Апрель

I thank You, Lord Jesus, who now prompted me, without condemnation, to partake of the most pure and life-giving Mysteries during the conciliar service of the Liturgy in the Assumption Church and a prayer service of thanksgiving for saving the life of the Tsar 10 to stand before the people and eminent people and dignitaries with great calm, boldness, Thy holiness, with the prayer of faith; then consume the Holy Mysteries with great faith and return to the world of spiritual strength. I thank You, for You have given me the grace to conduct the sixth grade with noble importance and authority and to speak well the lesson for the next class. Glory to Your Mysteries, Christ, - and I will also say: glory to Your Mysteries. Glory to the simplicity of faith in Your Holy Mysteries! O pre-divine, oh pre-actual, super-powerful, omnipotent Mysteries, glory to you. Glory to Thee, Lord! I am evil, a sinful abomination, and my neighbor is the image of God, therefore I must humiliate myself in every possible way before everyone according to my wealth, so that one day the fallen image of God will be restored in me. Alas for me, wretched one, Lord! Honor every person according to his property, especially my parents, my superior, and my brothers, grant me, Lord! Humility and self-abasement is our greatness! Blessed is he who is wise and does so! It is not others that I must shun or despise, but myself, myself alone, the sin and the devil living in me, the culprit and leader of all sin. Make me wise, Lord! Beware of extreme satiety: it can be the cause of extreme corruption of the heart, betrayal of God and neighbor. Who is most easily possessed by the devil? Sated. The enemy, sometimes arming us with internal malice against our parents, thereby arms us against the very Creator of our existence - God, who gave us life through them; arming against man in general, he also arms against God, because man is the image of God; We have this commandment from Him, that he who loves God should also love his brother (1 John 4:21). But by honoring and loving our parents and our neighbors in general, we honor and love God, our Creator, and ourselves, because we are all one in one God, from whom we all came and in whose image we were all created. We are all brothers, members of one body, animated by the one spirit of God, headed by one Head - Christ, one spirit of love, meekness, humility, gentleness, obedience, purity, holiness, peace, freedom should be in all of us, if it be by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit, by the good pleasure of God and the Father. Through the elevation of a peasant by the sovereign to a nobleman, the Lord suddenly teaches me that every simple and uneducated person is no worse than a nobleman when he does deeds worthy of a man and a Christian. But in Christ we are all nobles, because we are established by the Lord in hope in heaven and heavenly mansions are prepared for all of us. A priest, according to the will of God and according to the spirit of the Orthodox Church, must love all people passionately, care for everyone, have a soul for everyone, like a mother who is sick for her children, pray fervently and unceasingly for everyone; to know, if possible, the spiritual needs and ailments of everyone, to rush to everyone for various help and consolation, to be ready to give decent advice to everyone. That is why we are called fathers. Where is the spirit of love in us? Illumination on the occasion of saving the king from death. Fine. It would also be better if they collected money for the poor, and sheltered them, fed them, and clothed them. Lord's Prayer. Oh, how sublime she is, what feelings, what deeds she demands from us! Do you think: does the Lord require much from you? Very little: treat every day meekly, kindly with everyone at home and with everyone who meets and speaks with you or comes to you, always eat and drink in moderation, without satiety, indulge in luxury in clothing, home furnishings, pleasures, give alms to the poor, believe in the Lord, love Him and His holy commandments - and you will please God and be saved. Don’t trust your old man one bit about anything: don’t trust the eye, the ear, the taste, the appetite, the sense of smell, the touch, the mind, the feeling (heart) or desire - all lies, pride, malice, envy, greed, all the lust of the flesh and eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). But the new man is all truth, and he turns away from all lusts and pride, he is sincerely humble before everyone, because he knows what a person is. He who quarrels in vain against his neighbor is certainly at the same time an enemy of God, for man is the image of God: for example, if you do not honor your parents, you do not honor God Himself; if you become embittered toward someone, you become embittered against God—so closely did God unite with people through the installation of His image in us and especially through the incarnation and clothing of our confusion. What does it mean to believe in the Church? But here’s what: you see a poor person asking for alms, recognize him from the heart as your brother, a member of Christ, and give him alms with the confidence that Christ Himself in his person accepts it, and you will be a believer in the Church. A guest has come to you - accept him again as a member of Christ, with affection, talk to him sincerely for the benefit of his soul, treat him with cordiality, and you will be a believer in the Church. If you see a priest, admit from your heart that this is the shepherd of the verbal 11 flock of Christ, appointed by Jesus Christ Himself to spiritually give birth and raise people for eternal life; look at him as the image of Christ Himself, believe that the grace of the Holy Spirit and the power to teach, perform the Sacraments and lead believers to eternal life rests on him; believe in the right of his blessing (coming from Jesus Christ Himself) and accept it as Christ’s blessing; listen to him with respect and humility when he teaches, instructs, reproaches; Receive the sacraments from him as from Christ Himself, accept spiritual punishments as from God Himself; honor in the saint the image of the Chief Shepherd Christ, recognize that through him, after the apostles, the grace of the priesthood and all the grace of Christ flows to the faithful; obey him as Christ Himself, look to him as an apostle, as the full successor of His power, and to the priests and deacons as helpers with grace-filled rights - and you will be a believer in the Church. Further: acknowledge from your heart that the Most Holy Virgin Mother of God is the Head of the 12th church mental order, who is always with us as Mother in the one house of God (the Church); sees, hears us, cares, provides for us, especially for our spiritual advancement and salvation; how the Queen reigns over us, denounces, judges, punishes us, and generally takes an active part in our spiritual life, especially in the lives of those who know Her, believe in Her, and reverently honor Her. Further, recognize that all the saints are our elder brothers in the one house of the Heavenly Father, who passed from earth to heaven, and they are always in God with us, and constantly teach us, guide us to eternal life through the church services compiled by them, the Sacraments, rituals, teachings, church institutions, for example, fasts, holidays, and, so to speak, serve with us, sing, speak, teach, help us in various temptations and sorrows, and call glorify them, as if they were living with you under the same roof, in the same room, thank them, talk to them as if they were alive - and you will believe in the Church. Strive yourself to be established in the heavenly abodes that the saints have reached - continually cleanse yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, calling diligently and unceasingly on the Lord Jesus Christ and [receiving] the Sacraments of the Church for cleansing, strengthening and guidance - and you will believe in the Church. Even when you believe that our deceased forefathers, grandfathers, fathers, mothers, relatives, friends, acquaintances, all Orthodox Christians are alive even after death in souls and, depending on their deeds on earth, are tormented or are anticipating future bliss, and you pray for them to God, following the servants of the altar, and your prayer has power with God in the hope that God will hear your prayer for them and will be able to have mercy on them, then again you believe in the Church, because the dead are members of the Church. If you pray for living Christians and other people and believe that your prayer for them is also not fruitless with God, then you are a believer in the Church. If you observe times of holidays and fasting, times of cleansing of sins and communion of the Holy Mysteries and participate in them with all your soul with faith and reverence, then you are a believer in the Church. This is what it means to believe in the Church. If you live the life of the Church on earth or try to live the life of the celestials - holy, in the world, then you believe in the Church. Why should we envy each other? We are all equally in the image of God, the Lord has clothed ourselves in our common nature, He gives Himself to everyone equally for food and drink, we are all equally children of God and we say the same - Our Father... And earthly blessings are all insignificant dust. Everyone has one wonderful, greatest, most perfect, inexhaustible wealth, and belly, and sweetness, and honor, and glory - the Lord God. God! I thank You, for even now You have vouchsafed me to partake of Your most pure Mysteries, according to Your immeasurable compassion, into the world of my spiritual strength. But with perishable food, I, the accursed one, often destroy the fruits of eating incorruptible food. How slyly the devil approaches the heart and takes possession of it during the church service itself: during the proskomedia, he creates in the heart an addiction to the prosphyra, if it is soft and rosy; if it is callous and clumsy, it produces anger at the prosphyr for its disdain not for God, but for me; or produces a passionate desire for shiny vestments, or pity when a decent vestment is taken into the parish, and anger at the archpriest for not giving them, pitying them and forcing them to serve in bad ones; or again stings the thick candle if it burns strongly in front of the image. How to defeat him in this case? - With a living, firm conviction that the Lord alone is the life and treasure of our heart: when through such conviction the Lord enters the heart, the enemy instantly runs away, and silence reigns in the heart. But how does the evil one not stumble? And anger towards someone, sometimes an unclean thought, sometimes a pity for the prosphira for someone, especially given without my knowledge, and so on. Every day the Lord takes away the sinful corruption of my heart through the communion of His Holy Mysteries, and I, damned one, every almost day I corrupt my heart again through what? Through greed for food and drink, overeating and heavy drinking. Where is the mind? In addition, when the Lord so often takes away my sins from me, there are no number of them, I myself, the accursed one, am exacting to others, I do not tolerate evil in others, especially insults to me, I do not tolerate the mistakes of people, that is, people subordinate to me. Why do I forget my weaknesses? Constantly, mercilessly, unquestionably despise yourself, your old man, do not pay attention to his various demons and respect the new man, Christ, who lives together with the old and is persecuted from the old, trampled upon, embittered; to respect everyone, to be meek, condescending, patient and long-suffering towards everyone, because we see how long-suffering the Lord is towards us, we see what an abyss of evil nests within us, what kind of Gehenna is ready to swallow us up forever, but is restrained by the long-suffering Lover of Humanity, and yet everyone’s neighbor is another me: we wish for mercy for ourselves - and we should also be lenient towards him for the sake of his weakness, natural, sinful depravity. Do not yield one iota to the enemy from God’s and the church’s word, do not yield one iota to him from God’s commandments, that is, try not to sin with a single thought, movement of the heart (an iota, a dash [Matthew 5:18] is a symbol of simplicity). At the proskomedia, great events from the life of the Savior take place: His birth, suffering, death for our sake, and, in addition, the whole Church is remembered - perform it with the greatest attention and reverence, remove yourself from everything earthly. If the reader sings somewhat discordantly, or makes a stop, or does it in the wrong place where he should, or in the wrong voice, do not pay attention to it, but cover it with the condescension of love, for the devil seeks to turn all the stumbles of the priests and ministers into a reason for malice, and when you yourself stumble, it brings despondency or disdain even for important errors. Don’t believe him about that and say: it’s none of your business here, alien spirit. Do we stand or fall to our Lord [Rom. 14:4] and we trample your malice against the name of the Lord. Stop fooling us. We ourselves do not want to tolerate from others the slightest evil, resentment, stern look, proud taking of something unimportant from us, we do not want to tolerate in others any unevenness, roughness of treatment, but we ourselves are full of all sorts of wrongs, unevenness, roughness of character. But why do we ourselves not be kind to others, even wishing evil, when we consider ourselves to have the right to expect good from others, even if we have done something unkind to them? Why don’t we wish every good thing from those who are not favorable to us, when we wish for ourselves good from those who are not favorable to us? – Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you [Matthew 5:44], and if you love those who love you, what gratitude do you have for that? [ OK. 6, 32]. A Christian is meant to endure the roughness and wrongs of others and to wish the best for everyone. If my family doesn’t love me because of the bad qualities of my heart, then they don’t love me justly, and not in vain and not because they are evil, but if I am at enmity with someone, then I am at enmity because of the bad qualities of my heart. So, alas for me, a sinner! When we eat and drink more than usual, the next day or the same day we feel like captives of the evil one. If excess in ordinary food and drink (not intoxicated) makes us captives of the devil, then what can we say about drunkenness? What captives of the devil are wine drinkers! How pathetic they are! Oh, how a Christian needs abstinence! From intemperance all evil, all passion comes: pride, and malice, and envy, and stinginess, and covetousness, and fornication, and theft, and laziness, and unbelief, and disrespect, and disobedience, etc. When will I cleanse the old leaven within myself and become a new mixture (1 Cor. 5:7)? When will there be no malice and deceit in me? When will I be abstinent? Do not wastefully perishing [Russian: try not to eat perishable food] [In. 6, 27], said the Lord, and I keep chasing after the waste that is perishing, 13 because I am greedy for food and drink, although I eat the Body and Blood of God almost every day - this is the imperishable waste. The more and more dainty you eat and drink, the more pride, malice, envy, zeal, stinginess, love of money, laziness and all kinds of evil increase. And it serves us right, for we impute the Divine waste to nothing, greedily indulging in sensual pleasures that we should despise. Why am I impatient and angry when others sometimes speak the truth or even a lie against me? Because I do not have the spirit of Christ, I have not yet learned meekness and humility, I have not yet put off the old man and the devil who lives in him, I have not cleansed the old leaven, so that there may be a new confusion. God! Cleanse, enlighten and save me. Give me, Lord, patience, generosity and meekness. Grant me to listen complacently to the contradictions of my neighbors and to calmly listen to the voice of truth and reproof, as well as to calmly listen to unjust reproaches, censures, and curses. Christians are called to overcome evil with good in themselves and in others: anger - with goodness, pride - with humility, stinginess - with generosity, envy and ill will - with goodwill and trying to please one's neighbor, rudeness - with affection, greed - with abstinence, covetousness - with alms, despondency - with complacency, despair - with hope, fornication - with purity, blasphemy - blessing, grumbling - gratitude for everything, pleasant and sorrowful, doubt and unbelief - unshakable and simple-hearted faith, guile - simplicity, laziness - hard work, indifference to the ungodly customs of the world - zeal for reproof and eradication of them. Guard your heart above all else, for from it are the springs of life, says the wise [Prov. 4, 23]. Keep your heart from passions in every possible way, so that it does not become infected with malice, or pride, or envy, or stinginess, or fornication, or aggravated by intemperance and drunkenness, or laziness, etc. During the Liturgy, the enemy tries in every possible way to extinguish the lamp of our heart, in order to obscure for us the great work of redemption, in order to make us indifferent, insensitive to the infinitely great benefits of the Lord, revealed to us, unworthy, in His coming, suffering, death and resurrection. Here the enemy intensifies to bind our mind and heart either with worldly pleasures, the heart’s addiction to them, or with embitterment towards our neighbor, or with embarrassment, etc. But faith destroys his machinations. Do not look at a person’s face and do not judge, do not value a person by his face, for example, a general by his generalship, a colonel and in general an officer by his external, worldly dignity, by his education and state, a merchant by his wealth, by his clothes or by his mind: for God all this is appearance and has very little or no value with God; equally, do not value a person by his low rank, by the coarseness of his face, speech, manners, his clothes, by his poverty, for all this is external, and often the lack of this appearance is accompanied by internal wealth - the wealth of faith, simplicity, meekness, humility, love for God and neighbor. See everyone as a person, as created in the image of God, as a member of Christ, and as someone who comes closer to the ideal of the image of God and a member of Christ. And it is known that between ordinary people, babies at heart, there are much more of these than between nobles and scientists, in whom pride and arrogance often reign. What is one mind without a kind and loving God and a neighbor’s heart? – Nothing, as the Apostle said (1 Cor. 13). And educated people themselves look for a good heart in others and in their own learned brethren as treasures, but they regard learning and knowledge as almost nothing, especially if it does not have a good heart or a good life in its neighborhood. For we acquire all knowledge for the sake of life, to correct our hearts and morals, in order to make our life more comfortable and peaceful, in order to more conveniently achieve the common goal of our life - a blessed eternity and the means to it - good deeds. And what smart and learned people do not have, despite all their learning, and what they so diligently seek and often do not find in their learned brethren, is found in abundance in ordinary people - peasants, soldiers, merchants, philistines, in the clergy, and especially in its lower members - male and female. For there dwells simplicity, kindness, sincerity, kindness, patience, self-sacrifice for the good of one’s neighbor, sincere faith and piety. Every angelic nature was amazed at the great work of Your incarnation: for the unapproachable God, in sight of the approachable Man 14, but we humans have become indifferent to this great work of redemption and are negligent about our change, which the Lord commanded and for which he gave all the strength and means, we do not act according to the Gospel, we do not go to church, we prefer to go to the theater - to the idols of the ancient pagans watch. He who pleases people beyond measure, who is partial to earthly, temporary things - money, food and drink, clothing, etc., serves the creature more than the Creator and sins gravely, for God has made everyone and everything and gives everything, and to Him alone, the Giver of all good things, you must cleave with all your heart, so that He will give you everything in abundance: all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33], or let us complacently endure Him for the sake of deprivation of earthly blessings. Many desire wealth, but do not think about whether they will use it in accordance with the will of God, whether because of the wealth of their hearts they will not depart from God, from love for their neighbor, and whether this will become the cause of their eternal and temporary destruction? Do you, Christian, honor, as you should, the animated, pure, all-golden ark of the Divine – the Virgin Mary? Do you breathe Her praise, thanksgiving, and petition? Do you honor the animate churches of the Divine by the indwelling of the Lord in them, as in His pure images and vessels, namely the holy Angels and holy men? The Lord Jesus Christ does not regret sharing His flesh and blood among us, showing in this unceasingly ardent love for us and inspiring us to love each other as He loved us - will we regret sharing with our neighbor, the member of Christ, bread and salt, money, our clothes to express mutual love and communication from the gifts of the Lord’s love for us, for what do we have that we would not accept from the Lord? So, if we have received everything freely from the Lord, then why do we regret giving freely to those in need and to guests who providentially come to us, that is, by the mania of Providence, to test our love? Let us not have the slightest partiality for earthly goods that are perishable, for our highest good is the Lord, who has given us all of Himself, before Whom everything is nothing. May we have love for one another, according to the commandment of our Savior [John. 13, 34, etc.], for mutual love is our life and the fulfillment of the law. Let us instantly reflect the movement of indignation and enmity towards our neighbor. Let us turn everything into a reason for mutual love, from everything we will derive the benefit of love, just as the devil strives to turn everything, all our everyday relationships into a reason for enmity, pride and arrogance, envy, stinginess, covetousness, etc. Are not all earthly goods truly rubbish compared to heavenly ones? Don't they clog, darken, or weigh down our heart like rubbish? Meanwhile, how easy is it for the heart to receive the blessings of heaven, for example, from prayer, from the communion of the Holy Mysteries? What a poor, sick, unfortunate man I saw today: he was alone with his wife and, waiting to cross to Rambov 15, he was sitting against a granite stone wall. That's poverty! What sick, purulent eyes! What an abscess over the left eye, which has leaked and closed! What a skinny rag! And the poor wife is almost bare-chested! Also in rags. Oh, poverty! Poverty! Oh, our pride! I gave them 1 ruble 10 kopecks in silver. For the grace given to me now in the service of the liturgy (Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearers, April 9), I thank You, Lord, and for the communion of Your Holy Mysteries into the world of my spiritual strength. I thank You, Lord, for the boldness and loudness You have given to my poverty. But, alas for me, a sinner, unskilled in doing good deeds - in meekness, humility, kindness, patience! When my wife, after dinner, began to tell me in the presence of her sister Anna that I should give her most of my school salary, and have the smallest part for myself, and my sister with her heart began to insist on this and reproach me for giving to the poor - I could not stand it and became angry with both, and they were angry with me. And I, so as not to cause more hostility and quarrel, left the house for a walk. But in my heart I made peace with them, and then, meeting them on the street, for they too had gone for a walk, I offered them peace. And we made peace. Advice from God. Coming from a walk, I opened the Gospel, and the following passage from Acts fell upon me: like a sheep that is led to the slaughter, and like a lamb that is silent before its keeper, so it does not open its mouth. In His humility, His judgment was taken away: whoever confessed His generation [Russian: from bonds and judgment He was taken away; but who will explain His generation]? [Is. 53, 7 – 8]. Obviously, the Lord teaches me meekness and gentleness towards my family and everyone I meet in partnership or in the priesthood, and about willingly giving my property to others, without any contradiction. The Lord is the image of meekness and gentleness for all of us who bear His name. For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus [Phil. 2, 5]. Otherwise, why are we called Christians? Our Lord Jesus Christ unquestioningly gave His most pure body to be spat on, beaten, strangled and crucified and was not embittered by any villain, but was meek and gentle in order to teach us to unquestioningly and without bitterness allow others to take our property, our food and drinks, our sweets, to distribute our money and clothes to the needy or to the thieves of our property, to endure insults, curses, slander, ridicule, beatings, spitting, strangling, etc. If we are Christians, then let us learn to live according to Christ’s example. As about many of us, it must be said: yes, you yourself don’t know how to live and don’t know how to live with your family or deal with comrades, subordinates, students, the poor, relatives, that’s why you have troubles, quarrels, that’s why life is a burden for you, that’s why you have discord, nothing is in dispute, not successful - you need to be able to live with people, you need to adapt to their characters, you need to be able to please them (not their passions, however, for the good, for creation or edification), that is, it is better to say, to overcome all evil with good, not to repay evil with evil, but to do everything with meekness and kindness and with prudent prudence. People are the same as the sick - they are morally sick: this is where you learn to get along, please these sick people, endure without irritation their whims, outbursts of passions, for example, anger, pride and arrogance, greed, stinginess, passion for money, for elegant clothes, for various entertainments; if you reprove, reprove without bile, with love, with holy zeal for the salvation of their souls; let them understand that through a certain passion or addiction they are destroying their souls; skillfully bring them to the consciousness of the highness of the title of a Christian and the responsibilities inevitably associated with this name; inspire that the Christian faith certainly requires change, correction, renewal of the heart: if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), putting off the old man and putting on the new, philosophizing on things above and not on earthly things, mutual love, patience and long-suffering, meekness, humility, abstinence in food and drink, purity and chastity, non-covetousness, humility, etc. Let them understand that they are not living at all as they should according to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles, that they have a lot of work ahead of them in life, to which they must pay the strictest attention, all the more intense since they have previously neglected it. In Christ there is neither male nor female [Gal. 3, 28], we are all equal, have the same rights. Men should respect women, women should respect men. You are in the image of God, you are a king - conquer the passions that are warring in you and in others with the help of the Lord, strong in battle; conquer your flesh, the rebellious slave of the soul, so that you may be worthy to inherit the Kingdom prepared for you, as created in the image of God, from the foundation of the world. Be love - and conquer anger, be meek and humble - and conquer pride and irritability, covetousness - with generosity, lust - with fasting, self-will and stubbornness - with obedience. Know your dignity and support it. Be forgiving of all your mother’s infirmities and do not treat her with contempt of heart, eyes and tongue; at home, like a son, always be lower than her. Don’t pay attention to the words, which is awkward and [will tell you] - the power is not in words, in the heart: the word is often the wind. In the simplicity of your heart, look at the words of a mother, a simple woman, as if they were the words of a baby, for simple people are babies, and it would be crazy to be angry with them for the simplicity and weakness, rudeness and artlessness of their words. If she says something out of place, out of place, don’t despise her, because we ourselves are often out of place, we say it idly, and wow. And power doesn’t lie in words. Respond to her simplest, apparently inappropriate words in simplicity and kindness, as reasonable and appropriate: this is required by respect for your mother. Remember how she listened to your meaningless babble, infantile, innocent. So you, too, always honor your mother from the heart, and let nothing be a reason to overthrow the due respect for her: neither rudeness and simplicity, nor some weaknesses of the heart and will and weaknesses of the mind and words - cover everything with love, do not notice. Know one thing, that she is your mother, your nurse, your bearer, your mourner. Always be as kind to her as possible. How simply and easily ordinary people do everything that we scientists do somehow cunningly and with difficulty, with the help of many books. I mean life, good deeds! How many books I have written, but I am still not skilled in what a simple woman, my mother, is skilled in: in simplicity of heart, in meekness, humility, obedience, etc. Don’t forget: consider yourself worse than everyone else, more sinful, stupider, consider yourself inferior; despise yourself, and respect others, consider yourself better than everyone else, and not in any hypocritical way, but in the thing itself, sincerely. Artless, ungraceful words, my mother’s manner means nothing, but this is what means a lot: a simple, kind, meek, loving heart - she truly, persistently loved and loves me and proved her love by her very deed, growing up and partly raising me, not sparing anything for me, who was small - no peace, no health, no fortune, meager fortune. So in every person, value his soul, heart, and not words and manners, but the tenderness of the skin of his face, etc. These are nothing, leaves, and even then tinted ones. Do not have faith out of sight [Jas. 2, 1]. Why, you say, are the same prayers often repeated, the same prayers, for example: Lord, have mercy; Holy God; Holy Trinity; Our Father; Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; Hallelujah; Also for any time. 1) Because to a soul who believes and loves God, these prayers bring joy, tranquility, heavenly peace, sweetness, life, for the name of God is one name of God, which is often heard in these prayers, there is life, peace, spiritual sweetness. 2) Because the name of God is spiritual air for the soul: it must constantly breathe it, otherwise the pernicious air of passions will inevitably penetrate the heart, and the soul will be indignant, darkened, and cramped. Is this life? So, say these prayers more often to yourself, from the heart, sincerely, and you will feel for yourself how much joy, peace, and sweetness they will pour into your soul, like balm, like heavenly nectar - and in church, do not be lazy and sincerely follow the reader with attention. Serve your household and friends, feeding and clothing them, and not only do not be burdened by this, but do it with pleasure and ever-present desire, as if you were feeding and clothing Christ Himself (and they are His members), and as if you were not doing what was pleasing to them, but they were doing what was pleasing to you. Endure evil, irregularities, whims, stubbornness, disobedience and correct them with love if you can; if you can’t, leave it, and God cannot correct everyone: the will is given to everyone. Tobacco is a trifle, it’s easy to tolerate [it] without hostility: [you won’t stop] smoking. This is not what people endure; God has suffered and is enduring something from you, but you don’t want to bear such a small, light cross. Guests go to eat and drink, again there is no need to think - God will provide for everyone’s share. Let us live only in love. Noticing the unchristian, scattered, vicious life of Christians, remind them more often of Christian responsibilities and, denouncing their flock, say: is this how the children of God live, the sheep of the verbal flock of Christ, called to inherit the Heavenly Kingdom? Are these the morals and deeds that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the King and Judge of the whole world, who has all power in heaven and on earth, commanded them? Is this how Christians live and should live, who hear daily: I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who will come with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose Kingdom will have no end, and: I hope for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century? 16 Is this how they prepare to meet the One who is coming to judge the whole universe? Is this how they expect the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century? Will all be pardoned and there will be no part of Shuya 17, will it not be said from the Judge to those standing on the left: go away from Me, the curse, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angel [Matt. 25, 41 ]? And will they not go into eternal punishment? But the devil blinds the minds and hearts of the unbelievers, instilling unbelief and insensibility of the future horrors of judgment and eternal torment! Who to believe? Is it the Truth itself or a liar, a dreamer, an enemy? So, say in conclusion, be sober, brothers, and fear the Last Judgment. Walk continually before the face of God, remembering that He sees all your thoughts, intentions, passions, words, deeds. Fear His judgment. There is an answer for every idle word [Matt. 12, 36]. May the light of Your countenance 18 be marked upon us. When we earnestly and sincerely pray to God, when we are meek, humble, obedient, affectionate, when we do the commandments of God, we worthily partake, by the grace of God, of the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, then the light of God is signified upon us; Have you seen how bright the faces of pious people are, what heavenly light is on their faces, what calmness, what kindness? But have you seen how gloomy, unpleasant, disgusting are the faces of people devoted to vices - uncleanness, drunkenness, anger, pride, envy, stinginess, etc.? This darkness is from the chief of darkness, Satan, who nests in their hearts and teaches them to constantly do their will. Blessed are those on whom the light of God’s face still shines in this life: they will see in this light, after the end of their earthly life, the light of God’s unapproachable face. Unhappy are those on whose faces the darkness of Satan is already spread - if they do not repent, they will be cast into utter darkness, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth [Matt. 8, 12]. This is my problem: having in my heart, my mental eye, a mental log - a lot of coarse passions, I want to take out the knots from my brother's hair, even my father, my mother, my boss. Woe to me, the sinner who is constantly filled with passions, the evil, proud, contemptuous, 20 impatient, envious, stingy, stubborn, capricious, absent-minded, lazy, covetous, earth-loving, fornicating, blasphemous, cowardly, greedy, covetous, voluptuous, satiated, slothful, hypocritical, partial, hard-hearted. For the multitude of my sins, I must endure everything unpleasant for the flesh, which, because of various pleasant things, goes berserk, satiated with the gifts of God; One must always fast, so that the flesh can be pacified by fasting, and have prayer in the heart and on the lips. Oh, what an abyss of evil is within me! But wallowing in the abyss of sin, I call upon the unsearchable abyss of Thy mercy: from aphids, O God, lift me up 21 . God! Have mercy on me, for the thought of evil has been constantly upon me since my youth [Gen. 8.21]. God! You make heaven in me through the communion of Your most pure Mysteries, and I again make hell out of myself. Alas for me, wretched one! How I have not yet put off the old, proud, evil, earth-loving man, how I do not despise the earth and all its blessings and have not put on the new, meek, humble, unloving man. Be a prince, a king over yourself, for you are the image of God, you are a king, and you are promised a kingdom if you submit your flesh to the spirit, your will to the will of God. I thank You, merciful Lord, for taking away my sins through my prayer, and for pacifying my heart, and for enlightening my face. (Have mercy on me, O God... read, and: Lord our God, forsaking by repentance... 22) Where there is another person, there the enemy tries to create enmity towards him, for the Lord says: love your neighbor as yourself, but the enemy says: be at enmity against your neighbor - and strongly forces you to enmity against him. By ourselves, we, sinners, are stinking feces, and saints are fragrant incense or cypress; we are as dark as the night, and they are as bright as the day, being sons of the day (1 Thess. 5:8); We are the darkness, they are the sun. How can we not be in awe of them, not be surprised, not imitate, not honor them, especially since they are the eternal dwelling of the Most Holy Trinity? We worthily and righteously honor the saints and celebrate a festival in their honor, so that we may glorify God in them and through them, and through their prayers we may be granted forgiveness of sins, and be inspired to imitate them. Did our Divine Savior really not know what he was saying when he taught the people to love their enemies, bless those who curse, and do good to those who hate us [Matt. 5, 44], that we do not obey His Divine saving instructions and do it in our own way - we are angry with our enemies, we scold scolders, we are angry with the evil, we are annoyed with those who hate us, we try to do evil to those who hate us? If you are a true Christian, then out of single obedience to the Divine Redeemer, who sealed all His commands by death for us, you must do what He commanded, although what was commanded is unpleasant to your corrupted heart. So, if someone has insulted you, don’t be angry with him, but pray for him, according to the word of the Lord: pray for those who offend you, don’t be pouty with him, but talk to him kindly, and if he doesn’t want to, leave him alone, but without a heart. By doing this and in a similar way, you will be a true disciple of Christ, for Christ prayed for His crucifiers, as Stephen did for his murderers. During prayer, one must realize the importance of those petitions, thanksgivings, and praises that are contained in the prayers, and vividly recognize and feel the reality of that state of mind in which the prayers represent it, feel one’s poverty, one’s damnation, misery, blindness and nakedness, and shed tears of repentance. Then the filthiness of the heart will come out with tears, and light will shine in the soul and deep peace will be established, for the Lord, the King of peace, will dwell in the heart. We must desire with all our hearts the blessings we ask for. We must wholeheartedly appreciate the immeasurable condescension towards us of the Son of God, who came down from heaven and became incarnate for our salvation, and we must place our own salvation and others above all things on earth and take care of it, for the Son of God Himself places it above all else. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness... Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand [Matt. 6, 33; 3, 2]. Save yourself from this corrupt generation [Acts. 2, 40]. The Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost [Matt. 18, 11]. Thank You, Lord, for the safe passage of two classes (seventh and fifth) on April 11. I thank Thee, Lord, for Thou hast saved me twice in Thy name through my prayer in the apartment of Thy servant Mary Matt. I thank You, for through the prayers of Your Forerunner You gave me sincere evening prayer and tears of repentance and confession - I thank You for everything. I thank You, for You have taken away the anger from Me. I constantly look to the Lord and to the Most Pure Mother of God, for the Lord with His Most Pure Matter is the source of salvation, light, peace, freedom, spiritual joy, boldness, strength, purity and holiness, in a word, true life. Incense means that we must be a fragrant aroma to God through meekness, humility, gentleness, goodness of heart, purity, and obedience. Try wholeheartedly and diligently to fulfill the commandments of Christ regarding God, your neighbor and yourself; if others do not fulfill God’s commandments regarding you, although you fulfill them according to your strength, then leave them to God, the Righteous Judge. Let us commit ourselves, each other and our whole life to Christ our God. If others offend you in any way and you feel indignation in your heart and anger at those who offend you, immediately say to yourself: I am not the one who offends, they offend me - thank you, Lord! Don’t let me hurt anyone, but let them, because of my sins, hurt me. You are my protector, You are the giver of all good things. We often get offended when our neighbors take our property - food, money, etc. But this is more our greed: we offend ourselves. Tuna 23 we will eat, we will give Tuna [Matt. 10, 8]. You have again forgotten the meekness of Christ, that you are angry with the poor boys for their importunity! Do not be irritated by anything, endure everything with meekness, deny yourself and all your possessions for the sake of the inheritance of the unexplored riches of Christ. Because of his importunity, I pushed the beggar boy so hard that he fell. I sinned before God and before the Angels and all the saints! God! Have mercy on me! Forgive me, Lady, all the holy Angels and holy people and all humanity! (The boy’s kindness! So I must be kind.) What is the reason for our rage at the poor? Our lust, our greed, effeminacy, satiety. Christian love, seeing the poor, is merciful, compassionate and joyfully gives not only excesses, but also those from lack, so that the poor may rest; she does not know anger and irritability. Instead of buying books, it is better to give to the poor: holy books teach mercy. By giving alms willingly, you achieve the goal for which you buy holy books, for which they were compiled, for spiritual books primarily teach mercy towards one’s neighbor, meekness, humility, kindness, patience, and abstinence. You accept the Body of Christ, but what is this Body? - Meekness, humility, kindness, non-covetousness, goodwill to everyone, prayer for everyone. What is this Blood? This is strong love for everyone. Are you like this, a communicant? Whoever eats and drinks a lot and sweetly, collects and has a lot of money and is greedy for it, whoever has a lot of acquisitions, moves away from God; whoever fasts, does not have money, or knows its true value and uses it in accordance with it, whoever does not cling to earthly possessions, clings to God and finds everything in Him. Are you hungry or not dressed when you go, that you are depressed and annoyed at the visiting guests? But you can't say it. So you're going crazy. But the Lord provides for your relatives, and He will send and send them for their share. Your mother has made you grow like a sweet fruit, so please her. For the bitterness of her upbringing, it is worthy and righteous for her to see from you the sweetness in old age, the sweetness of love and respect, for the sweetness of the breasts that milked you - the sweetness of food and drink, the sweetness of conversation. Oh, the wickedness of my heart! What an unworthy son I am to my mother! Strange and wild! I myself enjoy as much as I want and greedily, while others feel sorry when they drink their tea sweetly. Oddball! How long should we chase after the sweets of food and drink? How long to be mad? Thank you, Lord, for your unfaltering service to the conciliar liturgy. For the speaking of royalty, the prayer behind the pulpit, the communion of the life-giving Mysteries into the life-giving fire; however, afterwards a crafty doubt partly darkened my soul - will the Lord, with His Blood, wash away my grave sin that I pushed a beggar boy with annoyance and he fell? At the prayer service, he overcame this doubt and was at peace. The Lord forgave the thief on the cross. I thank You, for even this evening You have had mercy on me through my prayer. The way you pray is the way you sleep: well, you prayed from the heart – well, peacefully and you sleep; not sincerely, not from the heart - and you sleep poorly, restlessly. We all need mutual services: we need the help of the saints, their prayers, our neighbors need us, and everything is mutual. Never eat greedily: bread eaten greedily 24 will become stale in your soul, depriving you of peace and boldness before God. What a humble father-in-law, what a humble mother! I'm half done with such parents! We need to learn from them. Every person's sin remains lingering in his soul. It is difficult for you to go against the pricks [Acts. 26, 14]. If all gifts, all sweets are God’s, then how can we have so much audacity to spare them for anyone, especially our relatives? Ecu conquered everything under his (man) nose [Heb. 2, 8]. Oh, greed! Oh, satiety! Generous Giver of all blessings, have mercy on us! Enlighten us, make us wise, strengthen us to direct our hearts according to Your commandments! Grant us the grace to be simple 25, generous, impartial to sweets, abstinent! Pay all your attention to your daily home life - to your daily thoughts, passions, habits; watch how you walk in the midst of your house - in gentleness or in malice of heart [Ps. 100, 2], in generosity or stinginess, in goodwill or envy and malice, in labor or laziness, in self-collection or absent-mindedness, in collecting the treasures of the Kingdom of Heaven, that is, virtues, or earthly treasures - money, etc. Home life means a lot: here, in our home, we are all in full view, without pretense, with all our weaknesses and passions and with all the virtues, if they are in us and have not completely withered away from the suffocating heat of passions. We must pay the most serious attention to home life: our success or failure in public life, in serving God and the fatherland depends on it; depending on moral development or the decline of home life, we are either good servants of the Lord God and the earthly king and the earthly fatherland, or bad ones. It is very important to observe the following virtues at home: 1) meekness, humility and kindness; 2) patience; 3) abstinence. When you walk with a simple person or a simple father or mother, and you yourself are high in rank, for example a priest, an official or an officer in high rank, then, so as not to be ashamed of the simplicity and coarseness of the face, speech and manners of a simple person, keep in your heart the words of the Apostle: have faith in Jesus Christ our Lord of glory, regardless of appearance [Jas. 2, 1]. When you see a person, your own or someone else’s, without any good reason, angry at you, reviling you (scolding), humiliating, calling you directly or indirectly a fool or stupid, ignorant, rude, etc., do not be indignant and do not be angry yourself, but humble yourself in your soul and thank the Lord that He is sending you an opportunity to show humility, kindness, patience - these are the most necessary virtues in which we are poor, and pray internally for the one who offends, even if he were one of those who eat your bread, but remember that without God we cannot do anything, we cannot be kind, humble, not scolders, for to be kind, humble, and affectionate is the grace of God, that without God you yourself cannot be kind, affectionate, simple-hearted, humble and often carried away by pride, malice, greed, stinginess - recognize the common ulcer and, if you want to rage, rage against sin and its culprit, the devil, who constantly deceives our minds and hearts and incites us to mutual enmity, malice, envy, condemnation, cursing, foul language, gluttony, drunkenness, love of money, stubbornness, etc. God! Let them go, tell them, they don’t know what they’re doing, and I myself often don’t know what I’m doing. We, sick, darkened, crazy, are in passion, for sin is madness, a lie, a dream of the soul, feverish delirium, illness, insanity, worthy of the greatest compassion, and not bitterness; sin is suffering, a plague, thorns, a sword, a razor, a double-edged knife. I thank You, Lord, for you crushed the machinations of the enemy over me during tea, and drove away the dream of the serpent, and freed your dear father from the pity of sweets. Glory to You! Stop thinking that you are the master, the owner of [the gifts] of the Lord - that’s it, you’re not alone. Do not have any malice against anyone and do not suspect anyone of malice. Conquer all evil with good [Rom. 12, 21 ]; Never respond to evil with evil, do not, under any circumstances, allow evil to triumph in yourself and in others. Have wisdom, humility and patience and above all this - love. See that your mother is with you without sadness. God's infinite love for man - the image of God: having created the earth and heaven with all their blessings, he gave them to man as nothing, like dust - and what else? Oh, inexpressible condescension! God gave Himself, His body and blood, as food and drink to man, His sinful and ungrateful creature. And the infinite truth of God has prepared the eternal torment of hell with all its horrors for those who are inattentive, ungrateful, and who constantly despise this love of God. Now, if God Himself gave the entire earth with its blessings to the power and use of man and gave Himself to us, then what madness is it to spare any of these blessings for man, to keep these blessings for oneself and only for oneself (for what is ours - isn’t everything God’s?), and sometimes not even for oneself and not for others! But what an evil it is to deprive people of the Kingdom of Heaven, whether by detaining them in ignorance or by seducing them into schism and heresy, etc.! Therefore, shepherds must teach the people without laziness, they must be vigilant on guard over the salvation of people. Woe to careless shepherds! For the enemy does not sleep. But save and save, O God, Thy people by Thy grace, by the prayers of the Most Pure Mother of God, by the intercession of the honest, disembodied heavenly powers, the honest, glorious Prophet and Forerunner and Baptist John and all the saints. Deeply respect every person, even the simplest, uneducated one, for human nature is deified, especially Christians, and Orthodox Christians, who are all members of Christ and Christ in them. The Lord God Jesus Christ Himself constantly turns and walks among us and in us, and the honor, love, and help given to a Christian person are given to Christ Himself. That is why the Lord says in the Gospel: just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did it to Me [Matt. 25, 35 – 40]. Thus, whether you honor your father-mother or spiritual father, the sovereign in word and deed, whether you kiss their hand - you honor Christ God Himself, you kiss the hand, as it were, of Christ Himself; whether you always show kindness to your neighbor, respect, whether you provide any help to him: whether you give food to the hungry, thirsty drink, poorly dressed clothing, whether you give shelter to the bloodless, lodging for the night - you do this to Christ Himself, for in everything and in everyone Christ is in His images, as in His members [Col. 3, 11 ]; Whether you console the sad, or instruct the ignorant, or turn someone to the path of truth and virtue from the path of wickedness and vice - you are doing this a service to Christ Himself and you will receive reward from Him. That is why a Christian is required to have humility before everyone, meekness and kindness, kindness to everyone, obedience, abstinence, purity, because, that is, Christ God is constantly in us and among us and with us, and if we despise our neighbor, we despise Christ Himself in his person; If we become embittered, we become embittered with Christ, if we are hard-hearted toward our neighbor, we are hard-hearted with Christ, if we defile our hearts, we defile Christ’s hearts, if we show rudeness and disobedience to our parents and superiors, we show this to Christ Himself. Oh Lord! Teach us to always live according to Your will, put in us Your fear, the memory of Your omnipresence, the memory of death, resurrection and judgment, eternal torment and endless life. If you give a newborn baby a prayer, remember the spiritual birth and the words of the Savior Christ: you must be born again [Jn. 3, 7], and: that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit [Jn. 3:6], and ask yourself: have you been born again? Are you not the same old, carnal man? Do you not have the same passions as those who are not regenerated? Sigh about this before the Lord and begin to immediately correct yourself with God’s help. Try to be meek, humble, respectful, obedient, self-controlled, chaste. Whether you are baptizing infants or adults, ask yourself again: have I been reborn in the spirit? Have you put off the old man and put on the new? Why didn't you put on your clothes? Why do such and such passions dominate in me? How do I teach others faith, hope, and the commandments of God, but in my own life I do not implement the Divine teachings and commandments? Why contradict yourself? You call yourself a scientist, knowing all the secrets of nature, the whole mind, but this learning is vain if you are intemperate, proud, irritable, angry, lazy, [...], a fornicator. This is our Christian learning: if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a scientist; if you are meek and humble, you are a scientist; if you love worship, you are a scientist; if not, you are an ignorant; if you love to pray in general, you are a scientist; if not, you are an ignoramus; if you love the word of God, you are a scientist; if not, you are an ignorant; if you love only secular books, you are an ignoramus, although you know a lot; if you are abstinent, if you observe Wednesdays and heels and do not please your belly on these days, you are a scientist; if you observe other fasts, practicing crucifying your flesh with passions and lusts, you are a scientist; If day by day you put off the old man - malice, pride, self-will, stubbornness, carnal lust, gluttony, intemperance, fornication, lust of the eyes: covetousness and love of money, passion for elegant clothes, for an elegant apartment, love of things, and put on the new, renewed in the image of Your creation, then you are a scientist. If there is no this saving change, you are an ignoramus, with all your learning, with all the nobility of your earthly origin, with all your ranks and distinctions. If you are courageous in adversity, temptation, trouble, you are a scientist; if not, you are an ignoramus; if you are a zealot for the truth, you are a scientist; if not, if you look indifferently at human untruths, you are an ignoramus; if you are a lover of poverty, you are a scientist; if you are a lover of money, you are an ignoramus; if you are hardworking, you are a scientist, if you are lazy, you are ignorant; if you honor parents, shepherds, the sovereign, bosses, mentors, educators - you are a scientist, if you are disrespectful, rude, capricious - you are an ignoramus; if you are kind to everyone, you are a scientist, if you are rude, you are an ignoramus, for external learning without correction of the heart and life means nothing - lost work. Whoever is in Christ is a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). If you are generous, you are a scientist, if you are stingy, you are an ignoramus; if you despise money and delicious food, you are a scientist; if you have a passion for money and delicious food, you are an ignoramus; if you are wise on earth, you are a scientist; if on earth, you are ignorant; if you don’t eat early, you are a scientist, if you don’t eat early, you are an ignoramus; if you despise everything carnal and respect everything spiritual, sacred, heavenly, then you are a scientist, if on the contrary, you are a bitter ignorant, for where there is care for the flesh and carnal things, there is negligence about the soul and about the spiritual, heavenly, there is even contempt for the spiritual - and in the spiritual is all the power. When we do not correct ourselves from the word of God, from the commandments of God and from people, then the Lord encourages us to correct ourselves through temptations from demons, from sorrows, misfortunes, troubles and illnesses. The devil, against his will, directs our lives to God, for we, clearly feeling and seeing how bad it is for him to work, turn to God, Who has peace, space, light. My labors for the Church and the Fatherland: 1) unworthy, unzealous, 2) they bring great benefit to myself, 3) are rewarded in great abundance, because everything that I receive is not received, solely by the great mercy of God, my superiors and my parishioners, and therefore I must treat everyone who comes to me cordially, for it is not my property, it is common. Man stands infinitely higher than everything material, as the image of God, as the king of everything. Do not get used to treating a person in a bad way, that is, to humiliating him, but always look at him the same way, as a brother, a fellow member, as the image of God, a member of Christ. Christ is in all things and in all [Col. 3, 11]. Do not despise or think of despising a single person, the most rude and uneducated, for in everyone the image of God shines, according to which he was created; everyone is a member of Christ, and in faith it is crazy to look at their faces: before faith, before God, everyone is equal; external advantages of origin, upbringing, education, worldly merits without internal virtues are insignificant before God. Precious before Him is a meek and humble heart, simple-heartedness, kindness, faith, hope, love for God and neighbor. Man sees on the face, but God sees on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7). Enmity against yourself, when enmity against your neighbor arises in the heart, and not against your neighbor, blame yourself, blame yourself, call your sin, your anger a dream, madness, absurdity. Excessive, vain concern for the flesh - for rank, blush, freshness, beauty, contentment - plunges the soul into many passions: vanity, vanity, pride, love of money, stinginess, irritability. The air is bad - trouble; whoever spoils the air - trouble; the food is not good - trouble, there is not enough money, not enough for good food, clothes, decoration of the apartment, furniture, dishes, various accessories - trouble; If anyone eats or drinks our sweets, it’s a disaster; if someone else takes ours, it’s a disaster; if we lose it, it’s a disaster, if it is destroyed by fire, it’s a disaster. Therefore, it is better to despise the flesh and everything carnal as temporary and perishable and to be diligent about the immortal soul 26. Then how calm we would be! How we would love God and our neighbor! My Most Holy Lady Theotokos... take away from Me, Your humble and accursed servant, despondency, oblivion, foolishness, negligence, and all the nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts from my accursed heart and from my darkened mind 27. Everyone who is attentive to himself feels all this evil within himself, for the word of the Savior is true: from the heart come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, blasphemy, pride, the evil eye, theft, false witness [Matt. 15, 19 ]; Our heart is equally prone to despondency, forgetting our duties to God and neighbor, to carelessness about pleasing God and the salvation of the soul and about fulfilling the tasks entrusted to us by God and public trust, it is also prone to unreason or free madness; How often do reasonable people do crazy things, for example, indulge in pride, arrogance, irritability, envy, stinginess, are lazy in home and public prayer, indulge in free-thinking or gluttony, drunkenness, uncleanness and other sins, and thus voluntarily fall into the abyss of unreason! But most often, 28 nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts strike the believer, and especially during prayer: that is, when you arm yourself against the old man, then he also arms himself against you with all his abomination, all his passions, which until then (until we confront them) are in us, as it were, in a state of sleep. There is no need to be discouraged by this evil nesting in the heart, but in trust in God, pray more strongly that He Himself, by His grace, will dry up the streams of various defilements in us; one must sincerely acknowledge one’s heart as accursed, corrupted, and one’s mind as darkened, and not trust oneself, but look to God and believe with all one’s heart His holy word and the writings of the wise fathers; one must renounce oneself and all one’s possessions, that is, the old man, one’s self-love, pride, enmity, envy, covetousness, stinginess, gluttony, drunkenness, laziness, self-will and stubbornness, etc., and all external possessions, considering everything to be God’s. Oh, what a serious and intractable disease is our self-love, this passion to consider God’s good as our own and to be indignant in spirit when our neighbors take it from us (and only an insignificant part, an insignificant part), and to quarrel with them because of dust, because of decay, because of the fact that there is earth, while there is nothing dearer than love. We need to give ourselves a firm word not to be at enmity with anyone for anything, but to always maintain love for our neighbor, even if he offends us, reviles us, deprives us of our property, etc. May we have everything in common, for we are all God’s, and everything is God’s, and God will not become scarce forever. You have to mercilessly break yourself every day. Stupid heart! After all, the flesh is sated, there is no need for food and drink, but everything hungers and thirsts and feels sorry for its neighbor, like a dog or a cat, and barks at its neighbor, snarls, and lunges. Well, it’s like an evil kennel, our damned heart, a nest of mental robbers – passions. When others take and use our property - our sweets, or somehow take away our money or our other property, which serves for luxury more than for need - do not grieve, but rejoice and say to yourself: thank God that from you, my raging flesh, they are taking away from you that with which you are strong and are strengthened more and more, which increases your madness, your demon, your pride, your enmity towards God and your neighbor, what plunges you into spiritual intoxication, darkness, languor, and cramped conditions. Indeed, how insane, evil, and possessed our flesh is! Every day I am full of all the gifts and sweets of God and do not suffer a lack of anything, but my neighbor, who often comes, comes to eat and drink my supposed sweets - I am embarrassed and regretful, annoyed, hostile, grieving! Oh, free madness! But sweets are a luxury: I can easily do without them; Moreover, they are harmful to my spirit and body: for the spirit, because due to its weakness the soul becomes addicted to them, for the body, because the body weakens from them. So, rejoice when they take what is yours, because they take from your soul a two-edged knife with which it strikes itself; they take that through which the serpent pours his poison into your soul. The less you have, the better. And most importantly, God will not leave you, the most loving, wise, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-righteous Trustee - look to Him, trust in Him. Oh, how earthly possessions and earthly pleasures seduce us, how the heart clings to them and turns away from God! The real idols of the heart are sweets, money, and our clothes. Invariably, constantly respect the image of God in man and, humbling yourself, be meek before every person, especially before your family or relatives, to whom we get used and with whom we become arrogant. Live in unchanging love with everyone, despise passions and despise their culprit. He gave his word not to be embittered towards your neighbor - hold him with the help of God’s grace, constantly listen to yourself. You die - and everything remains, and everything that’s yours is no longer yours and you can’t take anything with you. It is clear that, having food and clothing, one should thank God and be content. Our best and most precious possession, which we must inevitably acquire, is love for God and neighbor. You will lose everything, but these are gains. This estate will go with us to the grave, but the property here will remain here. Conquer yourself. Love your brother all the more because he brings out the madness of your heart - self-love, love of earth, voluptuousness, addiction to things, stinginess, pride, malice - and you have the opportunity to know yourself and correct yourself. A sick person should be grateful to the doctor who brings out the illness hidden inside him and thus does not allow it to corrupt his entire body, but, driving it out, heals it. So we should [be] grateful to those people who, intentionally or unintentionally, reveal our passions and, making them obvious to us, thereby encourage us to correction, to spiritual healing; Although such a discovery is regrettable, there is nothing to be done: sin is an old and most malignant disease - without pain, and severe pain, it cannot be driven out of the heart in which it has firmly taken root. A truly wise person is not afraid of these difficult passions, because they lead to eternal life, to everlasting peace, to eternal contemplation of the ineffable kindness of the face of the Lord. No matter how you think, you will come to the conclusion that everything earthly - all sweets, clothes, money, all things must truly be considered trash and not cling to anything with your heart, but have the Lord alone in your heart and love Him above all else, and love your neighbor unfailingly. He who is partial to earthly goods that are used daily, and who spares them for his neighbor, cannot love God and his neighbor. And this is the trouble of troubles, the misfortune of misfortunes! When you were a baby, you sucked your mother’s nipples, bothered her day and night, did labor for her, she dressed you, fed and gave you water, but you did not thank her then and could not, and did not repay her with anything, because you were unconscious - thank her diligently now, with all humility and love, in the simplicity of your heart, repay her generously now - as God commands. Honor your father and mother [Exod. 20:12], repay your parents in return, says the Apostle, this is acceptable in the sight of God (1 Pet. 2:20). Oh, wicked and proud devil! Arms against a mother, arms against a meek and humble and kind-hearted brother! But take heart and be strong, my soul, against the accuser! When you hear from your mother or someone questions about faith or something ordinary that you and most people have known for a long time and that exposes the deep ignorance of your mother or other people, do not be upset with your mother or other people, but with meekness, patience and kindness, tell them what the matter is, and remember that you yourself were once ignorant, and then the Lord gave you, through mentors, the gift of knowing the truths of God, teaching, Sacraments and rituals of the Church or human errors and errors so that you too can be a teacher of the ignorant. For we all walk in the darkness of ignorance, darkened by passions, and often we are not aware of where we are going, for the darkness of sin has blinded our eyes (1 John 2:11). But ignorance of the heart, like pride, anger, impatience, envy, stinginess, self-will, is worse than ignorance of the mind. If I give away all my property and give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it does me no good. Love is long-suffering, merciful, love does not envy, love is not arrogant, is not proud, is not rude, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ceases, although prophecies will cease, and tongues will be silent, and knowledge will be abolished (1 Cor. 13:3-8). (It’s good to eat Crimean apples to refresh and cleanse the stomach.) [You cannot] very lowly value servants who are equal to you by the right of God, sparing them sugar: they are also the kings of the earth, and before them is the same dust all sweets, all the treasures of the earth, and they are in the image of God, and for them Christ died, and they are promised incorruptible life if they behave well. Consider them equal to yourself, and consider all earthly blessings equal to rubbish, so that you will value future imperishable blessings, future imperishable sweets according to your property. Be wise, love, appreciate, not earthly; Don’t philosophize about earthly things, don’t love earthly things, don’t value them, as they are temporary, worthless, insignificant, thorny, gore, turning away from God and your neighbor. Give joyfully, give up everything earthly for people’s consumption, may it come and be given to you for the contempt of the earthly and heavenly. Consume earthly sweets as little as possible, lest your heart become hardened by them, lest it cleave to them, fall in love with them, and be bound by them. And then it is much bound by sweets, captivated by them incessantly. It’s time to cleave completely to God. Our old man sometimes looks for a reason for hostility, abuse and swearing and finds fault with every uneven word, unkind word, look, facial expression, sometimes only ostensibly unkind; sometimes everything is going well, but no, a person seems to be bored with prosperity and seeks misfortune, bored with the world and seeks anxiety, bored with tranquility and seeks languor, bored with freedom of spirit - seeks bondage, slavery to the devil; gets bored with space - seeks cramped spaces. Monster, monster old man! Worried, arrogant, embittered, envious, stingy, I don’t know why! Remember constantly that God constantly looks at our hearts. We must not only pay earthly blessings to our flesh, for it is multi-passionate, but to helping the poor and, in general, to serving our neighbors and to the churches of God, for through this the commandment of love for God and our neighbors will be fulfilled. I reject you, belly, because you reject love for God and neighbor and seek to deprive me of my eternal belly. I reject you, O sight, because you look wickedly at everyone and everything and strive to deprive me of the sight of the glory of God, which is eternal. I reject you, O hearing, because you cunningly hear many, many things and want to deprive me of hearing unspeakable words, which it is forbidden for a man to speak (2 Cor. 12:4). The body is destined for cutting and rotting - is it not vanity, is it not a dream to worry about it excessively, to delight it, to nourish it, to dress it luxuriously, to cultivate passions in it and hasten its destruction? Know yourself, consider your sins, weigh them, mourn, and not your fellow man: each one will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5]. The devil, out of malice, seeks for you to suspect your brother of some sins, for example, embezzlement of a private or church treasury, and condemn him for any actions that are apparently inappropriate; the devil distracts your attention from yourself, from your sins, so that you do not see them, do not correct yourself from them and, on the contrary, increase them with anger, pride, envy, etc. Remember that every sin is a sharp edge for the person who commits it: every sin for which we have not repented will return to our own depths. We've had enough of our own sins, why take on someone else's burden! – Pray for everyone, be kind to everyone. Do not rise above anyone, but be a servant to everyone, helpful, affectionate, kind to everyone; do not rise up, especially above your senior comrades in the service - archpriests and priests, and always place yourself below them, for your higher education in comparison with them is something external and imposes on you only greater responsibilities in comparison with them. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required [Lk. 12, 48]. If someone scolds you in person or in absentia, do not be indignant in spirit and do not respond with curse to curse or with annoyance and bitterness, but accept it with a calm spirit and pray for the scolder and wish him from the bottom of your heart all the good and mercy of God. By this you will defeat the scolder and change his heartfelt disposition towards you and save his soul from death. If you see someone proud in front of you, deliberately humiliating you and inciting you to irritation, do not notice his pride and calmly do your job and thereby disgrace his pride. Don’t forget to pray for him and you will heal him. I thank, glorify and magnify You, Lord, for by Your sole goodness, Your mercy, it exists and stands firm and is not destroyed, nor does this world disappear, as by Your sole goodness and mercy and power it was created, for You should want it not to exist, and nothing will happen, but You do not want this. I thank, glorify and magnify Thee, for even I, a sinner, by Thy sole mercy, have lived the past days and live to this day and, despite my many sins, have not yet perished. I thank You, for You give birth (create), educate, preserve, and guide all people to the eternal path according to Your sole mercy. Do not destroy us, O all-merciful Lord, with our iniquities. All who remove themselves from You will perish [Ps. 72, 27]. Today's people, the so-called educated (vain, vain), say that a person does not need either the Church, or worship, or the Sacraments, or prayer in general, and that this exists not for them, but for the common people; in their opinion, the Lord said incorrectly: I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it [Matt. 16, 18], they believe that the Church has already been overcome and is imputed to nothing! O superstitious ones, buoys 30 and blindness! You, who remove yourself from the Church, and at the same time from God, perish, counting your salvation for nothing, but the Church stands and will stand on an unshakable foundation; The Church will remain forever undefeated, but you have already been defeated by the original murderer, and he is dragging you alive to hell. O blind men! You need the theater, but you don’t need the Church; you need clubs, but you don’t need the Church; You need delicious dinners, but you don’t need the liturgy, during which the true bread, the bread of eternal life, is taught! You, educated gentlemen, are dogs, not people. For saints, because the soul is incorruptible, and the body is incorruptible. And from the dead I will rise incorruptible. The Lamb removed from the prosphora is the true bread of life, and the prosphora is the husk: do not be enticed by them, do not feel sorry for them, do not be upset with anyone because of them, just as because of ordinary bread. Ordinary food, consumed in moderation, nourishes, strengthens and encourages, but in excess it weakens and corrupts the spirit and body. A leper comes to Him and, begging Him and falling on his knees before Him, says to Him: if you want, you can cleanse me. Jesus, having compassion on him, stretched out his hand, touched him and said to him: I want you to be clean [Mk. 1, 40 – 41]. I am this leper. The Lord heals me daily through His desire and His life-giving touch through my prayer. Glory to Thee, Christ God. Glory to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ, for the miracles of Thy mercy and power that were invisibly upon me during the liturgy and prayer service, for Thou didst take me away from the fierce malice of demons and did not disgrace my face, but Thou didst bestow on me a most peaceful and majestic state during the prayer service for our Tsar in the presence of many eminent people. April 17, 1866 Thank you, for for the cleansing of my sins you have vouchsafed me to partake of Your Holy Mysteries. You complain to people about your neighbor, who used your gift for evil, that he squandered it, and deceived you. Why do you use the gifts of the Lord for evil, why do you lie to your Lord? Judge not, lest you be condemned [Matt. 7, 1]. By the judgment with which you judge another, you condemn yourself [Rom. 2, 1]. God! I thank You for the gift of spiritual wisdom, which You gave me at a time of good need at the table during tea: my carnal, old man was sorry for the sweets for his father (in tea), and ulcers and oppression were already coming upon my soul, but I said in my heart that everything earthly, like rubbish, everything was subdued under the feet of man - and I won, and was not put to shame, and my peace came to me I returned, and my boldness towards You did not fall away from me. For this I thank You. You see everything. But grant me from the small to the great for the sake of the glory of Your name, grant me the grace to be a winner in great deeds for Your name, in the power of Your strength. April 17, 1866. Sunday. The devil’s malice is armed against those who sing not in the choir in the church (singing along), and against the prosphyra who deliver bad prosphyra, and against the guests who often come to us: on whom and because of what will the accursed not rush and, apparently, because of plausible pretexts - because of external harmony and because of the insult allegedly caused to us, and the theft of the property of the beggars and ours! But everything is a dream, to believe nothing and to love your neighbor invariably as yourself, for all people are images of God, all children of God (Christians) and members of Christ the Lord. Don't be angry with anyone for anything. Otherwise, demonic malice will perhaps mature. Those who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit [Rom. 8, 4]. If you are meek, humble, kind, patient, self-controlled, chaste, simple-hearted (not wicked), then you walk in the Spirit; if you are angry, irritable, proud, arrogant, contemptuous, intemperate, a fornicator, wicked, etc., then you walk in the flesh; if you are generous to the poor, you walk in the spirit; if you are stingy, you walk in the flesh; if you love money - according to the flesh, if you despise money - according to the spirit; if you believe, hope to receive future benefits and prepare for the life of the next century, if you live in love for God and neighbor, then you walk in the spirit; if you do not live by faith, hope and love - according to the flesh. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit [Rom. 8, 1]. When meeting the poor, to whom we often give alms, we must always sympathize and have compassion for them, and not be embittered towards them and not despise them, as we usually do, and give alms not with zeal, annoyance and reluctance, but calmly, in the spirit of faith and love, as with the Lord Himself: God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7). We must be especially careful not to despise and offend poor children, innocent, gentle, simple-minded, persistent in their requests, for the Lord said: See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven, and: just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me [Matt. 18, 10; 25, 40]. We must learn from our children their faith and firm hope, with which they begin to ask for mercy from us, hoping to receive from us what they ask, their meekness, kindness, patience - with such courage, with such faith, hope, persistence, we must approach the Heavenly Father in prayer with the hope of receiving from Him what we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is inexhaustible wealth for those who believe in Him, and inexhaustible treasure, and strong food, and inexhaustible drink, and breath, and life, and resurrection and again life, strength, peace, freedom, light, joy, consolation, joy, every good thing. No one should feel sorry for their rubles lying motionless, while through them you can feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, give shelter to those without shelter or pay for shelter, or those without a form, that is, a passport, to leave 31 or issue a residence permit from their place of residence, or heal the sick, or remove someone in difficult circumstances from his situation, or owe a debt for an insolvent debtor. to pay, or to bury the poor according to Christian custom, or to pay for the upbringing of a poor child and thereby provide him with the means to educate his mind, heart and will, or to buy books of sacred and spiritual content for the poor and thirsty for spiritual reading - and you never know how much good can be done with money or other treasures that lie free in many boxes and are only an object of passion of the heart, the hope of the heart, while our hope is one Lord, who leads before our petition, what we need, and who promised in His unfaithful word that He will never depart from us and will never leave us [Matt. 6, 8, etc.]. We, Christians, should imitate resourceful and enterprising merchants in the use of our treasures, who do not allow themselves to keep their money idle, but put everything into circulation or give it away to increase interest in order to receive greater profits and benefits. Will we, children of light, children of God, be so short-sighted, so unwise, unprudent, when the sons of this age are so wise and prudent? And doesn’t doing good to our neighbor with our property, with our money, feeding him, clothing him, enlightening him, leading him away from the path of destruction with the donation of our property means giving our property in interest to God Himself, doesn’t it mean making sure and the greatest profit for ourselves, which we cannot even imagine? How long will we be unreasonable? How long are we partial to this decay, this dust, which we call money? How long will we have this unmercifulness, this hardness of heart, and above all this voluptuousness, luxury in everything, from the chair on which sometimes no one will have to sit even once a year, to the walls of our rooms, which serve as daily exposes of our luxury? Where is our faith? Where is the hope for the resurrection of the dead, the impartial judgment, the life of the next century? Where is the faith in the Crucified One, who commanded us mutual love, according to which we should not spare our own lives, if necessary, for the good of our neighbors? Where is our mutual love? Where is the faith in the Church as a single body, of which we are all - rich and poor, noble and ignorant - members? Where is the care for each other, as the members of the body care for each other? For if one person rejoices 32, everyone will rejoice with him, if one person suffers, will everyone have compassion for him? Where is the reason for such disorder? - In our pride, in our lack of faith, in our inattention to ourselves, in our negligence about pleasing God and saving our soul: so, if I believed in the common Father of all, who sent His Only Begotten Son into the world to save it, if I were attentive, grateful to Him for all His innumerably great gifts, if I cared about pleasing Him with all the forces of my being, if I appreciated, as it should be, the eternal salvation of my soul and my neighbors - would I do this, would I luxuriously, undead my flesh, instill it in the hope of wealth, sweets, honors? Would I dare to be hard-hearted towards my neighbor and, while he endures cold and hunger and illness and other troubles, would I dress luxuriously and elegantly and allow myself various entertainments, pleasures and various luxuries that cost me a lot of money and which in this case are thrown as if into an oven or into water? Would I, while another does not have a piece of bread, buy expensive tobacco or expensive so-called cigars, or, better yet, burnt cigarettes, these firebrands, or cigarettes, and without the slightest twinge of conscience smoke them both at home and on the road, with contempt and the coldness of granite, meeting the poverty that comes my way and not deigning to give her even one penny and not at all thinking of clothing true nakedness on my excesses, which are in bounty God and the sovereign give you their own and by His mercy, so that, of course, not only you yourself are well-fed and dressed decently and have decent shelter, but, as a member of the Church and society, you can give from your surplus to the poor, who inevitably exist everywhere. Or would I spend a lot of money on dinners, theaters, and festivities, when my body needs simple and inexpensive food, and when theaters and festivities are very often decisively harmful to my soul and even body, subsequently plunging me into relaxation of spirit and body, bitter melancholy and despondency? So we are unreasonable, inconsistent - we are called Christians, or Christ’s disciples, children, followers, but in deeds we are not Christians, not Christ’s. Let us reflect, turn around and follow the path shown to us by the Gospel. Let us be jealous of mercy, let us reject self-love, let us love ourselves in the body of the Church as His members, and not as special, lifeless, aimless branches that have fallen from the body, the end of which is burning. Until now, I have not learned the wisdom of the Lord to serve one’s neighbor, for example a beggar, with joy, as if it were the Lord Himself, and to rejoice at every opportunity to serve one’s neighbor in some way as a find, as a treasure. I have sinned before You, Lord! I get irritated, annoyed, and embittered at those who often ask me for alms. But how your poor have multiplied, O Lord! Four thousand beggars in Kronstadt alone—not many people ask me every day. The heart’s addiction to earthly goods and excess in their use, namely food and drink, addiction to money, clothes, home and its furnishings and shiny household utensils, corrupts the soul, burdens, oppresses, darkens, deprives it of freedom, torments it, and along with it the body suffers. Therefore, the Christian is wise who despises all earthly blessings and cares no more about them than about the dirt or dust of the earth that is under his feet, and diligently distributes it to those in need; who firmly trusts in the Lord that He will never fail to grant him this dust for the needs of his body, and not only for him, but also for everyone in his house or his poor relatives. However, he talks about the relatives of the poor in such a way that it is not a problem for them to live in some shortcomings, because the lack teaches abstinence, humility, patience, trust in God, and because prosperity in everything is the reason for cooling towards God and often forgetting God. It is a well-known fact that the rich often rely on wealth, indulge in pride, envy, covetousness, love of money, stinginess, overprotectiveness, luxury, absent-mindedness, and are careless about pleasing God and saving the soul. One must constantly cleave to the one God with all one’s heart, the source of life, the Giver of all spiritual and physical blessings. It is good for me to cleave to God, to place the hope of my salvation in the Lord [Ps. 72, 28]. Tuesday. I thank You, Lord, for the spirit, for the strength, for the word, for the light, for the boldness, peace, freedom, space of the heart that You gave me now during the fourth and sixth grades of the gymnasium. I thank You for the forgiveness of my sins through the prayer of my repentance as I continued my journey from home to the gymnasium and for Your great mercy, as you did not deal with me according to my iniquities, but rewarded me according to my sins. But teach me, O Lord, perfect teacher, perfect meekness, humility, kindness, patience, abstinence, mercy, contempt of the world and the flesh and its lusts, and heavenly wisdom. Well, what would happen if the Lord God, every time you persistently and persistently ask Him for your needs, for example, the forgiveness of sins and the granting of His grace, would be angry with you and send you away from His presence, beggars, with nothing? How bleakly and bitter your situation would be! How do you send away a beggar who asks you for alms every day, if not empty-handed, then with meager alms, and you get angry with him when he asks you again and again? Don’t you yourself ask the Lord many times in one day for the same thing, when you see, feel that you have not received from Him the perfect gift of forgiveness of sins, peace, freedom, space, boldness of heart before God and your neighbors, and you stop asking Him when you receive from Him completely everything you want? But as you want to see God towards you, be like that towards your neighbors; As you want God to do with you, do so with your neighbors. Why did the Lord allow you to be poor? - For your good, so that you can cleanse and atone for your sins, for alms cleanses all sin, in order to gain you those who pray for you in their person, so that you can make your Lord merciful to you, for through mercies you will be shown mercy [Matt. 5, 7]. Why did the Lord allow you to be poor? For the same reason, by the way, for which it does not suddenly make you righteous according to your desire. God could make everyone sufficient, even rich, but then there would be a great forgetting of God and the forgetting of the poor by their benefactors, pride, envy, etc. would increase, just as you would dream about yourself if the Lord soon made you righteous. But sin humbles you, showing you your great weakness, abomination and constant need for God and His grace, just as a beggar is humbled by poverty and need for other people. Enrich the poor - and many, many of them will forget both God and their benefactors and destroy their souls in the luxury of this world: wealth is so destructive and it blinds the eyes of the heart! This is how it makes the heart rude and ungrateful! I thank you, Lord, for you delivered me during evening tea from my anger, my stinginess through my prayer, and you pacified me. I regretted the sweets. Thoughts on the street while walking at the sight of the rising moon. I please you all, says the Lord: I created you in My image and likeness, I shone for you the sun, the moon and the stars, I created the earth for you with all its fruits, I poured out the air for your breathing, I gave you fire to illuminate and warm you and boil your food, I gave you a variety of sweet foods, as well as a variety of drinks; I made you wise to make many different fabrics for your clothing and gave you materials for it. I gave you gold, silver, copper and other metals from the depths of the earth for coins and your wares; I have gathered you into well-ordered societies, I have given you a king after My heart, My anointed, My image on earth; I finally gave you My Only Begotten Son to die, I gave Him with His will to you for food and drink, I established the Church on earth under His leadership - what have you done and are doing for Me? How do you repay all My blessings? - By forgetting Me, by ingratitude towards Me, by rejecting Me, by contempt for My laws. O faithless and corrupt generation! How long will I be with you? How long will I tolerate you? [Matt. 17, 17]. Your name is Almighty, Lord, as you hold not just heaven and earth, but the entire human race and the hearts of all in Your hand, and the life of every person, and not only every person, but also every animal, every bird, fish, insect, reptile worm and ciliate invisible to the eye. Glory to Your infinite sovereignty, Lord! Glory to Your all-good, wise and all-powerful providence, Lord of heaven and earth! Almighty Master! You hold all hell with Satan and his countless hordes in Your hand, and only by Your permission, for our admonition and punishment, Satan and his angels plot intrigues over us. We will pray to You, our Savior, for our sins, we will repent before You without hypocrisy, and You, having brought us to understanding, will take away our enemies from us, saying: It is sufficient for you to act evilly against My servants - they again belong to Me. So, Lord, when Your constant good deeds and mercies towards us do not enlighten us, what remains to be done? Punishments, bitterness, cramped conditions, fire, but our own malice remains to admonish us - we, the voluptuous, who love space, carnal coolness, vain things. Whoever clings with his heart to earthly sweets and, in general, to earthly blessings, his heart rejects the Lord and combines with the devil. Your heart is the church of God, do not make it an idol’s church, a playground of passions. Remember this. The world is in a state of slumber, a sinful sleep. Sleeping. God wakes him up with wars, pestilences, fires, and devastating storms. Who is more precious to me in the world than my mother? - Nobody. Therefore, if a lot of one and the other comes out to the mother, be patient. Give her everything you can. Be patient, condescend to her weaknesses. Do you see in your neighbor, for example, a comrade, a boss, any weakness, spiritual passion, vice - look at it in no other way than at the weakness, passion, and vice common to all of us, and at him as the image of God, although he bears the wounds of sins in his soul, and preserve love for him, as you love yourself, despite the multitude of your sins, for we are one body of many (1 Cor. 10, 17). Yes, remember that the Lord will not force you to bear your neighbor’s burden, for each one will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5], - there is no need for you to bother considering the true or imaginary burden of your brother, or to shout at him, or to be angry with your brother or to gloat and, out of your brother’s burden, increase your own burden of sin. One thing is necessary and useful when we see the weakness of our neighbor - to pray earnestly for him to the Lord, as for ourselves, when we ourselves are in the grip of sins and passions. If a brother sleeps in sins and does not feel, does not recognize them, and even delights in them and persecutes others, oppresses, and exalts himself before others, then we must pray even more for him, so that the Lord will sober him up, awaken him, and enlighten his darkness. But be careful, first remove your malice from the sight of your heart, for the darkness of malice, envy, and pride blinds your own eyes. Remember constantly that our common weakness, our common passion, no one is sinless. Sigh first of all for your sins, of which there are many and countless. And God deals with the brother and the brother deals with God. Look at the delight of malice you yourself find yourself in, when everything your neighbor does or says makes you angry at him. Remember the common enemy, the common war raised against us, the common misfortune - we are all in trouble, the common charm, the common network in which we find ourselves. Remember and constantly carry in your heart the commandment: love your neighbor as yourself, and pray for his sins, but do not judge him and do not be angry with him. It’s enough for you, crafty man, to think that your brother is pretending not to go to the service. Have pity on him as a brother and wish him peace, health and salvation and pray for him to the common Father of all and show by this that we are all brothers, have one all-good Father and we all live by His Spirit. Why anger, zeal, secret gloating, this madness? What if everyone gets angry at you and rejoices at your misfortune? Will you be constantly suspected? But whatever you want people to do to you, do to them in the same way, what you don’t want for yourself, and don’t wish for others. Oh, when will we hate sin and not our brother? Let us remember that both we and our neighbors have one Judge - God, and let us refrain from judging our brother. The bolder the better. Suddenly, mentally, stand taller than everyone else in the church when listing the names of the royal family, like a priest of the Most High God. Glory to Your mercy, Lord, revealed to me now at the liturgy of communion, when I was able to believe in faith when I was overcome by doubt, during class and before the funeral service in Semyonova’s apartment. Quickly, powerfully, miraculously You showed me, O Lord, great power - I thank and glorify Your mercy and judgment and power. April 20. Pre-sexuality. Don't be cowardly. You will be full, everything will be fine. Mother be content with everything she wants. On whom should I rely now for my property, if not on my mother, who previously gave me everything? So, on the mother, then on the wife, father-in-law and sister-in-law. I will, with God’s help, lay down my life for my friends. The flesh wants us to have more, more profitable and better, tastier, more beautiful, but for our neighbor what is smaller and not so profitable, but worse, tasteless, uglier. We ourselves are happy to have other people eat, drink well, sweetly - and we happily, calmly sit at someone else’s table, the conversation flows like a river. When we eat and drink well and sweetly, we often sit at the meal sad and sad, as if sentenced to death, as if we are being separated from life, and the word does not come from the tongue, and the lips are closed; we allow ourselves everything - we are ready to take away the last pleasure from our neighbor; We ourselves, both at home and at a party, enjoy what we want and as much as we want - we often don’t want to give our neighbor and his usual measure, but we try, we plot, we strive to reduce it. O evil flesh! Blind flesh! Envious, greedy flesh! With one blow, always break the evil knot of flesh and passions - quickly, instantly. Early mass from the Estafievs. I thank You, my most merciful Master, Lord Jesus Christ, for Thou hast provided my soul with the heavenly peace upon the acceptance of Thy Divine Mysteries and has granted me this peace for a long time, for until now I have it by Thy mercy (six o’clock in the evening). I thank You, for You have given me boldness, peace, light, and the power of speech during two years of high school. I thank You, for through You I am strong. But strengthen me in abstinence, for for my abstinence the day before I was rewarded with these fruits of communion. The day before was Wednesday. I thank You, Lord, for when I came to the wake of Semyonova (the general’s wife), for which many noble people gathered, You suddenly took away, through my faith in You, the absurdity from my heart that was tormenting (tormenting) me, and You instantly granted me peace, and You granted me to sit at the table with peace and a bright face, and to talk rationally with the wife and daughter of the deceased. I thank you for everything, Lord! You are the Creator, God, Father, Judge and Savior, my trustee and guardian and intercessor! Until now, the accursed one, I have sinned against the Lord my God through voluptuousness, gluttony, greed, and satiety. How long is this? How long shall I provoke the Lord? How long should I burden myself? As long as I eat at night, when this is also a kind of prosperity, sinful perfection, you [the devil] want to kill me temporarily and forever with gluttony, greed and satiety. Long-suffering Lord, incline me to repentance and correction! April 22. Morning. Friday. We cry out the angelic song to You, Mightier: Holy, Holy, Holy ecu, God, have mercy on us by the Mother of God 34 You glorify with the Angels, you are one cathedral, one Church, you make up one family of God with them by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. You must live like an angel in constant vigil over yourself and over the souls entrusted to your care as spiritual children; you must constantly praise and thank the Lord; you must strive for holiness, you must live in abstinence and fasting. In all humility and submission and patience. May it be by the grace of the Lord! What can I bring to You, O Lord, for all Your blessings, in whose image You constantly begrudge me? - My only faith, for I have no deeds that justify me: for I have done nothing good before You. But my faith is also Your gift—besides 35 Receive what You offer from Yours. Because everything Yours and we are all Yours. This, according to Your faith, I ask of You: accept me and us all completely to You. You are our most perfect Prototype - we are the image of Your ineffable glory, even if we bear the wounds of sins, spare Your creation, Master, and cleanse us with Your compassion and grant us the longed-for fatherland, creating paradise for us as inhabitants; Take away carnal passions from us, and having trampled down all carnal lusts, let us go through spiritual life, all to please You, both in philosophizing and in creating. God! Just as it is characteristic of the Proto-Image to attract, to assimilate images for Itself, to inhabit and live in them, so it should be characteristic of Your images to strive with all love, with all diligence to the Proto-Image, to cleave to It! But behold, our flesh, greedy and voluptuous, plump, inert, tears us away from You. We need fasting, abstinence, and we are passionate about sweets. Strengthen us to abstinence. What does it mean to be meek? This means not to be irritated by those who speak unjustly, slander, or blame; however, meekness also includes when we listen to fair censures without irritation. If they reprove you fairly, you need to correct yourself; if they are unfair, you should take those words for granted, and not pay attention to them and do your job or get off with jokes. The servant of the Lord should not quarrel, but be friendly to everyone, teachable, gentle, and instruct his opponents with meekness (2 Tim. 2:24-25). We will live, we will live, and we will die, and we will be thrown into the grave by our neighbors - that will be the end. Let us spend our time in repentance and virtue. Yes, we live with fear. Sit at your table as at someone else’s, with meekness, humility, reverence, and thanksgiving, for the table is God’s; The Heavenly Father nourishes everyone and wants to see us all living in love and humility, not wanting or seeking much, but content with little, not envying each other, but benevolent, willingly giving to our neighbors all earthly blessings and even sacrificing for them our peace, strength, abilities and life itself, mutual love, peace and tranquility above all else, and everything that pleases and flatters the flesh is nothing. imputable. For the wisdom of the spirit, I thank You, Lord! For peace of mind - the same. What happens from the deceit of the flesh, the corruption of the heart, is that the longer we stay with relatives or strangers by blood, who depend on us (that is, of course, first of all on God, like us) for urgent needs, or as guests often visit us, we get used to them, become arrogant with them, grow cold towards them and regard them as almost nothing at other times, especially when we are sitting at the table; Meanwhile, we get used to sweets and earthly goods in general in the opposite way, that is, we value them more and more and cling to them with our hearts. Therefore, we must fight with all our might against this perverted direction of the heart, which brings the wrath of God upon us, and try in every possible way to strain our mental eye to see the light of truth, to see in our neighbor, unceasingly by faith, the living image of God, the sovereign owner of the earth, and to consider sparing him something earthly, essential, a rebellion against God, an encroachment on the boundless rights of God, for He is the sovereign dispenser of gifts. His own - He gives and takes. So, we must go against this demonic flattery, which instills in us to constantly value as much as possible the good of the earth and as little as possible of man, who is the image of God and the king, the owner of the earth. If you want to love and honor God the All-Benefactor, love and honor His image - man, His members (joint members). Keep your mind and heart awake, think about the wonderful works of God, about the crown of creation - man, about the image of God in him, about the incarnation of God the Word, about the deification of human nature, about the body of the Church, or about those who believe in Christ, who are His members under Him - the head of the body of the Church. Strive for love, unity, be forgiving, be patient, pray, lay down your soul for your friends. Consider the old man (your many-sinful flesh) to be possessed, crazy, despise him, do not pay attention to him, undoubtedly, without mercy, resolutely, quickly always go against him, do the opposite to him - in this you will find peace, happiness, prosperity in this life, bliss after death. Be jealous of abstinence. From intemperance in food and drink, from the voluptuousness of the flesh, all the troubles in the world. It is good to deny oneself for the sake of God and the salvation of the soul in sweets, in the consumption of meat foods, cream, butter, sweet tea, pies, etc. As the flesh is deprived of carnal pleasures, spiritual treasures and consolations increase, and vice versa: the more and more we pamper the flesh, feed it or dress it luxuriously, the more spiritual treasures and consolations of the spirit dry up and the greater the sorrows that greet us. Whether it seems to be an important matter to eat and drink more than usual or tastier, for example, to eat a hearty, tasty lunch or drink more ordinary tea or coffee, - meanwhile this is strongly reflected in spiritual life: it falls like a barometer from cold and dampness, it is comfortably overwhelmed by all sorts of passions, worried, embarrassed - and from abstinence and fasting it rises, becomes enlightened, calms down. Do not condemn a sinner: you do not see his inner struggle, his repentance. He sinned, but perhaps he immediately repented - and God forgave him, but you committed a sin, condemned him, and did not repent of your sin, you ascended, became proud of your brother, full of all sorts of infirmities and sins. Humility and self-condemnation are needed. Everyone is judged internally by God Himself. God the judge is righteous, and strong, and long-suffering [Ps. 7, 12]. So the Lord created me, brought me from non-existence into being, restored the fallen through His suffering and death, cleansed the sinner, adopted me as a son, promised me an inheritance of eternal blessings; enlightens me with the light of His Gospel, Fatherly punishes and has mercy on me, illuminates me with His sun, gives me food and drink, sweets every day, and most of all His sweetest and life-giving Feast - His Body and Blood - gives me; He shed air for my breathing, and above all He poured out His Holy Spirit into me; He dresses me with garments of beauty, but most of all, he clothes me inwardly with Himself, according to what was said: 36 You were baptized into Christ, you put on Christ [Gal. 3, 27 ]; he rests me in a spacious and clean dwelling, and he promised me an eternal, luminous dwelling in heaven; He will gird me with health especially through the Holy Sacraments, etc. What will I repay Him for this? How can I repay? I cannot repay in any way except according to my strength by observing my fidelity to Him through the fulfillment of His commandments and unchanging, firm resistance to sin and the devil. We must go opposite to carnal passions: the flesh cleaves to sweets, loves them - we must shun them, despise them; the flesh hates and shuns a person who uses our sweets in excess - we must, on the contrary, love him 1) as a fellow member, a co-man, 2) because he destroys our sweets, to which we could cleave, with which we could become satiated and fall away from God, 3) because he gives our spirit a chance to become sober through the temptation of his sweets, to renounce sweets and willy-nilly, despise them and cleave to the one God, Who alone can fill the immeasurable depth of our heart, calm and revive it. Come to Me, all of you... and I will give you rest [Matt. 11, 28]. I should consider it a blessing that I can live for my parents in their old age and serve them, and by honoring and pleasing them, I myself will receive a long life from the Lord. Look: partaker of the Divine Mysteries, you must be cold to all earthly sweets and hot to the Lord Jesus Christ and to your neighbors, whom He loved to death; you must be abstinent and zealous for fasting. Despise earthly life and earthly pleasures like an old, dirty rag - hasten to incorruptible, holy, righteous life, love it with all your heart, strive for it with all your might. She has long been yours according to promise, she is our inheritance, and everything visible is perishable, transitory, everything leads to sin against God and neighbor. Do not spare anything for your father, as the Heavenly Father Himself, be ready to sacrifice your life for him, just as he gave you your daughter, gave you a place and happiness and a name (after the Lord God), and gave you a priestly place in accordance with your education, your abilities, your direction of work. He is the master of the house, you are the guest. This night (the temptation from voluptuousness the day before) made me tangibly understand that it is the devil who teaches us to chase after sweets, to desire them, to crave them, to become embittered because of them when they are taken from us. Whatever types of sweets he imagines in a dream: huge braziers with pies, doused with sugar on top, and braziers with roasts, and to top it all off, he imagines some kind of voluptuous views and with your own flesh, like some master, he will make vile voluptuousness. What do you need? A Christian absolutely needs abstinence and the most moderate consumption of sweets and occasionally. If you hear about a brother that he uses unworthy means to enrich himself, for example, ignoble, dishonest transactions in wills or otherwise, do not despise him, but have pity on him and sincerely pray for him, as for yourself, when you are tempted by the same or another passion, for we all walk among snares, Satan inflames us all with love of money, voluptuousness, pride, malice, envy, fornication, irritability, impatience, murmuring, self-will, disobedience and so on. Oh, how much it means to pray for each other! How it sobers us up! How it attracts mutual hearts! If it were not for Your salvation, Lord, if it were not for Your goodness that has mercy on us, if not for the dew of Your grace, then we would have burned in our own furnace of passions, Satan would have completely corrupted us, tormented us, and we would not have seen any joy in life. If the Lord were not in us, no one against us would be able to overcome the enemy's battle: the victorious one ascends from here 37 . But now Thy mercy, Thy grace, which Thou hast acquired for us through Thy suffering, Thy blood, and Thy death for us, comforts us. Glory to Thee for this, O Lover of Mankind! But what will happen to those Christians who do not want to know You, Your commandments, Your teaching? Woe to them. God! I thank You, for You granted me to serve the early Mass with boldness and loudness, like the prayer service of water to the Great Martyr George, and to partake of Communion with boldness. I thank you that during the all-night vigil, through my prayer, you removed the mountains of my sins from my heart and gave your grace to me, and with boldness I celebrated the all-night vigil and said sincere forgiveness to your people. Jonah the prophet was swallowed up by a sea beast in the image that the entire human race would be swallowed up by Satan forever and ever and would be carried away by him to the bottom of hell for eternal torment. That is why the Church sings: from the belly of hell, the Lord deliver us and bestow the world’s great mercy 38, and also in image of the fact that now Satan often consumes us temporarily, but that the Lord Jesus Christ, by His mercy, saves us from his belly. Here everyone should still see a lesson to despise one’s own belly, for it is not for nothing that the receptacle of hell is called the womb; Satan nests in the womb, in gluttons, self-lovers, the satiated, and drunkards. Abstinence, fasting, their necessity. Now they reject it. I want all mankind... to be saved and to come into the understanding of truth (1 Tim. 2:4). This means that sin is a lie, a delusion, and our life passes in a lie, in a delusion. The purpose of all God's punishments for sins is so that we experience the lies, daydreaming, madness, absurdity (paradoxicality) of sin and hate it as rebellion, disobedience to God the All-Creator. The devil fell through disobedience and self-will. Strange thing! Despite the severity of the punishments, we all love sin: it has so deeply taken root in us, so fused with our being! Hence the need to crucify the flesh (the old man) in which it nests. If you were asked what you choose: a piece of dirt or the Lord, would you really prefer the dirt to the Lord? But this is what almost all of us do: we cling to earthly blessings, which are all earth, rubbish, dung, and leave with the heart of the Lord. Thank You, Lord, for the solemn service of the Liturgy and the non-judgmental acceptance of the Divine Mysteries and for preaching the word of God as it was composed. I thank You, for You drove away the flattery of the serpent, the flattery of malice, from me by Your truth: I vividly imagined that all are members of Your body, Lord, You are our Head. Do not forget that your father is an archpriest, he was once an important person; For his 35-year service to the Church, honor him, give him peace, caress him, warm him, and it will be good for you too. Looking at the cross, imagine that the Divine Sufferer, the Lamb of God, hangs on it, taking away the sins of the world, and that the Divine blood is still smoking on it, flowing along the cross, dripping from it, that this blood was shed for you. One should not at all envy one’s neighbor in his wealth, that it flows to him, for the envier thereby reveals in himself an evil, ungrateful soul, partial to temporary and vain wealth, loving earthly things, not heavenly things, soulless dust, not God. But if we pay attention to the state of mind of a rich person, then we will refrain from envy: it is difficult for a rich person to maintain his passion for him: it is not for nothing that a person who has a lot of money or other property is called rich, that is, having many gods; indeed, money is his gods, his heart is partial to it, and he is cold towards God and constantly violates God’s commandments. Therefore it is said: a little is better for the righteous than the much wealth of sinners [Ps. 36, 16]. But who will not say that addiction to wealth is the greatest evil? Who would envy a man tied with a chain to a golden mountain and alien to the Lord, the source of life? Moreover, you must love your neighbor as you love yourself, wish for him everything that you wish for yourself; but you wish for yourself the wealth that he has, although this is a sinful desire: it is pleasant for you to have extra in reserve - wish this for him too. You say: he has nowhere to put it, he hoards it, he looks at it, does no good. The time will come, sooner or later, his money will begin to move and disperse or disappear, go to dust, just like dust is - either a thief will steal it, or it will go to a dissolute person, or to a God-fearing person. We must remember that our best, greatest, inexhaustible, holiest, most peaceful wealth is God, and God rests in those hearts in which there is not the slightest attachment to earthly things, which despise wealth as the most dangerous, most lovely dust, like a terrible aphid of souls. We must be content with the small, essential things. Give us this day our daily bread. The surplus must be given to those in need, and there are always many beggars. To all this it must be said that envy is from the devil: the envious one carries it in his heart and fulfills his will; envy is the devil’s malice, the devil’s dream, in which we also become participants, we, created for truth and love, for the possession of the endless blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven, which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and has not entered into the heart of man (1 Cor. 2:9). Whoever envies his neighbor in earthly blessings loses Christian nobility and spiritual wealth, for we are children of God in Christ Jesus - and who is richer than the children of God? Isn’t this one immeasurable nobility and wealth to be a child of God and the heir of all Divine treasures? Who is so crazy that he would exchange this nobility for earthly slavery, for slavery to wealth, this soulless dust, and still enjoy this slavery? O Christians! Christians! This is your wealth - the name of Christ, the name of a Christian. This name contains everything, for what inheritance is promised to a Christian and who would not agree to be a beggar here, just so as not to lose the promised benefits? A subordinate who is jealous of his boss exposes his pride, because he wants to be rich like him, to receive the same as him. Both the rich man and the one who envies the rich man are thus both in error of mind, heart and will, both in blindness, both in a sinful sleep, both are not sober spiritually. We must pray for both of them, so that the Lord will awaken and enlighten them. This is our wealth - faith and love for the Lord, sincere piety, impartiality, indifference to everything earthly, to all its blessings, peace and freedom of spirit, contentment with little, contentment with everyone, contentment with our condition, living hope of future eternal blessings in Christ, prosperity, conscientious fulfillment of our duties and peace of conscience. How can I not go in every possible way, mercilessly, strictly against myself, against my heart, when it is armed with pride, contempt, and malice, and envy, and stinginess against those who sincerely love me, against my mother, wife, father? How can I not hate my soul, according to the word of my Savior? Oh, my absurd flesh! Oh, ridiculous old man, ugly, perverted, hideous, wild, brutal! But isn’t it all sweets that work? We must at every moment respect and love every person, every uneducated, beggar, for by respecting a person, we respect ourselves in him, our nature, we honor the Lord, who became human for our sake and deified our nature. Let us not look at faces, let us be impartial. Simple people are much better than secular, educated people: they have simplicity of faith, religious feeling, fear of God, while secular, educated people have guile, pride, and malice. I sinned before You, Lord, by prophesying and dishonoring the father of the archpriest and the elder Mikhail Dmitrievich Semenov before Alexander Lebedev, calling them thieves and thieves of church property and the archpriest a piper. If they have sinned, [...] they will give an answer, I am not their judge; I myself am a great sinner, I must ache and shed tears over my sins. I have so many sins that I can barely bear them – why should I touch other people’s? Each one will bear his own burden [Gal. 6, 5]. Consider the brethren as holy and deeply respect her according to their rank, I mean Father Archpriest, Father Matthew and the deacons and the clerics and ministers, for according to Christ the Lord, as members of His body, they are all holy. And cover their sins, and if you know what tempting sins are behind them, sigh for them with love for the Lord and ask them for forgiveness, admonition and correction, and most importantly, sigh for yourself, correct yourself. For it is impossible, having a log in our own eyes, to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. Only he who is without sin among us can throw the stone of lawful condemnation at his neighbor. And which of us is without sin? There is no point in condemning our neighbor: if we were in our neighbor’s place, we would hardly do the same thing as him. Often we condemn our neighbor, annoyed, why aren’t we in his place, why aren’t we doing what he is doing, why, for example, it’s not we who steal, but he. All our anger, pride, envy. Oh, damned ones! Oh, how the enemy steals our souls! How flattering we are! It is safest to know ourselves and not to be judges of those whom we are not called to judge; The safest thing to do is to acknowledge your sins and mourn, to carry out your work conscientiously, to love your neighbor as yourself, to pray for your neighbor, to suffer from his illnesses, to suffer from his passions, to ask for healing for him as for yourself. God! It is to you, not to me, that my brothers sin, You are their Judge, Lord, Creator. That I take upon myself a task that does not belong to me at all? Why do I admire Your rights? You say: it’s good to pray at home on Sunday or other holidays, there is no need to go to church, that is, you want to be free. God loves communication, for communication testifies to love, while, on the contrary, division testifies to self-love, lack of sociability, except for the solitude of God in the desert or monasteries and in any place not during divine services. Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them [Matt. 18, 20]. You see, the Lord Himself wants us to gather together and promises the gathering primarily the gift of His co-presence, as those gathered in the spirit of common faith, hope and love. One body, one spirit... [Eph. 4, 4]. Look, do not listen to the all-malicious devil, who slyly draws your attention to the coarse materiality of a person in word, clothing, face, etc. and incites you to contempt and anger towards him because of his coarse appearance and disfigures your insides, your soul, your heart. See how cunning he is! Protect your heart from anger, contempt, envy and other passions. There is nothing more precious than the heart, more important. Guard your heart above all else [Prov. 4, 23]. Who sincerely, diligently honors and loves us? A simple man. Who do we despise and hate more? Ordinary people. Have mercy on us, Lord... for we are filled with much humiliation: our soul is especially filled with the reproach of the gobblers (with external wisdom, learning, earthly possessions, the chosen foods and drinks of the sated and earthly nobility, connections) and the humiliation of the proud [Ps. 122, 3 – 4 ] 40 . Simple, rude and educated, delicate - all one body, we are many (1 Cor. 10:17): some are weaker, others are stronger, at least outwardly (according to the world), everyone should live in mutual love, and the strong should endure the weaknesses of the weak and not please themselves [Rom. 15, 1]. Simple people, having no external learning, do not have pride, which for the most part is associated with it, but have simplicity of heart, which the educated should learn from them. They say: it is easy for a priest to serve. It’s easy to chatter, but not to serve, and serving the Lord God worthily for us sinners is not an easy, but a difficult matter, because we very rarely serve worthily. The difficulty is that it is not easy to bring the mouth, thought, heart and will into harmony and to pray with all the thought, with all the heart, with all the will, and our spiritual strength during worship is often in discord, as if in a paralyzed state. But when the Lord gives His grace to pray in the grace of the Holy Spirit with all your soul, then you pray to God most easily and sweetly. Test the hearts and bellies [Ps. 7, 10]. These words in our morning prayers encourage us to live carefully according to our inner man, to walk in meekness, gentleness, goodness and purity of heart. Remove oblivion from Me 41. Oh, what oblivion always comes over us. You recognized the sin, disgusted it, but an opportunity presented itself, a temptation to sin - and you forgot that it was a sin, and you commit a sin again. This happens almost incessantly. O weakness, sinfulness of the flesh! O wickedness of the flesh! The devil's malice! Dress a simple, rough man in good clothes, give him an education, teach him to speak in correct, competent speech - and he will be like one of the secular (of this world) people whom the world respects, before whom he bows. But you respect those whom the world despises, about whom it is in great error, as looking at the outside, and not at the inside, not at the person actually, but at his clothes, not at the content, at the spirit of the word, but at the word itself, at this shell, appearance, at this chatter, at this wind, at these elements of the word, common with the parrot. But even a parrot speaks well, but has no thoughts, hearts, or feelings: it does not think about what it says, does not feel what it says - so often the people of this world: they speak, but often do not sympathize with what they say, do not fulfill what they say, often do not have love for God and neighbor, despite all their eloquence. But a simple person does not speak eloquently, but from a simple heart he believes in God, hopes in Him, loves Him, honors Him with reverence and sincerely respects his neighbor, loves him, and is ready to do good in any case. Nourish generously, caress your flesh, and it will be more raging with fornication, malice, pride, envy, contemplation, covetousness, stinginess, and laziness. One must be zealous about abstinence, about fasting urgently, and not go into the difference and sweetness of foods and drinks. Wake up! Who arms me with malice against the guests who come to me? The belly, greed for food and drink, addiction to earthly pleasures, earthly wealth, earthly life. And who nests in the womb? - devil. So what? - To despise the womb, earthly life, earthly sensual pleasures. Who arms me with malice against the poor who follow me? The passion of gluttony, carnality, self-love. So what? Shouldn't we be followed as beggars on the same earth? But is not the Lord's earth and its fulfillment [Ps. 23, 1 ]? Are we the only ones who want to move in there? Aren't the blessings of the earth common to everyone? Do we really need so much that we can absorb it all? Oh, how little each of us needs! And with what abundance the Lord has created everything and given it to us! God of bounty! Have mercy on us stingy ones! God Almighty! Have mercy on us, the evil ones, and make us good by Your grace. Teach and confirm us to mutually respect and love each other as members of one body under one Head - You, Jesus Christ our God - God, Creator, Life-Giver, our Savior and Provider. Take away satanic dreams from our hearts. What is the main virtue in Christianity? - Humility. Learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart [Matt. 11:29], says the Lord Himself. What did the Lord look upon in the Most Pure Virgin Mary? To her humility: as he looked upon the humility of his servant [Lk. 1, 48]. Do not be arrogant, but follow the humble, says the Apostle [Rom. 12, 16]. Man, having received everything with his being from God and in himself nothing, according to the teachings of the star, thought of himself as something great, attributed to himself the gifts of God, desired to be God himself - and fell, fell terribly, being alienated along with the devil. The uprising from the fall, naturally, had to go the opposite way - through humility, through the consciousness of one’s insignificance and one’s guilt before God, through meekness and humility before people like us, through the consciousness of the image of God, a member of Christ, installed in every person, albeit a beggar, covered in rags, through the consciousness of his equality with us, through an invariably meek and kindly treatment of him, goodwill to him. I thank You, Lord, for You have granted me this day (April 26) without sin. By Thy grace I served Mass well, without stumbling. I spent the fourth and sixth grades very well; At home, he received and treated guests well, with a cordial disposition, believing in them as members of Christ. If you want to show love to Christ, show it to Him in the person of your household - father-in-law, sister-in-law, your servants; love, respect their human dignity, moreover, honor in them the deified nature, members of Christ. This is the sacrifice pleasing to Christ, the daily sacrifice. Then provide all possible help to the poor, as to Christ Himself, forgiving offenses, as Christ forgave you - this is a pleasant, daily sacrifice to Christ. Do you want to please God? Pray sincerely, from the heart, for all those who sail and travel, for all sinners, for the goodness of the air, for the abundance of earthly fruits, for everything and everyone that the Church teaches us to pray for, guided by the Holy Spirit. Even though I speak the tongues of men and angels, I am not an imam of love... I have no benefit (1 Cor. 13:1-3), that is, no matter how florid, eloquent a person is, he speaks sweetly, like an Angel, but if he does not have love in his heart for God and his neighbor, he is nothing, he is like ringing brass or a clanging cymbal. All power is in love. What are the fruits of love? Love is patient, merciful, does not boast, is not proud, is not irritated, does not think evil, bears all things, endures all things. On the other hand, if a person does not speak eloquently, speaks rudely, does not speak grammar, but if he is meek and humble in heart, if he loves God and his neighbor, he is better, above anyone educated, above anyone who is eloquent, but proud and pompous, angry and irritable, etc. I sinned against the Lord - I became embittered with my sister for her, perhaps imaginary, rudeness towards my mother. Give me, Lord, patience, generosity, meekness; forgive me, Lord, my sin. While there is time, we must humble our souls by fasting, we must thin our hearts, which are growing fat from delicacies and drinks. The sweeter we eat and drink, the more our flesh becomes enraged by malice, contempt, envy, stinginess and other passions. Therefore, sweets and passions are one and the same. Sweetness is the mother, passion is the child of sweetness, and grandmother is self-love. The twelve apostles were chosen according to the number of tribes of Israel to testify that the New Testament Church of Christ replaced the Church of Israel, the house of Jacob, which was the image of the New Testament Church. Rejoice that those at home are satisfied with the goodness of God and with your labors. At the devil's instigation, he became angry with the poor old woman for no reason. Oh, absurd malice! Consider it happiness and pleasure that the poor and despised of this world ask God’s blessing through you and kiss your hand. See in them the images of God, the members of Christ, love and respect them, but despise your contemptuous, satiated flesh. How long is this dream, this madness, that we value a person by his clothes, by his condition, and we honor the well-dressed, wealthy, and despise the poorly dressed and poor, while this latter deserves our special sympathy, respect and love, as one suffering need, disaster, as a crusader in this life, unless, of course, he is a drunkard and does not voluntarily give himself up to disaster. Oh, how the enemy of the human race has perverted our nature! Therefore, in everything we must go against the flesh! Reject, despise, hate yourself. Relaxation, bliss and laziness of the heart and body often come from the devil. In this way he tries to plunge us into spiritual sleep. Everyone dozed off and fell asleep [Matt. 25, 5]. We must fight and pray as hard as possible. Friday. Week about the Samaritan. I thank You, Lord, for You have vouchsafed me to partake in the world of my spiritual powers and to perform the Divine Liturgy, prayer services, and requiem without stumbling. Look at how you treat every neighbor, simple and educated, is it from a sincere heart? Who is the body of Christ? Our neighbors are predominantly Christians. How to treat your neighbors? How to receive them, how to talk to them, with what meekness, respect, courtesy, how to willingly give alms, treat them, how to sympathize in sorrows, troubles, illnesses, how to rejoice in true joy, how to turn away from sins, how to be zealous for each other’s salvation! Feel sorry for sins, like painful scabs of your neighbor, pray for their healing, reprove them, punish them so that they can be corrected, but where severity and drastic measures are needed, it would be sinful to use affection and slowness in punishment. I thank You, Lord, for You have granted two classes (fourth and third) with great boldness, peace, and the power of words (there was a director in the third class). I thank You, for at home in the evening, twice or more, You saved me from my anger, pride, envy and stinginess and pacified me. I thank You, for little by little you teach me to look upon my household and my guests as members of Your body. My invisible enemies are fierce, O Lord, but Your salvation is also wondrous, O my Savior! What if You, Lord my God Jesus Christ, would shine the light of Your Divinity from Your most pure Mysteries, when they rest on the holy throne, on the paten during the Liturgy, or in the tabernacle, or monstrance, when Your priest carries them on his forehead, going to or from the sick! From this light, everyone who met them or looked at them from their homes would be thrown into fear to the ground. For even the Angels are covered with fear of Your unapproachable glory! And yet, how indifferently we treat these heavenly Mysteries! How indifferently we perform the terrible ritual of the Holy Mysteries! Whom, O priest, are you carrying on your breasts? Bearing all things with His power. Whom do you keep close to your chest? All creation is held in His hand; Who are you carrying, living creature? Everyone's belly. A wondrous and terrible wearing! O our priceless treasure, Lord Jesus Christ, glory to You, glory to Your look, glory to Your condescension, the only One who loves mankind! The womb is imputed to God, it is said about Esau, the son of Isaac (in the Menaion on the 30th of April on the day of the Apostle Jacob) 42. I, a great sinner, also work for the belly with sweets as for God, I am greedy, I feel sorry for the sweets of others when I should despise them, that is, sweets. Those who have sinned against the Lord! If you notice that someone is insincerely, coldly, feigningly greeting you, for example from family members, or it seems so to you, then instead of responding to you with coldness, as often happens, treat him sincerely, as sincerely as possible, greet him from the heart, and with this apparently unimportant act you will fulfill the commandment of God: love your neighbor as yourself [Matt. 22, 39], and: overcome evil with good [Rom. 12, 21]. For if we kiss our friends only, turning away from our enemies and ill-wishers, what are we doing unnecessarily compared to the pagans [Matt. 5, 47], we, taught by the Gospel to the highest, Divine wisdom and a new life in the spirit, and not in the flesh, taught to love even our enemies? Despise the sins of your neighbor, impute them to a devilish dream and always triumph with good over evil: from good, like ice from the sun and wax from fire, all evil will melt, for evil is a dream and is maintained by our dreams, that is, by passions. Do not seek for yourself honor, respect, love from the people of this age, who are vain and vainly loving, but seek for yourself honor, glory, incorruptibility, love from God, who truly loves us - when God loves you, then people will love you. Do not please people, do not indulge human passions, do not remain silent when you see them, be simple-minded, frank, bold without impudence, accusatory without being picky. Pride and pride, our vanity is the reason that we are offended when we are not greeted or greeted coldly and carelessly. For what will these memorized greetings bring us without soul, without strength, out of habit alone? Nothing. O dreamy heart! I despise you, I regard your old, sinful, passionate heart as nothing. I said in my excitement (in inspiration): every man is a lie [Ps. 115, 2]. There is no truth in their mouth, their heart is vain, their throat is open, their speech is flattering. Judge for them, O God, that they may fall away from their thoughts: according to the multitude of their wickedness, I will purge them, for I have grieved Thee, O Lord [Ps. 5, 10 – 11 ]! Who takes up arms in me against my family, especially when they drink tea in front of me, but without me? - The womb, a soulless, blind, stinking, corruptible womb. To despise the belly is to respect and love those who eat and drink, for everything is for them, everything is put under their feet from the Creator. Nothing is mine - everything is common, for we are the Church, one body. Oh, how great, deep, strong is the corruption of my nature, my heart, my mind, my will, how pride, malice, disobedience, waywardness, disrespect, envy, addiction to earthly things, stinginess, covetousness, hypocrisy, partiality, lies, daydreaming, condemnation, fornication, greed and intemperance, delicacy, despondency, fear, have grown into my heart, cowardice, etc.! How urgently I need a Savior, so that He would save me from myself, from my anger, pride, contempt, addiction to earthly pleasures, from stinginess, covetousness, partiality, mental and physical relaxation, laziness and other sins, and strengthen me in the opposite virtues. God! Behold, from my youth many passions have fought me, but intercede and save me Yourself, my Savior! 43 Lord! Grant me to walk in newness of life. Give me not to desire external renewals, but internal, spiritual renewals, with which Your gaze is rejoiced! We are vain, our Lord, we chase after new clothes, in suits, but we do not care about the renewal of our inner life, about the renewal of our hearts, as Christians should, we do not strive for this priceless renewal of the spirit, the sweet fruits of which we would begin to taste throughout eternity. Poor souls! Pathetic bodies! Pathetic people! Ever deluded people! April 30, 1866. Saturday. Apostle James. My passions are the dogs of hell, they are demons, not me. Yes, I will hate them with all the strength of my soul. Love the Lord your God with all your heart [Matt. 22, 37]. This means: hate yourself and your sins, your passions with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your strength, and love with all your heart, with all your strength the truth of God, the commandments of God, the fulfillment of them; deny yourself, despise yourself and be one with the Lord, one spirit, have His spirit in all your life. Never doubt to despise yourself, your old heart, this hellish abyss. On fasting days, do not eat fish in quick oil, and do not eat fish at all; Do not drink sweet tea, do not consume currants, raisins, prunes and other sweets, unless in very small quantities. This is said positively, because from breaking the fast the enemy gets the opportunity (like a lawless person) to stealthily enter our heart, nest in it and torment us, just as from sweets he also enters us. Carnal food and carnal drink corrupt the heart and soul and plunge the body into relaxation. As a member of Christ, love and respect, and caress, nourish and clothe a person, and have compassion and rejoice with him. Be content with your condition, do not desire much: a person needs little, and most importantly, he needs Christ in his heart. What do we have in heaven? and what did You want on earth? My heart has disappeared (God grant that my heart may disappear in the Lord) and my flesh, O God of my heart, and my part, O God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26]. Much wealth means many aphids of the heart: the more aphids, the worse. The more we have, the more we desire, the more we envy those who have more than us. Be kind to everyone, and most importantly, pray that everyone will be with Christ, that they will put the salvation of their souls above everything else in the world and not think only about enrichment and the gaiety and pomp of this age. Do not envy a person for his wealth: his soul is infinitely higher, dearer than wealth, but wealth most often destroys it, just as the Savior said that it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 19, 23]. Do not enter into the affairs of others, for example your boss or your neighbor in general, with zeal: know your own business. Oh, how strongly the enemy ties the heart to sweets! My heart! You must cleave to the one God. How do you exchange the Lord Creator for sweets, for the devil, for clinging to sweets means working for the devil? Haven’t you, my heart, experienced a thousand times how peacefully, sweetly it is to cleave to the Lord and how restlessly, fieryly it is to cleave to sweets, to feel sorry for them for others? Never mind them, despise them like dirt. Cling diligently to the Lord! Oh, how sweet it was for me today at the all-night vigil from heartfelt service to the Lord! After this I must despise all earthly delights! And what do I say after that? Only after this? Haven’t I experienced the life-giving, sweetness of clinging to the Lord a thousand times? Oh, my Lord, my Lord! Have mercy on me, Thy traitor! How often I have cheated on You! I do not care about anything earthly, because the fullness of my life is God: He is everything for both my soul and my body; He is the source of all good, all gifts - spiritual and material. That we cling to the earthly blessings here and do not strive for the heavenly blessings there? 1) These goods are temporary, not eternal, but those are eternal; those here must, we must certainly leave sooner or later, because we must die, those will always be with us; 2) those here are insignificant, rude, those here are infinitely great, spiritual, pure. He who spares sweets for his servants spares them for Christ the Lord Himself, for they are His members. Let such a one remember Judas, who spared the precious world for the Lord. Isn't man infinitely more valuable than everything sweet, dear, and beautiful in the world? Isn't it all for him? Isn't it earth, isn't it dust, sweetness? What about our body? Hearts brought up in sweets, amusements, and luxury are cold towards God and neighbor. Notice the tricks of the enemy: in order to deprive you of love for God, he first [strengthens] to plant in your heart enmity towards your neighbor, envy of his well-being, and in this case, all the little things, all the mistakes, the vanities of life or the successes of your neighbor turns into a reason for anger towards him, for envy of him: and the collection of our neighbors from our sweets, to which we greedy, and an unkind look, and an unkind word, and not giving a bow, and the rude look of his face, and the coarseness of his clothes, and his frequent asking for alms (although we ourselves constantly receive, and a lot), and his awkward helpfulness to us, and singing out of voice with us, and reading, somewhat incorrectly, and the very cough, even the very sight of a person who takes advantage of something from us, or his receiving a good place or reward and etc. Thus, the enemy managed to tie our heart to self-love, pride, envy and earthly sweets, and thus rejected it from love for God and neighbor through the medium of sweets. Hence the need to despise and consider all sweets as rubbish, to consume them as little as possible and not to spare your neighbor, because they are intended for his consumption. It is impossible, clinging to sweets, at the same time to love God and neighbor; It is impossible to work with God and mammon: either we despise sweets and then love God and our neighbor, or, having loved sweets, we will hate God and our neighbor. But what is the end of nourishing and [decorating] the body? So that our body, having existed for some time, then itself decomposes and turns into earth. So, aren’t the drowned bodies of sinners the coffins? So, isn’t it puppet comedy to play with your flesh, cherish it, amuse it? Are Christians so jealous of the perishable life? Do Christians despise the incorruptible life? Are Christians so jealous of the corruptible body and despise the immortal soul? But he who sows to the flesh, living in pleasures, luxury, envy, love of money, gluttony, avarice, will reap corruption from the flesh; but he who sows to the spirit, who despises sweets, although he does not disdain the use of them, despises luxury, abhors envy, love of money, gluttony, avarice, abstinent, benevolent, he who sympathizes with his neighbor in all sorrows, who is generous, meek and humble, will reap eternal life from the spirit [Gal. 6, 8]. God! Blinded by my spiritual eyes, I come to You, Christ, as if blind from birth, in repentance I call on You, be merciful to us, the only Benefactor 45. Oh, how I could sow less into the flesh, and more into the spirit! How could one consider the acquisition of flesh to be a loss, and the loss of it to be a gain! How can I get rid of a flatterer, a sin-loving, carnal-loving person? How to despise everything carnal - the splendor of the earth, and the abundance of money, and the nobility of blood (vain nobility), and carnal strength, and carnal greatness, and carnal pleasures, and the beauty of clothes, and splendor, and the beauty of the dwelling and its utensils, and chariots and horses with rich harness, etc., etc.! - for all this is vanity! So, I am still in captivity in Babylon! Hitherto I sit and cry on the rivers of Babylon [Ps. 136, 1]. Our spiritual eye is darkened by passions, and the eye of the world - the sun - is darkened and does not give its light: there are constant dark clouds in the sky, just as we have dark clouds of passions in our mental sky - the soul, for our soul is heavenly in nature. But how have we, heavenly citizens, not yet despised earthly, perishable things? How can we not be jealous of the imperishable? Away with the rotten heart and in its place a new one, Christ’s! Away with the devilish rot! Passion away! Away with sweets! I thank You, Lord, for now, during the all-night vigil, You have granted me great grace to serve You peacefully, majestically, with boldness and stand before Your throne. (Week about the blind.) It is pleasant for you when your neighbors, acquaintances, relatives, friends, comrades rejoice in your happiness or in receiving some kind of profit, reward, or in the successful conduct or completion of a business, etc. Why don’t you rejoice in the happiness of others, for example, those receiving distinction, profit, successfully working in a certain good cause, why do you envy? Are we not one body? Don't we 46 fool each other [Rom. 12, 5] ? But when [one] oud rejoices, do not everyone rejoice with him (1 Cor. 12:26)? Again: you enjoy sympathy, sincere compassion, the participation of others in your misfortune, illness, grief, loss - why do you rarely sincerely sympathize with others, have compassion, why do you not take voluntary participation, such participation as you would like for yourself from others or according to the strength of each? We must rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep [Rom. 12, 15]. On April 4, 1866, Emperor Alexander II was heading from the gates of the Summer Garden to his carriage when a shot was heard. The shooter was D.V. Karakozov. The bullet flew over the emperor's head: the shooter was pushed by the peasant Osip Komissarov, who was standing nearby. Verbal (church glory) - spiritual, reasonable. Creation (church glory) – re-creation, renewal. Rejoice, Head of the mental creation [Russian: Rejoice, Originator of spiritual rebirth] (akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos, ikos 10). Perishing (Church Slavic) – temporary, perishing, collapsing. Akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos, Kontakion 9. The popular name for the city of Oranienbaum, now the city of Lomonosov. Shuiy (Church Slavic) – left; on the left side - on the left side. Znamenatisya (church glory) - put a sign, seal; reflect. Prayer to Christ, the True Light, read at the first hour. Disdainful (Church Slavic) – arrogant, contemptuous, disrespectful. Irmos of the 6th song of the Sunday canon at Matins, tone 2. Prayer 10 of the luminary prayers at Matins. Tune (Church Glav.) - for free. Osten (Church Slavic) – sting, butt; needle, nail. Pr ό sty (Church Glav.) – here: open, straight, clean; sincere. General troparion to the monk. Prayer 10 to the Most Holy Theotokos from the sequence of morning prayers. Stuzhati (Church Glav.) – to bother, oppress, disturb; oppress. Ever-present (church-glorified) – eternal, always existing. Buiy (Church Slavic) – stupid, crazy. To go out (to nurse) means: to get something by walking. Ouds (Church Slavic) – members of the body. Tochiyu (church glory) - only. Troparions from the sequence of morning prayers. Obache (Church Glorious) - however, however. Elitsy (Church Slavic) – everyone who; everything, as much as there is. Rus.: If the Lord were not among us, then none of us could withstand the fight against the enemy; for those who overcome ascend from here (Antiphon 2 at Matins, voice 6). Troparion for Sunday, tone 3. Flattery (church glory) – lie, deceit; seduction, temptation; pretense. Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us, for we are filled enough with contempt; Our soul is quite filled with reproach from the arrogant and humiliation from the proud [Ps. 122, 3 – 4]. Prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos from the sequence of morning prayers. Vespers service. Stichera on the second verse “Words of the self-witness, Jacob...”, tone 8. Antiphon 1st at Matins, tone 4th. Part (Church Slavic) – share, allotment, property; fate. Troparion from the continuation of the Sacrament of Anointing, tone 4. 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