how many of these are perishing, in whose destruction we, the shepherds, also participated, through our inattention to our flock, through our silence at a time when it was necessary to speak and denounce! Ole 70, shepherds! With the greatest care, you need to keep in your meager vessel - in your heart - the treasure of the Spirit, rivers of living water in your belly [John. 7, 38 ]; we need to be vigilant over our hearts, be meek, refrain from irritability and movements of pride, attachment to earthly things, from unclean rebellions of the flesh - otherwise the priceless treasure of the Spirit will instantly leave us: suddenly peace and joy will disappear from the heart, this feeling of extraordinary, angelic-spiritual lightness of the soul, soaring in the freedom of heart and thought; These rivers of living water will also disappear, which before only flowed and abundantly watered the reins of 71 souls; the soul will be filled with an alien fire, painfully scorching the insides, depriving it of peace and joy and filling it with a feeling of sorrow and oppression and inciting it to irritability and blasphemy. The Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the enemy, the kingdom of life and the kingdom of death are so obvious, so sharply indicated and replaced in us! A Christian sees this with his inner eyes and is amazed at God’s truth and holiness, and is amazed at the vigilance of the enemy, always like a lion roaring and seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. 5, 8). God the Father is life, God the Son is life, God the Holy Spirit is life: the Holy Trinity; in Himself there is life, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; reject the Father with your heart - you will reject the life of your heart, reject the Son - you will reject your life, reject the Holy Spirit - you will reject your life: so your doubt will respond with death in your heart, sorrow, painful tightness, and God will remain, of course, the God of life in Three Persons; you will reject the doubts of your heart, you will recognize with all your heart all Three Persons as God, as your life - and life will again enter your heart. God, worshiped in the Trinity, is in Himself the Amen to it (2 Cor. 1:20). When reading or listening to truly sacred works, it is almost heartfelt in the people who produced them, images of God the Word, or God the Word Himself, speaking through them. Always remember when reading a book of spiritual or worldly content that man is the image of God, and this image of God is in his thought, word and spirit with which he speaks. Accustom yourself to always look at every person with high respect, as the image of God, but especially when he speaks and especially when he speaks about God. ABOUT! Then he is divine. From the habit of people, from getting to know them, from their everyday life, from the habit of the gift of speech in ourselves and in people, we value the gift of speech little and sometimes we despise it in others, and the devil, through our pride and inattention, thus blasphemes the image of God in people. against the sweet-voiced, blessed singers 72 - no more (they did not want to carry out their commands, they even despised, persecuted, beat and killed them), so that we would not become like these people, for whom no prophet is accepted in their own country [Lk. 4, 24]. No matter how small and insignificant a person may be in appearance, the image of God is almost in him, especially when he speaks, especially when he speaks with love, especially when he speaks and does deeds of love. When you come to any house and your heart seeks God, then do not look far for Him. He is here: firstly, in you, and secondly, in those faces that you will see there. He acts constantly in our conscience, as the vital principle of our souls, as the law of their spiritual existence; He is in their hearts: Do you not know that you are the church of God and the Spirit of God lives in you? (1 Cor. 3:16). He also rests in His grace in material icons, as in His shadow. He is in the air, and everywhere - in every place, not limited by anything and not constrained, the highest of all: Who is above all, and through all, and in all of us [Eph. 4, 6]. (Hope to see the intelligent light.) You are promised a heavenly, eternal, most blessed life, and this life is not something new, unusual for us: we were created for it, we feel the beginnings of it even here, as if as a pledge of a future wealth of blessings, when we eat the Body and Blood of the Lord, when we sincerely pray to God. They will accept their bribe [Matt. 6, 2, 5, 16], they will receive their consolation [Lk. 6:24], says the Lord; This means there will be a reward in eternity. Woe to those who accept their bribe here. Matt. 6. If your heart is embarrassed and hurts at the sight of your property being damaged or stolen by the hands of others, then you probably have a heartfelt attachment to earthly things; your heart is sick, the root of evil sits in it. Therefore, for example, if you give your book to someone to read, and they dirty it or ruin it, don’t be irritated by this and don’t say: I won’t give you any more, otherwise you will show in this, firstly, your sinful attachment to materiality, and secondly, you will expose your addiction to a shiny appearance, to appearance in general, and you will show yourself to be a Pharisee, cleansing the outside of a glass and a dish, but inside is full of theft and untruths [Matt. 23, 25]. Let everyone read your spiritually beneficial books and don’t be upset when they are destroyed or soiled: isn’t the spiritual benefit of a brother greater than your book, its clean, beautiful appearance? If only they read and receive benefits for the soul: if the benefits are received, the book has already achieved its purpose. If it lies in your bookcase, it will condemn you, like the silver and gold of a money-loving rich man lying in his chests. If your heart grieves when you feel any pain or illness in your body, then this means that you have a strong attachment to life, not entirely pure, especially if you grieve when you experience pain or illness while doing the work of God. A Christian must have impartiality towards life itself. For to me life is Christ, and death is gain [Phil. 1, 21]. Whoever loses his life for Me and the Gospel will save it [Mk. 8, 35]. If your heart grieves and, with illness and difficulty, partes with money that you should give to another, or with any other things, then you have a sinful addiction to them. The evangelical rich man had such an addiction, who departed from the Lord with sorrow, because he was very rich [Matt. 19, 22; OK. 18, 23]. Inconvenience 73 such a person will enter the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 19, 23]. We must make every effort to ensure that this addiction, which destroys the immortal soul, does not exist. Pitying materiality is death, not pitying, indifference to it is life for the soul. Experience. If in the form of material profit for yourself or honor you lie and deceive, then you put Christ and the eternal salvation of your soul below your profit and your honor - in a word, you put yourself, your sinful self, your pride above Christ and His holy truth and you hate your soul: he who loves untruth hates his soul [Ps. 10, 5]. So, in the same way, in satisfying your other passions, you place Christ and His commandments of life below you, you neglect them out of your sinful, blind pride, and if you do not turn and repent, you will kill your soul temporarily and eternally. If you become irritated when you encounter an obstacle, intentionally or unintentionally put in front of you by others or by some random thing, then you are very proud, proud and alien to the spirit of the meekness of Christ. Love is God, and God is love, and God is life. The Lord says: I am the way and the truth and the life [Jn. 14, 6]. My belly is Jesus in all periods of my life, my belly in all moments of my existence, starting from conception in the womb. If you think only in your head and not in your heart, then your thinking is not life-giving; but if you think in your heart, that is, you transfer everything you think to your heart and feel it with your heart, then your thinking is life-giving and true. Think in your heart. The hermit and fasting life formed those holy ascetics - the adornment of the earth, the joy of the heavenly Angels, who left us their pure contemplation of God and His works and their pure and ardent aspirations for God in their prayers and in their writings, who are still leading people living in the world to God. Is this not enough for us from hermits and fasters? See how much benefit fasting and the inner striving of the soul towards God brings. (The Savior’s parable about the sower and the seed, clearly told to the disciples, moved to tears those whom I asked [to whom] I explained ([Bernikov] and Rebrov). – The action of the Holy Spirit.) The Heavenly Fatherland is a city, and earthly life is the path to it; a Christian is a wanderer. Just as one who travels, for example, to Jerusalem, must spend time on this and endure the difficulties of travel and after all this enjoy the sight of the holy city and its shrine, so one who wanders to the Heavenly Fatherland - to Heavenly Jerusalem - must use time, and endure many labors and sorrows, and after all this enter his Heavenly Fatherland. The greatest good that all people revere is life; but the life that we all have is far from perfect - strictly speaking, it is not life: you will not have life in you [John. 6, 53], says the Source of life Himself about those who do not eat His Body and do not drink His Blood. I will talk about the hope for true life in Christ, the beginnings of which are only given to us in this life. This hope of life in Christ is Christian hope. If I am appointed for heaven, then why, you say, was I thrown to earth? In order to be in the order of creatures, it was necessary for such a being as you are, that is, a sensory-spiritual being, that is, a transitional being from the sensory to the spiritual. You are the image and likeness of God on earth, you are the king over earthly creatures, your great and happy lot. Just know how to use it. Don’t get attached to the earth and don’t say: my life is only earthly, temporary, I can’t believe that I would be so dear to God that he would take me to heaven for eternal bliss. The church is the threshold of heaven. Divine service is the beginning of eternal praise to God in the next century with the Angels and saints. It refines, nourishes and sustains our hope for future benefits. Signs of true Christian hope: patience with sorrows, staying in prayer. Be patient in affliction and constant in prayer [Rom. 12, 12]. When we pray, then the ears of the Lord are in our prayer: He is so then - and in general always - close to us, like the icon before which we stand, even much closer - He is at our very heart. He is all sight - His presence with us is so tangibly clear, like a visible icon, and therefore the icon is a real and visual representation of how close the Lord is to us, how He looks and hears us. And the saints of God in the Holy Spirit are as close to us as the Holy Spirit is close to us, who is everywhere and fills everything. We are His church, and in the Holy Spirit they see and hear us as we see and hear people speaking to us. After all, the Holy Spirit mediates in ordinary vision and hearing. I am in trouble in this life: danger for me in food, danger in drink, danger in clothing, danger in silver and gold, danger from the home itself, danger in thought, danger in the heart, danger in words. Only with the Lord am I completely safe, with the Invisible Lord of my life. Oh, fly to the Lord, my soul! He has your place. My soul comes from God, like a drop from the ocean, like a stream of air from the airy space, like a lamp from the fiery, everywhere existing element. Only my drop is an independent drop, my trickle is independent and itself alive, my lamp is independent and itself animate. The purer my drop, the sooner it increases and turns into a river of living water, flowing from the womb; the purer my air stream, the more the Spirit of God blows on it; the clearer my lamp, the more it grows and is animated by the fire of the Divine. Glory to You, Lord, who takes away the burdens of my soul; glory to You, who enriches my poor soul; glory to You, who ever covers the nakedness of my soul with the golden robe of His righteousness; Glory to Thee, sovereignly tear to pieces the handwriting of my sins and forever put the devil to shame! Everywhere the devil catches me and hurts me through everything! The ethereal enemy stays, a frequent guest, in our hearts. But many people don’t notice: the accursed one is hiding, and you won’t find it unless you look more carefully. How does the devil incline a person to all kinds of sins? He sits in the heart and from there demands satisfaction of all the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Thus, in a voluptuous person and a drunkard, it sits in the heart and demands tasty food and wine; in someone who is partial to expensive and elegant clothes, to a rich home environment, it sits in the heart and demands clothes and a brilliant home environment; in those who love social pleasures, it sits in the heart and arouses heartfelt anguish - in a word, it acts in every possible way in everyone: in thieves it thirsts for profit, in murderers - human blood, in liars - lies, in unbelievers it blasphemes, it begs the pious with doubts: adapting itself to everyone, it acts in everyone in accordance with the sinful habits, dispositions and passions of everyone, in order to somehow devour someone. When you ask God for forgiveness of sins and salvation, believe that this is the most common act of His goodness and love for mankind; say: It is Yours to have mercy and save us, O our God. (Hope.) Turn funerals into a means of strengthening hope, and not into a means of satiety and riotous joy and revelry of human passions. Woe to the priests who indulge and feast at such feasts. If the enemy settles in your heart, hurting, oppressing, burning and darkening you, call on the Lord with faith and depict the sign of the cross on your belly; say: Lord, You are always with me, testing my heart and entrails; drive away my enemy by the power of Your cross. When we talk about hope, we will respond to the deepest, most sacred needs and longings of your heart. Your heart has been looking for peace and bliss all your life, but does not find it in anything earthly. We will show you where this peace of your heart should be sought, where to find it, where this bliss for which it so greedily strives. The comprehensiveness of hope: a) in relation to people of all ranks and conditions; b) in relation to the comprehensive satisfaction of all their noble aspirations of the soul. What do we hope for? What do we not have? – We do not have true life in ourselves: we do not have life in ourselves [John. 6, 53], - it means we are dead in soul. Hope involves expecting good things in the future. Christian hope presupposes, by its very name it presupposes, that it is instilled in us by Christ and is an expectation of good things; The greatest good of every person in real life, as everyone knows, is our life: not this external life, bodily, transitory, but that inner life of the heart (which comes from the agreement of all spiritual forces, [is] full of undisturbed calm, spiritual light, truth, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit), in which we feel the perfect agreement of all our spiritual forces - this heavenly peace of the heart, which the Lord left to His disciples, saying: Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, I give to you [Jn. 14, 27 ], this inner Divine silence in which holy thoughts, pure and life-giving feelings of love for God and neighbors pass in orderly order in our soul - silence in which we notice the touch to the heart of every unclean thought, every unclean movement of the heart and, not for a moment enduring their touch that darkens and disturbs the soul, we drive them away by force the grace of God living and acting in us. That silence that we finally maintain while going about all our everyday affairs, nourishing the confidence that the present course of affairs is temporary, impermanent, that it serves, however, as preparation for us for another, eternal order of things, and that no matter what happens to us here, everything will pass, everything joyful and sad, and another, eternal life will come, in which everything will be new. Behold, I make all things new [Rev. 21:5], everything joyful, everything that will completely satiate both our mind and our desires - in a word, everything that will satisfy the endless holy desires of our spirit. This is the subject of hope for the best part of humanity. In relation to real life, this is the height of hope. This is Christian hope in real life. Christian hope is the reassurance of the heart in God with the confidence that He continually cares about our salvation and grants us the promised bliss. Calming the heart in God. Our heart is mostly restless, it languishes and suffers in this life from various sins, sinful inclinations and passions; in addition, created for heaven, for life in God, and not for earth, it does not find peace here in anything except God, with whom it unites [from time to time] during prayer and in the Sacraments, received with faith, and the more often it unites in this way with God, the more and more often it seeks its peace in Him, the One Reposer of all - God. Meanwhile, he naturally seeks peace and bliss for himself, seeks the most perfect life, and now the God of our heart responds in His holy word to such a search, to such a need of the heart with the promise to free us completely from sin and death, the promise of eternal life, eternal peace and blessings, which no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor has entered into the heart of man (1 Cor. 2:9). That is why Christian hope can be called such a calming of the heart in God, when a Christian looks with confidence at God as a caring Father, who cares with love for our salvation and, as a loving, most blessed Father, gives us the promised bliss. God cares about our salvation: conscience testifies to this to everyone, rewarding for good and punishing for evil precisely in order to reject a person from evil and force him to do good, and for good subsequently crown him with the crown of the Heavenly Kingdom; For this reason, God is now testing the hearts and insides of everyone - to show that there will be a terrible test at the last Judgment, after which the righteous will receive the Kingdom of Heaven, and sinners will receive eternal destruction. God cares about our salvation... It is not in vain that God gives us the means to unite with Him and bliss in Him, because He, as a father, constantly cares about our salvation and gives us the bliss that He Himself promised. The Holy Scripture silently and clearly testifies to this, which says that God so loved the world, that is, the human race, that he gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life [Jn. 3, 16 ]; This is evidenced by the cross of our Savior (His constant, invincible Divine power), on which our redemption from sins and eternal death was accomplished; constant and visible proof of this is the Church, founded by the Lord on earth, its worship, breathing the spirit of salvation, and all the Sacraments, which are nothing more than the Lord’s answer to the crying needs of our soul, thirsting for salvation from its sins and blessed repose. This, finally, is evidenced by all of nature, which with its entire structure confirms the great truth that if God provides for the welfare and bliss of irrational creatures, giving them everything necessary for their life, if He feeds birds, animals, fish, insects, reptiles and has given them all the means to get food for themselves and make their life pleasant and contented, then all the more cares about the welfare and bliss of His rational creatures, which if not If they are blessed, as one would expect, here, they will be blessed there, in heaven, in union with the God of spirits and all flesh [Num. 16, 22]. Aren't there many birds?.. 74 Subjects of Christian Hope. Show the benefits of the Kingdom, and then the means to receive them: cleansing from sins; means: going to church for services, [receiving the Sacraments]. The sacraments and church services are God’s answer to the crying needs of our soul. The work of God requires skill above all else: rationality, goodwill, calmness. This is the work of prayer. Worshiping icons, I, firstly, honor in them the image of God, who gave birth to the beginningless Son, His living image, Who gave the image to the infinite thought of God the Father, creating the world and man and all creatures that were in the thought of God; man created in the image and likeness of God; 2) I honor the image of God incarnate; 3) I respect myself, my image of a person, and in general I respect in the image the image of an immortal, god-like person, called to be a partaker of the Divine nature, one with the Lord: Cling to the Lord, there is one spirit (with the Lord) (1 Cor. 6:17), the temple of the Holy Spirit. I am also involuntarily moved to venerate icons because I see the saving power of God manifested through them for the faithful and the punishing power for the unfaithful, just as I see and feel this same power in the image of the Cross of the Lord, which by its miraculous power is called life-giving. For all these reasons, icons replace for me the very faces whose names they bear. The faces of the saints on our icons represent to us the closeness in spirit of the saints of God, who are all alive with God and in the Holy Spirit are always close to us through our heartfelt faith and prayer to them, for what can be distant for the Spirit of God, existing everywhere and fulfilling everything and passing through everything, rational spirits (gifted with reason), pure, subtle [Wis. 7, 23 ]? There is joy among the Angels of God over one sinner who repents [Lk. 15, 10]. This means that the dispositions of our soul are revealed not only to God, but also to the Angels. Standing before You and before Your terrible and holy Angels, I offer my wicked and lawless deeds, reveal and reprove them. Remember that during prayer the Lord corresponds perfectly to us, as our personal prototype: He responds to every word, to every movement of the heart. Rivers of living water [John. 7, 38] - that is, words of salvation that come from the Holy Spirit filling our heart. Living water: a) according to its life-giving effect in hearts, for the word of God is living and effective; b) by lively, rapid fluidity. Prayer is also living water flowing from the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray for what is appropriate, interceding for us with our own lips with groanings that cannot be uttered [Rom. 8, 26]. O love of the Holy Spirit! Respect yourself in every person: he is exactly the same as you, in soul and body. You, clay 7, are promised endless life; to you, earth and ashes, eternal bliss is offered. When I read the works of others, I read as if I were my own; Respecting the works of others, I respect mine, because they reflect completely me, with my thinking, with my laws of thinking, with my word, with my laws of speech. I am in them, I am perfect. And in the word of God I read or hear God Himself. Oh goodness! Oh, indulgence! Looking at the gaze of the Savior on the icon, remember that this gaze constantly tests the hearts and wombs of people, 76 that this gaze is like a fiery flame in its effect on the hearts of people. His eyes are like a flame of fire [Rev. 1, 14]. The carnal man rejoices because he has become fat, fat and plump [Deut. 32:15], and fears the mortification of his flesh; but the spiritual one rejoices when an opportunity presents itself for the mortification of his flesh, and grieves when it grows fat, because the spirit then becomes powerless. If any thoughts and desires of the heart bring with them painful fire and oppression into the soul, do not follow them, but throw them out immediately, like poisonous snakes, like hellish fire, and say: these thoughts are death, they are from the devil, I do not sympathize with them for a moment. The more the belly is fed and enjoys food, the less sensitive the heart becomes to the great truths of God that shake the soul with their greatness, revealed to us in the word of God, the more powerless our inner man becomes for faith, hope and love, because food earths, whitens him, makes him flesh. The words of God spoken about the antediluvian people always come to well-fed people: My Spirit will not forever be despised by these people, because they are flesh [Gen. 6, 3]. Such people do not and cannot have living water in their hearts, which flows in rivers among believers and those who fast [Jn. 7, 38]. Umet (Church Slav.) – droppings, manure; also the coarsest and toughest part of the straw, on which the grain is supported and which, when the wheat is harvested, is thrown away as if it were worthless. I will find myself (church glory) - I will find myself. Foresee (Church Slav.) – to foresee, provide for; also - to see, to mature. I will take it out (Church Glav.) - always, incessantly, at all times. At the right hand (Church Glav.) - on the right side, on the right. Father-in-law (wife's father); brothers - also refers to the wife's brothers. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive an unfading crown of glory (1 Pet. 5:4). Verbal (Church Glorious) – in a mental image; reasonable; spiritually. Glass (Church Slavic) – glass vessel. Apoplexy (Greek) – lit.: “I strike with a blow”; rapidly developing hemorrhage in any organ; in a figurative sense - a sudden blow. Verbal (Church Slavic) – mental, spiritual. A non-evening day is a day without evening, darkness, always bright, endless. Izumevati (Church Glav.) – not to comprehend, to be perplexed, not to understand. Prisny (Church Slavic) – related, close. Kosniti (Church Glav.) – to hesitate, hesitate. Ole (Church Glorious) – about; interjection expressing surprise or sorrow. Rezda (Church Slavic) – furrow; Niva. Pesnivets (Church Slavic) – singer. Blagoslichny (Church Glorious) – slender, foldable. Inconvenience (Church Glav.) – not free, not easy, difficult; sometimes it’s impossible. Wed: do not be afraid: you are of many better birds (Matthew 10:31); see also: Luke. 12, 7. Wed: Ps. 7, 10; Mer. 11, 20; Open 2, 23. You might be interested in: