Февраль

God! I thank Thee, for Thou hast renewed me after sinful corruption with Thy Divine Mysteries; I glorify Your goodness, Your long-suffering, Your bounties, Your immeasurable power, for You can, if You wish, make gold out of pus. I am proud - and in front of whom? Before my father 26, who in turn is humble. I am arrogant and arrogant - he is meek as a lamb. Have mercy on me, Lord! Teach me meekness and humility. We, many, are one body (1 Cor. 10:17): let us love one another, let us love our parents, relatives, acquaintances, enemies, friends - everyone. I myself eat sweets greedily, and a lot - if someone else allows me to do this, even my father or wife, I am inwardly indignant at this, I am sad, faint-hearted, despondent, placing my life in sweets, retreating in heart from the Lord and my neighbor. But aren’t all earthly sweets a dream at night? Yes, yes. There is one source of our life - Jesus Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one Provider and our Trustee. Let us place all our trust in Him alone; we will love Him alone and love each other in Him. Everything will remain when we die. Let us be content with what God has given today. Let us neglect everything earthly as rubbish: all sweets, money, jewelry and [other things]. How long will there be madness over food and drink, how long will there be delicacy, how long will there be greed, satiety, pity for others, grief over consumption and waste? How long will the addiction to litter last? It is impossible to love either God or sweets, that is, one thing, both together: the heart is one and simple. The spirit of attachment to earthly pleasures and greed for them is the spirit of the devil. Tested without number. Our common illness is addiction to earthly goods. When the enemy stirs up indignation and bitterness in the heart against a parishioner singing in church, tell him: the psalm says: Sing to our God, sing: sing to our King, sing [Ps. 46, 7]. Let everyone who wants to sing. You, O devil, out of your pride and malice, cannot sing to the Lord and want others not to sing, but this will not happen. Let us sing to the Lord, so that we may be glorified [Exod. 15, 1]. The singing of a parishioner is just an empty, absurd demonic excuse for hatred against one’s neighbor and for our languor, just as food and drink, especially sweets, serve as the same excuse for hating and despising one’s neighbor. Do not please the people of the world, but please those who serve God and sing to Him. Blinov. God! Give me the grace to blaze with love towards You alone, to cleave to You alone, the most beloved with all my heart, with You, the inexhaustible source of life, to unite and cool off to all worldly sweets and diverse things. God! With You and in You, I will always be fed by You, clothed by You, adorned by You, warmed by You, sheltered from storms and bad weather by You, completely safe by You. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you [Matt. 6, 33]. So, when they take what is yours, do not be irritated and do not become embittered: God can give you more than this; but if he doesn’t give it, that means it’s not necessary; when they offend, rob - be patient and do not become embittered, but leave everything to the One who sees and judges righteously, to the One who cannot depart from us, nor can he leave us with His Providence and good deeds [Heb. 13, 5]. He allows temptations for us so that we can recognize our passions and spiritual addictions - pride, malice, envy, stinginess, addiction to sweets and poverty of love for one's neighbor, which has nothing dearer and which is long-suffering, merciful, patient in everything, laying down one's life for one's friends (1 Cor. 13:4-7; John 15:13). Despise sweets: because of them the devil fights especially hard. By despising them, you will destroy his power. How anger increases during Lent and in general during the time appointed for piety: every action, every sound, step of a neighbor is presented in a distorted black form and arouses anger. Oh dream! Oh, the madness of the old man and the devil - the enemy of men! Away with all pretexts for anger! May unanimity and love reign! Do not rely on anyone or anything except God. Speak every word in service with strength, emphasis, and soul. When someone else, for example a former or present comrade, is praised, rejoice in your own praise. However, what am I saying? When someone else is praised, rejoice; when someone praises you, do not rejoice, but grieve and sigh over your sins and consider yourself worse than everyone else, worthy of blame. When the hellish serpent tries to wound your heart with an addiction to food and drink, sweets and pity on them for your neighbor, then you contrast to yourself the incorruptible, living, eternal sweetness - Jesus Christ and His Divine Body and Blood and say: here is my meat and drink, here is my sweetness, and this is this bodily food, these sweets are pus, because everything decays from consumption [Col. 2, 22], and the body is pus, earth and ashes, and at the same time imagine vividly the coffins of the dead and graves. And also say: love for my neighbor is my life, this is what the Lord commanded me, and the commandments of the Lord on earth are light and life. Say again: He who gave the infinitely great - Himself in the Divine Mysteries, will, of course, also give less - food and drink, which from the beginning of the world have not been exhausted in the world. Will the hand of the Lord run short of food? Didn’t the Lord feed you with wonderful manna in the desert? Didn’t He send the Krastels 27 not one day’s journey and more than an arshin from the ground [Exod. 16] ? Have the sweets of the Lord been exhausted from the earth? Has sugar become scarce in the shops? A brother or sister will spend a little, but the Lord will send ten, twenty times more - but if he doesn’t send, that’s fine, because it is not in sweets, but in God that life and carnal pleasures prevent one from loving God and His living image - one’s neighbor. And what is the comparison of the image of God with corruptible sweets, with dust, pus? Man is a king, the owner of the whole earth and all its treasures, everything is subjugated under his feet [Ps. 8, 7]. Not the slightest comparison: everything earthly is nothing compared to the soul. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul? Or what ransom will a man give for his soul? [Matthew 16:26]. Firmament - because the inhabitants of heaven, Angels and men, are solid. The ascetic Christ looks at the exploits of everyone, and sees the passions of everyone. How persistently anger, irritability, dreamy fear, blasphemy, stumbling, cowardice, despondency, etc. act in a person: one after another, sinful thorns follow! The voice is not good, but maybe the heart is good: God knows the inner. Where are we going? Are we going to the Kingdom of Heaven, to the heavenly Jerusalem? Are you not bound by worldly lusts and pleasures? Possessed people are not yet in church, so they are calm, but in church they go crazy, talk, laugh, and are overwhelmed by thoughts. Remember that the enemy is constantly working within you, and constantly go against him, fight him in your thoughts, in your heart movements, in your movements, in your words, in your deeds, diligently calling on the name of the Lord Jesus. How the devil fights against the simplicity he hates! What does the cross teach us? – Love for one’s neighbor, crucifying one’s sinful flesh, condescension towards the shortcomings of one’s neighbor, covering these shortcomings: covered ecu, it is said, all their sins [Ps. 84, 3], - humility, obedience, patience, heavenly wisdom and contempt for things below. If those who love father, mother, son, daughter more than the Lord are unworthy of Him [Matt. 10:37], what can we say about those who love more His sweets, money (for example, they spare Him them in the person of their neighbor), clothes or vain customs, amusements, habits, worldly games, shows or secular books more than His words, more than the Gospel and completely remain cold to the Gospel and to His Church, which is His body [Eph. 1, 23 ], His Bride? Everyone think about this carefully. The heart is pure and firm in faith and virtue, so the voice is pure and firm. What infinitely great Divine gifts - intercessors of eternal life - does the Lord give you, and what insignificant gifts do you begrudge the Lord in the person of your brother - sweets, money? But the Lord is an endless sweetness and an inexhaustible treasure. All His gifts are material and spiritual, earthly and heavenly. You need to feel sorry for the poor most of all, as those suffering various hardships, and listen compassionately to the voice of their need, always feel sorry for them, even when they deceive, play pranks, steal, or get drunk. You, alien and evil to the soul, want us not to sing to the Lord, but we will sing to the Dondezh of Esma 28. Remember the equality of people as people, as images of God. The devil strives to bring us into oblivion about the dignity of the nature of other people and treat them with disdain at the expense of the exaltation of ourselves; teaches the poor, sick, and low condition to despise and run away; rich, healthy, beautiful, noble birth - respect, caress towards them. Oh, how everything in the world is perverted, contrary to God’s laws! A terrible captivity happened to me today, firstly, because of satiety, and secondly, because of money at confession. Oh, this decay! Waste! And what a scoundrel I am: after communion of the Divine Mysteries, I am satiated, I think about money when performing a holy deed, lest the children standing nearby steal it. I, the accursed one, always resist the Holy Spirit with pleasures, pride, malice, envy, and stinginess. When spiritual children put money to the confessor for the work of confession, then Simon the Magus comes to mind, bringing money to the apostles and saying: give me this power, so that whoever I lay my hands on will receive the Holy Spirit, and the Apostle Peter, who said to him: let your silver perish with you, because you thought to receive the gift of God for money. You have no part or lot in this, for your heart is not right before God. So repent of this sin of yours, and pray to God: perhaps the thoughts of your heart will be forgiven you; for I see you filled with bitter gall and in the bonds of unrighteousness [Acts. 8, 19 – 23]. Isn’t it simony 30, isn’t it sacrilege that is being committed among us during the celebration of the Sacrament of Confession? And how does a priest making confession become guilty before God when he is constantly tempted either by the desire to collect more money from his spiritual children, or by thoughts of lest his money be stolen by the same spiritual children, among whom there may be all kinds? How the matter of confession is paralyzed by money! What scope is there for the enemy the devil to swear at the Sacrament, at the confessor, and at the spiritual children. God gives us a lot, but takes away a little through our neighbors - to test whether we have mutual love. If your brother comes to you to eat and drink for free, don’t spare him anything, just like yourself. He needs a little to get enough. The thought says: my brother receives a good salary, and often comes to eat and drink with me. What do you care about his salary? You accept him as a poor person and do not treat him with hostility. This is a temptation for you. God will reward you for it. Well, would it be better if your brother, who comes to you, lived in poverty and had the need to always eat and drink from you and even ask you for clothes? God did not allow both him and you to fall into this temptation, and you can only rejoice in his well-being as if it were your own, and thank the all-good and rich Providence of God, which cares for everyone and abundantly supplies everything to everyone. Your brother, you say, does not spare yours, he allows himself to indulge in luxury, to feast on you, despite your comments. If you noticed him and he does not correct himself, then leave your offense and your brother’s untruth to God, who sees and knows everything, and do not have zeal and vexation in your heart. Do not demand back from the one who took what you have [Lk. 6:30] and remember in any case that your brother will take a little of your goodness into his stomach, but God is able to repay you tenfold for your offense - and always repays you. Ordinary, carnal food corrupts the soul if taken a little immoderately; Divine, spiritual food - the Body and Blood of Christ - strengthens and pacifies the soul. Do not omit a single iota from the Service Book and the Breviary of what we say at services and during the celebration of the Sacraments. Lord help me! Have mercy on me, Lord, that I complained yesterday that everyone was offending me. Am I not the one giving? Shouldn't we be happy about this? Are we not all members of one body? Are they not images of God? We must despise the flesh according to the truth and exalt the spirit according to its property, 31 but if we highly value our flesh and everything that is for the flesh, then it will be wrong for [...] the spirit to be humbled. Because of addiction to the flesh, even the Lord God and all His works are despised, as if they were counted as nothing. What fools say: there is no God [Ps. 13, 1 ]? - Preoccupied with their flesh, obsessed with its pleasures. Because of our addiction to our flesh, we despise the spiritual world, with which we are akin, into which we must enter after death, holy men of God, the afterlife. The good does not live in me, the lilac in my flesh [Rom. 7, 18], but everything is evil: pride, malice, envy, stinginess, greed, delicacy, fornication, laziness, theft, despondency, waywardness and stubbornness, and so on. Do not feel sorry for her, but crucify her mercilessly, like the work of the devil. I am one evil, one sinful abomination; There is as much good in me as I ask from the Lord, and even then, like in a leaky vessel, it does not stay in me, but is ready to pour out if the Lord does not hold back. Everything that is good in me comes from God. Actually, I don’t exist—I’m either God or the devil. Let us love one another and neglect our flesh and property, for we are all God’s and everything is God’s, and God is love; let us hate the devil and sin. If you give too much, you will be fed up, you will become greedy, stingy, ungrateful to God, and uncompassionate to people. Therefore, it is necessary to give to you in moderation, so that you trust in God and are not satiated, so that some poverty will be for you a teacher of abstinence and moderation in everything and an incentive to love God and your neighbor. May meekness, humility, obedience, chastity, purity, and abstinence be with you everywhere. Where the enemy instills doubt, despondency, cowardice, despair in the heart, there oppose faith, boldness, a majestic spirit, hope, resist like lightning the enemy, who is lightning-like in his speed. To say “this is mine” and to appropriate it for oneself, to feel sorry for others when it serves their needs, is pride, empty self-love, for everything is a gift from God and everything is for man. I am not, for I am a lie, according to David [Ps. 115, 2] and from my own experience, a dream. There is only God and His gifts in me, or I am all God’s gifts, for soul and body are brought from non-existence into existence by God and are supported by God. God is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). The spirit of love, the passion of the heart for earthly things (tested a thousand times) is the spirit of demons, namely: addiction to beautiful bodies, to food, drinks (of which there are so many), sweets, money, to shiny things (for example, clothes, vessels, household utensils), to earthly honors, festivities, games, skating, secular books. The evil spirit has come over us from all sides. On the contrary, the spirit of love for heavenly things, spiritual things, comes from God. Only things above are abiding 33 and true. Where the enemy brings shame and silence, there greater boldness and raising of voice are required. Observe this especially during the public reading of prayers of repentance. Boldly bring to shame all vile sins, so that their ugliness and absurdity can be seen, so that the general awareness of their absurdity and abomination will be a punishment for them and a warning against them for the future. Why feel sorry for them, keep them warm, hiding them in yourself? Crucify them with loud confession. You want to sing - and so does your brother; It’s good for you to sing – and for him too. Why be indignant at the brother singing along? Let him sing along. Sing to our God, says David, sing: sing to our King, sing [Ps. 46, 7]. Uproot your anger, pride and contempt for your brother. Are there many people echoing or singing along with you? You would still be grateful to your brother. (These words are the truth of God.) We sinners do not have true love for God and neighbor. But let's look at the sky, at the stars, clouds, at the earth, at plants, animals and birds, fish - everything and everywhere preaches about God's love for us, everything inspires us with mutual love. But the Church of God preaches especially clearly, powerfully and majestically about God’s love for us through its divine services, its Sacraments, its icons, its statutes; The Church, or the Bridegroom and Head of the Church Jesus Christ, especially strongly and clearly instills in us mutual love: This I command you, that you love one another [Jn. 15, 17]. The Gospel preaches love, the Cross preaches love; Almost every image, every sacred act speaks of love. So God love the world [Jn. 3, 16 ]! Let us die for His sake with worldly indulgences, so that we may love Him, our God, and each other, for indulgences hinder us from loving God and our neighbor. A single heart cannot be divided into two: either for me or for him. Pour less wine into the Holy Cup: wine in large quantities and transformed into the Divine Blood has an effect on the legs. You, master, when you sit at the table with your household, among whom there are non-relatives, or with the poor, consider them to have exactly the same rights as you to all the sweets offered at the meal, and consider both your own and strangers even more worthy than yourself, for you are satiated, and they, perhaps, eat and drink from hunger. Everything is God's, not ours. One must behave humbly and gratefully to the Lord at the table. All sweets, no matter how tasty and expensive they may be, should be considered equally rubbish, for only God’s omnipotence turned simple earth, water and air into such sweet waste for us, and they, having served man, will again be rubbish and pus. Don't be envious, greedy and stingy; be simple; Treat everyone as you treat yourself: all are members of one body and one body. Be kind to everyone, rejoice in other people's well-being and pleasure as if it were your own. What ugliness, savagery, madness - to envy someone else's pleasure and well-being when we ourselves taste it! This is monstrous! Can that person be in paradise and see the bliss of Angels and men, and even the all-blessed God Himself, who here cannot indifferently see the well-being and pleasure of his neighbor, grieves for him and is tormented by his envy? Here we must accustom ourselves to rejoice in the well-being of our neighbor in order to be worthy to contemplate with joy the bliss of the righteous; Here you must share your pleasures, for example, the pleasures of a meal, with your neighbors, and especially the poor, in order to be accepted into participating in the bliss of the righteous! O obscene, insane, possessed flesh! We must despise you and crucify you incessantly! You yourself must be deprived of those pleasures in which you envy your neighbor. If you feel dislike and even hatred towards your wife’s father or your wife’s mother or your husband’s mother and your husband’s father, then fall earnestly in prayer to the Heavenly Father and ask Him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ 1) to heal you from this rage of vain hatred of your own; 2) to give you love for your own as for yourself, and to honor them, according to the commandment of God [Matt. 19, 19]. A sincere, albeit brief prayer will now be heard and fulfilled. Do the same when you feel the violence of anger towards your brothers and sisters because of something everyday, or towards guests, or towards someone’s children, or towards the poor. My God, my Lord! I thank You, for now on Sunday (the Sunday of Orthodoxy) You have granted me to perform the good early Liturgy of St. Basil the Great and to perform the prayer service with the Blessing of Water prayer without stumbling. I thank You, Lady, most swift Intercessor, for You save me with Your prayers. Don’t be lazy to read the canon of prayer to the Mother of God. Great benefit for the soul. There is no need to please the flesh in everything and give it only pleasant food and pleasant drink and incense - otherwise it will be greatly disgusted by all unpleasant, simple, somewhat coarse foods and drinks and stench, and will be embittered at those who are the cause of these foods and drinks and stench. One must deliberately eat coarse food and drink simple drinks and smell the stench in order to accustom oneself to dispassion, so as not to be upset by coarse foods and stench, not to be carried away by sweets and incense, and not to be angry with anyone either because of the loss of sweets or because of the spread of stench. Others need very little food and drink, but he is carried away by his greed and eats and drinks more and becomes satiated. That's how I am. I sinned, Lord: I did not cover the shame of my wife, but I was upset with her and turned out to be impatient and wayward. Those who are smelly, bitter, or rude must be pleased and accept this as a godsend, because all this weakens the sinful power of the flesh and gives strength to the soul; Be equally pleased with the rude treatment of another, because it humbles the soul, which relaxes from constant affectionate treatment. And we, sinners, love fragrances, sweets, things that are soft, tender or beautifully, artistically decorated, and we cherish sinful flesh, and strengthen it against our soul, we ourselves give great strength to the Belial nesting in it. That is why he often drags us into pride, contempt, into anger, envy, self-will and stubbornness, into laziness, into coldness towards God and His living image on earth. If someone takes our sweets immoderately, we envy and are indignant; if someone caused a stench, we are irritated and despised; if we encounter simple things, we despise them because of their simplicity; whether we meet people dressed simply or even rudely - because of their rough clothing we despise the whole person, although his soul may be clothed in gold and adorned with love for the Lord and for humanity; If someone treated you rudely, we get angry and respond in kind and don’t think about reconciling ourselves and keeping silent, becoming numb [Ps. 38, 3]. How many carnal excuses, vain due to our delicacy, the devil presents to us for becoming embittered at our neighbor, at the most sincere, devoted to us! How we are still carried away by his quirks and absurdities! Just as we do not despise the flesh and everything that is pleasant for it, just as we do not accept everything that is unpleasant as if it were pleasant! Just as we do not despise this enemy of ours, God's and our neighbor - our flesh - when it leads us to sin, for example, to pride, hatred, envy, greed, stinginess, covetousness, lust, fornication, drunkenness, idleness, laziness, absent-mindedness, freethinking and so on! Holy icons serve as a living reminder of the heavenly Church and that we ourselves are members of the militant Church of Christ and must strive with all our souls for the heavenly Fatherland. Where there are no icons, this is conveniently forgotten. The reverence we pay to icons is also fair: walking in the presence of the Lord, His Most Pure Mother, holy Angels and holy men, glorified by God Himself, can we, without offending God, not give them just reverence, can we not ask them for mercy, for intercession for us! In addition, seeing saints on icons, we learn to imitate their faith and love for God, their patience, abstinence, holiness and chastity, meekness, kindness, and mercy. All saints are virtues personified: it is easier for you to become virtuous when you see people servile to you, who have succeeded in every virtue. We venerate holy icons or, better yet, saints depicted on icons with dignity and righteousness. One must dwell with a reflective heart on the words of the prayers and not rush through reading. If your neighbor often comes to you beyond your expectations, don’t you butt him like an ox against a cow from another herd, don’t you cast an evil glance at him, because it seems to you that your neighbor has come to you to eat and drink? If so, then you are truly a beast, a senseless beast who spends his life eating and drinking and tormenting the weak or goring other cattle. Meanwhile, you are in the image of God and must despise food and drink - these common needs with the dumb, and philosophize on the mountain, cleave to God, think about Him, fly to Him on the wings of contemplation and love, live by Him, breathe, reflect on His deeds, read His word, and contain it in your heart, and actually fulfill it, and finally, pray to Him day and night. You, as the image of God, as having reason, meaning, knowledge, the revelation of God, must know and remember that we are all the breath of the one God, according to Scripture: and I will breathe into his nostrils the breath of life [Gen. 2, 7 ]; all from one man, from one blood: From one blood, it is said, He made the whole human race to dwell on all the face of the earth [Acts. 17, 26 ]; everything is one, like a single tree with many branches, and therefore everyone should love each other as themselves, and not have a single thought against anyone, nor a feeling of malice, or pride and contempt, or uncleanness, or envy, not to spare anything for anyone, just as we do not want this from anyone for ourselves, but to caress, protect and care for everyone whom God sends to us, to wish well to everyone, to please everyone for the good, to do nothing to anyone. to regret, for everything is God’s, not ours, and everything is God’s, not ours: if we live, we live for the Lord; Whether we die, we die for the Lord: and therefore, whether we live or die, we are always the Lord’s [Rom. 14, 8]. You are not your own... For you were bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you are Christ’s, truly I tell you, will not lose his reward [Mk. 9, 41]. And we are all Christ’s disciples, Christ’s followers, Christ’s children—that’s why we are called Christians. Do we remember this, do we feel with all our hearts all the power, meaning, importance of this name, do we value it, do we admire it, do we place it above all earthly titles? If we are all children of Christ, then how should Christ’s children live? In what love, in what unanimity, in what condescension, for so much did the Lord Christ condescend to us; how patient we are with each other, for Christ endures us so much and has not yet destroyed us with our iniquities; in what purity and holiness, for holy is the Lord our God, holy is our Most Pure Lady, the Head of the mental creation 35, the inheritance of Christ, the flock of Christ. Conduct yourself so meekly and humbly that you never feel dislike or alienation and hatred towards your neighbor, but feel only disposition: completely deny yourself, crucify self-love. Holy Father, who listens to me, who has mercy on me, who pacifies me, I thank You in Your Only Begotten Son, for whose sake You hear and have mercy, I thank You with Your Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love, peace and freedom. I thank You for delivering me from my passions, from fire and oppression and their darkness. Most Holy Lady, Mother of the Life of all our Lord Jesus Christ, I thank You, for You heard me, in cramped, spiritual sorrow, calling to You in the apartment of the fisherman Verzin during an interview with the monk John. We believe in the Holy Divine Trinity, we know Her through spiritual experience, but we do not honor Her with our life, our deeds, we hope little, for we hope for earthly things, and we love little, for we love earthly things more. Father, Son and Holy Soul, Trinity our God, teach us to do Your will. Lord in Three Persons, I thank Thee, for Thou art known to us! Treasure the wisdom of the Spirit, for if you think only for a moment about earthly things, you will immediately lose the priceless wisdom of the spirit, and carnal wisdom will follow, which is death [Rom. 8, 6]. Don't cling to anything, consider everything as rubbish. And God will provide everything necessary, as He has previously provided; carnal wisdom, care, worries, and worldly addictions do not allow the soul to unite with the all-blessed God and rest in Him. What is the benefit of fasting? Big. He who fasts looks at everything more brightly; the one who fasts is humble, he respects high authorities, without neglecting the lower ones; he looks at the Lord with appropriate reverence, and at the Most Pure Mother of God, and at the saints. And when he is satiated, he does not want to know anyone, and he considers the Lord God Himself to be like him, as if carnal. Love every brother as yourself, indiscriminately, but do not love sweets: whoever loves sweets does not love the brother who consumes his sweets. So, love your brother, but despise sweets, for sweets are rubbish, earth, and a brother is the image of God: for him all sweets, the whole earth, even heaven and the throne of God. Always be kind and sincere to every brother. Be careful not to repay your neighbor evil for evil, not to repay him with rudeness for rudeness or rudeness for frequent and untimely visits or for taking our sweets, our things, etc., or for malice with malice, for pride with pride, for insult with insult. Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult (1 Pet. 3:9). Give your attention to what is good before all men [Rom. 12, 17]. Do not owe anyone anything except mutual love; For he who loves another has fulfilled the law [Rom. 13, 8]. Who and what should I envy? God acts in everything in everyone - both in my brother and in me: everything good is His, from Him and for us, and we are one. One has such a talent, the other has another. According to the grace given to us, we have various gifts [Rom. 12, 6]. The Holy Spirit distributes to each individual individually as He pleases (1 Cor. 12:11). Will you envy the omnipotent and omnipotent, all-good and wise, creative 36 Spirit, you fool? Thank God for everything! Everything is His gifts to us, indecent. Staying awake with the people of God during confession is a wonderful, spiritual, God-loving, useful and healthy activity for the soul and body. There's really no need to rush home. And there’s really no reason to eat extra at home either; It's better to leave more behind. After all, you are a stranger in this house - you eat and drink everything that belongs to others. Be humble, meek and gentle, and do not bark with your 37 horns. Be calm when they take what has fallen to your share: nothing is yours: God gave - He takes as He pleases: sometimes through a neighbor - a doctor, a guest, a relative, sometimes through a fire, loss, theft or otherwise. Submit without complaint, without zeal, without rage. (God is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).) Don’t take on too much. Man is a living image of God: reverence him as God, serve him as God, endure him as God, bear his infirmities as God, pray for him when he offends you. But don’t you dare be angry with him, be proud of him, be arrogant, humiliate him, trample on him. You, a learned man, are ashamed to forget who your neighbor is, who you are. Remember your spiritual poverty. Oh, how poor, cursed, poor, blind, naked you are [Rev. 3, 17]. Everything that is somewhat good is from God, and everything that is bad is our own; how much of this bad stuff? When your neighbor offends you, be numb to him in your heart and lips, and let your soul pray for him, and do not seethe with indignation and anger at him. When a brother is faulty, meekly point out to him, without zeal or embarrassment. Try to be humble, meek at heart, good at heart. Give up the habit of pride, anger, irritability. Stop being angry and abandon rage: do not be jealous and deceitful [Ps. 36, 8]. When, feeling your sinfulness, you find the need to sincerely and with tears pray to God, but, having begun to pray and be touched in spirit, you then feel a disposition to sleep, coldness in prayer, lethargy, insensibility to the words of prayer - know that it is the enemy who is plotting intrigues over you, trying to keep you in captivity; Be sure to overcome the disposition to sleep and with a warm, feeling heart, pray to the Lord your God, or the Lady Theotokos, or the Guardian Angel. In total, get 38 with your heart, just take care of your soul; everything will leave you - your soul alone will remain with you forever and its deeds. How is it that you, an educated, intelligent person and also a priest, allow the passion of voluptuousness and lust to dominate you? How do you allow your flesh, this soulless slave, this dust, pus, and decay, to dominate you? How are you, being a priest and knowing better than anyone the love of God for man and the sacrifice of this love - the suffering and death for us of the Son of God and the commandment of love: love one another [Jn. 13, 34, etc.], do you violate this love for your neighbor because of sweets? Why don’t you grow cold and dull to sweets? Why don’t you have ardent love for your neighbor? God! Help. Addiction to sweets is the thorn of the devil, it is in our hearts of the enemy. To the Most Pure Lady! I thank You, for You heard my prayer in my heart in the apartment of the fisherman Verzin and had mercy on me, pacified me. February 17, 1866. Every virtue is strengthened by practice and deed. (The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is gymnastics for the first people.) Neighbors with many different needs, spiritual and physical, are gymnastics for love. If you love God, prove it in your neighbor, in His image. Evil passions are the devil’s practice, his gymnastics. We look at the light of God, at the blessings of the world, at people through the glasses of the enemy of our souls - the devil, who nests in our hearts through various passions and addictions of everyday life. We must try in every possible way to cleanse our hearts. We must deny ourselves, abandon our carnal wisdom, our way of looking at things, at people, and accept the wisdom of God, the Bible, the Gospel, through the glasses of the Gospel, look at all people, at all things in the world, for this is the only view that is true, bright, healthy, life-giving. The carnal, worldly look is a false, deathly look: it deadens the soul, although it revives the flesh. Why do we fight against our neighbor, why does our neighbor take what is ours? We are fed, clothed, live under a warm roof, we have everything we need. Is it not our excess, which the Lord gave us solely through His generosity, without our merits, that our neighbor takes from us? Isn't that what we don't need? Truly so. Well, the Lord is with him. God! How crazy we are, being gifted with reason from You! Like us, so beloved by You and having received from You the commandment of mutual love [Jn. 13, 34, etc.], we are at enmity with each other at the will of the enemy because of vanity, out of empty things, out of nothing! What should unite us with each other and increase mutual love, for everything with us is Yours, everything is given abundantly, - because of this we quarrel, hate, rage. For this reason the trial will be terrible. Are they insulting you? Be patient, as the Lord endures you, your sins, which are countless, and the whole adulterous and sinful world. Or is there only one Lord, or are we all masters? We live as if we are all masters and we have no Lord: we surpass each other in wickedness. Look: you are becoming a lover of sweets, a lover of money, of earthly goods in general, and not a lover of souls, not a lover of your neighbors, not a lover of God. Disastrous delusion! After all, everything is for a person, ridiculous! Everything should serve him. Why do you pervert the order of God? When we feel sorry for our neighbor’s sweets and we are furious at him for taking these sweets in abundance arbitrarily, then the original murderer fights against us, and we, out of delusion, become embittered at our neighbor, considering him our enemy: this is how the enemy fools us. We also become embittered at our brother for something (because of trifles, some dream) and think that our brother is our enemy, and yet again the enemy laughs at us, that is, the devil, for we are all one, in the same image of God, from the same blood, we have one Head - Christ. You provide for strangers, you give freely to strangers, even to the poor - how can you not provide for your brother? You don’t feel sorry for strangers - how do you feel sorry for him? And what nonsense? If it weren’t for the sweetness, but for the money, which is all the same, I wouldn’t even think of regretting it. What about your sister? Why can’t you visit her when she’s sick? Remember that you cannot correct all people in God’s way, and therefore do not get excited, but be patient. But God does not take away human autocracy. Speak your iniquity to God, that you may be justified [Isa. 43, 26]: tell your shameful sins in order to be justified. If you don’t express it, you will be falsely ashamed, and you will not be justified, you will not be cleansed. That prodigal uncleanness, that passion for sweets is the work of the devil alone, and therefore despise sweets, so that you do not fall into fornication, so that filth does not work in our hearts. God! I thank You for the abundance of Your grace, poured out by You into my soul after communion of Your life-giving Mysteries during the Liturgy and after it. (Sunday of the Second Week of Lent.) Thank You for the abundance of peace, lightness, sweetness, purity, light, boldness. But what happened to me yesterday when I gave communion to three hundred and fifty people early! What heaviness, what humiliation of face, what cramped space! And after mass, and during the sermon, and then. I said that I need to give up evil suspicion, but I myself fall into it again. Why am I not serving quietly? Why am I inventing evil that is not in my neighbor? How long will we pay attention to appearance - to clothing, to bearing - and will we not take care of the internal correction of our hearts? How long will we chase after external splendor and leave our souls in the darkness of sin, in the darkness of passions? How long will we be depressed over trifles? Where is the cheerfulness, courage, boldness, and hope? After all, cowardice and despondency are a sin, especially during worship. Why are some rich and others poor? In order to give place to virtues, such as mercy. I don’t have - you have and satisfy my need and show me love, even more - you make Christ a debtor. With what joy, eagerness, love and reverence one must give alms! Or: you have a certain sweetness - I don’t have it; but you, loving me as you love yourself, although you love this sweetness very much, nevertheless willingly give it to me, because you love me no less, or, better yet, you consider it a greater sweetness and happiness and duty to love me than sweetness, considering sweetness to be nothing, and valuing me, for whom all sweets are created, infinitely higher. Or: you have a certain beautiful, precious thing, at the same time very useful - I don’t have it, but you, loving me as you love yourself, although you love this thing very much, nevertheless willingly give it to me, because you love me no less than yourself or this thing, which, of course, cannot be compared with a person - a priceless being, and you consider it a greater pleasure to please me with this jewel than to enjoy it yourself, considering this jewel to be nothing, but me, for whom all are precious and who himself is more precious than all of them, valuing infinitely higher. Who on earth is the sweetest of sweets, the jewel of jewels? - Human. When he eats sweets, he eats his own; when he uses something precious, he uses his own, if only for the benefit of the soul. And its sweetness, its preciousness is Christ. Relatives, friends, comrades, acquaintances write letters to us from different places, and based on these letters we carry out the execution; different government places communicate with each other in writing and carry out mutual instructions - this honor is not given only to the letter of our Lord Jesus Christ or His spiritual apostles: they write, write to us for fulfillment, but we do not follow with an ear; they say, they tell us their orders, and we close our ears. They publish the royal manifesto - and everyone eagerly listens to every word and tries to fulfill it exactly; publish the manifesto of the Son of God Jesus Christ daily for immediate and precise fulfillment - and there is no fulfillment. To receive a royal rescript 39 is considered to be a great happiness in the world, especially with a royal gift; The Son of God sent us His rescript, and in that rescript there is a priceless gift - the Kingdom of Heaven, and many do not want to read this rescript and refuse its priceless gift - for what? Because, you see, people really liked the ashes of the earth. How does this sound to you? Even if people didn’t have reason, even if they were insane, otherwise they are reasonable and everyone has common sense. What will we, brothers, be worthy of for our neglect of God's gifts? Love for earthly things creeps into the heart in different ways: sometimes in the form of shiny clothes for service or clothes in general for wearing in the world, sometimes in the form of a desire for a magnificent apartment, or furniture, or cutlery, or books in rich bindings, sometimes in the form of a desire for sweet food or clothing, or pity for one’s neighbor’s money, food, clothing. In addition to love for earthly things, the enemy often confuses and seduces us with hatred of our neighbor; He does this in us 1) through predilection for earthly things, 2) by making us forget that man is the image and likeness of God and our neighbor is completely like us and descended from the same blood, and 3) by producing in us pride or a high opinion of ourselves, and a low opinion of our neighbors, while they have equal rights with us as men, as created in the image of God, redeemed by the Son of God and headed, having the same high promises, the same hope, as we have. Through sin, man has become divided within himself and has quarreled: the mind with the heart, the heart with the will. The mind says this, the heart feels and does something else, the opposite; free force refuses to obey the mind. Then the person separated from his neighbors, who should be close to our hearts, like ourselves; then with the God of our heart, the source of life. Infinite in a small form - God in man - like the sun in a drop of water. The venerability and amiability of man. To the devil who troubles you, say: I do not listen to you, for lies are the father of lies [Jn. 8, 44]. Remember: if I give away all my possessions... but do not have love... then I am nothing (1 Cor. 13, 2 - 3). Love every neighbor as the image of God, as a member, although he stinks with the scabs of passions. Bear each other's burdens [Gal. 6, 2]. Despise the sins of others. Be the boss in the church. Look at the kind of owners the clerks run around in the shops. An addiction to sweets and to earthly things in general is a disease of the soul, and we must pray to the Doctor of our souls to heal it and give us strength and determination not to cling to earthly goods. An addiction to earthly sweets is a possession, just like for clothes; it alienates a person’s heart from God and his neighbor, and creates enmity against God and his neighbor. When thoughts of graceful vestment in sacred or household garments bother you, say: Christ is my vestment, according to the Scripture: all of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ [Gal. 3:27], for the sinful flesh is enraged by fornication, so that it may turn the soul away from the spiritual garment, and may strip it of the garment of Christ’s righteousness and clothe it in the shameful and stinking rags of passions. My flesh is not me: it is the earth, and I am my soul and my neighbor: we, many, are one body (1 Cor. 10:17). One must not enjoy, but must suffer. The more and better or more refined the flesh eats, the more it rages against poverty and the poor. The Lord Jesus Christ forgives your countless sins and heals your spiritual leprosy. Therefore, give to the poor as much as possible about the name of Christ, for He forgives you infinitely and gives you gifts of many different kinds of mercy. You have to quarrel with secular and military people, with the nobility - there is no other way: they have completely forgotten. Patting them on the head and flattering them is a great sin. They will, perhaps, be wise about themselves 40, as they are. We must prove to them at every step that they are behaving stupidly. They invented a unique, completely anti-evangelical life. Sybarites, Mongols. Do evil to them, O Lord, do evil to the glorious ones of the earth [Isa. 26, 15]. We alone are the image of God, love, and everything earthly is rubbish; everything is God's and everything is God's. Enmity is the devil's dream. Do I repay God with enmity for His rich gifts, for enmity against one’s neighbor is enmity against God? To your neighbor, as to God, repay your debt of gratitude. If you receive for nothing, give for nothing. Yes, remember that you are a priest and often eat the heavenly incorruptible Bread. Are you jealous of the dying soul? Having a true life, are you jealous of the dreamy one? Stinging on food and drink and sweets is pure devilish malice. Yes, remember that clinging to dreams is a sin, idolatry, moving away from God; one must despise them. Oh, the sting! Oh, hellfire! Oh, demonic poison! Every now and then there are demons to keep us in enmity against our neighbor, but in love for sweets and various things of this age. For all this is idolatry, abandonment of God and service to creation and with creation, and especially with them, the accursed, in combination. How can you allow such stupidity: equating food, drink, money, clothing with a person! That is rubbish, but man is the image of God, the king of everything, the owner. God! I thank You for this truth, for placing it in my heart! Everything is subdued under the feet of man. I myself, unworthy above all others, eat and drink the gifts of the Lord freely, greedily, as much as I want, sweetly or whatever is better; Of course, I sin in this, but at least I must look completely indifferently at my brother, eating and drinking my tuna, although apparently mine, but in fact God’s, or with the same pleasure looking at him enjoying my meal, with which I eat and drink. In this way I would preserve love for my brother, which is dearer than nothing and which covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8). And now we become embittered against our brother, who often eats and drinks ours, or God’s. We are triple sinners - in delicacy, in addiction to sweets, and in dislike for our neighbor. It was decided: not to regret anything, for everything is not ours - God’s, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Lord, help me! I curse in myself this slowness, lethargy, wildness towards good and haste, strength, tendency towards evil; this shame of good and shamelessness of other evil, fear of humiliating, humiliating oneself when humiliation would be exaltation, and a passionate desire to exalt oneself when exaltation is humiliation; this is the zeal of malice, instead of which one should have constant affection; this envy when one should be sincerely benevolent; this stinginess when one should be generous; this is covetousness, when you have to be a lover of Christ and a lover of your neighbor; love of earth when one should have love of earth; voluptuousness, when one should have love of holiness; fear when one should have boldness; guile when one should have simplicity; impurity when one should have solar purity; blasphemy, when one should silently praise the Lord and His saints; laziness, when one should have a diligent desire to fulfill all the commandments of God and the deeds of one’s calling. Poor man I am! who will deliver me from this body of death? [Rom. 7, 24]. “Sorrow” comes from the word “scrape.” For sinners they are necessary, like a cleansing fire, like a cleansing comb; for the righteous they are a test and an increase in the burden of eternal glory - or, having been tempted themselves, they could help those who were tempted, for example, the Most Holy Virgin Mary, all the saints, all of them: apostles, prophets, martyrs, saints, saints, righteous and all saints. Let us turn to them with boldness and hope, asking their prayers to God to send us consolation in sorrows and cleansing of sins and strengthening in virtue. O perishable food and drink, perishable sweets, clothing, money! How much sin and trouble there is in the world because of you! How many kidnappings and murders happen because of you on the one hand, how many tears, grief, torment, and sobs on the other - from the wronged! How many quarrels and litigations! How much greed, stinginess, envy, often vain labor and sweat, how much gossip! What oblivion because of you of Christian duties and the only thing that is needed! Because of you, how cold are human hearts towards God and towards their neighbors, how crafty, hard-hearted, uncompassionate, and murderous! Oh, earthly acquisition! Oh, when we Christians will be above earthly and material desires! Christians are citizens of heaven; they must live on earth for heaven. How many blessed and saints have migrated from earth to heaven! They are waiting for us to come to them. Why are the faces of saints depicted in church? To remind us of the Heavenly Fatherland and excite us to seek what is above. What do people sometimes care about? About making the face plumper and redder, and the hands too, and so that their posture was more majestic, more beautiful, and their gait too. And a Christian must pray to God that He may enlighten His face upon His servant and teach him with His justification, and direct his steps according to His word, so that all iniquity may not possess him [Ps. 118, 135, 133 ]; The servant of Christ thinks very little about appearance: all his attention is turned inside him - to his heart, so that his heart is new and his spirit is new. Oh, what terrible disasters arise from sweets! What anger, pride, cramped conditions, disappearances! Give us this day our daily bread [Matt. 6, 11]. Bread - food and drink - is a gift from God to us, therefore we should share it with our neighbors all the more willingly, even if our neighbors took it for free; to us - that means he is a common property; today means there is no need to worry about future food: the Heavenly Father knows our needs. Do not harbor hostile feelings towards a person because of his apparently angry expression on his face: he has such a face by nature. And if he really is angry, then defeat the angry one with affectionate treatment. With fear, call on the name of the Lord, the Mother of God, the Angels and the saints: you are unclean - they are holy. What is hell? Terrible torment. The eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, the heart has not sighed, not a single member of ours has felt the torment that is prepared for the enemies of God. United love for God and neighbor. We must despise love for ourselves, for our flesh; you must crucify the love of your flesh - despise the flesh 41. Temptations to overcome are from the devil: the devil acts in people to our temptation, irritating us. Hitherto you have respected the flesh too much: from now on, despise it too much, the enemy of the love of God and neighbor. Oh, how much I despised God and my neighbor, how much I respected the flesh! Fasting is the fulfillment of the requirement of the Gospel: those like 42 Christ must crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts [Gal. 5, 24]. Punishments should serve the same purpose. When a wealthy brother eats our sweets, the flesh says: he has his own and eats yours, but you have poor relatives, they need it - don’t believe it: there will be enough for everyone. Captive of sweets. Love God and your neighbor, it is said [Matt. 22, 37, 39; Mk. 12, 30–31; OK. 10, 27], but it is not said: love yourself, because you must deny yourself for the love of God and your neighbor, you must love yourself in God and your neighbor. Oh, what a fierce war over sweets! Sweets are aphids, because they corrupt my soul, they are worse, stinking of any aphid. Because of sweets, the enemy captured me in my sleep at night, and to this day I am in his captivity. In essence, the sweetness is that stench that we turn away from in latrines; the bodies of sensualists will all stink so much! Look at sweets as stench, as decay. Sweets drive the Spirit of God out of the heart and make a person carnal. What drove the Sodomites to all kinds of indecency? Sweets and satiety. Never eat your fill and you will be a spiritual winner. Avoid sweets. On the ruins of sensuality, on the crucifixion of sensuality, love for God and neighbor and renewal of the spirit arise, and without this there cannot be true love and renewal in the heart. That is why fasting is necessary. During fasting, almsgiving is necessary, intercession of God's mercy for us unworthy. Oh, how the Spirit of God, the Life-giving, the Righteous, is still not in me, how I hope for sweets! If not with sweets, then with money, not with money, then with a passion for smart clothes, - not with this, then with a passion for a bright, richly furnished apartment - not with this, then with a passion for secular books, or theaters, or for cheerful evenings, for cards, wine, the enemy captivates us, and often entangles us in many nets. And therefore you need to be sober and awake and consume sweets extremely moderately or avoid them altogether. Try to live soul to soul with your family and with all the pious. The multitude of those who believed had one heart and one soul [Acts. 4, 32]. Here is a sample of family and social life. Father Paul spoke well about retribution to parents. Instead of Me, you have given yourself over to sweets and to their culprit, the devil - let them save you. Find out what it’s like to work with them: do they give life, peace, freedom to the heart, even health to the body? If you surrender to Me, I will intercede and save you, like the apple of my eye. The benefit of those who trust in God: he is peaceful, free, full of boldness, looks straight in the face, fears no one and nothing; and the disadvantage of those who trust in the blessings of this world and generally transgress the commandments of God: they are restless, bound as if by iron bonds, by passions, they avoid the gaze of men, they are fearful: they are confused by the shadow of a flying bird, they are afraid of everyone and everything. It's a trap for you, a snare for sweets, and for your brother too; you are seduced - and so is he: after all, you have the same nature; If you are condescending to yourself, be condescending to him, but remember that we receive everything from God. Addiction to sweets and to earthly things in general is necessarily the cause of contempt for the Lord God and everything divine and contempt for one’s neighbor. Experience continually confirms this. Why is this? Partly because of the very essence of the matter: where the flesh predominates, there the spirit is powerless - and because of the machinations of the devil, who finds a sure way in our addiction to earthly things to turn us away from God and heavenly things, for our spirit is a simple being, it can cling to one thing, but cannot work for two masters. Indulgence and especially satiety alienate our soul from God, the Mother of God and all the saints, from prayer and the word of God and everything spiritual and saving, and make us carnal, the dwelling and work of evil spirits. Enjoy and be satiated afterwards if you wish! There, fearing fear, where there was no fear: for God scatters the bones of people-pleasers [Ps. 52, 6]. Don’t think about pleasing people and pleasing God – and there will be no fear. Everything is God’s, not ours, and therefore we should not spare anything for anyone - neither rich nor poor (as we love ourselves, love everyone: there is only one soul), but consider everything as rubbish, and consider mutual love to be higher than everything in the world. To bear all untruths, to bear all insults with joy, to endure mistakes with love. Mental harmony is infinitely higher than physical, material harmony. Maintain spiritual harmony in every possible way - peace of spiritual forces and their harmonious action. Lusts of the flesh: this food is not good - better give it; these clothes are not good - better come on; this furniture is not good - you need to buy better; this horse is not stately, not a greyhound - you need to buy a better one; The crew is not good - we need to do better. And how much resistance and evil zeal there is when the higher ones, the elders in our lusts, oppose us! Everything is a dream. Sometimes a person is weak, sad from satiety, but he still eats and drinks, and they also tell him: eat, drink - it will be easier. Madness to madness! With a forty-day fast, the Lord defeated the devil—here is the evil number forty, or the words “fourty days.” Enter into the spirit of Christ, bear the burdens, sins, passions, mistakes, insults of your neighbors, as Christ endured everything, as He bore our burdens. Keep God's commandments about loving God and your neighbor - and everything will be added to you. Do not dare to be hostile to your neighbor, to your brother, because he goes to eat and drink what is yours, but endure him with love: the Lord will reward him for him, he is God’s, Christ’s. A mother knows how much food and drink she needs to prepare for her family. Doesn’t the Heavenly Father know how much He needs to prepare for the family of the human race? He prepares everything abundantly; only the rich, out of passion and hardness of heart, withhold the gifts of God, withhold bread, clothing, and shelter from the poor. You, a rich man, want to be healthy and happy, while you have taken everything into your own hands and are suffocating from satiety. No health for you! You're not worth it! As soon as you feel sorry for your neighbor’s sweets, you lose interest in him, and your heart does not lie towards him. Do not feel sorry for anything, but always feel sorry for your neighbor, feel sorry even when he devours us, robs us out of his greed, then feel even more sorry. What grace comes from abstinence: it is easy to serve, and you easily fight against opposing forces and passions, and you win comfortably, and there is space with peace in your soul, and joy in your heart and on your face, and it is easy to pray! You pray to God to remove parasites from you; why do you condemn your brother for parasitism when you yourself are God’s first parasite? If no one will eat or drink for nothing, then you should not eat or drink for nothing. Otherwise, at home you eat and drink God’s gift, and when you’re away you like to eat and drink someone else’s. Doctor, heal yourself [Lk. 4, 23]. Those who have sinned against the Lord! Just as in the Most Holy Trinity the Three Persons are consubstantial and equal, and all properties, except personal ones, are common to them, so all people must be consubstantial, one heart and one soul, and they must have everything in common, except bodies and personal properties; everything should serve the common good, over and above the private: wealth, intelligence, strength, abilities, power. We, many, are one body (1 Cor. 10:17). Let's understand this. Let us not look at the fact that this one is rich and that one poor, when it is necessary to show love: we will show favor to the rich and the poor equally, and we will acquire the love of all. By insulting any neighbor, I insult God, for a brother is the image of God; I insult the Mother of God, for She is the Mother of the inheritance of Her Son and the Head of the mental creation of 35 - the Church; I insult the holy Angels, as they form one Church with us, I insult the holy men of God, who form the one body of the Church; I insult all humanity living on earth, for they are all of the same blood, I especially insult Orthodox Christians, who form one body among themselves. It is terrible to insult, terrible, criminal to insult your neighbor! It is better to endure a thousand evils from your neighbors than to insult them in vain or to become embittered at them and to copulate with the devil against God and your neighbor. Forgive me, Lord, my sin. Grant that none of my neighbors should behave (for example, rudeness, envy, stinginess), but rather love each other [Rom. 13, 8]. Anger at one's neighbor because of anything, for example because of food and drink, money, because of some mistake, offense, grief, is the work of the devil, the devil himself. Therefore, be afraid of malice, therefore be patient, humble yourself, force yourself to meekness and gentleness, cover the sins of your neighbor with love. Ask the Lord for help. Lord help me! If we notice above ourselves, above our passions and addictions, then we will notice that the devil is deeply entrenched, burrowed into us through our addiction to food and drink, sweets, clothing, housing, furnishings, money and other things, so that because of these earthly addictions he completely tore us away from the heavenly City and its blessings, from love for God and neighbor. That is why we must despise our flesh and everything earthly, so that we can overcome the devil, who is strong in our addictions to earthly things, and love God and our neighbor with all our hearts. If a crafty, greedy and stingy heart condemns your brother for parasitism, say to yourself sincerely: I am a parasite, not my brother; or: both I and he are equally both parasites, both are obliged to God, and not to each other. Let us repay our debt to God with mutual love, condescension and forgiveness for each other, and let us love God with all our hearts. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him (1 John 4:16). Consider yourself the first sinner, the first parasite, the scum of the world, not worth a piece of rotten bread for the rottenness of your stinking heart, for the rottenness of your deeds, and honor every neighbor. God! You saw the vow fulfilled in my soul not to be hostile against my brother [Constantine]. Complete it yourself and seal it, Give yourself the strength to complete it. February 24th day, 1866. We are all one, we should all be love. Lord, grant! The heart of a glutton and one who is satiated is not with God and not with his neighbor, but with food and makes love, and just as it is impossible to love two different objects together, then it does not love God and his neighbor (His image) and is at enmity against them, but loves sweets mortally. Until now you had enough of everything and you were healthy in your service - why did you quarrel with your old father for the sake of sweets? Everything is God's. And what a zealous servant - his daughter - he prepared and gave to you! For this alone he is worth a lifetime of the most ardent love and respect. What is the highest gift who can give you such as a beautiful wife? With her, all good things came to you. Love both your father and her unfailingly, and love the Lord God, who gave all this, above all. My wife is his offspring, the place is his former place and he gave it to me and my daughter, all around I am in his mercy: why will I hate him? Crazy, ridiculous. I should consider it happiness to love him, to greet him with childish affection, to please him in everything. Be, Lord! The flesh that is deprived goes berserk, and the flesh that is worn out calms down. But for the good of the soul it is necessary to deprive it. All earthly blessings - food, drink, money, clothing, housing, all things are rubbish, and our bodies are rubbish, and human sins are rubbish, their mistakes and the violence of the enemy are rubbish. Lord and soul, love for God and neighbor - that’s priceless! We are many and one body (1 Cor. 10:17)! The devil raped me during the communion of the Holy Mysteries with the laity out of malice against one who had sinned; At first I didn’t know what to do: it was hard, I disappeared, rushed about; then the happy thought came that it was the devil who was raping me, and as soon as I thought about it, became convinced of it, the anger immediately left me. So, understand about all such cases, and in general know that the devil rapes us with various passions: greed for food, drink, money, passion for shiny, elegant clothes, irritability, pride and contempt, coldness towards God and neighbor, envy and desire for someone else's good for oneself, covetousness, stinginess, laziness to please God and the salvation of the soul, laziness to prayer, reading, listening to the word of God, stubbornness, disobedience, pity on your neighbor for everything that is good, and the desire to take advantage of everything that is good for yourself, and so on and so forth. We must remember this and try to be one with everyone, consider everyone as one, love everyone as ourselves, as one. Then God will be one with us, and the Mother of God, and all the holy Angels, and all the holy people, and whatever we ask the Lord for, we will receive everything from Him. If you are embarrassed by the fact that your father-in-law smokes tobacco, then I should tell you that what does not go into the mouth defiles a person, but what comes out (comes from the heart) defiles a person [Matt. 15, 11], for example, malice, blasphemy, fornication, the evil eye, etc. How dare you condemn your father in your heart for smoking? Repent of this wickedness of yours. You constantly condemn him in your heart and despise him, either for eating and drinking, or for smoking. Do not judge not only him, but no one. Condemn yourself constantly. Will you condemn all, often valiant, people for smoking? Smoking is a weakness for most people nowadays. Judge not: God is the Judge, He is God and the Rewarder; You are a defendant, not a judge: do not take on the role of a judge and do not become arrogant. Live in love; smoking, food, drinking, etc. are just the devil’s pretexts for anger and pride. Beware: you are walking among nets. It's none of my business, say: I'm a party. Judge not, lest ye be judged [Matt. 7, 1]. Love and love! Let there be no more place for malice in your heart. Love everyone as you love yourself, wish for everyone what you wish for yourself, and do not wish for anyone what you do not wish for yourself. There will be enough for everyone. Usually we are at enmity with each other, we are hostile to each other because of earthly things: because of food, money and other things. Don't worry: there will be enough of everything. Regarding beautiful bodies, sweets, money, beautiful clothes and all beautiful things made of wood, metals, glass, crystal, porcelain and other things, think that they are all dust, do not care about them, despise them. But honor man as the image of God, as a member of Christ, and serve him in every possible way, for he is worthy of this by his nature and by restoration, or by the sight of the Divine. So, just as you look at dust and dirt, look at all these things and do not be captivated by them. Always be captivated by the One Savior. He is your God, your life, your breath, your peace, every good thing. What is the life of our hearts? Mutual love: we are all members of Christ, or, as it were, one Christ. God! I thank You for your valiant passage of this day. I thank you for giving me your word; for you saved me from the evil of demons several times: during the liturgy twice or thrice and at home the same number of times; for you have vouchsafed Thy people to receive communion without condemnation, into the world of spiritual powers. Saturday of the Third Week of Lent. I thank You, the Lady of the world, the Most Holy Theotokos, for through Your prayer and intercession I was delivered from the evil of demons during Matins: I submitted my humble prayer before You, I bowed down before Your image with faith, as before a living person, and You heard me. February 26. Words by Avdotya Dmitrievna Britneva: Jesus Christ accepted such suffering that even the last of people would not want to accept. Magazines, novels, newspapers harm the cause of Christianity by erasing from people’s memory the name of Christ, the heavenly Fatherland (because they talk about earthly things), the resurrection of the dead, the future Judgment, eternal life and eternal torment. One who is addicted to reading secular books is no better than one who is addicted to food, drink, sweets, money, clothing, etc. Pupils and pupils of the world (theaters, clubs, fun evenings) are dolls, soulless statues! Laughter and grief as they come to church, especially to confession! Will you ever hear the name of Christ in the theater in earnest? Will you hear the words: Create in me a pure heart, O God [Ps. 50, 12 ]? No. Why is theater also called moral, almost Christian? This is paganism in Christianity, and it came to us from paganism. The education program for secular youth is filled with a lot of rubbish, paganism - both literally, meaning many languages, and paganism itself, that is, pagan writers in Latin. Variety is nice and useful, but there is too much of it. He who sincerely and truly does not wish well to another does not and cannot wish true good for himself. How corrupted we are by sin, that without prayer and God’s help we cannot sincerely wish good for others, but secretly wish evil! My heart, like a spirit, is simple and individual by nature and created in the image of God, and God is love. Let it be love, and let it never be malice. Lord help me! I can't live without you. In the hands of everyone is either life or death: if we do the will of God, then every time we will feel life and sweetness in our chest and in our heart; if the will of our flesh and our thoughts or the will of the devil, we will feel death, bitterness, tightness, suffocation in our insides; if we love God with all our hearts, and not partly (giving another part of him to the blessings of this world), if we love our neighbor as ourselves, we will be kind to him, we will do good to the best of our ability - we will feel life and contentment with ourselves; If we don’t love God, don’t run to Him, pray to Him, thank Him, glorify Him, and don’t be kind to our neighbor, do good to him, or do evil to him, then we will feel death and crampedness in our chests and will not live our days. Dream. February 27. The poor are the brothers of Jesus Christ; not only my brethren - this is a lot [for] me to say - but also Jesus Christ Himself. Remember the words from the kontakion to St. Nicholas: you have laid down your soul for your people. The more you delight and satiate your flesh, the more it is proud, disdains, gets angry, gets irritated, screams furiously, is stingy, and loves money. You need to humble it with fasting, prayer, labor, endure insults, deprivations, and be kind to suffering and insults. The more the flesh is deprived of earthly blessings, the more it suffers, the more the spirit is humbled, the more the streams of passions are dried up. To rejoice in carnal deprivations as a find, as an acquisition, and not to grieve during deprivations, not to become embittered, not to be irritated. And we would sing alone in church, as if we ate at home, or we would receive ranks and distinctions alone, and the brethren would be alien to all this. What self-esteem! Almost all of us are like this: we are all unkeyed 43 . Who will we be angry with for our sins, who will we condemn, who will we despise? No one, except yourself, and certainly yourself. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye [Matt. 7, 3 ]! Why expect reciprocity from people for everything, for example, the same response for a gentle hello? – We will not have any reward from God. If you love those who love you, what gratitude do you have for that?.. If you greet only your brothers, what special thing are you doing? Don't the pagans do the same? [ OK. 6, 32; Matt. 5, 47]. Do good for good's sake, expecting nothing, and your reward will be many in heaven [Matt. 5, 12; OK. 6, 23]. Do not cling to anything with your heart except the one God, do not love anything except Him, do not be hurt by anything except love for Him. This is life, peace, freedom, lightness, joy. Having been with Grigory Yakovlevich Blinov, I was stung by the sweetness (treacle), craving it, and I felt cramped, stuffy, and weary; but as soon as I perked up in my heart and became convinced that the Lord alone was the belly of my heart, immediately the tightness and languor left me, I calmed down and took courage, and left him in peace. But then I gave some boys money with grief and displeasure, and again peace and freedom of spirit left me, and then, when I was convinced that everything on earth is rubbish, and man is the image of God and the child of God, for whom everything is that God and man are one, and we should all be one, and that God is everything to us, I calmed down again. As for the sins of others, I cannot put everyone in my own way: and the Lord cannot and does not want to do this, for everyone has his own will; Yes, I don’t care about other people’s sins: that’s why God is the Creator and Judge of all, but God forbid I can cope with my own. Of those born of women there never arose a greater man than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven (that is, Jesus Christ) is greater than he [Matt. 11, 11]. Oh, how we must live, having the Most Pure Mother of God as our Head, the Head of our mental creation, and the Angels and Saints as our members! What a heavenly residence on earth they must lead! How clean it is to live! Just as the four main elements make up the bodily being of all living and soulless creatures on earth and they live by them - after the Lord God, who created them from these elements, so the Lord Himself makes up the life of all truly pious people: He is their light, breath, food and drink, their life-giving fire. But there are people who are physical and have no spirit [Jude. 1, 19]. Why are you expanding in this world? Look, where are your comrades who promised themselves a long life, like you? Many, many are long gone, some left the stage of this worldly spectacle yesterday. And you are one-day. And you will die. Hasten to repent and bear the fruits of repentance. God! Deliver me from contemplation and man-pleasing: let me look at everyone equally and please You alone and dispose everyone to please You. Grant me to deeply honor all the broadcasts of the Church during worship and to incite everyone to respect these broadcasts and not be proud, saying: this is superfluous, this is not necessary, this can be omitted. Everything that is most necessary. You just need to listen heartily and reflect on what is being said and done in the Church. We are nearsighted - the Church is farsighted; we are dark, having eyes of the heart darkened by sin; she is light, having God-enlightened eyes, looking 44 towards the Sun of Truth. The spirit, deprived of sweets, rejoices, but when deprived of them, the flesh grieves, becomes faint-hearted, gets angry - but one must despise the flesh, for sin lives in it and it removes one from love for God and neighbor; to despise everything that instills coldness towards God or enmity towards one’s neighbor. Forgive grievances from the heart and not consider them as such. Don’t impute anything to yourself – entrust everything to God. Our flesh, when we serve God, especially before people, disposes and forces us to coldness, laziness, hypocrisy, darkness, dullness and insensibility of heart, to indifference to God and His saints, to the very oblivion of them and to dreaming about the vain things of this world - and the spirit disposes us to ardor, zeal, sincerity, enlightenment, keenness of vision and sensitivity of the heart, to reverence for God and His saints, to the unceasing memory of God and His saints and to the contempt of the vain things of this age. Little by little, the flesh is ready to completely abandon worship - the spirit seeks unceasing service to God, and will not allow itself to miss an iota of worship unnecessarily. The flesh, getting used to God, the Most Pure Mother of God, Angels and Saints, and on earth to persons of the highest family, ecclesiastical persons, all those in authority and other people, is ready to despise them - the more the spirit treats them, the more imbued with reverence for God, His saints, members of the highest family, ecclesiastical persons, all authorities and respect for every person, because it sees, is convinced, that everything in everyone is God and everything is from God, and that by humiliating them, he first of all humiliates himself, punishes himself, and by exalting them, he himself rises with them. He who glorifies Me will be glorified, and he who despises Me will be dishonored (1 Samuel 2:30). God is marvelous in His saints [Ps. 67, 36]. There is no power that is not from God; The existing authorities have been established by God [Rom. 13, 1]. Doing honor to one another [Rom. 12, 10]. We are accustomed to Christianity, we have become arrogant, forgotten about it. The Church represents the face of the Savior on earth: honor, obey her, do not shy away from worship, the Sacraments, and her decrees. Those who move away from it will perish, for whoever is not with the Church is not with God. One truly Christian owner of the house spoke about all his money, sweets, clothes, when strangers took them and used them: some kind of rubbish that I have accumulated, they take it and use it; thank God it’s good, it’s for the benefit of people - after all, it exists for them, I just need a little. He also spoke about human bodies: with our bodies we will fertilize the earth. And what a rich earth there will be under us! What a wonderful feast for worms! Oh, how they fatten up there! Every person needs so [little] and the Heavenly Father has so distributed to everyone the required amount of all the goods necessary for life, that we have absolutely nothing and nothing to worry about. Only our greed demands a lot and is afraid for the imaginary greed of others. We must be completely carefree. Let her calm down, let her enjoy the blessings of my home, my mother, who brought me so much joy in life and the sweetest of existence, after the Lord God. May everything be pleasant for her. I don’t regret anything for her. But I myself despise sweets, but let me put the Lord above all else, and let me cleave to Him alone with all my heart. The head of the family must maintain peace in the family, for peace is most valuable; yield in everything, endure everything, condescend to the members of the family in everything to maintain peace in the house. (Words of a recluse of the Voronezh monastery.) For God will forgive everything - non-observance of fasting, and some relaxation in prayer, and worldly entertainment, but He will not tolerate hostility. Why do we very quickly forget the worst offenses of the devil and do not remember his evil, but we often remember the offenses of our neighbor for a long time? Because the devil, being at enmity against us, does not incite us to be angry at him, for he is not his own enemy, but he incites us to be offended at our neighbor. What does the exclamation inspire us with: the Most Holy, Most Pure... Mother of God... remembering all the saints? Inspires that there is life of the future century, after our death - eternal, the life that the Mother of God lives and the saints who help through our prayers and do miracles; that this life will come for us too; inspires that we are all members of the Church, not only earthly, but also heavenly, that the Lady is the Head of mental creation 35, our true Queen and Mother, whom we must always invariably honor and call upon and to whom we must submit; that we must imitate the life and deeds of the Mother of God and the saints as members of the Church, as future citizens of heaven, as members of Christ; that we must completely surrender ourselves, each other and our whole life to Christ God, as the Head and King and Provider and Father and Righteous Judge. An intemperate life, filled with greed for sweets, is a direct contradiction to the Gospel, opposition to the Savior, Who, as the first act of His Divine Embassy, ​​preached abstinence and fasting, Himself fasting for forty days and nights. An intemperate, voluptuous life, which is our custom now, goes directly against the work of the Savior. All the trouble we have in the human race came about because of the intemperance of Eve and Adam; all the temptations of the enemy of the human race tend to plunge us into intemperance and then lead us by the nose, as he wants, because through intemperance he takes possession of us. A Christian must live on earth not for earth, but for heaven: he is a disciple of the Heavenly Father, Christ God and the Holy Spirit. You should definitely not eat anything at night, no matter how tempting your thoughts may be. Otherwise it suffocates at night. Mixing caviar and sweets, such as compote, in the stomach is harmful. One thing. The spirit is simple, like a thought, like a name, like an instant feeling. Therefore, when you mentally call on the Lord or some saint with great faith in him, that he is close and hears and can and wants to fulfill your godly desire, he will immediately come to the rescue and help. So call on the Lord, the Lady, the Forerunner, the apostles, saints, martyrs, saints and all saints. So we call them with words in church or at home, and they hear us, they are here. Especially the Lord. Worship is a genuine conversation between people and God and His saints. Gold is rare, and there is an abyss of ordinary land. It’s the same in literary works: there are few beautiful works, but there are an abyss of ordinary or bad ones. And there’s so much manure! This is your mind, your will, my enemy, the devil, to highly value sweets, to indulge in sweets, to feel sorry for sweets for your brother and because of them to be at enmity with him, and until now I have obeyed you. From now on I don’t want to serve you, may the Lord help me. He who is carried away by voluptuousness and who is at enmity with his brother because of sweets does not see in him the wonderful qualities for which he is worth all respect and love, but sees one thing: that he eats his sweets. How one must despise sweets, because of addiction to which there is so much untruth and insult to God and neighbor! They're rubbish. God! Don’t let me think about my neighbor what I don’t want them to think about me. Do not let me think evil about my neighbor. Teach me to charge everything earthly, all sweets for rubbish; Teach me to love and respect every person, except the obviously vicious ones; Teach me to be hospitable to Your people. Deliver me from wickedness. Do not take revenge on anyone for yourself, but leave vengeance to God, the Righteous One, the Judge and Father of all. Do not avenge yourself, beloved (and revenge is a matter of malice, it is indecent for beloved ones), but give room to the wrath of God. For it is written: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord [Rom. 12, 19]. Be afraid to take revenge on someone with inner malice, lest you become one spirit with the devil, lest you become like the devil. Honor everyone as images of God. If a person falls into any sin... correct him in the spirit of meekness [Gal. 6, 1]. Let everything be with you with love (1 Cor. 16:14), all mutual relationships of correction, discipline, punishment, without enmity and malice. May the brew of anger in our hearts be destroyed. There will be enough for everyone - don’t be afraid of deprivation. When, for no apparent reason, you worry that your money will not be stolen, remember immediately that this is the deception of the devil, turn your heart to God and say: be with me, my belly, Lord, and do not allow the deception of the enemy to take possession of me. We are heavenly citizens, but we do almost everything earthly: household chores, books, theaters, evenings, educational institutions... the spirit of the earth is everywhere. Honor and praise to theological schools, seminaries, academies: [...] the spiritual, the Divine prevails. Have you seen the image of an eagle over the city on the bishop's eagle 45? This is an image of a bishop and a priest: they must soar from earth to heaven, leave earthly things, trample on them. A Christian person is united with God and deified - will he be connected with earthly things, will he have an addiction to earthly things: money, sweets, clothes, housing, household items and generally to earthly things? Set your mind on things above... [Col. 3, 2]. Will he worry about what he will eat and drink, what to wear? Will the Heavenly Father, who so miraculously took care of his eternal life, leave him with temporal and temporal blessings? If we do not consider everything earthly as rubbish, we cannot love the Lord with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. Paralysis will take the soul. My one treasure is the Lord; You shouldn’t bother yourself to look for or desire other treasures. My treasure, the Lord, is inexhaustible. Believing in this, I will give to the poor willingly, without bitterness or irritation. God! Forgive my passing sins, for I became embittered with Your poor, and with reluctance and annoyance gave them alms today, not believing that You Yourself accept it in their face. As the eyes of a servant are in the hand of his masters... so are our eyes towards the Lord our God, the Dondezh will show mercy to us [Ps. 122, 2]. We expect generosity from the Lord - and we ourselves must be generous to the poor. And the Lord always encourages us, so that we are always full, overdressed, and rest in beautiful dwellings. Do not offend a single beggar with a single rude or abusive word, lest you irritate the One who created him, for the One who created him created him in His own image and likeness. I thank You, Lord my God, for You have had mercy on me through my prayer, and You have saved my soul from wickedness and stinginess, and from oppression, and humiliation, and shame, and darkness. I thank You, for You have made me worthy to perform the Liturgy without stumbling and for Your people to receive communion with an unashamed face. March 4, 1866 Kiss your mother’s hand with reverence, but consider yourself unworthy to kiss her on the mouth. God! I thank You, who admonishes me, and cleanses me, and saves me. Mother's hand. This hand swaddled me, breastfed me, prepared milk for me, took care of me, carried me, fed me. How can I not kiss her with great respect and unfeigned love? And these lips with love lulled me, caressed me, chewed food for me. How can I not kiss them lovingly? How can a son not caress his mother? A calf, a foal, a lamb - and they caress towards their mothers. In the simplicity of your heart, without hesitation, you should honor her son or daughter. One must always humble oneself before her, for she is the mediator between God and her children in the greatest, infinitely great gift of God - the gift of life: through her life was given, and she preserved this life: yes, she was an instrument of Providence in preserving it. So, let children cast aside selfishness and pride before their parents and let them honor them, according to the commandment of God, as their greatest benefactors after the Lord God. What happens now? According to the psalmist, the milked 46 often rises up against its mother [Ps. 130, 2] if not openly, then secretly, not in word and deed, then in the heart. Oh, corruption of hearts, oh, corruption of morals! Oh, oblivion of God's blessings! Children sometimes dare to disobey their parents, to be rude, to be insolent to them, to swear, to quarrel! The Lord provides for the ants, feeds them, protects them. Will he forget me, will he forget us? Will it not saturate us for the rest of our lives? He created us - He protects us, He provides for us, nourishes us, clothes us, warms us, enlightens us, cleanses us, gives us peace, and makes us happy. We will betray ourselves, each other and our whole lives to him. We won’t worry about a lot, we’ll be happy with a little. Why is there no image of the Creator of the world and the Savior of the human race here? Why is there no image of His Most Pure Mother, Queen of heaven and earth? (About a house where there are no icons.) What is most necessary for a young man and every person to know? That he is a creation of God, that he must live according to God’s commandments, and if he sins, breaks the law of God, he must immediately repent and correct himself; that his true fatherland is in heaven; that he will die and at a time determined by the destinies of God will be resurrected, appear at the Judgment and after the Judgment will receive reward - eternal torment or the Kingdom of Heaven. Do you wonder why your heart is alien to God and our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Most Pure Mother of God, the Mother by grace of all Christians, the holy Guardian Angel and all the holy Angels and saints, whereas it should always be characteristic, close to them? - Because the spirit is alien, the spirit of malice, pride, envy, stinginess, covetousness, lust, disobedience and stubbornness, despondency, murmuring, drunkenness, fornication - in a word, the devil constantly alienates them from you, and also because you are flesh, and they are spirit. Change your carnal life to spiritual life - and you will love the Lord and His saints fervently. While you love earthly sweets, money, clothes, the beauty of your home, you cannot be a lover of God and the heavenly Jerusalem. The Lord alone is the treasure and life of our heart; everything earthly is rubbish, not worth attention, rubbish to which the heart should not attach, which should not be valued, although the world values ​​it, and desires it, and seeks it like treasure. The less earthly things for a person, the better. That is why our flesh desires as much earthly things as possible, in order to entangle, bind, constrain, burden, darken, and blind the soul with so many things. So, there is only one friend of my heart - the Lord, who is everything to me, with one Lord they will live, to Him alone they will cleave with all their hearts; But I will not cleave to the sweets and treasures and beauties of this world, as corruptible and coarse, so that I will not lose the Lord, the light of my eyes. Through the prayers of our All-Pure Lady Theotokos... Out of indescribable love for people, especially for the Christian race, the Most Holy Theotokos continually prays to God for us, that He may grant us the eternal bliss of the righteous. Intercessions of the honest, disembodied Heavenly Powers... And the Angels, as good and holy beings, out of their love and as constituting one Church with us, pray or intercede for us before God, so that we too will be participants in their eternal 47 bliss. Oh, what a sweet, amazing community! What after this is all earthly life, passionate, charming, stormy, what are all the sweets, earthly joys? Nothing, a dream, a dream. Christians, why do we, in our apparently waking state, get carried away by dreams? Why are we delirious about earthly things, why don’t we think about heavenly things, why don’t we live in the blessings we hope for? Where is in us the pledge of the Spirit, the betrothal of a future inheritance, the firstfruits of eternal blessings, the life-giving power? Why do we give our hearts to the blessings here when they do not satiate or pacify the soul, but butt, darken, worry it, torment it, plunge it into decay? Let us remember that great and precious promises have been given to us, so that through them we might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Pet. 1:4). Let us constantly remember this and begin to despise the flesh and everything that is for it: we will give it what it needs, we will cut off what is unnecessary, we will reject lusts. Let us be content with what is necessary; let us not chase after excesses or luxury, so that it does not entangle our spirit. May we fly every day: we will test and exercise our strength in flight to the heavens, like pigeon chicks whom the dove teaches to fly. Our Fatherland is heaven. Why forget this? Our Savior, who came down from heaven for our sake and again ascended there, teach us to fly to You. Dove, flying above all the skies, do not leave us, Your chicks! Behold, Thy Blood is in us; Behold, Your Body is in us! Your Spirit is in us! Through partial love for earthly goods, coldness and hostility towards our neighbors who live with us, who eat and drink among us, will certainly take root; meanwhile, there is nothing more precious than love and peace: therefore, to completely despise all earthly blessings, truly as rubbish, worth nothing, to impute them and hold on to them with all the strength of love and peace. As members of the Church of Christ, we are fellow saints: let us imitate them and live worthy of their community. God united with people, sacrificing Himself for them - people must unite in love with each other, sacrificing for each other in need all their wealth, their strength, abilities, tranquility, being long-suffering, forbearing, helping each other. We, spiritual ones, sacrifice our abilities, our minds, education, strength, peace of mind, property to people; You, the rich, must sacrifice your wealth, your property, to your fellow men. Every person is overcome by some kind of darkness, a sinful intoxication, a storm of passions. When this is done in a person’s soul, he must stand firmly on the rock of faith, hope and love and resist this storm, try to speak calmly, meekly, slowly, and refrain from doing anything with his hand. My characterization. Another person does many good deeds: he prays fervently, and is chaste, and gives alms, but one or two or three bad deeds spoil the whole work of his salvation: if, for example, he is greedy, often satiated, impatient, touchy and irritable - what he creates with one hand, he often destroys with the other, and this is insane. Christians should strive with all their might to be perfect: so that you may be perfect in all completeness, without any deficiency [Jas. 1, 4]. It is necessary, absolutely necessary, to be abstinent, and patient, not offended, to instruct opponents with meekness, whether God will give them repentance to the knowledge of the truth, so that they free themselves from the snare of the devil, who has ensnared them in his will (2 Tim. 2:25-26). You see, the networks of the enemy are everywhere. [...] our neighbors, and we often fall into his snare. We must have long-suffering and forbearance towards each other. Our parents in our youth patiently endured our shortcomings and whims - we must patiently endure their shortcomings and whims in their old age; they pleased us - we must now please them; they fed, watered, clothed, and gave us rest - we must now feed, water, clothe, and give them rest. (If you don’t console your mother, she will be sad and bored with you, and you will be sad that you couldn’t console your mother.) Warfare, mutual enmity, quarrel is nothing more than the devil’s rubbish, a dream: to despise it and immediately stop. Swear words also poof, dream, wind and deeds or the face of the one being reviled do not change at all, unless he himself is cowardly and unreasonable. Therefore, we must forget grievances as soon as possible and not be angry with those who offend, but pity them, as having become, through natural sinful depravity, inexperience and recklessness, an instrument of the devil, pray for them to God, the Father of all, and not abandon love for them, not listen to your evil heart, despise it, resist it, overcome it. Greet the offender kindly and without arrogance, please him, help him, talk with him if he wants; if he doesn’t want to, God bless him. The one who insults first of all punishes himself by the very fact that he insults. We must be lambs, for we are Christians, followers of the meek and humble Lord Jesus, like a sheep led to the slaughter and like a silent lamb before its shearers [Isa. 57, 3]. Malice must always be alien to our hearts, like the property of the devil. We must never allow it to stick to our hearts; My malice against my neighbor is, in fact, the malice of the devil against me and at my neighbor - which means that all anger must be poured out on the devil, and not on my neighbor: the neighbor is the suffering, self-tormented and tormented instrument of our enemy. But may the Lord quickly crush Satan under our feet [Rom. 16, 20]. If I become angry with those who offend me, it means that I do not have meekness and humility. How can I, a sinner, worthy of all censure, all humiliation, not want to endure a few swear words, perhaps false, but perhaps expressing my true character, aptly outlining some of my passions or the nature of my actions? Like: maybe I myself have embittered someone before and then I don’t want to endure the insult myself? Look, what pride! But to fulfill the Lord’s commandment about mutual love and peace, one must deny oneself. The covenant of the Lord, sealed by the sufferings of the cross and His blood, is the following: love one another [Jn. 13, 34; 15, 12, 17]. Love your enemies... do good to those who hate you [Matt. 5, 44; OK. 6, 27]. And will we listen to the devil, the slanderer? Will his lies, expressed about us through our neighbor, confuse us? - To despise all untruths, all slander, abuse, slander expressed to us by our neighbors according to the teachings of the devil. After all, we know the source of all evil, all untruth, slander, malice, pride and other things - namely the devil: why be angry with your neighbor, the instrument of his lies and malice? Moreover, [one must] pity him and respect his nature in him, and caress him more quickly and strongly. But to be cowardly, to become embittered because of an offense against one’s neighbor, because of words filled with slander and slander, is insane: the poison of lies and slander comes from the devil, not from one’s neighbor. Slander, in fact, is diabolical and poisonous for us, but due to our blind pride and unreason. Let us not pay attention to it and remain calm. The wisdom of a Christian should consist, among other things, in distinguishing in himself and in his neighbor, in actions and words, dispositions, the flesh, or sinful corruption, from man himself and man from the devil acting in his heart; be patient, forbear, forgive a person who sins, and attribute the beginning and continuation of words and actions hostile to us to the devil, for the devil incites and incites a person to evil. Speak sedately to offenders, do not remain silent in anger, for both silence and anger are the flattery of the devil. We must always remember that man is by nature corrupted by sin. I was conceived in iniquity, and my mother gave birth to me in sins [Ps. 50, 7]. Sin is a common pestilence, a common illness of people. I am the culprit of yesterday's quarrel. It was necessary to settle the matter with meekness, and not with irritability. What is most subtle, purer, nobler in the material world? Light. What's the rudest thing? Earth. But our body is the earth; through gradual liberation from the corruption of passions, and even more so through the grace of God, it must become, at a time determined by the destinies of God, like the sun: the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father [Matt. 13, 43]. There is a spiritual body, and there is a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:44); the spiritual body - that is, characteristic of every living creature living on the earth and created from the earth; the spiritual body - that is, the body characteristic of righteous people, abstinent people who have cleansed themselves of the corruption of passions, become a pure receptacle of the Holy Spirit and have shaken off all earthliness and spontaneity. Christians! We must gradually thin out our bodies through abstinence and ascend to the eternal light: this is our destiny! Let us not cleave to food, drink, sweets, money and other earthly things. Let us strive to raise our nature, deified by the incarnation of the Son of God, to the level of angelic purity, angelic lightness, by the grace of God. Let us remember this, Christian brothers! Who are you? You say: I am an officer, a soldier, a student, a merchant, a tradesman, a peasant. You are first and foremost a Christian - always consider it that way. And then ask yourself: Am I Christ’s in spirit? Have I put on Christ? If not, then grieve, regret it, and repent, and change your heart, dispositions, aspirations, concerns, words, deeds, thoughts. If we are Christians and in this life we ​​have sincere 49 communication with Him in His Holy Mysteries, and with Him - and with all His saints, for they are in Him, and He is in them, then how should we live, what should our morals be on earth, how should we be meek, humble, kind, chaste, holy, self-controlled? How we are all deluded by appearances, neglecting the inner: we alienate and despise ordinary people for their simple, coarse, unartificial speech, simple appearance, for their simple, coarse clothes, while we respect secular, learned, rich, majestic, well-spoken people (although in reality, perhaps, they are proud and evil, and bound by various sins and passions), well dressed, majestically speaking, We are surprised, we show them obsequiousness. Oh, vanity! Oh, blindness! Oh peace! Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt. 5, 3]. Has not God chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom that He promised to those who love Him?.. Are not the rich oppressing you, and are they not dragging you into courts? Are they not the ones who dishonor the good name by which you are called? [James. 2, 5 – 7]. Is it not in simple hearts that God rests? Are not the poor rich in faith? Aren't scientists going against God? Are not the rich distinguished by covetousness, pride, contempt of the brethren, and hard-heartedness towards the poor? Isn’t it often hidden under rich clothing that a poor heart and the stinking rags of passions hide? Don’t those who live in rich houses, drowning in luxury, sweets, and amusements, most often completely forget about their Christian title, about their duties, about the heavenly abodes and live only for the here light? Therefore have faith in Jesus Christ our Lord of glory, regardless of personalities [Jas. 2, 1]. A person looks at his face, but the Lord - in addition to everything external: height, rank, nobility, learning, rank, title - looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). All the power is in the heart. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in my womb [Ps. 50, 12]. The earth is a collection of all untruths, insults, oppression, all passions, abominations. The Lord of glory was crucified and killed on it, His faithful servants endured countless untruths and torments on it - will we love the earth, will we cleave to the earth, will we cleave to its blessings, which most often plunge us into evil? Cursed is he who loves the earth; blessed is he who loves heavenly Jerusalem, the Kingdom of Heaven, where the Savior calls everyone. I thank and glorify my Lord Jesus Christ, who saved me during two grades (fourth and sixth) with a wondrous salvation. His right hand has the power of salvation 50 [Ps. 19, 7]. I thank and glorify our Most Holy, Most Pure, Most Blessed, Glorious Lady Theotokos Mary, as I, who fell with faith, hope and reverence before Her Tikhvin icon in my house, in the hall, saved me from flattery, violence and oppression by the enemy and quickly cleansed me, pacified me, eased me, enlightened my face. She is always with us, offering Mother to the all-good King, like a mother in the house. March 8th day 1866 I praise You, Master, for Your mercies on me, a sinner, which are innumerable, especially as You created me, redeemed me and the machinations of the enemy over me, constantly destroying me and to the glory of Your name, and turning me to my salvation and the knowledge of Your name. I glorify Your Holy Spirit, who teaches me Your knowledge, thanksgiving, praise, and petition. Adverbs - this outer shell of thought - are many different in the world, but they are all venerable as expressions of the thoughts of beings created in the image of God. A truly wise person considers everything external in a person to be of little importance, for example, incorrect, illiterate speech, a strange reprimand, a strange raising or lowering of the voice, a simple, rude appearance, poverty, sickness, etc., or the opposite of this, and pays all attention to the internal merits of a person. First of all, he sees the image of God in everyone, then a member of Christ, although weak and with the wounds of sins, sees a person similar to himself and equal to himself in human dignity; if they are father and mother, he sees them as father and mother and treats them with all respect, despite their infirmities, rudeness, lack of education, and weaknesses; if a brother, sister, acquaintance, friend, he looks at them in this way, covering their weaknesses and respecting in them the equality of their nature, honorable by Divine inspiration and deified by the incarnation of the Son of God, who took upon Himself all our weaknesses and sins, suffered and died for us. A truly wise man fears that, through his addiction to vanity and appearance, he himself may become worse than any rude, uneducated, poor commoner; gentleness, kindness, friendliness, simplicity, chastity, abstinence, non-covetousness, attribution to God and His saints. Educated, correct, artificial speech without a good heart, without a correct life is an insignificant thing for him, just like smart clothes, a beautiful face, wealth, and other appearance. Therefore, a truly wise Christian constantly tries to be humble and kind, patient and self-controlled. He leaves pride and malice to the devil, the culprit and leader of it, and to those who do not want to know his charms, as well as impatience and intemperance - to pampered people who live without labor, in great abundance, who do not want to raise their hands for ordinary everyday activities, who are accustomed to ride in chariots, on greyhound horses, go to the theater, bask in its boxes and burst into laughter, idle talk and vain arrogance, or skate on ice and waste time in vain, unworthy of a person running around. A truly wise Christian constantly pays attention to himself, his thoughts, the movements of his heart, delves deep into the word of God, which he reads very often, and constantly thinks about the great goodness, wisdom, omnipotence, holiness and justice of God who created him, about the unfortunate fall of the first parents and with them the entire human race, about the economy of our salvation, about the need to work out for each one his own salvation with fear and trembling [Phil. 2, 12], about the incarnation of the Son of God, His teaching, saving deeds and miracles, about His suffering and death for us, about His resurrection - the guarantee of our resurrection, His ascension into heaven and the deification of our nature and its seating on the throne of the Divine, about His glorious and terrible second coming and terrible Judgment, about the eternal bliss of the righteous and the eternal torment of sinners. But holy fools 51 Christians, devoted to this age, deceived by the short-term blessings and pleasures of this corruptible world, do not think about anything about this and think only about this life and its vain blessings, being in constant deception - deceiving and being seduced (2 Tim. 3:13), paying all attention to ranks, distinctions, outfits, shows, concerts, to rich tables laden with wines and snacks, to the rich, magnificent furnishings of the home, which today is a place of life and fun, and tomorrow - a home of death and crying. A true Christian constantly cares about his salvation, for he is aware of many sins and passions, sees in himself the incessant spiritual struggle of death with life, sees, feels in himself the horrors of spiritual death and is afraid that it will completely, through his negligence, through self-love, through pride and malice and addiction to earthly goods, overcome him; he is afraid that he might not die a completely sinful death, that he might not fall asleep spiritually in worldly and carnal pleasures and destroy his soul forever, that he might not exchange the here corruptible blessings for future, incorruptible, eternal blessings - and he prays to his Savior: do not let me fall asleep in a sinful death, but be merciful to me, having been crucified by will, and hastening me who lies in laziness raise me up and save me and bring me into Your eternal Kingdom 52. Your mother did not spare anything for you - and now you do not regret anything for her: peace, comfort her sinlessly with everything you can, what God has given and will give, what she loves, what and as much as she wants. Respect, caress her. Your father-in-law did not spare anything for you: he gave his daughter, his place, deserved by thirty-five years of service to the Church of God - and you do not spare anything for him. Your wife has completely given herself over to you, with her whole being, she spares nothing for you: neither strength, nor peace, nor earthly blessings - and you do not spare anything for her, do not spare; also for her sister and brothers, who are one with her, the branches of the same olive tree. Amen. For all people, especially Christians, members of Christ, do not spare anything: neither strength, nor peace, nor labor, nor property - for Christ, who exhausted Himself for us. Humble yourself in every possible way, caress your mother in every possible way with those names that tender childish and maternal love invented: mummy, mummy, mother and others. Also the father: daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy and others; The devil alone teaches to abhor these tender names of love. Speak, walk in simplicity of heart, do not hesitate, do not think about what you should not think about, otherwise you will fall into the devil’s snare. People have many gods, or idols of the heart, and all are almost different: one has an idol - an order, a skufya, a kamilavka, another has a theatre, an actor, an actress, another has a musical concert, a fourth has a famous secular writer or generally secular writers or a famous novel or drama, a fifth has sweet food and drink and tobacco, a sixth has clothes, another has a gold watch or good furniture, in a new way, - [in a word,] there are many idols among people; all these idols are crowding out the heart of the Lord God, who alone should be the God of our hearts. Chastity - that is, correct, based on the voice of conscience, the word of God, the commandments of God and the writings of the holy fathers, thinking about faith and Christian life and following this faith, God's word, the commandments of Christ and the life of Christ; He is chaste who does not allow freethinking, pride, malice, disrespect for parents, the Church, spiritual fathers, authorities and every person, envy, stinginess, greed for earthly goods, covetousness and love of money, laziness, passion for excess in everything or luxury to nest within him, who does not allow himself to overeat, get drunk on wine or anything else, and not only do, but also talk and think about fornication and so on and live according to the word of God and the teachings of the Church, practice humility constantly, be filled with goodness, courtesy and friendliness towards everyone; honors parents, the king, shepherds, rulers and mentors, every person, as created in the image of God, is merciful, helps those in need, despises earthly things, philosophizes above, lives in labor, observes moderation in everything: in clothing, in table, in words - and is chaste regarding the use and purpose of the reproductive organs, without perverting the laws of God, and so on. Thus, chastity is the totality of Christian virtues, it is a holistic, not perverted, true, in the spirit of the Gospel, wisdom of a Christian about faith and life and about all things or their expedient use. The enemy of chastity is the devil: he constantly seeks to violate or destroy the integrity of our wisdom in Christ, the integrity of our bodily nature and, having violated, he himself invades the soul robberly, for example, through a lustful thought and not immediately reflected, or through an instant feeling of anger at one’s neighbor because of something empty (or even important), through pride, envy, stinginess, through desire other people's goods and so on. Therefore, every hour, every minute, be sober, stay awake, pray to God, so that the enemy does not find a place in you - this poisonous, evil, intelligent wedge 53, corrupting human souls and bodies. Honor your mother with your heart's desire, willingly, with joy. The honor given to the mother relates to God, who created her and through her created you as a living and personal instrument and commanded you to honor her, may you be blessed and may you live long on earth [Ex. 20, 12]. Lord God, Father Almighty, Only Begotten Son and Holy Soul, I thank You, for you have heeded my prayer and taken away the self-willed savagery, ugliness, dishonor, torment of my pride and voluptuousness, the pride and contempt and malice of my heart towards my blood for their simplicity, for their sweetness (which I do not condemn in myself, which I myself love), for their rude speech. Oh, what an external, hypocrite, carnal I am! God! Everything is possible for You: change, transform, renew my heart! In this show Your immeasurable goodness, Your long-suffering, Your omnipotence, Your Divine wisdom! Behold, Lord, my heart is corrupt, wild, proud, self-loving, contemptuous, evil, envious, stingy! On my own and in myself, without Your grace, Lord, I am stinking feces, the stench of latrines, a rotting corpse, a accumulation of all uncleanness. Hey, amen. Treasure of good things, Lord, fill my soul with Your good things. Give me spiritual wisdom, but take away carnal wisdom from me. Pursue in yourself mercilessly lust, contempt, malice, envy, greed, stinginess as the birth of the devil. O wicked flesh, my wicked heart! In my neighbor I slyly and quickly see the slightest fault, often just an external shortcoming (rude speech), but in myself I don’t want to see internal, important, glaring shortcomings: pride, anger and others, or I myself sin - nothing, the other is a disaster; I’m voluptuous myself - nothing, my other one is a disaster. Coarse, uneducated speech in an uneducated person is a matter of little importance, like a coarse caftan on an uneducated person; Likewise, understand the same about rude manners: because of this, it is insane to despise a person, especially your own father, or mother, or sister, or brother, or in general a rude, uneducated person: they deserve all the more condescension, pity, compassion and affection. In one body... all the members do not have the same work [Rom. 12, 4]. From countless experiences you have seen the futility, harm and madness of irritation and anger at the beggars who suffer you every day. You have long known the words of the Apostle Paul that love is not irritated, long-suffering, merciful, does not boast, is not proud, and covers everything (1 Cor. 13:4-7); you know that in the person of the poor is Christ Himself (I am a co-creator [Matthew 25:40]), and hence let [you stop] being irritated and embittered with them, and with meekness and condescending love listen to their requests and give them alms; do not be upset that they ask you several times, remembering that you yourself are completely poor, dressed in the shameful rags of passions, you constantly ask the Lord for mercy and constantly receive it, that you yourself are almost always satiated with His gifts and have some excess. It's time for you to become wiser, it's time to be meek and humble. God! Help! And what need, what desire do you have to be burned in your heart by Gehenna, to enter into communication with the devil? With sweets, O priest, and you, a layman, live not with God - with sweets, and not with the souls of your neighbors, with money, and not with souls. You don’t eat fried fish during Lent, except on holidays, and then at lunch. Fish makes the heart coarse, fat, wooden, deaf or dull to prayer, to the word of God, to love one’s neighbor. And after the labors of confession, you can eat raw salmon with pepper, vinegar and Lafite to strengthen your strength. Who sincerely and diligently respects and honors us? Commoners. Whom do we despise more and consider almost nothing? Simple, uneducated people. What kind of anomaly is this? What nonsense? But sin is lawlessness, senselessness, absurdity: sin is sin, it is always equal to itself. Sweets - sweet food and drink - are the soap of the devil, with which he lures our souls to sin; money too, all earthly blessings - elegant clothes, elegant furniture, etc. All this disposes us towards earthly love, not heavenly love. And a Christian must be on earth a citizen of the mountain city of Jerusalem. I myself love sweets and don’t regret it when others make me sweet; When I do something nice for others, I regret it. What madness! I myself, when visiting, wish that they would treat me sweetly; When I have guests, and even the most dear ones, I don’t want them to be treated very sweetly or not always! What madness! O heart, addicted to sweets, greedy for sweets! We must crucify voluptuousness! From now on, consider sugar as nothing, as the most ordinary food, as a sting. God is an infinite sweetness - to love, not to love; To love people, not to love sweets, for all sweets are for people. Mother, after God, is the culprit of the sweetness of being and all the sweets that I taste in my being, spiritual and material. Therefore, it is insane to feel sorry for your mother for anything, any sweets, because she is the culprit of the greatest of sweets - the sweetness of being, and your mother, despite all her poverty, did not spare anything for you, did not spare, not even herself, she laid down her life for and for you, she wished for you every kind of good and happiness. In God, may the charm of all earthly blessings disappear for you; may your belly, your sweetness, be one God. Krastel (Church Slavic) – corncrake, quail. Dondezhe esma (Church Glav.) – we still exist. Ever (Church Glorious) – always, constantly. Simony is the sin of sacrilege, when sacred positions (and other church sacraments) are awarded not according to their merit, but out of self-interest, for money or other gifts. According to property (church glory) - according to dignity. Osset - to surround with nets, that is, to take possession of a person’s soul, to subjugate it to oneself. Abiding (Church Slavic) - from “abide” - to remain, to last forever. Shame (church glory) – a spectacle; shame, public, popular disgrace. “To bring to shame” - to reveal hidden sins for everyone to see. Creation (church glory) – re-creation, renewal. Wed: Rejoice, Chief of Mental Creation (Russian: Rejoice, Originator of Spiritual Revival) (Akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos, Ikos 10). Constructive (Church Glorious) – creating, creating. Reyu (Church Slavic) - pushing, pushing (“reya’ya” – rush). To be vain (Church Glav.) – to suffer a loss (futility), to lose everything, to be left with nothing. A rescript is a letter from a monarch to a subject expressing gratitude or announcing an award. Wise about yourself (Church Glav.) - those who dream highly of themselves, who imagine themselves. General troparion for the monks. Izhe (Church Glorious) - who, which. Inaccessible (church glory) – worthless, obscene. Vynu (Church Glav.) – always, at all times. Orlets is a special round rug on which the bishop stands during worship. This rug depicts a flying eagle and below it a city illuminated by the sun's rays, and below the city there are three springs. Milked (Church Slavic) – a child weaned from the mother’s breast. Ever-present (church-glorified) – eternal, never ending. Paki (Church Glorious) - again, again. That is, the closest, lively, personal communication. His saving right hand is strong (translated by P. Yungerov). Holy Fool (Church Slavic) – stupid, crazy. Prayer 2, St. Macarius the Great, from the sequence of morning prayers. Clever (church glory) – here: ethereal, non-material, spiritual. You might be interested in: