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I thank You, most merciful, all-merciful and all-powerful Lord, for today You have made me worthy to partake of Your Divine Mysteries with faith, or, more importantly, with the power of irresistible faith, and You have driven away the demon of voluptuousness that nested in me. I thank You, for You have granted me the gift of passing on the third and fourth grades peacefully, blessedly, and with boldness. But this evening I committed a great sin before You: I pushed the beggar hard when he followed me and asked for a shirt after the alms were given to him. Will not some beggars cry out against us, saying: Our soul is especially filled with the reproach of the gobblers and the humiliation of the proud [Ps. 122, 4 ]? In all the fruits of the earth and in all the blessings of the earth, God’s immeasurable love for people is expressed - therefore we must teach these blessings to people with love, for they are God’s, not ours, we are only givers; We will use what we need for ourselves, and the excess should be distributed to the poor or used for hospitality. I must be the holiness of the Lord, the meekness and longsuffering of the Lord, the tender mercies of the Lord. As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering [Col. 3, 12]. Remember that a piece in someone else’s hands always seems greater and better than ours, and do not believe your envious eye. Love your neighbor as you love yourself: whatever piece you take for yourself, try to give the same to your neighbor, if possible. Appreciate your servants and their labors and their long-term service to you and your house; consider them worthy and worthy of your bread and salt, tea and coffee, sugar, clothing, etc. Do not forget that they are members of Christ. Cast away the evil eye from yourself. For ten years it’s the same thing, that is, we eat and drink, etc. If you’re indignant at others for being treated to a feast, then you’re more indignant at yourself than others, because you’re the greediest of all. Christ, eternal sweetness, is with me, - I said in my heart and sang with my lips and heart, and I felt light and peaceful, whereas before this my heart was languishing and worried with an addiction to earthly sweetness - sugar. My heart is one, and it must be all God’s; Meanwhile, the devil wants and strives to take possession of it through countless worldly lusts and often deprives us for a time of our most sweet, most worldly, most good, most holy Master. Therefore, we must crucify our flesh with passions and lusts. I pacify and enslave my body, says the Apostle, so that, while preaching to others, I myself may not remain unworthy (1 Cor. 9:27). Being a member of the Orthodox Church and honoring the Church of Angels and the Firstborn and calling on them in prayer, I myself exercise the right to their prayer for me before the throne of God, and after death, if I die in peace with her, the Church will pray for me, and thus I will not be deprived of hope for salvation. But in Lutheranism and Anglicanism, who will pray for the believers among the saints, and what right can Lutherans and Anglicans have to the prayer of the saints for them, when they themselves do not call upon them in prayer and do not honor them? Meanwhile, are their pastors who have not received apostolic ordination worthy of interceding before God for others? Blessed are the true believers of the Orthodox Church! Appreciate your Orthodoxy! Participate with all your heart in the prayers of the Church, listen carefully to its prayers, hymns, and Sacraments! It’s enough for me to be childish and compete in food with servants and household and try, as it were, to eat more of them, not less, because, they say, I am the master. It is precisely for me, as a priest and as a communicant of the Divine meal, that I need to eat less than everyone else and live in the Lord, through prayer, contemplation of God, and reading the Divine Scriptures, and leave eating and drinking with all the sweets to others. Be wise from above, not from earth. Truly, simple people are a thousand times better in the eyes of God than scientists, for the former are simple (not wicked), obedient (not nasty), meek, gentle as lambs, humble, patient, content with simple things and little, good-natured, condescending, not envious, hospitable, benevolent, sympathetic from the heart; and the latter are crafty, contradictory, disobedient, irritable, picky, proud, evil, envious, stingy, covetous, impatient, dissatisfied with everything, picky, inhospitable to everyone, unkind, cold, unsympathetic. The Lord’s election of the apostles from among the fishermen serves as an important, instructive, and significant lesson for all of us scientists. I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes (simple souls) [Matt. 11, 25]. Hence the duty to especially respect ordinary people, to regret their rudeness and lack of education, and even more so to cherish and serve them with love. How did I acquire a proud heart, contemptuous of the poor and uneducated? - Is it not a lot of external knowledge, is it not gluttony, is it not elegant clothes, is it not an elegant apartment and all the furnishings? I shied away from simplicity. Truly, many educated people go not forward, but backward compared to simple, but kind and honest people (retrograde), and many uneducated people go forward. This is the kind of deception that can happen in a person! It is necessary that the heart and will be formed along with the mind, and not the mind or memory alone. The Gospel says: love your neighbor as yourself, that is, every person, but we love according to whim and lust, according to our corrupt taste; We love, for example, beautiful faces, those who can speak well, have good manners, perform well, are lively, etc. Oh, how we sin before the Creator! We distort everything in our own way. Oh, sated ones! Be sure to try to form your relationship with your parishioners as a father to his children, a shepherd to his flock; instruct, console, admonish, reprove, enter into their lives, deeds, activities, etc. Be sure to observe fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays and others, but not like now, but just eat bread and tea, and nothing else. Excessive food and drinking with gore 78 gore and scorch in my insides. The fuller and richer a person is physically, the hungrier, nakeder and poorer he is spiritually. All earthly blessings are a passing shadow, having nothing substantial, a dream, but true life, true good is Christ in the heart, eternal life and bliss. I thank You, because You have taken away from Me the charm of earthly blessings now through my prayer and You have taught me to regard them as nothing. Don't be afraid of passion - it's a dream; look boldly. We breathe the same air, we are quickened by the same Holy Spirit. I thank You, Lord, for through my prayer you cleared away the sin of satiety and the expiration of the night and granted me the grace to perform the Divine Liturgy without stumbling and with power and to partake of the Holy Mysteries into the world of spiritual strength and to speak the word with boldness and power. A priest who serves the living God and performs the heavenly Mysteries must trample upon everything earthly with his heart, consider everything as rubbish, then he will worthily receive the title of Christian and priest. Otherwise, he will be like salt that has lost its savor [Lk. 14, 34 – 35]. We must hate and despise everything earthly, just as the devil despises, beats, and torments our soul because of earthly pleasures. The spirit of earthly love is the spirit of the devil. Man is the priceless image of God, and his body is like a magnificent, artistic, priceless column or a beautiful, majestic, pure church of the immortal god-like spirit. Oh, the splendor and beauty of human members! The whole world, like rubbish, is thrown at the feet of man. When we learn to respect a person as ourselves, everyone will always respect us. We must practice lively, friendly conversation with family and with relatives and friends who come to us in order to become closer in spirit; You also need to have communication with parishioners, entering them for an interview, and in general, take care of spiritual communication with your neighbors. Through this the commandment of love for one’s neighbor will be fulfilled, through this we will not give place to the devil; By doing this, we will see all the absurdity of the passions of pride, envy, carnal impurity, etc. I, I, Lord, am the cause of my neighbors’ great displeasure against me, and not they. We often persecute our neighbor internally (for example, our family) with suspicion, condemnation, internal hatred, or our guests with frequent condemnation and indignation. When passions overcome you, then stand and fight courageously, like a good warrior of Christ. Give thanks to your elder father-in-law and your mother for bread and salt and for everything, as the Lord, and not man, for the Lord is all in all, for all are members of Christ, all in the image of God, and in ourselves we are nothing. In general, always treat them from the heart, sincerely, humbly, respectfully. Respect them as you want to be respected, and more than that: the honor given to our neighbor turns to ourselves, for we are one body. And whoever treats others hypocritically, insincerely, proudly, hostilely, enviously or stingily, covetously, with impurity, first of all dishonors himself, harms himself, defiles himself, for evil punishes itself, just as virtue is its own reward. What are the lamps and candles that burn during worship for? Let our loins be girded and our lamps burning. And we are like people waiting for their master to return from marriage [Lk. 12, 35 – 36]. In human society, family enmity [yes] is destroyed and the bonds of family life and mutual respect and love are strengthened. Education should teach you to sincerely honor and love every person and to readily, willingly, joyfully serve the least of them, the least educated. You are educated - bring the benefits of education to the uneducated; regret at least their lack of education, try to convey to them what you can, sympathize with their ignorance, sigh to God for them. Remember that man is in the image of God and in every person, no matter how sinful he may seem, there are many guarantees of goodness, truth and beauty of the spirit - you just need to give them a chance to express themselves. Therefore, every person must be respected, loved, and given the opportunity to act in a positive way. It would be nice to write in separate books 1) the life of each saint for a certain day, then 2) the service from the monthly Menaion to this saint. Everyone would know their Angel and could imitate him: saints are guiding stars. My Angel's Day October 19, 1866; not with the holiness of soul and body, but with the abomination of Sodom, I gifted You, my Creator, Holy of Holies - and all because of gluttony, gluttony, because of eating meat, milk, cream and because of boasting before Father Alexander Lebedev that I live as a virgin, not like you. Oh, my damnation! Oh, my fall from grace! Great blessings to the communicant, partaking of the Divine Mysteries daily! - through gluttony and communion I am deprived of them! Lord, have mercy on me! Those who sinned more than David, the Sodomites and the Ninevites, for they were not awarded so much good, so much grace, as I was. O, fiercest man! Oh, inattentive to the great gifts of the Creator! Oh, careless and lazy! But, Long-suffering, give me mourning for my sins, give me conversion, correction, accomplishment 79 and salvation! Lamb of God, take away the sins of the world, take away my heavy sinful burden and do not let my enemy rejoice in me, who mocked me for the sake of intemperance and the praise of pride. Being in such grace that I partake of the Divine Mysteries daily and continuously, I live like Sodom, cursed: I eat and drink to the full, for the sin of the Sodomites consisted in the satiety of bread and the abundance of wine. How long will I not change, how long will I not strive for abstinence and fasting? For Christianity certainly requires abstinence, just as our Lord Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of His service to our salvation, showed and indicated this by His example, fasting for forty days and nights. Eating only and drinking is paganism: yadyahu, piyahu... [Lk. 17, 27]. And how easily this paganism is tolerated in us, this pagan way of life! As if this is how it should be! It is good to take away from the flesh, from the soul, from its pleasures, things, money, clothes, so that it is not voluptuous, prodigal, greedy, selfish, arrogant, vain, but loves God more than anything and its neighbor as itself; I would be meek, humble, patient. It is necessary that she does not greedily devour food and drinks, does not stare at the beauty of things, at the shine of gold and precious stones, at beautiful furniture, beautiful tableware, beautiful printing fonts, beautiful books, the beauty of clothes, for all this is to the detriment of love for God and neighbor and the purity of the soul. Let us not serve, God-wisdom, the creature more than the Creator: a beautiful, desirable creature - the Creator is even more beautiful, even more desirable; creation is perishable - the Creator is imperishable. Don't eat meat, don't drink beer, don't drink sweet tea. Oh God, help! The actions of the old and the new man must be written in the “Kronstadt Bulletin” to enlighten the public and about the destruction of the old man and the putting on of the new. I recognize my pride from the fact that I do not want to listen to the advice and comments of my family, as if I were all-knowing, as if I were perfect in everything, and I take offense at them for their comments, instead of accepting them with gratitude. What is Christian education? In simplicity of heart, meekness, kindness, patience, hard work, purity and chastity, non-covetousness, generosity, faith, hope and love. Education of the mind at school or at home should lead to this. He who knows a little, and yet has the indicated virtues, is much higher in the eyes of God, the Mother of God, holy Angels and holy people and all sensible people - higher, I say, than that person who has studied a lot, knows a lot and is alien to Christian virtues - simplicity, meekness, humility, kindness, purity; who, despite the art of speech and manners, is crafty, proud, angry and irritable, lives uncleanly, serves the belly, wealth, offends, deceives, covets, is stingy, hard-hearted, does not love the poor, does not pray, does not obey the statutes of the Church. It is necessary to distinguish the greed of the heart for earthly things, for example, sweets, money, home decoration, decoration in clothing, from the real need of the body: that is false in its beginning, because it comes from the devil and is destructive for the soul and body, insane and worthy of laughter, - but this is a real need that has a basis in nature. The first must be avoided at all costs, the latter must be satisfied. The next one, in his madness, first craves money even when he has a lot of it, craves food and drinks and then, when he is fed up, craves honors, when almost everyone bows to him, new and better clothes, when those he has are very good, a new and better home, when he is doing well. He who satisfies a natural need is content with little: a piece of simple bread and a simple stew satisfy him, simple but decent, although rough, clothing is sufficient for him; The place he occupies in society, although low, is high for him, because he considers himself unworthy of it, or he holds himself in it with dignity and does many good deeds in it. A greedy person spares sweets for his neighbor when he allows them to himself freely, and is offended when others say an unkind word to him or show him a not entirely affectionate look. He who knows the measure of natural needs and the damage to human nature looks at everything with indifference, for he knows that there is a natural measure for everything; is not offended by anything, for he knows that a person is at enmity with his brother according to the teachings of the devil, that he is damaged by nature, very weak, sinful, like himself, and willingly forgives him all insults, especially if he sees the correction of the offender. Oh, what high respect for humanity is inspired by the fact that the beginningless Lord chose the Most Pure Virgin as His Mother and from Her He became incarnate and God became man, so that He would make man God 80 . What respect we must have for the female sex, for falsehoods, for the door through which we pass into the light! With what purity must we treat them and every person in general! For God put on man and united to Himself human nature. My Lord, Creator and Savior, forgive me, for until now I have persecuted You in the face of my brethren, my relatives - and because of what? Because of the rubbish called food and drink, because of the land, which is Yours and not mine, as it is said: The earth is the Lord's, and its fullness, the world and all who live on it [Ps. 23, 1]. Who am I that I considered my food and drinks, tuna, given to me by the sole goodness of You, and was angry with my brother because of them? What kind of pride? What kind of atrocity? But where is my faith in the all-governing Providence that feeds the birds? Who has not forgotten a single one? Will I be forgotten? What lack of faith! What disrespect for a person's personality! What pride! The evil of the devil grows old from frequent dealings with those persons who often come to us and freely use our goods - food, drink (of God), but this is the dream of an old, self-loving, voluptuous, covetous and proud person - we must destroy it and love our neighbor as ourselves, as other people whom we favor because they are good friends of ours and good to us our good comrades in the service treat us, etc. The commandments of God, for example about loving your neighbor, must be fulfilled according to the will of God, and not according to your own taste, choice and arbitrariness, not to love your neighbor in a pagan way, that is, to love not only those who love us, but also those who hate and offend, who do not give only to us, but also to whom we must give, not only the rich, but also the poor; not only beautiful, but also ugly, not only young, but also old, not only relatives and relatives, but also strangers, not only of the same tribe, but of foreign tribes, not only of the same faith, but also of different faiths or other faiths and even non-Christians; not skilled only in words, but also completely rude and unskilled, not only healthy, but also sick, not noble, but also simple, not only not well dressed, but also ragged, walking in beggar’s rags; not only clean in appearance, but also unkempt, not pleasing only to us, but also those whom we must please due to rank or the necessity of circumstances, or who annoy us, contradict, laugh at us. When we see a brother who has come to us, we should not even think about food and drink, money, etc., and do not compare it with a substance that is rubbish, dust, even if it were gold or diamond or some kind of sweetness, for example, sweet fruit, jam, food or shiny clothing, a sign of distinction; There is especially no need to be seduced by anything earthly during worship and not to serve the creature more than the Creator. When your heart becomes embittered and breaks out at your neighbor, who often comes to you, and spares him sweets, then turn the anger on yourself, on your greed and stinginess, and kindly treat your brother the more, the more you became vainly angry with him internally and thereby offended him secretly. God! I have sinned before You: in the person of my brother I internally persecuted You, for he is Your member and Your brother, since You are the God-man and our Redeemer, having redeemed us all with Your blood. Oh, why have I not yet been renewed, have I not put off the old man with his deeds and put on You [Col. 3, 9 – 10 ]? Why else does the earthly direction dominate in me, and not the heavenly, material wisdom, and not the spiritual? And sweets, and money, and magnificent clothes are all rubbish both in themselves (like everything is earth), and because they greatly clog our heart and tear it away from love for God and neighbor when it cleaves to these things; therefore, despise them and focus most of all on the one thing that is needed. It’s not all about being frivolous children: it’s time to take up your mind, it’s time to think with importance about your high purpose and about the means by which you can achieve it - about prayer, about the word of God, about abstinence, about alms, about patience, about obedience to the Church, in general about the commandments of God. Look: the tares grow, become stronger and greatly choke out the wheat, not allowing it to grow, and this is a terrible state: it can end with the tares becoming completely stronger and completely choking out the wheat. What are the tares? Gluttony, delicacy, satiety and drunkenness, pride, envy, stinginess, covetousness, etc. What is wheat? – Love for God and neighbor, meekness, humility, obedience, patience, abstinence, forbearance. How vigilantly, incessantly, the enemy works within me! Now it inclines us to gluttony, now to covetousness, now to stinginess, now to anger and irritability, and constantly incites us to sin. You must renounce all your possessions, otherwise you cannot be a disciple of Christ, you cannot love God and your neighbor, you cannot be meek, humble, uncovetous, patient, and self-controlled. If another person were poor, he would be good, but now he is rich, and wealth spoils him: he is proud, hard-hearted, stingy, envious, intemperate, voluptuous, impatient. Look with your intelligent eyes at the cross and see the love of the Crucified One for humanity, who laid down His soul for them, and grow in love day by day; serve everyone with joy, in simplicity of heart: a guest has come - to greet you kindly, treat you, see you off, even though he is a frequent guest; a beggar asks for help - give what you can, etc. More food and drink means more heaviness, more pus, more irritability, pride, envy, covetousness, in a word, more madness. Oh, priceless abstinence, priceless fasting! Always remember and observe the following: greet everyone who comes to your house with love, treat them cordially, if you come to the table as a member of Christ, as Christ, do not regret anything: for everything there will be a special reward; Do not be embittered at anyone, at your most insidious and evil enemies or at those who do their job incorrectly. God allows us to see stinking corruption on the dead, so that he may arouse in us a thirst for incorruption, an eternal fragrance; allows us to experience illness - let us desire a painless life; makes us see the vanity and brevity of life, so that we may love a non-vain and eternal life. We must despise lawlessness and hate sin, passion, vice, but we despise and hate a sinning, offending brother, instead of praying for him as someone suffering ruin and spiritual misfortune, or we should hate and despise ourselves for our dislike for our brother, for the multitude of our sins and passions, and we turn hatred and contempt on our brother. We live on earth in order, among other things, to know the flattery and destructiveness of sin, to feel complete disgust for it and then, having learned the truth and life-giving virtue, to cleave to it with all our hearts until our last breath. Notice for yourself: have you become better, have you been healed, have you become more meek, more abstinent in food and drink, more patient, more sincere, more unselfish, less of a fornicator and a blasphemer, less greedy, gluttonous, less proud, hateful, envious, stingy? Woe to you if you are still the same. This is why the Lord gives us every day, in anticipation of our repentance and conversion. We must study the science of governing people precisely in the spirit of meekness, kindness, calmness, and patience. We must learn to manage ourselves, to subdue passions to the mind and the law of the Lord in order to govern others well. We must be above human passions, we must give them time to subside or use means to tame them. Our duty on earth is to hate the spirit of the devil in every sin and to hate every sin as his spirit or his offspring, his vomit, and to love the Spirit of God in every virtue and to practice every virtue unfeignedly. Anger and all passion are madness, madness. You must either pray during passion, or speak and scold your passion. If you consider yourself educated, enlightened, but if you are proud, contemptuous of uneducated people, envious, stingy, lascivious, money-loving, a drunkard, a glutton - then you are a learned fool, you are an ignoramus, a dark person. My mother is both smart and pious, sensitive, compassionate, meek, humble and, despite her outward lack of education, quite knowledgeable in the basic truths of the faith. What does it mean: let him deny himself [Matt. 16, 24; Mk. 8, 34 ]? This means that when anger at your neighbor, or pride and contempt for him, or envy, or impurity, or rebellion, or the love of money, or the love of money, or stinginess, gluttony and greed, laziness, comes to your heart - every time you firmly say to each of them: I reject, I reject, - and thus drive away all sin. Unceasingly, unfailingly love a person as yourself, despite any obstacles from the evil flesh: beauty or ugliness, poverty or wealth, and various mistakes of your neighbor, for we must pity the one who sins against God or personally against us and pray for him, and not become embittered and not fall into the gravest sin ourselves - the anger and pride of the enemy. Our bodies are the earth: do not care about them, like the dust that is under your feet. To love the immortal soul of a person unfailingly, and to consider its sins as illnesses and to try in every possible way to heal them in oneself and in others. To pursue sin in oneself and in others mercilessly, but to spare and pity the people themselves - however, while saving the soul, one can and should sometimes not spare the person himself, subjecting him to the full severity of punishment. Spirit of brotherhood. Our Father, who art in heaven, let us be imbued with the desire for the heavenly fatherland and not cling to the earth as strangers and strangers; Hallowed be Thy name - let us be constantly imbued with the desire for holiness; Thy Kingdom come - let us strive to become churches of the living God, in which the Trinity God lives and reigns; Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth - like children, let us strive with all our might [to fulfill] the will of the Heavenly Father, good and perfect, but let us reject our own as corrupt; the words: as in heaven and on earth they show that through the incarnation of God the Word one Church was formed from Angels and men and that we must imitate our heavenly elder brothers in fulfilling the will of the Heavenly Father; Give us our daily bread today - yes, tea and earthly blessings from the providence of the Heavenly Father, who does not leave a single bird, and let us not desire to have much, for much worries us a lot, ties us to earthly things, turning us away from heavenly things, but most of all let us desire truly daily bread - the Body and Blood of Christ, the word of God, prayers; forgive us our debts - let us be imbued with a thirst for forgiveness of our sins, with hatred for them; just as we leave the debtor... - Let’s learn to be unforgiving; and do not lead us into temptation - let us beware of temptations and let us arm ourselves against them with prayer, the cross, the name of the Lord and prayer; but deliver us from the evil one - let us always strive to get out from under his power, rejecting passions. Most merciful, quick to obey, quick to intercede, Lord, I thank Thee, for Thou hast vouchsafed me to perform the Sacrament of Marriage without stumbling twice and to read the prayer of blessing of water and the prayer of thanksgiving at the act with due reverence and stumbling block. Fasting is for man, not man for fasting. Therefore, fasting can be permitted in case of need; In general, do not condemn those who eat fasting food during Lent and do not disturb the peace. Love is higher than fasting. What a many-headed hydra my flesh is! Now pride, now anger, now love of gold, now laughter, now despondency, now irritability. When we have a light thing made of wood, a thin thing, it’s nothing, we even consider it an advantage, but when this thing is made of silver or gold, we consider thinness to be a big drawback and are dissatisfied with it - because we have no predilection for wood, but we have a predilection for silver and gold and want there to be more silver and gold, although this abundance does not lead to anything good. So the rich man wants to collect as much money as possible and, having treasures, I don’t know who will collect it [Ps. 38, 7]. So, a priest or anyone else, seeing small prosphora on the altar, is dissatisfied with this and wants them to be larger, although these would be enough for him. So the glutton greedily fills his belly with a large amount of food, although nature requires little. How deceitful is the flesh! Instead of paying all our attention to the content, we pay attention to the content! When we need to put aside all worldly cares, then we are bound by the desire for a lot of gold. Proskomedia - abbreviation, table of contents of the liturgy. Let us pray to the Lord for the salvation of our souls in peace. The most precious thing is the salvation of the soul, for what good is it to a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul? Or what ransom will a man give for his soul? [Mk. 8, 36 – 37]. For our salvation, the Son of God came down from heaven. What does it mean? More shiny earth in your hands, soft in your mouth and everything around you? O flesh! Oh, nailing to the ground! How they respect the royal governor! But man is the image of God, the viceroy of the King of Heaven on earth - honor and love him. And the saints? The participant must remember the words of the Lord: Come, and let us reason together... Though your sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; if they are red as purple, they will be as white as the moon 81 [Isa. 1, 18]. We must serve God with all three forces. Why does a priest put on special clothes during the priesthood? Let him always remind himself to put off the old man, which is decaying in the lusts of delusion, and put on the new man [Eph. 4, 22 – 24]... The Elits were baptized into Christ, they put on Christ [Gal. 3, 27]. May the priest always remember this. Standing before the throne, I take the place of Moses, intercessor for the people, Samuel, Elijah, the apostles, Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom and other saints. May I be like them in spirit, faith, purity, love... How can I not pray for the Holy Synod, for the sovereign?! They raised me and made me a man according to the will of the Lord. They are my fathers. The Lutheran rule - not to call on saints in prayer, not to venerate holy relics, contains pride and pharisaical complacency, rejection of the authority of sacred traditions, also breathes extreme pride. Pride and the fact that Lutherans boast of their reform and celebrate it solemnly, celebrate their heresy, their falling away from the Apostolic Church. It's out of hand. The error of some Catholics, because of which the Lutherans separated, is not the error of the entire Western Church. It included Saint Gregory the Dvoeslov, Saint Clement, Saint Ambrose, etc. Gold, silver - earth, dust; silk, velvet, colored dresses - earth, all earth and dust - why are we seduced? The devil seduces all our feelings into hostility towards our neighbor. He seduces with various suspicions, insults, imaginary or real mistakes, etc. But one must always love one’s neighbor as oneself. Love to accept not praise, but also scolding and abuse from others. The harshness of abuse is often necessary to heal us from a certain passion: sin must sometimes be burned out, cut out, painfully driven out of the heart. This is how wild meat is cut or burned. The one who loves to accept only praise is reckless: he will not recognize his spiritual wounds, his inner ugliness and will, perhaps, enjoy his imaginary (perhaps partly true) perfections and fall into pride, [which] will scatter all spiritual wealth. That’s why you have to love scolders. Sinful satiety with people, for example, parasites, the poor, to whom we often serve, and humiliation of them. We must rejoice that we can serve our neighbors and thereby please the Lord Himself and earn a lot from Him. We must rejoice that kind guests often come to us and have a good disposition towards us because of our tea, sugar, bread and salt, and especially because of our good disposition towards them, that they give us their visit, communication, and conversation. It is a sin for them to feel sorry for anything, because, firstly, their treat costs nothing, 2) if there were love, everything of this life will be added to us. Never sympathize with your old, sinful man, but be in constant enmity with him, do not sympathize with your malice, your envy, your arrogance, your covetousness, your gloating, your wickedness, your fornication, your gluttony (don’t say: oh, lovely, what a dish!), your laziness, your hypocrisy, your carelessness. Serve the sick person sincerely, as Jesus Christ Himself, in thought, word and deed. Do not disdain them, do not wish for evil or death, do not gloat, for our common weakness, our common sins. And you will have to get sick, and you will die. Remember that we are all one body, that everything earthly is rubbish. Insincerely, slyly, today at the liturgy I remembered Father Archpriest Gabriel Lyubimov, who stood in the altar, and therefore I was confused in spirit and vaguely performed the Holy Mysteries and received communion, and vaguely served the requiem service, and it took many prayers for me to regain peace of mind and consume the Holy Mysteries without condemnation. Moral teaching. We must sincerely remember at the Liturgy every person, living and dead, as ourselves, as our heart. Lord, make me wise and confirm! During the Liturgy, talk to the gray God, do not be ashamed of any of the people and do not be embarrassed by their presence. Little one! why did you doubt? [Matt. 14, 31]. Eating meat brings me trouble - why else do I eat meat? Oh, if only I, like the Apostle, could say: I will not eat meat forever (1 Cor. 8:13)! Fashionistas and fashionistas, rich merchants, parquet gentlemen, theater guests, people with modern education are somehow not visible in our church, but only the common people are visible in them! Oh, unbelief, oh, ingratitude to God! You are fed up, dressed in ten dresses, a few boots, [and are you] furious when a beggar asks you? A guy's heart hurts because of sweets and money because his neighbor takes them from him or asks him, but because of his neighbor, because his neighbor is hungry, naked, barefoot, sick, it doesn't hurt; what a wonder, what an ugliness! And because he developed an addiction to things, because at first he did not want to fight this addiction, but laid down his arms and gave himself up to pleasures, because he did not love his neighbor as himself, he forgot that the earth is the Lord’s, and its fulfillment, the universe and all who live on it [Ps. 23:1] that everything on earth is earth and ashes, but man is the sovereign king of the earth, to whom everything is subjected under his feet, like dust. Because of sweets and money, the heart hurts, but according to the commandments of the Lord that we must fulfill them, to preserve them well, it does not hurt, but according to the Lord, who commanded us to preserve them as the paths leading to the eternal belly, it does not hurt, because of the eternal belly, most desired, it does not hurt, because of the infinite beauty of the face of God, which is promised to behold for the righteous, it does not hurt, because of the sweetness of future blessings it does not hurt. Oh, the beauty of enemy! Oh, the delusion of the human heart! And don’t be sorry to give alms to the poor, and when you lose something, don’t regret or grieve, for God will not depart from You and will not leave You with anything. If you want others to give you generously, give willingly to the poor and to your relatives or to guests and strangers, for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you [Matt. 7, 2]. But how many are stingy themselves, but want others to be generous to them! Let us pray to the Lord in peace. The entire property of God is the entire Church, earthly and heavenly, and the Queen of mental creation 82. A comprehensive litany, a litany of love. Why do we begrudge our neighbor pleasant foods and drinks? Because we want a larger share for ourselves, we ourselves want to greedily destroy everything pleasant, but this is very harmful for us: moderation and abstinence are necessary for the health of the soul and body, and since our sinful nature leads us to satiety with the abundance of earthly goods, we must be glad that our neighbor uses our food, we must be glad that we get less, that he distracts from us what is unnecessary by using it himself. A Christian needs to live more by love, service to others, by the Holy Spirit, and not by material goods. I am looking for a man who sincerely loves the Lord, and I do not find him: this man’s heart is stuck to the furniture: do not let holy water come on his furniture, for it can ruin the furniture; This one has to do with money, this one has to do with sweets. Sin is the will of the devil, holiness is the will of God. I betray my love for God and my neighbor, damned one, always because of something unimportant. And love must cover everything and correct everything with meekness. Someone from your acquaintances or your own came to you, and a feeling of hostility, enmity towards the newcomer was born in your soul: it is this feeling of hostility and enmity that you pursue, despise in yourself, and not the neighbor who came - and your spirit will be pacified after indignation, and it will spread after oppression, and will exalt after humiliation, and will rejoice after sorrow. These words are true. So, in general, pursue every sin within yourself, and not your neighbor; so pursue in yourself pride and contempt, envy, stinginess, cruelty, and not your neighbor; drunkenness, not wine; gluttony, not delicious dishes; fornication, and do not chase after fornicators; laziness, not business. I thank You, Lord my God, for this evening several times You heard me calling out to You for help, and sovereignly delivered me from the internal malice and fornication that befell me: in the house of the clerks [Benardaki], in the house of Sinebryukhova and at home - from enmity against Vasily Al. Pesotsky and brother Konstantin. I said to my anger at my brother: I despise you, not my brother, and peace came to me. So you have to conquer or despise the charm of the known passion that nests in you and reject it. This is the wisdom of a Christian, his strength and victory over sin. Every Christian must manage to overcome sin in himself and in others, or various passions, whims and bad habits. This is the feat against sin. After the Lord God, His Most Pure Mother, I owe my entire current position to my elder father-in-law. How grateful and respectful I should be to him! Remember the body of various metals seen by Nebuchadnezzar [Dan. 2, 31 – 33]. What is this body? This, firstly, relative to us means a well-known kingdom, for example the Russian one; secondly, it means all the kingdoms of men, for the human race is one body, as if descended from one person, from one blood. A significant dream: it reminds each of us of the saying of the Apostle: we are one body of many (1 Cor. 10:17). I thank You, Lord, for You have now pacified me with your supernaturally life-giving Mysteries (November 1, Tuesday). But I appeared before You ungratefully and maliciously, taking pity on the two prosphyras given by the deacon to the parishioners, out of greed desiring them for myself, or out of selfishness and pride, giving them away myself at my own discretion. Oh, self-love! I would give, not others, and to my friends. But this is the deacon's business. And I did this after communion, when I should have had the same mood of thought that David had when he said: What do I have in heaven? and what did You want on earth? My heart and my flesh are gone, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever [Ps. 72, 25 – 26]. And as if it wasn’t enough for me that God Himself was the God of my heart and a part of me, I wanted a few more prosphyras. Oh, how the enemy abused me through their desire, through the taking away of the deacon’s prosphyra. God! Cleanse me, a sinner! How infinitely much is given from God to man, for example, the Divine Body and Blood of the God-Man and with them deification and eternal life, and what insignificant things does a person regret for someone like himself - he regrets prosphyra, sweets, money, perishable clothing, etc. Oh, absurd heart! O foolish heart! The Lord spoke truly about our hearts; O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have foretold! [ OK. 24, 25]. After this, we can only despise our old heart, not trust it in anything, and try to form a new heart within ourselves. I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you [Ezek. 36, 26]. Serve the poor and all Christians as Christ Himself: about the children of the poor, remember the words of Spasov: whoever accepts one of these children in My name, he accepts Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me [Mk. 9, 37]. Now that the charm of voluptuousness has reached such absurdity and strength, it is time to stop it and uproot it and impute all sweets to nothing. Under different circumstances of ministry and life, the devil brings various temptations to the soul. We must listen and resist. I am an unworthy organ of the most holy and wise mother of my Church and the Spirit of God, the Pilot of the Church. You have to be worthy. Our love for our neighbor is broken by the first temptation (alms, insult, malfunction, untidiness). Obstacles to love for God and neighbor: pride, envy, covetousness, luxury, greed, laziness, selfishness, gluttony, carnality. What enormous and terrible consequences of sin! We sin against one person - and we sin against all humanity, for people are one body, and against the Lord God, for the image of God is insulted in the person of our neighbor. In serving God, we must care more about internal harmony, and not pay exclusive attention to external harmony, because through dissonance, the enemy tempts us and arouses hatred towards those who sing dissonantly (or not in agreement, not in the same tone). I thank You, Lord my God, for you have granted me, through my prayer, the grace to shamelessly consummate the marriage of Simeon and Elena (Simeon is the brother of the wife of Gerasim Filippovich Murashov). November 2, 1866. When celebrating marriage and every Sacrament, divine service, and prayer, keep in mind only the glory of God, forget to think about yourself, put everything worldly away. When addressing the people, boldly look everyone in the face. Look around, that you have nothing to fear and no one intends to confuse you. Dad, may you serve every Christian as Jesus Christ Himself, and may you not look wickedly at his weaknesses, but may you cover all infirmities with love. No prophet is accepted in his own country [Lk. 4, 24]. This is the rule of this world, adulterous and sinful, the evil flesh, satiated with the often visible person. Rozhon is a point, a pointed tool for driving draft animals. Completion (church glory) – completion, fulfillment; consecration. Following the Matins of the Feast of the Annunciation, stichera on Praise, tone 2: From the beginning of time a mystery has been revealed today, and the Son of God, the Son of man, is... man is God, so that he will make Adam god. In ό lna (Church Slavic) – wool. 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). You might be interested in: