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Every person is each other’s neighbor: I am your neighbor, and you are my neighbor. When I demand help from you, then you must be my neighbor; and when you demand help from me, then I must be your neighbor. So the rich for the poor, the wise for the ignorant, the young and healthy for the old, the healthy for the weak, the strong for the defenseless, the free for the prisoner, the one who has a home for the stranger should be a neighbor. Thus, the neighbor who fell among the robbers and was wounded by them was the merciful Samaritan, mentioned in the Gospel, who took pity and, coming up, bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine, and so on (Luke 10:30-37). 1. It is not kinship, but need and poverty, not the closeness of blood and flesh, but the union of love and mercy that makes us close to each other. And so, with our help, we must be close where there is some kind of poverty - whether the one who requires help is a relative of ours in the flesh or a non-relative, an acquaintance or a stranger, loving us or not loving us, a fellow tribesman or a foreigner. So, when Satan, like a thief, exposed us and wounded us with the deadly wounds of iniquity, Christ, the Son of God, seeing our poverty, became our neighbor; having descended from heaven, he came to us; The Most High, the Great, greater than all honor, He bowed down to us, low, vile, dishonest, outcasts, despite the fact that we were foreigners, who voluntarily separated from Him, and were His enemies. Our poverty and damnation were the reason that He, the High One, humbled himself, God became Man, the Lord took the form of a servant, the Spirit was flesh, the Invisible was visible, the Intangible was tangible, the Strong was the weak, the Lord of glory accepted dishonor and reproach, the Judge of the living and the dead was condemned, the Just was numbered among the wicked, the Immortal died. So, having become our neighbors, he bound our scabs, pouring oil and wine, and thus healed us and, departing to heaven, handed us over to the hosts 7 - the apostles and their successors, the shepherds, so that they would be with us. This is how our good Lord taught us, His servants, to be neighbors to people like us. 2. This name - neighbor - is renounced by those who, seeing a person’s poverty, coldly or even shamelessly say: “What do I care about him?” And so they pass by, without providing him with any help, as did the mentioned priest and Levite, who, without offering a helping hand to the one who had fallen among the robbers and wounded, passed by. 3. Those who not only do not help the poor, but also inhumanly deprive them of their last and so add tears to tears, add misfortune to poverty, not only renounce this name - neighbor - but also become like thieves. Such are all robbers, rapists and bribe-taking judges, kidnappers, masters, who unnecessarily burden their peasants, withholding wages from a mercenary, stealing from a fire, and others like them. When we want to please God, we should not despise our neighbor and turn away from him, but have mercy on him and help him in his needs. Each of us must please our neighbor for good and edification (Rom. 15:2). Our neighbor requires advice from us - we will give advice when we can. He demands food from us - we will give food. He needs clothes - we'll dress him. He requires repose in our house - let us give him rest. He requires our service - let us serve him. In grief and sadness he requires consolation - we will console him as best we can, and so on. This is the will of God and Christian love demands this. Do not forget also to do good and be sociable, for such sacrifices are well pleasing to God (Heb. 13:16). Where there is peace, harmony and unanimity, there is the God of peace. All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (Rom. 8:14). How good and wonderful it is to have peace and harmony among one another, the holy prophet sang in a special psalm: this is what is good and what is pleasant - this is for brothers to live together (Ps. 133:1), - and further: for there the Lord commanded blessing and life forever (Ps. 132:3). 1. Everyone is one another's neighbors: bosses and their subordinates, shepherds and their people, parents and their children, husbands and their wives, gentlemen and their peasants, those who sell and buy, and every person to another person. I am yours, and you are my neighbor. Therefore, every Christian must give to another what God himself, and his faith, and love, and Christian office, and the written law of God, and his conscience itself requires of him. For it all comes down to one thing and strives for one completion, that is, towards our bliss. 2. If a Christian does not repay his neighbor what he owes, then he sins against his neighbor. When he sins before his neighbor, he also sins before God, since he violates God’s commandment. 3. A person, sinning before his neighbor, harms himself more than him. It harms him physically, but damages his soul. He causes physical and temporary harm to him, but eternal harm to his soul. He is deprived of bodily and visible good, and his soul is deprived of invisible good. He is seduced and deceived, but the devil himself has already been seduced and deceived. He laughs at him, or swears at him, or slanderes him, but he has already given himself up to ridicule, mockery and slander of the devil, and so on. The reason for this is the following. Since he violated the eternal and unchangeable law of God and thus, by sinning before his neighbor, he sinned before God the Lawgiver himself, about which the devil, as the Christian enemy, tries and rejoices. For this is all he strives to do, to plunge a Christian into sin, and thus to offend God, and to destroy the sinner, and to laugh at him. Look, Christian, where your sin against your neighbor leads you. A bee, having stung another, is said to die itself. So it is with a person: when he harms another, he harms himself more than him. Beware, man, of causing evil and offense to your neighbor, so as not to fall into greater evil yourself. 4. Conscience is similar to the law of God, as we see. What God's law forbids, conscience also forbids. For what the law of God convicts, conscience also convicts. The law of God frightens the sinner with the judgment of God, and the sinner hears the same in his conscience. The law shows and praises the innocence of an innocent person, and he feels the same in his conscience. By sinning against his conscience, a person also sins against the law of God, and by acting in accordance with and similar to his conscience, he acts in accordance with and similar to the law of God. Act, Christian, as your Christian conscience requires, and you will live according to God’s law. And that is why people call a good person conscientious, and an evil person unscrupulous. Conscience and the law of God are similar to the rule: “What you don’t want for yourself, don’t do to your neighbor.” Follow this rule, Christian, and you will not sin in your behavior with your neighbor. What it forbids, conscience and the law of God forbid. You don’t want anyone to offend you, take away your health and life, steal something from you; you don’t want anyone to deceive you in anything; You don’t want to sell a bad thing for a good one, one for another, a rotten one for a good one, or a cheap one for an expensive one; If you don’t want someone to slander you, condemn you, curse you, dishonor you, etc., don’t do this to your neighbor. You don’t want all this for yourself—and neither does he. Everything that is evil for you is also evil for your neighbor. When your neighbor does to you what you do not want, he does you harm, but when you do to your neighbor what he does not want, you do him harm. If you sin against this rule: “what you do not want for yourself,” and so on, you sin against your conscience and the law of God, and thus you are convicted by your conscience and the law of God as a lawbreaker. On the contrary, you want your neighbor to help you in your need: to feed you the hungry, to give you drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to welcome and calm the wanderer into your home, and so on - he also wants you to help him in his need. Do for him what you want for yourself. This is required by conscience and the law of God. And this is what the Lord says: in everything that you want people to do to you, do so to them, for this is the law and the prophets (Matthew 7:12). If you don’t do to your neighbor what you want for yourself, you sin against your conscience and the law of God. Hold on, Christian, to this rule: “Whatever you want for yourself, do it to your neighbor,” and you will live in accordance with your conscience and the law of God. Many Christians are deceived in this name - neighbor. Therefore, first of all, let us consider who our neighbor is, in order to know what love for one’s neighbor is. We are all neighbors to each other: those who are subject to power, and those who are subject to power are neighbors; shepherds to people and people to shepherds neighbors; parents are children, and children are neighbors to parents; masters are to slaves and peasants, and slaves and peasants are neighbors to masters; husbands are to wives, and wives are neighbors to husbands; neighbors who sell and buy among themselves; masters and mercenaries are neighbors to each other; judges and defendants are neighbors to each other. In a word, all people, relatives and non-relatives, acquaintances and strangers, fellow countrymen and foreigners, are each other's neighbors. And especially Christians, who are united by a single faith, a single Baptism, a single Word of God, the confession and invocation of a single God, a single hope of the resurrection of the dead and eternal life, especially, I say, Christians are neighbors and brothers to each other. For they pray to the one Heavenly Father and, like brethren, they say to Him among themselves: Our Father, who art in heaven, and so on. Your neighbor is presented to you as you are to yourself, when you are commanded to love him as yourself. - Do you love him like that? Are you not doing to him what you don’t want for yourself, and are you doing to him what you want for yourself? Do you rejoice with him who rejoices, and do you grieve with him who grieves? Do you have compassion for the suffering? Do you help the needy? Do you try to console the sad? Do you want to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and show other acts of mercy? And when you can, do you provide it? And when you can’t, do you have compassion for him from the heart? Pay attention to yourself. We are all neighbors to each other: the rich to the poor, the healthy to the weak, the wise to the foolish, the free to those imprisoned, those in power to those in power and those subject to power, parents to children and children to parents, shepherds to men and men to shepherds, masters to slaves and slaves to masters, husbands to wives and wives to husbands, teachers to students and students to teachers, old to young and young to old. In a word, every person owes love to his neighbor, and all Christians are called to serve each other through love (Rom. 13:8; Gal. 5:13), according to the apostolic word. Hotelier – hotel owner; in monasteries: a person assigned to treat guests and visitors.