Embodied housebuilding. Experience of Christian psychology

Spiritual heritage of Saint Theophan the Recluse With the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II The root of the Christian life is the incarnate economy. Without this economy, Christianity, Christian life and salvation are inconceivable. It was destined from the ages, and came into action in its own time, in the Person of the One from the Most Holy Trinity, Christ the Lord incarnate. From Him came Christian life and salvation, and through Him everything necessary for this was arranged and provided. All this is the embodied economy. The outstanding Russian church writer, St. Theophan the Recluse, saw the main goal of his theology in explaining to the Orthodox reader that “the root of Christian life is in the incarnate economy.” “Without this economy,” he wrote in one of the reissues of “Letters on Christian Life,” “Christian life and salvation are unthinkable. It was destined from the ages, and came into action in its own time, in the Person of the One from the Most Holy Trinity, Christ the Lord incarnate. From Him came Christian life and salvation, and through Him everything necessary for this was arranged and provided. All this is the embodied economy.” This volume of the Saint’s works constituted the third edition of his famous “Letters on Christian Life”, dedicated to the theme of house-building, and in connection with Christian psychology. In a letter to his old friend and publisher Nikolai Vasilyevich Elagin dated November 1, 1889, Feofan the Recluse characterizes his long-standing work as follows: “You take good care of yourself - to find or compile and publish Christian psychology. This, in my opinion, is what the program of this psychology should be. Depict the composition of human nature: spirit, soul and body - and present a systematic list of all the abilities and functions of each part - and then describe the state of both parts of nature and abilities: 1) in a natural state; 2) in a state under sin and; 3) in a state under grace. I presented a small experience of such psychology in “Letters on Christian Life” - third issue, letters XXI-XXV, and in the Addendums to them: Appendix B)... If you want, you can publish my essay - as it is, separately.” 120 years later, the publishing house “Rule of Faith” fulfills the blessing of the Saint and publishes this work, marked by the depth of thought, the richness of the language and the unsurpassed subtlety of the analysis of the ups and downs of the human soul. The editors have provided notes for words that are difficult to understand. Editorial text in angle brackets. For the first time, a fully disclosed and verified “Content” is published. Letters on the Christian Life Letters on Christian life, which explain the general basic concepts of Christian life and activity, namely: about a person acting in a Christian way; about the distinctive features of Christian action; about Christian virtue and sin, with their consequences It seems that you and those around you look at Christian life too superficially, and all your affairs, which seem to be correct, are on the same line. As for others, it is not for us to judge them, but as for ourselves, we must truly know whether the deed that seems good to us is truly good, and most importantly, is it Christian?! After all, a Christian good deed is not like any other deed. How a Christian is not like every man; for it receives into itself a special force from heaven, as if a special element in its composition: so true Christian deeds must have in their composition special principles, which do not exist in the deeds of other people. And Polish silver is also silver, but it is not at all the same as our Russian silver. So it is in moral matters: the Christian cause seems to be the same as all the others, but not the same: it has a different spirit. To make this clearer to you, I will depict to you a person acting in a Christian way, or I will indicate the characteristic features of Christian activity. A person capable and obligated to moral action must be in himself, in his mind, or must be aware of himself, his present position and his relationships. Whoever is beside himself, out of his mind, unaware of himself, his actions do not have moral dignity, such as the actions of the weak-minded, upset in mind, immersed in sleep, or who have not yet come to their senses. Such a consciousness, however, must not only be the same as the general natural consciousness in which a person distinguishes himself as himself in the circle where he exists; but there must also be a strictly moral consciousness, called self-consciousness, in which a person recognizes himself as a person obligated to purposeful activity, to responsive deeds that are subject to reporting. Why do children, who have not yet reached such self-awareness, apologize for everything bad and with their goodness show only hope, albeit still indecisive; just as, on the contrary, adults are subjected to strong reproach when they allow themselves to forget themselves and act in a manner that is not human and not according to their position and place. Applying the last property to a Christian, it should oblige him to a special kind of self-consciousness, namely Christian. That it must be special in him is evident from the fact that in rebirth he became different - new, not in thought, but in deed; why he had to be reborn in self-consciousness. What should be part of this self-consciousness is evident from how he entered the font of Baptism or repentance and how he came out of it, or what he became in it. He perished, and now he is delivered; he was wounded, and now he is healed; was rejected, and now accepted into sonship; I was self-willed, but now I have bound myself by obedience, by vow. All this must resonate in his heart and together constitute one thing that he feels to be in Christ Jesus. In a feeling of healing and freedom, he must recognize himself as Christ’s servant, work and labor as if on His behalf, before Him and for His sake, to the point of saying with the Apostle: “I live not for anyone, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). This Christian self-consciousness was so strong in many of the leading Christians that to all the questions of the tormentors they only answered: I am a servant of Christ, I am a servant of Christ. And here is the first feature of Christian morality, or the first property of a person acting in a Christian way! A slave, recognizing himself as a slave, acts in relation to his master as a slave; the son, recognizing himself as a son, acts before his father as a son; so the loss of this consciousness is at the same time the beginning of their deviation from their order. And a Christian, conscious of himself as a servant of Christ, must set out to work. With the extinguishing of this consciousness, his actions, if they do not become bad, then lose to a greater or lesser extent their Christian character and enter the category of generally moral matters. Meanwhile, a Christian is not only a generally moral person, but a moral person in a Christian way. If, therefore, from such self-awareness all the activities of a Christian receive their character, then its light should burn in his soul, not extinguishing, not diminishing, but increasing, to the very end of his life. That is why His Eminence Tikhon 1 wrote this rule for his entire flock! - “A brief admonition that every Christian from infancy to death should always keep in mind. Remember: 1) that at Holy Baptism, through your father and godmother, you renounced Satan and all his works, and all his ministry, and all his pride, and this you did by threefold renunciation... 2) having renounced Satan, you promised to serve Christ the Son of God three times, with the Father and His Holy Spirit. And so, at Baptism, you signed up for the service of Christ and swore allegiance, just as soldiers and others sign up for the service of the king of the earth and swear allegiance... ...keep this in mind, instill it in your family, and especially in your little children, so that, remembering your promise, they become accustomed to piety from a young age” 2 . Here's the first one! And what else is needed—more on that later. You already know how a Christian looks at himself when he sets out to do his work. Now I will tell you how he deals with his very affairs. Despite the fact that a person recognizes himself as a person, and a moral person, not everything that comes from him and in him is due to him as a person, or is moral. Moral actions are imprinted with special properties. Firstly, they are inevitably conscious actions: for they come from a person who is conscious of himself, and are due to him. How can something be owed to him when he doesn’t even know about it? For example, circulation of blood, nutrition and rotation of the body, as well as the usual movements of arms, legs and other members. Not every conscious action, however, should be attributed to a person as a person. There are many actions in him, which, although he is conscious of them, nevertheless occur completely without his knowledge and are not carried out by him himself. These are all the natural movements of his forces and needs. So, self-activity must also be added to consciousness, that is, self-initiation, self-election. In order for a certain deed to be attributed to a person, it is necessary that he himself began and carried out it intentionally: moreover, since this person recognizes himself as moral, the character of morality transfers to the deed itself. This character can also transfer to those actions that do not occur according to his will, but not otherwise than when he gives his free consent to them, for in this case he assimilates them to himself - chooses them, makes them his own. From this moment on, they begin to be owed to him, both by themselves and by others. So, anger will be born by itself; but when a person agreed to it, then he himself begins to get angry. On the contrary, if someone, feeling an involuntary movement of anger or other passion, does not agree to it, but strains to overcome them, then they are not imputed to him, although they are in him. This act of consent is very significant in life and, one might say, is just as, if not more, comprehensive as self-initiation. For his share is due not only what happens within us or what is produced by us, but also by others - independently of us. And someone else’s business, in which our consent has somehow interfered, is also due to us. It follows from this that everything is imputed to a person’s person and is moral, what he consciously chose and to which he consciously agreed. It is obvious after this that for a person, in order to maintain the character of a moral person, it is necessary to be the master of his affairs, to dispose of them according to his own discretion and his goal, and not to be led by the flow of external circumstances or his internal spiritual movements. But what a mixed and pitiful picture will a person’s moral life present if we reconsider it from this point of view?! How much is done in ignorance, oblivion and inattention? This is the part lost to good morality, although not to judgment. How much is humiliated or also stolen by such cases in which either consciousness is subjected to violence, such as in anger and fear, or self-activity is undermined, as in passions and sinful habits? Meanwhile, external events that encourage free initiatives, and internal movements that entice consent, do not always agree with the law and are always almost disordered. Why is human moral activity meager, mixed and even ugly? The reason for this is direct in the loss of moral strength. This power is resurrected or restored in a Christian by the grace of God. Why, entering the field of moral activity, a Christian, with the consciousness of his duty to work for Christ, has one exclusive goal of walking in His will: he made a vow to this end, he is burning with zeal, and most importantly, he accepted power. Standing on a solid foundation, he commands his affairs and directs them all towards the indicated goal, allowing no deviation. This is exactly how he acts! 1) From the first time he learns for himself the requirements of the Christian law - by reflection, reading, hearing, conversation - as much as he can and as much as he can; 2) builds, in accordance with this knowledge, the entire order of his life - both external and internal - at least in its general and main parts; and: 3) finally, he rules himself and his affairs according to his plan, without being carried away, as has been said, by either the external course of related events or the internal movements of his nature. This is required both by the desire of the heart, which has decided to work for the Lord in all paths of life, and by that property of grace, by which a person reigns in himself and becomes his complete owner and manager. The Lord commands nothing else when He commands the Apostles to be sober, to stay awake, and to pay attention to themselves. For this obviously commands conscious and prudent management of one’s activities, personal management, although in arbitrary subordination to the will of God. What else does the Apostle instill when he teaches us to build a spiritual church, a sanctuary for God? For this means arranging your life according to a known plan, leading it harmoniously, in gradual elevation and improvement, in the full conviction that it is being led according to a heavenly - Divine blueprint, which is the Christian law, depicted in the word of God by the Lord Himself and the Apostles. Here's the second feature! There's another one... wait! It has been said that a Christian is the director of all his activities. Now look at how he conducts each of his business separately... First I will tell you how each business is done in general, and then how the Christian business is built. External action is the fruit of internal action. Before it is revealed, it must take place within. Where a person’s moral activity is given over to a mechanical correlation of his forces, the method of internal formation of a moral matter is explained by various combinations of the actions of reason and will or degrees of desire and turns of reasoning. Here reason and will take several turns and, accordingly, change in activity. First: 1) they turn to the subject or matter; and here the understanding sees it and presents it to consciousness in illusory or true perfection, for which the will finds it pleasing and would desire it; then, when the mind declares receiving this object or doing the deed possible both for the strength and for the person’s personality, the will really desires it and is actively ready to strive for it. Then: 2) they move from the subject to the means. Here it is a matter of reason - consultation, review of means, comparison of good with better and indication of more adaptive ones, which are immediately chosen by will. This election, combined with active desire, gives rise to determination. Further: 3) what is planned must be carried out: the mind collects various ideas to excite and strengthen the will; the will acts, setting in motion the lower forces subordinate to it; 4) finally, the deed is done: the intellect acquires from it experimental, practical knowledge regarding this deed, while the will enjoys, calming down in achieving the goal, or experimentally tastes the benefit from it. So naturally a person goes from the first thought about an object to the final enjoyment of it, after completing the deed. But this is a story, or better yet, a form without content. What content should a Christian put into this form, or what specific way of doing things is characteristic of him? Exactly, and he has these four turns, now to the object, now to the motives, now to the means, now to what should happen after the deeds are completed; but all this has a special meaning for him, a special spirit and property, in accordance with his main mood and goal. Namely: a Christian is in communion with God and is zealous to remain in this communion by actively fulfilling His will, by the power of grace, in a sense of slavery to the Lord Jesus Christ. It follows that all his deeds should, as it were, come from God and return to God. This general law is expressed in the following course of carrying out truly Christian deeds: having realized the legality of a certain action, or, what is the same, the will of God for it, and having felt the inner obligation to carry it out, a Christian must incline both his will and his heart to it; then, after asking for God's help in prayer, with a feeling of strength from God, complete it, always, however, humbly recognizing the imperfection and insignificance of both this action and all others, and finally resting only in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is a universal program for every Christian cause: 1) consciousness of the will of God in it; 2) inclination of one’s will and heart to it; 3) prayer for help to accomplish it; and: 4) not seeing him and his other good deeds. Let me explain each of these features to you in a little more detail. 1) Consciousness of the will of God in the work undertaken A Christian must carry out all his deeds with a clear consciousness of their legality or that it is the will of God for them, so as to walk in the light, as a son of light and day, and not night and darkness (cf.: 1 Thessalonians 5:5). He is obligated to this by: a) the essence of the vow in Baptism. If, for the sake of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, he surrendered himself entirely to God, then at the same time he surrendered to Him all his affairs, internal and external. Why should he not allow something to come into his life that he was not sure would be pleasing to God and the Lord? He was created in Christ Jesus for good works, that he might walk in them (cf. Eph. 2:10); b) without this, he cannot be confident in Divine favor towards himself, cannot boldly stand before the face of God and cheerfully look at the sky (cf. Job 22:26): which, in fact, reveals that he is standing at his last goal or is in communion with God. For it is not otherwise than when our heart does not blind us, the imam’s boldness towards God (1 John 3:21), teaches the Apostle John. Why: c) it is a direct commandment for him not to be meaningless, but to understand what is the will of God (cf. Eph. 5:17). So, the constant rule of his activity should be: in every action that comes from your consciousness and should be due to you, hasten to recognize the will of God and do not proceed to perform it otherwise than by an exact determination that it is not only not contrary to the will of God, but is also pleasing to Him; Seal actions not determined by law with your own will, so that in this way your whole life will be according to God. At the same time, everyone is ready to ask how to find out the will of God in particular cases? The means to find out the will of God for this or that matter, the first and most important thing, is conscience, enlightened by the word of God and guided by the grace of God. For that is what it is designed for; this is her essential business. He who deals with his conscience in good faith, does not contradict it, does not distort or drown it out with his talk, can rarely say: I don’t understand what to do. If he really encounters any bewilderment, then he immediately solves it, as it should be solved - self-sacrifice and love. Great help to the conscience comes from transforming or organizing one’s life according to a conscious and understood law, as was said before. For, if someone really understood all the actions obligatory for himself as a Christian, understood the spirit of a true Christian life, and then, according to this, he established all his behavior in his place, at his time, on his own behalf, and put the stamp of the will of God on everything; if, at the same time, everything unusual for a Christian, which he found in his internal and external life, was changed and rebuilt by him, with prudence, however, and without pleasing and without the slightest indulgence to selfishness and passions, and especially to the corrupted customs of the age; if all this is done as it should, then every action after this will no longer be anything other than an expression of the will of God. Further, real life, in the true Christian spirit, although not without mistakes, always intelligible, will enrich you with experiences and practical reason. In other cases, to the one who has put it on his heart to walk in the will of God, the Holy Spirit living in him, at the hour of action, will reveal how to act according to the Lord’s promise to the Apostles (see: Luke 12:12). Only ill-intention drives away this leader. But whoever is a man, fear the Lord, He will lay down the law for him according to his will (cf. Ps. 24:12), sings David. Finally, everyone has a spiritual father, and the law commands us to obey and turn to him for advice. As he says, do so; and you will act according to the will of God. Such activity throughout a Christian’s life imparts a character of prudent attention to one’s internal and external behavior and, at the same time, careful fearfulness not to do anything against the will of God. In general, courage is considered by all the Holy Fathers to be the beginning of deviation from the right path. Why do they advise maintaining a constant fearful concern for good. (There is false fussiness - scrupulosa 3; that is not the point; it is a disease of conscience.) In this regard, all people are mainly divided into three classes: some always and in everything act according to their own will, not constrained by any rules, they follow, that is, the broad path; others constrain themselves in everything by the will of God and follow a narrow path; still others want to maintain an impossible middle ground: they are neither warm nor cold. Looking at human affairs from this point of view, we must conclude that they sin: a) all those who act generally without due attention to themselves and the main goal of their life - or act as it happens, according to the routine and flow of circumstances. This exposes their indifference and even contempt for the will of God - negligence; b) who act without being sure of the correctness of their actions, with a dark and uncertain consciousness of the conformity or inconsistency of actions with the will of God. For everything that is not of faith, says the Apostle, is sin (Rom. 14:23); c) which act when in doubt; who, that is, while their consciousness oscillates between one side and the other, decide to take action and carry it out under this continuous oscillation. Such a conscience, being weak in nature, becomes defiled (cf.: 1 Cor. 8:7); d) as well as those who allow themselves to act rashly, in confusion of spirit, while being carried away by some new and striking thought, or by some feeling, especially passion. They usually consider themselves to be right, for example, those who are angry, jealous beyond reason; often their side actually turns out to be right. But, besides the fact that this rightness is an accident, their main thing is not pleasing God, but themselves, their passions and their selfishness; e) especially those who, with various pretexts, want to dissuade themselves from fulfilling the conscious will of God and with various ideas dissuade themselves even in the very legality of a lawful matter. Such people obviously act against conscience - and their deeds are an obvious crime. Enough for now! I will send the next points later. I would like you to pay closer attention to what you are reading. These are: 2) On the inclination of the will to obligatory deeds - the second method when a Christian performs his deeds I remind you of this because few people consider this point to be significant, when in fact it is not insignificant. Once the legality of an action, or God’s will for it, is known, a Christian must immediately incline his will to it and dispose his heart. The first because she is not always submissive, the second because otherwise a matter without heartfelt participation will be a soulless matter. It is fair that one who has made a vow to please God in everything should feel a greater or lesser readiness to fulfill every known His will: but such easy mobility for good, free, not prohibited, is always a spiritual good, acquired through long labor and many deeds. Usually, the will has its own dispositions, inclinations and passions, which do not allow it to willingly rush to do good and distract it in the opposite direction; sometimes she is in a state of incomprehensible willfulness, when, despite all the force of obligation, she does not want to do what she should. Therefore, there is a need to force yourself to do good, as if by force to attract and incline towards it, to persuade and convince your soul. It is obvious that here much, if not everything, depends on the perception of the law in the heart, from which a sense of obligation or consciousness of the moral necessity of action is born. Just as in general the feeling of the heart underlies the actions of the will, so in moral life the feeling of obligation constitutes the strongest point of support for inclining the will to action. A person in whom, through the action of Divine grace in Baptism or repentance, is imprinted a fiery zeal for pleasing God, or unswervingly walking in the will of God, who, therefore, thirsts for the will of God, such a person immediately acts as soon as he realizes the obligation, despite any obstacles. Therefore, if, on the one hand, this zeal never grew cold and was not discouraged 5, and if, on the other hand, the moral feeling always possessed such perfection that it vividly and truly felt the power of the obligation of actions and was so sensitive to the will of God that the smallest traces of it were reflected in it: then with these two forces it would be possible to replace all instructions in morality and all guides to piety, since this is happened to some ascetics. But since jealousy actually occurs in a person in different degrees of increase and decrease, and the moral feeling, according to its natural properties, is lively and exciting for one, dull and slow for another, more accustomed to some things, to others to other things, sometimes it is true, sometimes it is not true (for there is also a false moral taste), - and in general a person encounters great unevenness and wrongness in his heart (why he prays: renew the spirit of rights). Ps. 50, 12 ]), according to which it is either unlawfully sensitive to one, or unlawfully cold to another: then in many cases it is necessary for him to forcefully, as it were, impose an obligation on himself and introduce this feeling into the heart. Such control of the heart and will is carried out through impulses, or this kind of thoughts and truths, which have the power to boil the heart - to make it soft and accommodating. It is not difficult to determine where to find such thoughts. What is the relationship between freedom and law? Mainly by the feeling of dependence on God (see “On the beginning of the Christian life” 7). Consequently, all thoughts that strike this feeling of dependence and set it in motion must stand among the impulses of the will. What exactly these thoughts are can be seen from the path of conversion of a Christian. Since this conversion, beginning with a feeling of dependence, is resurrected in repentance and, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, sealed with vows in Baptism, then these very truths and others touched by them should have the power to support, purify and renew extinguishing zeal and together incline the will to good. So: a) bring to mind the vows of Baptism and remember the blessings given to you with this: justification, rebirth, sonship with God and inheritance to Christ. Do not stain this clean garment; b) remember the economy of salvation, how the Only Begotten Son of God came to earth for your sake, became incarnate, suffered, died, was resurrected, ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father and there intercedes for you; and beware of being ungrateful. Remember also how the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and, through them, having established the Holy Church, now abides in it to lead believers to Christ - and how He was communicated to you in the Sacraments; and beware of offending Him with uncleanness; c) remember your nobility, with which you are honored in creation and rebirth, and then the vileness of sin and the holiness of virtue, how it distorts, and this sanctifies your inner being; d) place yourself mentally before the eyes of God, your Creator and Provider, Who holds you in His right hand and gives you everything that is in you and that you possess, Who is everywhere, sees everything to your innermost thoughts, Who, as much as His goodness and goodness constantly reveals, is just as righteous and ready to reveal His truth at every moment; e) remember the last thing: death, inevitable, but unknown; unfeigned judgment for every word, deed and thought; hell and eternal torment, without measure or end; The Kingdom of Heaven with indescribable sweets. These thoughts, like some kind of atmosphere, must contain the soul, and zeal for pleasing God will not go out. At least, in the right case, each of them will strongly evoke it and restore it to its proper strength. Just try to bring these thoughts to feeling, and not keep them in the form of cold ideas; and for this purpose, turn them before your heart in the way that they can influence it, collect everything that is striking, move from one to another and do not leave work until you overcome yourself and restore the proper order and proper subordination within. It is impossible that such conscientious work will not bear fruit. There is, however, an all-conquering thought, special to each soul, which instantly overcomes the stubbornness of the will. Try to find it so that you can steer it like a rudder, the ship of your soul. Particularly strong in this case is the attention to the presenting 9th special case. Whoever hastily clarifies for himself its connection with the main law, on the one hand, and the inevitability of action, on the other, puts himself, as it were, in some kind of cramped conditions, which is why, out of necessity, he becomes inspired and strains his strength. To also be able to find a side in a matter that is flattering to the heart, not with sin, but innocently, to develop a taste for it is one of the wise orders of a person in relation to himself. In general, you need to convince yourself. However, just as in external governments they sometimes act by persuasion, and often by power, forcing them to do something else and against their will, so it is possible for a person to use, in addition to the first, the last resort for his will and heart. Whether you like it or not, pleasant or unpleasant, do it. This is the will of God; There is no other way. Our speech has now spread a little. The rest is short; you will receive in a short time. I hesitated a little. I hasten to outline for you the last two methods that a Christian uses in doing his deeds, namely: prayer and blindness, not noticing his good deeds. 3) Prayer as part of Christian deeds There is prayer - one of the duties of a Christian to God, and there is prayer as part of true Christian deeds. The arrogant person relies on himself for everything. A true Christian expects everything from God, which is why he begins, continues and ends every task with prayer. And his whole life in general is primarily a life of prayer, as the Apostle commands: pray without ceasing... With all prayer and supplication, praying at all times in the spirit (cf.: 1 Thessalonians 5:17; Eph. 6:18). At the same time, he prays to the Lord: a) for admonition, so that with the spirit of His wisdom he might instill what is pleasing to Him in a variety of circumstances (see: James 1:5), as the prophet David prayed to Him: O Lord, tell me Your ways and teach me Your paths. Guide me into Your truth and teach me (cf. Ps. 24:4-5); b) prays to strengthen his weak strength, so that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ will give him, according to the riches of His glory, strength to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man (cf. Eph. 3:16). Having kindled with prayer his zeal for pleasing God, he feels how he can do everything in Christ who strengthens him, and in the feeling of this strength he reliably performs good deeds; c) through prayer, finally, he sacrifices himself and his deeds to God, humbly begging him to cover with his mercy both this matter and all other deeds and his whole life. Just as at first he devoted himself entirely to the Lord, so afterward he offers every thought, word and deed to Him as a sacrifice of righteousness (Ps. 4:6), pleasing to Him (see: Heb. 13:16). Thus, prayer during a good deed shows that this is a truly Christian deed; work without prayer is not Christian. “It is impossible for there to be a Christian life without prayer,” says Chrysostom 10 (in His Grace Tikhon 11). “The head of all good diligence and the summit of good deeds is always remaining in prayer, through which we acquire other virtues” 12, teaches Saint Macarius... 13 By applying prayer to good deeds and forcing oneself to do them, despite the resistance of the heart, according to Saint Macarius, a Christian soon rises to the heights of virtues and begins to do the commandments of God without any labor, with desire and pleasure 14 . The last essential property and, as it were, the conclusion of Christian deeds is not seeing them, as if not noticing them. A Christian, having created everything, says that he is an unbreakable servant (cf. Luke 17:10); why he places the final hope of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. “This is the foundation of Christianity that even if someone has accomplished all the works of righteousness, he should not dwell on them, hope for them and think that he has already done a lot” 15. “Therefore, having tasted Christianity, think that you have not yet touched it, and this should not be superficial, but, as it were, planted and forever established in your thoughts” 16. The possibility of such an arrangement is explained by a living consciousness of the power of God in oneself or how it accomplishes good deeds in us. If God works in us, both as we want and as we do (cf. Phil. 2:13); then what should we see as our own in ourselves or what should we focus our attention on? Therefore, a God-loving soul, righteously attributing all its deeds to God, constantly feels insignificant and despicable 17. On the other hand, a soul that is truly God-loving and Christ-loving, although it creates numerous virtues, behaves as if it had not created anything for the sake of an insatiable desire for the Lord. She never imagines herself to be something; but the more spiritually rich he becomes, the more insufficient he considers himself, inflamed with a spiritual desire insatiable for the heavenly Bridegroom, as the Scripture says: those who eat Me will still hunger and those who drink Me will thirst (cf.: Sir. 24:23) 18. The saving fruit of this is that: a) a Christian incessantly begins only to live like a Christian, considering everything that has passed as nothing, as the Apostle Paul testifies to himself: I do not think that I have attained to myself: but forgetting what is behind, but reaching out to what is before, I pursue with zeal the honor of the highest calling of God in Christ Jesus. - I have not already attained, or have already accomplished: I pursue even though I will comprehend about him and will be comprehended from Christ Jesus (cf. Phil. 3:12-14); b) Christian life therefore means continuous repentance. Every moment he raises a repentant appeal to God for mercy and purification of his thoughts, movements of his heart, or something else unnoticed. Thus, indeed, every Christian work comes from God and returns to God. If at any of the points shown the soul appropriates something to itself, it will hinder the formation of a truly good deed. From this will come the ghost of good. Acting as shown, a Christian continually surrenders himself to God in everything and, therefore, is continually in communion with Him. Judging by everything written down, you can be convinced that the Christian work is not the same as any other - for there are special kinds of turns of consciousness, mind, will and heart, which imprint the actions of a Christian with a special character. A Christian has his own state of personality, his own attitude to activity and his own order of doing each thing, as you see. Take heed of this and judge yourself by this. But others are judged by God. I was surprised that you write, as if I wrote something completely different from what you expected. It is true that in previous letters the speech concerned more the active person, and not the affairs themselves; but doesn’t the character of the character carry over to the matter itself and put its stamp on it? And I did not consider it necessary to tell you how to determine the moral worth of actions, believing that you know this well yourself. But, okay: I’ll write about this as much as I can. Just bear with me if my writing seems a little dry to you. If you look at things abstractly, then their dignity is not difficult to determine. The deed according to the commandment is good; a deed that is contrary to the commandment is bad. For the commandment is holy. It is said: do alms; almsgiving is a good deed, and vice versa. But when we consider deeds that were actually done by us or by someone else, then, in addition to this consistency or inconsistency with the commandments, we must pay attention to other aspects, such as the goal and circumstances. In this regard, it has long been accepted that the moral dignity of an action is determined by its: I) subject, II) purpose and: III) circumstances. I) Each of our actions, internal and external, that is, our thoughts, feelings, desires, words, movements, actions, have their own subject. Most of these objects have been elevated to an unchangeable rule and law, so it is impossible not to desire and not to do them. They make up the circle: 1) our responsibilities. Several items are offered in the form of: 2) tips. Finally, not a small number remains without definition of their meaning. They are neither good nor evil in themselves; because: 3) indifferent, are considered permissible to everyone. The commandments or duties constitute the foundation, structure and solidity of the moral kingdom; advice is above the law (see: John Chrysostom); what is permissible is beneath him. A task that is commanded and, therefore, obligatory, differs from advice and action that is indifferent - it is distinguished by an internal or conscientious compulsion to do it. One can decisively say that what is such an internal compulsion to do, or regarding what does a person recognize himself as being in moral necessity, that is, his duty. For such consciousness is the action of conscience; conscience must be resolutely obeyed, and to the extent that it binds. On the contrary, what is offered in the form of advice as the best is only pleasant, but not boring; in relation to actions that are indifferent, our moral feeling is indifferent, that is, it does not say anything about them: act as you want. But it is more accurate and reliable to distinguish them according to the instructions of the revealed word of God, which is a code of spiritual codes: a) what is commanded or indicated there as a law, our conscience must unquestioningly bind itself or accept it as an obligation; b) what is indicated there as advice must be taken as advice; c) what is left without definition of meaning should be considered as such. 1) The general basis of moral necessity inherent in commandments or duties is the consciousness of God’s will on them. Just as in the external world no one can resist this will, so in the internal, moral world there must be silent obedience to the Divine will. Conscience by nature is combined with the will of God; therefore, as soon as it is indicated to her that this and that is the will of God, she is immediately inclined to do this, stands for this and forces us not to violate it. However, when placing this or that matter as a duty, the Lord did not want to limit himself to His will alone or to one title of 19 omnipotence, but to each of these matters He deigned to attach other, immediate grounds, directly arising from the properties of the matter itself and its connections. These immediate foundations are the means through which the will of God is impressed in our mind and heart to the extent appropriate to the matter. Therefore, in interpreting your duties, you can, of course, limit yourself to the fact that this or that matter is the will of God; but it is more decent or more consistent with our nature to seek these immediate foundations: for through them the will of God binds us; on the other hand, from the point of view of the will of God, all duties seem equal; meanwhile they have unequal importance, which can only be recognized through the closest basis. Judging by these immediate reasons, and partly by other connections, our duties, or the deeds that we feel internally compelled to do, receive different shades. The first of these shades is determined by their origin. In this regard, there are conscientious responsibilities, such suggestions for which conscience alone is sufficient, even if there were no outside instructions. They are called natural because we are born with them. There are positive responsibilities, such as are subsequently imposed on the conscience and become part of its own responsibilities. The strength of these obligations depends on the fact that they are perceived by conscience itself as a law and, one might say, from that moment on they cease to be purely positive. True, some of them are only natural, conscientious developments; However, from this, even those who have nothing, so to speak, to take root in their conscience, do not lose anything from their inherent strength, and others even become above all natural ones. Of the positive ones - some are Divine, and moreover, immediate, such as the Revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy Apostles, contained in the word of God and in the sacred Tradition of the Church, and Divine mediocre, such as the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Others are human, and, moreover, church and civil. The latter come from the sovereign, and the former from the church hierarchy. The obligation to both follows from the Divine origin of the authorities and our conscientious submission to them. He who is devoted to the Church and the throne accepts everything that comes from them with reverence and does what they please, that is, according to the strength of the obligation that they impose. A special class of rules in this regard is made up of customs, both ecclesiastical and civil. They attract us so pleasantly, our spirit is so at peace in them, with a sense of security, protection and age-old immutability. Customs in general should be sacred to us: the firmness of our life depends on them; he who is cut off from them blows 20 like the wind. But in fact, they are not included among the legal and mandatory rules unconditionally: precisely for this purpose it is necessary that they agree in everything with the moral law and the spirit of Christianity: the stronger their actions, the more dangerous the error in this regard. The memory of ancestors obliges us to silent submission. Experience shows that violation of such customs is always closely related to the corruption of morals. That all the corrupt customs of the age are excluded from this is self-evident. But in general, one must strictly remember the difference between custom and commandment, or law. Because he who is corrupted in heart and mind almost always begins with contempt for customs, and then, out of ignorance, although not without desire, he begins to regard everything as custom, that is, both faith and morality, and also begins to despise them. So you need to know this border. What's around, you can still lay your hand on it; but don’t touch your heart, your moral life, your duties. The second shade is put on the commandments or duties by their internal meaning, property or content. In this regard, there are unconditional duties that a Christian person must fulfill, no matter who he is and no matter the circumstances; and there are conditional ones, mandatory only under certain conditions. For example, the responsibilities of a father lie only with a married man, and, moreover, with children. The former flow from the essence of man and the Christian, the latter from his condition and position in the world. One should not, however, think that conditional duties are insignificant. For the one to whom they go, they have the power of unconditional, for they are nothing more than their closest application to his life. He cannot fulfill the former except through the latter. These stand in the foreground, and those are hidden under them; therefore, even if he did not have the former in mind, he fulfills them through the latter. Both are main, source, radical, and subordinate, means. The former must be placed deeper in the heart, the latter held as if in the hands. However, the obligation to the latter is just as strong as to the former, which is why there is a law that whoever is obliged to some action is also obliged to the means that necessarily lead to it. There is, for example, the duty to cleanse the heart of passions; one must consider certain feats a duty, for otherwise it is impossible to fulfill that duty. The most remarkable division of duties in this regard is into the duties of justice and love, or benevolence. This is the relationship God has established between people, so that one does not violate the freedom and rights of another and repays him what he owes him. This is required, as they say, by justice. Whoever does this is right; whoever violates is wrong. He can be brought to court and demand satisfaction. Requirements of this kind are duties of justice. They constitute the outer fence of a virtuous life. He who violates the law of justice steps outside the realm of virtue; but whoever fulfills them, for the completeness of virtue, must also apply deeds of love both to people and to truth itself. Love is not limited to justice alone or to what truth requires, but willingly does more than that, out of inner goodwill alone. Whoever does this is morally good; but no one can be forced to do this. Someone who, for example, has borrowed money from another and does not want to give it back, can be forced to give it back by the authorities; but whoever does not help someone in need cannot be forced to do so. A true Christian willingly does good to others, although there is no external compulsion associated with this, and acts fairly in relation to others, not out of fear of punishment, but out of love for truth and out of the fear of God. There is also a difference in duties: some prescribe what should be done, while others indicate what should not be done. Turn away from evil and do good (Ps. 33:15), says the Prophet. There are also responsibilities to God, there are responsibilities to our neighbors and to ourselves. Love the Lord with all your heart, and your neighbor as you love yourself (cf. Matt. 22:37, 39), says the Lord. The third shade of responsibilities is a consequence of the first two and consists of varying degrees of their importance. From the enumeration of duties shown, it is already obvious that not all duties have the same force of obligation for us, and some are more coercive, others are less coercive. This is confirmed by conscience, and by the Savior, when he rebuked the Jews for abandoning the law 21, which should have been done, and clinging exclusively to what could only be left unabated (see: Matt. 23:23). Knowing the strength and relationship of different duties is very important in moral life. This is already required by the harmony of morality - so that just as on the outside, as part of the law, everything stands in its place, so on the inside, in our hearts, everything has its corresponding weight. This harmony in the heart has been lost: why should we pray that the Lord would renew the right spirit in us. But this is especially necessary so that, as the Lord denounced the Jews, they do not strain out 22 mosquitoes while devouring camels. By attaching too much importance to the unimportant, you can obscure the most important and thereby turn 23 God's order into yourself. In fact, it would be up to our conscience to determine the importance of duties, and then one rule would decide everything: the more compelling the demand of conscience, the more important the duty; but, due to the infidelity of our conscience in its current state, such a rule in very many and very important cases cannot give the right decision, for we often bribe ourselves with passions. Therefore, it is necessary to set some external standard to measure the importance of duties. If we judge abstractly, then it is obvious that: a) the more important the obligation, the closer it is to the essential, or the more the moral order is perverted by the violation of any obligation, the more important it is. This general rule, in application to the case, is reinforced by the following two; b) the more motivation there is for a well-known cause, the more important it is. For if through these motives or reasons the will of God comes to us; where there are more of them, the will of God acts on us more urgently. For example, respect for parents is more obligatory than respect for anyone else; c) the more significant the subject of the action, either in itself or due to circumstances, the more obligatory it is. However, it must be kept in mind that when different degrees of importance of duties are indicated, it does not follow from this that one is allowed to disparage some duties in one’s thoughts or is given freedom to fulfill them or not to fulfill them. Every duty is sacred and must be performed with all the diligence, readiness and unsparing labor required. This is done in order to guide everyone to be a wise worker in the Kingdom of Christ, knowing its order and order of actions, and not giving in to the random flow of circumstances. In reality, however, there seem to be great injustices in man’s assessment of the deeds that are obligatory for him. This mainly concerns the relationship of Christianity to natural law, churchism to citizenship. The commandments that condition salvation stand above all: for without the salvation of the soul, what will everything else mean? They are followed by moral laws of conscience: for those first exist in order to sanctify and bring into force these latter. Next should come the sacred ranks of the Church: for they are the closest vestments of the first two, and, finally, citizenship. For, having a temporary meaning, it must be in the service of faith and good morality, which determine the receipt of eternal bliss. But in reality this is not the case. For someone whose heart is not properly governed, Christianity does not come first; he thinks little about the Church and its beneficial institutions; Honesty and civic benefit are the basic rules of his morality. How many are content with this rule and are at peace! A person beginning to live virtuously in a Christian manner must first of all pay attention to this, take care to correct his feelings and give his weight and his place to any responsibility. Another wrong is found in preferring the duties of truth to the duties of love and benevolence. Almost everyone considers the former to be higher than the latter, and thus the true spirit, the spirit of love, is driven out of life, as if by force. The laws of truth constitute in themselves only the outer fence of the moral kingdom; whoever walks on them may not be inside this kingdom. For if legality alone satisfies them, and the legality of the deed is not denied by a bad heart; then every righteous person, according to the duties of righteousness, can be a moral lawless person. True moral life is in fulfilling the duties of love: here is the root of life! With this spirit of love one must also fulfill the duties of truth. And we can say that only then, as they are imbued with this spirit, do they descend into the realm of morality. After this, is it possible to place them higher than the first?! If such a rule is generalized, then we must expect a general perversion of the moral order. The moral world will be torn away from its center. There is also a third untruth in the incorrect proportionality of our rights with those of others. For a self-loving heart, our rights to others are more valuable than the rights of others to us. For others, this is the law. But Christians shouldn't do that. According to the word of the Lord, they should forget their rights: someone hit you on the cheek, offer another; If you take one piece of clothing, give it back; If someone takes a loan, don’t ask... don’t resist evil at all, let it come to you (see: Matt. 5, 39–40, 42)... On the contrary, you should have complete respect and reverence for the rights of others. Both the brother’s face and his property are inviolable and sacred for a Christian. If we add to this that a Christian is obliged to all kinds of goodwill, with which he must fulfill the duties of truth: then this is how we can determine the order and relationship of these duties! Be as zealous as possible in fulfilling the duties of goodwill; With the same spirit, fulfill the duties of truth, forgetting your rights. One must acquire skill in assessing the true importance of duties, especially as applied to particular cases. This will give us the opportunity to easily get out of a difficult situation when mandatory matters collide. For duty presupposes the necessity of a certain action. Meanwhile, there are often cases in which a person is faced with two or more obligatory tasks, of which, however, he can and must perform only one. Such a clash of responsibilities always leaves one perplexed as to what to decide on. Whoever understands well the relative importance of duties will not find it difficult to choose what is due. It is certain that the apparent incompatibility of duties is only imaginary. For one thing must always be done. You just need to guess what exactly. Anyone who finds it difficult to choose is advised to: a) first of all, see whether the duties exactly contradict the duties? Is it not our selfhood, is it not some passions that do not want to submit to duty? b) if there are indeed duties and duties in dispute, then it is necessary to look at whether they are of the same type. With duties of different types, the higher ones prevail over the lower ones, namely: the unconditional over the conditional, the Divine over the human, the main over the means; c) when duties are of the same type, then everything is decided by reasons, reasons or motivations. Where there are more of these reasons, one should incline there; d) it often happens that out of the existing duties it is possible to fulfill one before, another after, and only haste, and sometimes weakness of the heart, creates difficulty. Everyone, however, knows from experience that a confluence of responsibilities and even a collision of them rarely puts one in a situation that is not the starting point. Conscientiousness will easily solve everything by itself. But it must also be said that few cases for a person who is zealous for the purity of life are very confusing and sorrowful. Therefore, in order to prevent such cases, they advise: aa) build your duties according to a certain correct beginning, write, as it were, a life program (which I already mentioned before) and then carry out it. In this case, accidents will be rare; bb) think more often about duties and different cases of their fulfillment, put yourself mentally in difficult circumstances and figure out how to act in them. This creates liveliness of consideration and will help maintain the presence of mind in cramped conditions and the rightness in resolving matters in them; cc) consult and talk more often with experienced people; d) at the very hour of need, place yourself in the presence of God or in the position of a dying person and do as you would do exactly on the edge of the tomb, ready to stand before God as the Judge. I've tired you. Did you read to the end? I considered it necessary to explain all this to you... Take the trouble to understand, although it is not so easy to read. There is a spiritual voluptuousness, according to which one reads only what is pleasant and easily digestible; but as soon as they encounter something difficult, they run away; this is not proper for this to happen. There is a way to discover the sweetness in something that seems dry at first; if only it were true. Be smart. The lazy man seeks guilt and says: A lion is in the paths, but robbers are in the way (Proverbs 22:14). Now I will tell you a word or two: 2) about advice and: 3) about indifferent actions, as follows in order. 2) In addition to obligatory actions, regarding which we are in moral necessity, the word of God offers some actions in the form of advice in the sense that whoever performs them does better than the one who acts differently, and to which we are therefore pleasantly disposed, but we do not feel bound by necessity. There is no doubt that such advice really exists. When a young man came to the Lord with a question: what have I done, will I inherit eternal life? - The Lord answered him: if you want to take it into your stomach, keep the commandments. Then, when the young man announced that he had already saved all this from his youth, and wanted to know what he had not yet completed, the Lord added: if you want to be perfect, go, sell your property and give to the poor, and follow Me. Here the division is obvious between the duties necessary for salvation, and between such actions, through which they ascend only to the highest degree of perfection (see: Matt. 19, 16, etc.). The same truth is even clearer in the Apostle Paul (see: 1 Cor. 7). He was asked about virginity and marriage. He replied that he had no commandment from the Lord to oblige virginity, but he gave advice to observe it. Then he explains at length how and why virginity is superior to marriage. And he concludes that whoever gives his daughter in marriage does well, but whoever allows her to remain a virgin does better. Here the Apostle distinguishes between commandment and advice. These are, however, only sample tips. But in fact, there can be countless of them in life. Therefore, it is unfair, in some branch of Protestants, that the idea is introduced that a Christian is absolutely obliged to everything, that is, as if bound by necessity. There is an obligation in the council, but not such that the one who does not fulfill it becomes a criminal. He is only less perfect. This is our conscience’s true testimony: don’t we feel such confidence in ourselves that such and such an action is necessary on us, and if we fail to perform it, we are criminals; and even then, although it is better, we are not bound in relation to it and will not become criminals without committing it. He who does not oppress his debtor, but awaits his debt in silence, does well. But whoever takes only half of the debt from a debtor for the sake of his need, much more who forgives the entire debt, does better. Patriarch Abraham, returning from the war, could have taken all the spoils for himself, all the more so since the kings themselves who helped him agreed to the same thing: and this act would not have been bad; but when he gave in everything, he did better. Or, when he gave Lot the freedom to choose the best place for his residence, he acted in the best way; however, it would not have been bad if he himself had assigned him a sufficient and good plot, although not the best. And again, the saints of God reverently revered by us were then so exalted and glorified by God that throughout their entire lives they made it their lot to always choose the best and most perfect. If all the best were an indispensable law, where would the weak go and who could help but fall into despair about their salvation? Meanwhile, when it is left in the form of advice, how comforting it is for a weak and timid spirit and, at the same time, how inspiring for a Christian who feels quite strong! However, the Christian must be reminded: for you, heaven and earth were set in motion; you are chosen, sanctified, you have received strength, even to life and piety; is all this really without special goals and obligations for you? No, Christian, you must carefully do every good thing that your thought touches. If, in gratitude to benefactors in ordinary life, they try to prevent their every desire: then you, showered with the mercies and powers of God, can you refuse, without disturbing your conscience, the will of God, which shows you the best path and shows you, without not wanting you to flow along it. When we take into account the word of the Lord: turn up the other cheek when you have received a blow on one (cf. Matt. 5:39), or in general: do not resist evil, and the word of the Apostle: seek the highest, philosophize on high (cf. Col. 3:1-2), then it seems impossible not to conclude that it is more common for a Christian to choose everything that is best and most perfect. For neither the Lord nor the Apostles gave Christians any relief in anything, but as much as they considered them high, they obliged them to high, excellent Divine deeds. And if we judge the differences between a Christian and others by the objects of his actions, then we can directly say: what makes him different is that he always chooses what is different in his actions. But again, what a multitude of weak, fearful Christians who barely step on the right path?! Inspire him, bring him to his senses, take him for a ride and carry him. There are shepherds who are instructed not only to watch how they go, but to lead and carry... In general, it is impossible to find a solid basis on which one could remove from us the obligation to choose the best... In general morality, outside of Christianity, so; This should not happen in Christianity. He who refuses the best degrades Christianity in himself and descends to the level of natural morality. You just need to remember: a) that this certainly concerns only the best, the perceived best, to which there is, moreover, full possibility; why will it become obligatory for the weak, if you explain this to him: for then the reason why it is not fulfilled will remain only one’s reluctance, one’s will or selfhood; b) that this does not apply to the most important advice - celibacy and arbitrary poverty. These are definitely not for everyone. But he who is able to contain, says the Lord, let him contain (Matthew 19:12). However, here too there are internal compulsions and external instructions that are not safe to contradict in the matter of salvation; 3) about many very actions, neither our internal law of conscience nor the written law says anything. Such people are usually considered indifferent, left to their own devices. (Sit down, stand up, look to the right and left, etc.) There is no way to determine everything by law, judging by the endless variety of moral persons and circumstances. Moreover, it is not entirely in the spirit of the moral free law to bind everyone on all sides. If a person is brought up in a moral life, then in order to educate and strengthen his spirit, much should have been left to his freedom, so that through this he would exercise his moral powers or reveal the true spirit of moral life, just as a father does not determine every step of his son with orders. It is only necessary to remember that if you look at the actions of a moral person with all the circumstances of his action, then although there are indifferent actions here, precisely those that in themselves are indifferent and are committed by a person without any special intention, even without thought; but as soon as these same actions, the most insignificant in appearance (for example, a glance), receive a purpose, they cease to be indifferent. In general, all actions emanating from a person with consciousness and purpose certainly have a moral quality and are good or evil. Is it good to allow indifferent actions within yourself? Not good. A Christian must take every possible care that everything in him turns into a means to moral ends, even the position of his body, the movement of his hands, eyes, and so on. For he gave himself up as a complete sacrifice to God, and vowed to work for Him all the days of his life. The time that is given to indifferent action is wasted time, therefore it must be made up for by repentance. Moreover, are there objects that are indifferent to the heart? It seems not. But the movements of the heart in moral life are not indifferent. Consequently, actions that seem indifferent, leaving a good or bad mark on the soul, are therefore good or bad. What, for example, is bad in a free gait, in a free position of the waist, arms, legs and other things? Nothing, in appearance. But they always precipitate freedom of thoughts and desires in the soul, therefore, from this side they are not good. Again, if it is possible to make an indifferent action qualitative, and a Christian is a merchant who zealously collects here treasures of deeds for eternal life: then why not turn them to his advantage? And what prevents this except a lack of jealousy and an excess of negligence, which cannot be considered indifferent. Thus, in a Christian, indifferent matters are not indifferent because they are allowed into his life through negligence, they are the fruit of a morally bad state. Isn’t it better to take care to quality them all 24, turning them into a means to your goals? This is the thought of Saint Chrysostom; but I don’t remember where he expressed it. Here's the whole field of action for you. Cultivate without being lazy! I assume that, reading the previous lines, you felt how suddenly it would become wide and suddenly tight again. After all, the word of the Lord, our Lawgiver, is not false, that the narrow gate and the strait path lead into the stomach. Let us leave the wide for the free choice of others, and choose the narrow for ourselves. I should write to you about: II) the main goal that a Christian should pursue throughout his life. But first, look at what the goal contributes to the matter. I'll tell you this briefly. 1) deeds that are indifferent from the goal receive quality: that is, from a good goal they become good, from a bad goal they become bad; 2) a good goal in a good deed adorns and elevates him, a bad goal in a bad deed enhances his badness and immorality. For example, who studies the truths of faith for the spread of the Kingdom of Christ, or who stands freely in church, so that they do not think that he adheres to piety, or who condemns another in order to expose himself; 3) a bad goal in a good deed eats up his kindness, and a good goal in a bad deed does not impart its kindness to him. In both cases, things are bad. For example, whoever sings or reads in church to show off his art, and not to edify, makes good bad; but whoever appropriates someone else’s property to help him does not make something bad into good; 4) in general, the higher the goal, the purer and more perfect the deed, and the more corrupt the intention, the more immoral the deed. These brief statements are enough to convince us how important the goal is in our activities. Therefore, it is worth taking care to find out what purpose you should have in your affairs. Here it is not a matter of motives with which you can incline your will to action and of which you can invent a lot for yourself, and each one has his own, judging by his character and mood (this has already been said); but about what a Christian should keep in mind when zealous for virtue, what he achieves with his entire virtuous life, or what the main goal of moral activity is. This is already determined from the first by both the goal of a person and the vow of a Christian, namely: always do the works of God, to please Him, to glorify His holy name. The Lord says: let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven (cf. Matt. 5:16). The Apostle commands us to do everything for the glory of God, even to eat and drink (see: 1 Cor. 10:31). To this we only need to add: for the sake of faith in the Lord. Just as a person himself does not ascend to communion with God without Jesus Christ, so his deeds will not ascend to God without faith in the Lord! Just as in the ancient tabernacle blood was brought into the Holy Place, and the sacrifice was pleasing to God: so now the sacrifice of works is pleasing to God only for the sake of faith in Christ, who redeemed us with His blood. This especially needs to be said to those who think to please God without believing in the Lord. Their work is in vain! Further, since the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world and a Christian is the most damned if in this world he hopes to receive anything from his Christianity (cf. 1 Cor. 15:19); then the thoughts and expectations of a Christian must all be directed to this age: he must work, work in the hope of an endlessly blissful life. Thus, the whole goal is this: do everything for the glory of God, through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the hope of endless life. One must only remember that the main thing here is the glory of God, the starting point is faith in Christ the Savior, the final limit is eternal life; that when eternal life is provided in such an important matter, what is the moral goal, then nothing selfish, mercenary is presented, but only the essential feature of Christianity and Christians is relied on, who still here become citizens of heaven and live, tea and sighing for their fatherland, with the thought that strangers and strangers are on earth, not having the city that is here, but seeking the one to come (cf.: Heb. 13, 14). As for other goals, although they may be allowed, they should never be made the main ones: from them it should always ascend to God. The goals of the actions themselves are especially important here. Each deed can have its own purpose: for example, the purpose of alms is to help the poor, the purpose of reading is to enlighten the mind. But we should not dwell on them: otherwise the matter will be completely outside the main meaning of a Christian. In general, if we allow ourselves to dwell on such goals, then infinite variety will enter into the life of a Christian, whereas it should all have one tone. This tone is communicated to her by the unity of purpose, according to which she is a complete sacrifice to God. Glorify God in your souls and in your bodies, which are the essence of God (cf. 1 Cor. 6:20). It seems very strict to others - to do everything for the glory of God, and therefore they believe that in deeds one can have other goals, outside of God, as long as these goals do not exclude God, and in general, they say, one can limit oneself to only attributing deeds to God more often. Nevertheless, dedicating all your deeds to God is the lot of the most perfect, which can be advised, but which should not oblige everyone to do so. How the bright Christian life is humiliated here! Apparently there is reluctance and laziness to make the effort to ascend to God. But, firstly, dedicating everything to God is not advice, but a necessary, obligatory goal: glorify God in your souls and in your bodies; Do everything for the glory of God (cf. 1 Cor. 6:20; 10:31)... What is clearer and more definite than this? And why classify this goal as the most perfect only when the direction of action does not require special tension: whoever is already doing good, just tell him to mentally and heartily devote it to God. What a lot of work here! It is another thing to awaken a sinner from his sinful sleep or to revive a weakened one. Here it is necessary to frighten him, shake him - to present the harmful consequences of sin and the good fruits of virtue, etc.; but these are not goals, but stimulants of the will, as was said before. Secondly, to say: other goals are also permissible, as long as they do not exclude God, means that by our deeds we seem to be showing some kind of mercy to God; and to say: it’s enough to dedicate a few things to God means that God is something extraneous in moral life. Such thoughts distort the order. A Christian is born of God, and must refer every single one of his deeds to God, and sanctify his entire life for this one purpose. If we begin to consider pagan morality, that is, how good people acted there, we will find the exact application of these rules; the same applies to Christians who are left without edification. But both of them do not know the essence of the matter. Now, out of pity for their deeds, one should not pervert the true meaning and order of a pure and holy life, but rather, one should teach everyone and everywhere what the truth is. A Christian is not a person given over to the attraction of chance, but a self-governing person. Tell him how to rule himself, and he will rule. No, a good deed, not done for God and not done through faith in the Lord, is not Christian, but is simple natural good. Just as, for example, reasoning in the mind is natural, but it is not a virtue: so a good deed is not natural for God in the spirit, but it is not a virtue. It should now be concluded that all other goals, except for the one shown, are not true goals and the deeds carried out according to them lose their value to the extent that they move away from it. There is no mention of bad goals arising from selfishness. Hear this and direct your heart this way every time you do something. After all, this striving of one’s deeds towards God has a need for achievement especially because it is overshadowed by immediate goals. So always avoid these immediate goals with your mind and heart and ascend before the face of God; and dedicate all your work to Him and thereby sanctify it. God bless you! I didn’t want to write about the last point, III) circumstances, since everything here is well known and in activity it will always work out well almost by itself when the matter is legal and its goal is real. I will say, however, a few words for completeness and information. Circumstance is what the situation is, or all its external connections. There is no matter that does not have many connections: but in fact, only those that have an impact on its internal dignity are considered in the moral circumstances of the case. Of these, some relate to the person acting, others to the action being performed, and others to the action itself. They are all combined under the questions: who, what, where, when, how, by what means? Carry out any work on these issues, and you will see for yourself how the further you go, the more it improves. Do not think, however, that all these are trifles or rhetorical games. Just delve into what you should look for in a matter, about any matter, and be convinced of this yourself. To the question: who? - what is being sought is not whether the person who did the deed is moral, but what kind of person he is, what state and quality he is: priest or layman, educated or ignorant, official or private, man or woman, and so on. Apply, for example, drunkenness to each of these individuals, and you will see how its malignancy either increases or decreases. Apply also sincere faith, and you will see that not everyone will have the same value... So reason about other things. For ourselves, let us write down the following rule for this occasion: arrange affairs worthy of your condition, degree of education and rank. Whoever is greater, be everyone's slave. To the question: what? - what is being sought is not whether the matter is in accordance with the commandments or not, not the subject of the matter itself, which has already been discussed, but its secondary accessories. For example, theft... how much, a sacred or simple thing, poor or rich. Also alms...whether from excess or the last mite. So about other things. But this is what you must accept for yourself: define each task with an exact measure and, in general, do everything possible so that the space of forces does not remain superfluous when applied to the space of affairs. Others make it a rule for themselves: not to allow anyone to leave them with a sad face. In the circumstance: where? - attention is drawn not just to the place, for somewhere the deed must take place, but to the property of the place and its other accidents. For example: someone insulted a person in private or in public; glazing 25 on the street or in a church and the like. And so sanctify places with deeds, and do not desecrate them. Remember that at the hour of judgment, every place will give the voice of the Judge to God as a testimony to your good or bad deed. In the circumstance: when? – it is also not time in general that is taken into account, but its quality, for example, on a holiday or a simple day, hour, month or years, and the like. So, make sure that the entire time of your life is an unbroken chain of good deeds. But, together, remember that everything has its time. There is a system of waiting for the most favorable time, in which the work will bear the most abundant fruit. When they want to know: how? - then they examine the way of doing things, not the one that was previously written about and which is characteristic of the case by its nature, but another, external, random one. For example, in fear or in a calm state, in knowledge or ignorance, persistently or in passing, suddenly or with preparation. He who watches his heart vigilantly, all his affairs go smoothly. He slows down the slow, speeds up the fast, and generally does everything with his usual zeal, without laziness or rashness. When they want to know: in what way? - they are looking for the means by which the work was accomplished or the goal was achieved, and the aids that were used for this. For example, something useful has been done: with one’s own labor or with someone else’s hands; wealth collected: righteously or unrighteously; acted openly or failed in hidden ways... and so on. Help, Lord, not to walk crooked roads even towards good, not to spare one’s labors and, if one cannot achieve something in good faith, it is better to be patient than to take advantage of the unrighteous method that presents itself. All such circumstances, if they are lawful, constitute the external beauty and propriety of the action, although some of them influence the matter more strongly, while others not so much. The means, for example, are so significant that some limit the entire question of circumstances to them alone. Inserting one's internal good thoughts, as it should, into the structure of the external flow of affairs is Christian prudence, which, however, does not consist in applying the internal to the external (for example, the Gospel to the customs of the world), but in a decent, so to speak, clothing of the internal spiritual law with its corresponding external connections, even if in this case it was necessary to go against the flow of external affairs. I will say even more: Christian prudence is the understanding of the will of God, all-containing and all-ruling in the course of all events, both external and internal. From this point of view, it again appears that a Christian must manage his own circumstances, and not submit to their attraction. This is not achieved suddenly, but gradually, through experience in doing good, after acquiring which every work from the hands of a Christian comes out perfect in everything, like an elegant work from the hands of an artist. From such an examination of the circumstances involved in every matter, you can see how difficult it is in experience or in the person acting to find an indifferent action, when each of them is so diversely linked from everywhere with many objects that have a true influence on his moral dignity! How difficult it is, on the other hand, not only for outsiders, but even for the actor himself to determine the true merit of his deeds. For, perhaps, in some cases these circumstances are all legal, in others only some, and moreover, to a greater or lesser extent; Sometimes 26 there may be only a shadow of evil, and sometimes only a shadow of good. Accurate knowledge of all this is possible only for one All-Seeing One. For a righteous man there is a law: and do not undertake to judge others. And as for yourself, increase your crying and contrition tenfold for your sins, because perhaps they are ten times more sinful than you think, and reduce the goodness of your deeds a hundredfold, because perhaps this is so. This rule is prescribed by Saint Macarius of Egypt. Here's a brief summary of all aspects of our affairs: subject, purpose, circumstances. Learn to judge yourself by them, but never others. This is not our domain, but God’s. Here is a general rule for determining the merits of cases. It is attributed to Saint Dionysius the Areopagite 27; namely: in order for an action to be worthy of being considered good, it must have a good object, a true goal, and legitimate circumstances. On the contrary, if in any action any of these three aspects is not good, then it can no longer be good. It goes without saying that the degree of goodness and badness of these sides is transmitted accordingly to the matter itself. I believe that all this may not be satisfactory for you... It’s not surprising - out of habit. Just don’t consider all this empty, unnecessary and don’t say: the works that I read are lost; try to remember better. Not everyone walks by flowers... However, the thought comes to tell you something else; be patient, and now be content with this! I'm keeping my promise. Here are some thoughts on Christian virtue. Take a look without being lazy. I want one thing: to imprint in your thoughts the distinctive features of Christian virtue from any other. After this, if laziness does not interfere and there is a need, I will write something about sin. Virtue has more than one meaning. It means: a) the main and fundamental desire of the spirit for good or the mood of a virtuous spirit, then: b) good dispositions of the will and heart, then: c) every good deed. Now I will explain to you virtue in the first respect, or virtue as the main mood of a virtuous spirit or as the desire to remain in goodness. Where is our good? In God. Consequently, the desire for good is the same as the desire to abide in God, or the thirst for communion with God. If this desire should not remain fruitless, but should find its own satisfaction, then it must take the trouble to go through the entire path by which a person can ascend to God. Consequently, this very path and everything that happens on it must be included in virtue, as the main aspiration, or mood of a virtuous spirit, that is, everything that is necessarily included in the composition of the main principle of Christian life and activity. It states there: “stay in communion with God through Jesus Christ by the active fulfillment of His holy will, assisted by grace and filled by faith, according to the power and promise of Baptism, in the Holy Church” 28. Consequently, true Christian virtue, or a Christian virtuous mood of spirit, will be: thirst and strength to remain in communion with God through Jesus Christ by zealous, constant, complete and everlasting fulfillment of His will, with the help of grace and with faith in the Lord, according to the power and promise of Baptism. Why all this is necessary, you probably already know from the article on the beginning of the Christian life. If you forgot, look again. Now it is only necessary to explain a little each of these features of the Christian moral mood of the spirit in order to make clear the distinctive properties, composition and origin of Christian virtue. Her first feature is thirst. The Savior pleases those who have hunger and thirst for righteousness (see: Matt. 5, 6). The Apostle Paul says about himself: I persecute, even if I comprehend... with zeal I pursue to the honor of the highest calling (cf.: Phil. 3:12, 14) and exhorts others: always persecute good things, - do not quench the Spirit (cf.: 1 Thess. 3:13, 19), seek those on high (Col. 3:1), with the spirit burning (Rom. 12:11). This thirst in itself is an open and ready companion 29 of all good things, like a thirsty earth that soon drinks water into itself. In life, on the one hand, it maintains the tension of the spirit, and on the other hand, it does not allow him to value external labor too much, bothering him with himself from the inside. It is always a sign of a good state, just as hunger and thirst are physical signs of physical health. You can recognize her by the warmth that is constantly stored in her heart. It is opposed to a cold, relaxed, sluggish, inactive spirit, unconcerned about goodness and salvation. The second trait is strength. What is thirst without strength? This is fruitless torment or destruction of the spirit. Look at the thirsty Justin the Philosopher! 30 Before accepting power, he suffers from the inner spiritual fire consuming him! It would be in vain, therefore, for anyone to limit himself to one aspiration. It is only a preparatory state at the beginning and then a constant renewer of activity subsequently. It can be found outside of Christianity, and power is given only in Christianity. The Lord, who loves mankind, gives those who are thirsty, however, strength to drink from Himself, so that by this strength they can abide in Him. Come, he says, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Whoever is in Me will produce much fruit (cf. John 15:5). Thirst is evidence of the awakening of our spirit, and strength is evidence of the combination of our spirit with the power of God. In the latter case, he confesses: I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me (cf. Phil. 4:13). The third trait is the power to remain in fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. It is known how man was appointed to communion with God, how he later fell away from Him, how, as a result of this falling away, he was subjected to the tyranny of pride and passions with their instigators, the devil and the world. It follows from this that a person’s good care must necessarily include two dispositions: renunciation of oneself and everything that flatters self-love and surrender of oneself to God. But self-sacrifice is only a means, and the goal is to remain in God. Therefore, whoever has gone through a crisis of self-sacrifice has the most important thing and that is all: communion with God. This is an exceptional subject, on which all the work and all the care of a Christian is directed. From here this is what comes out: a) whoever has not experienced an internal change, as a result of which all his thoughts and desires began to be converted and dedicated to God, has not yet begun to be truly and Christianly good. If anyone wants to come after Me, says the Lord, let him deny himself... and come after Me (cf. Mark 8:34); b) whoever stops at self-sacrifice alone, thinking that he has done everything, is in a dangerous delusion. Besides the fact that self-sacrifice as a means, without adapting it to its goal, communication with God, is useless, it can hardly be true without this! For without God one cannot deny oneself. The teaching and life of the Stoics 31 were of this nature. They taught to subdue the self to the mind or spirit; but they did not understand that the spirit or mind must be subdued to God, and therefore they were teachers of spiritual pride and, despite work and sacrifices, kept themselves and others outside of God, in falling away from Him. In the same way, those who invent some kind of philosophical virtue, that is, doing good without thinking about God, do it badly and dreamily: for what kind of virtue is outside of God? c) since without communication with God virtue is not virtue, and this communication is possible only through our Lord Jesus Christ; it follows that outside of Christianity there is no truly good life. There is good doing there that does not bear true fruit and does not lead to the goal. Therefore, all people are called into communion with God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and clinging to and striving for God is made their only and exclusive task. The Lord teaches: be in Me, and I in you (John 15:4) and prays to the Father: as You, Father, are in Me, I am in You, that they also may be one in Us (cf. John 17:21); I am in them, and You are in Me, that they may be perfect as one (cf. John 17:23). The apostles preach: according to Christ we pray, be reconciled to God (cf.: 2 Cor. 5:20), so that you may have fellowship with us: our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ (cf.: 1 John 1:3). Draw closer to God, and he will draw closer to you (cf. James 4:8). If you seek Him, He will be found for you; if you forsake Him, He will forsake you (cf. 2 Chronicles 15:2). The fourth feature is the power to remain in communion with God through zealous, constant, complete, always fulfilling the holy will of God. One should not think that communion with God can be supported by knowledge of Divine things or mysteries alone, or by intense aspiration of feelings towards God, or by the external expression of one’s non-alienation from God. All this happens with him and is necessary to a greater or lesser extent; but the essential, most solid and reliable means to this is walking in the will of God. For thus says the Lord: not everyone who says to Me: Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of God, but do the will of My Father who is in heaven (cf. Matt. 7:21). If he keeps My commandments, he will abide in My love: just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love (cf. John 15:10). And a person is made a Christian, according to the Apostle, not by human lust, but by the will of God while he lives in the flesh. The passing of time prevails (cf.: 1 Pet. 4: 2-3). It is so necessary for a Christian to fulfill the will of God. We must, however, remember that this is still only a means, albeit an essential and urgent one. Since the goal is in God, this fulfillment must be sanctified by dedicating it to God or by looking at Him. In addition, to complete this trait of a virtuous state, it is required that the fulfillment of God’s will be: a) zealous, diligent, coming from the heart. Without this, the entire sum of deeds, good in appearance or legal, will be a collection of ugly statues in which there is no soul; b) constant, in contrast to transient good movements of the heart or intermittent impulses, which are not alien to a sinful person; c) complete, that is, extending to the entire law and commandments, embracing the entire will of God, and not some part, perhaps the easiest, chosen more by natural disposition than by love of goodness and pleasing God; Moreover, it is not limited to the cases that occur, but seeks them out, inventive for good. Whoever keeps the whole law, says the Apostle James, will sin in one and be guilty of everything (cf. James 2:10). Since the basis of all commandments is the same - the will of God, then whoever is sincerely devoted to the will of God will not leave it unfulfilled, no matter in what form it is revealed to him. Finally: d) incessant, working tirelessly throughout life. No one, having laid his hand on the forehead and in vain turned back, is ruled in the Kingdom of God (cf. Luke 9:62). And only having endured to the end will he be saved (cf. Matt. 10:22), says the Lord. Don’t you know, the Apostle teaches, that all people flow into disgrace, but only one receives honor. Teach this, that you may comprehend (cf.: 1 Cor. 9:24). Why does not it stop until it reaches the end: for the end crowns the work. The fifth feature is with the help of Divine grace. Grace is the property of a Christian man and, at the same time, a distinctive property of his life. Just as at first he became a Christian by the power of God, so afterward he does all his deeds by the same power. For according to the Apostle: God is at work in us, both to will and to do good (cf. Phil. 2:13). The same Apostle testified of himself as the grace of God, which was with him in all his labors, not being in vain (see: 1 Cor. 13:10). The actions of this grace, which accompanies a Christian person in activity, consist of: a) in the diverse enlightenment of the mind by the impression in it of the truths of faith and activity, both in general and especially regarding each case, so that he can see what is the holy will of God, thus having enlightened eyes of the heart (cf. Eph. 1:18); b) in igniting jealousy and strengthening the will. “Without Me you cannot do anything (John 15:5), says the Lord. This is why the Apostle Peter prays: God of all grace, who has called you to the eternal glory of Christ Jesus... Let him establish, strengthen, and ground (cf. 1 Pet. 5:10). From these influences of Divine grace, a Christian is characterized by a feeling of strength and strength in a morally good life or a timid walk in the law, but not independently, but in the Lord: for he says: I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me (cf. Phil. 4:13). The sixth trait is with faith in the Lord. Faith accomplishes or makes perfect and complete good Christian activity and life. It covers shortcomings, infirmities, weaknesses, sins. Why is it generally impossible to please God without this faith (cf. Heb. 11:6). It forces the worker who has done everything commanded to say: I am an unworthy servant (cf. Luke 17:10) and to place all hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. In relation to the works themselves, it not only represents the strongest, most stimulating impulses in the understanding of the moral order, in the certainty of great promises and in the excessive love of God for us in Christ Jesus (see: John 4:10; 2 Cor. 5:14), but also imparts to them some supernatural quality of the Divine: for the believer creates them as a living member of Jesus Christ the Lord. Whoever abides in Me will produce much fruit (cf. John 15:5). The seventh, finally, feature is due to the power and vow of Baptism. This is a trait that is exclusively appropriate only for Christians. By Baptism we enter the Church and, becoming members of it, we are honored to be participants together in all its benefits. This begins in Baptism. For his sake, then and further everything works in a Christian. As for a developing seed, food is supplied by the surrounding elements; Thus, for the newly born, by grace in the Church, the spiritual elements are delivered to him as food through the Sacraments and the entire order of church ceremonies. At the same time, inner strength comes to him from the whole body into which he is grafted, from the body of the Church, through which spiritual life-giving juices descend into his veins from its head. A Christian matures in the Church. Just as the kokosh 32 gathers chicks under her wings and warms them, so she, embracing all her children, feeds and warms them. Therefore, progress in virtue is conditioned by remaining in the Church. Outside the Church there is no truly virtuous life: for those outside of it do not receive God's power, and there is no educational atmosphere and educational wisdom around them. Here are all the features of a Christianly virtuous state. They signify the essential properties, composition, and origin of Christian virtue. If we call all these features the order of Christian moral life, then virtue, as a state or as the mood of the spirit of the virtuous, can be defined as follows: there is zeal and the power to remain in the order of Christian moral life, or simply zeal for Christian life. However, when condensing the description of virtue into words, do not let go of all the traits included in it, so that in case you do not bring a counterfeit coin instead of a true one. For Thy fear, the spirit of salvation was received in the womb and sick and gave birth (cf. Is. 26:18), sings the prophet Isaiah. Any truly zealous Christian can say this about himself. Approaching the Lord, he begins a zealous concern for salvation and, hastening after Him, is constantly enriched in good deeds. This zeal is the spirit of salvation, the germ and producer of a Christianly good life, which grows and ripens from it gradually and, according to how strong or weak the zeal is, ripens quickly or slowly. The Apostle Paul speaks about himself, as a lesson to everyone: I have not already attained or have already been accomplished, but I persecute even if I have comprehended it, and I have also been comprehended of him from Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not think that I have attained to myself: but forgetting what is behind, but reaching out to what is before, I pursue with zeal for the honor of the highest calling of God in Christ Jesus (cf. Phil. 3:12-14). So was the constant and tireless zeal of the Apostle Paul. It should be just as constant for every Christian. But the degrees of its strength, intensity and speed can be different, according to the difference in human characters and the difference in life circumstances. This is how we should judge this. Jealousy is the higher, more intense and firmer than: a) more willingly, more hastily, more urgently, as if more thoughtlessly, he completes every good deed that presents itself. For this is the property of love - to rush to do what is pleasing to the beloved. What the Apostle says about those who give alms: God loves a willing giver (cf. 2 Cor. 9:17); the same must be demonstrated in every virtue. Just as a good son, as soon as he hears his father’s word, strives to fulfill it, so a Christian should act in relation to every known will of God; b) the more she, in her action, raises labors and bitterness. The Savior says that when they love those who love, they do nothing special, for this is natural. But that high perfection is to love those who hate and enemies (cf. Matt. 5:44). Bitterness is a test of true kindness of heart. Many joyfully receive the word and keep it under favorable circumstances; but when they encounter bitterness, they immediately fall away. The degree of jealousy in this regard depends both on the magnitude of labor and displeasure, and on their duration. Sometimes day and night there is no rest, sometimes from ridicule, sometimes from oppression, but everything does not lag behind its good intention. One was tormented and tormented for 28 years for confessing the name of Christ, and he remained unshaken. But even without torment and persecution, whoever, despite the constant wounds that torment the heart, remains incorruptible, is awarded the crown of martyrdom; c) the wider the circle of activity on which it extends. How not to be surprised by the Apostle Paul, who was everything to everyone, that he might save everyone (cf.: 1 Cor. 9:22). His care embraced Jews, pagans, the weak, the erring, the stubborn, the converted and the unconverted - and this not in one place, but throughout all almost pagan countries. Imitating him, other saints of God tried more and more to expand the circle of their good deeds, always, however, adhering to gradualism and wisely awaiting the beckons of God, so as not to lose His help for self-confidence and self-will and, having stretched out to a lot, not to remain unsuccessful in a little; d) finally, the purer and more detached her motivation. We must imitate the one who does everything for the glory of God, crying out, “What do we have in heaven?” and what did You want on earth? my heart and my flesh have disappeared: the God of my heart and my portion is God forever (Ps. 73:22-26); who does not live for himself, but Christ lives in him (cf. Gal. 2:20), does not live for himself, but for him who died for us and rose again (cf. 2 Cor. 5:15); who wants to be resolved to be with Christ and then is only willingly ready to remain in this world, that this is necessary for others (see: Phil. 1, 23), and in order to be rich in good deeds for eternal life (cf.: 1 Tim. 6, 18), knowing and feeling that our life is in heaven (Phil. 3, 20). I limit myself to the proposed explanations... In the mentioned article, “On the Beginning of Christian Life,” quite a bit is said about this zeal as the source of Christian life. It's good to watch it again. And it is best to pray to the Lord to never allow this fire in our heart to go out, for there is life in it. Now I will tell you a word or two about virtue in the second respect, namely about virtue as a good disposition. A good disposition is a feeling or love for a certain kind of good deeds, which lies at their foundation. Humility, for example, is called virtue, but it is not some specific deed, but is an abiding disposition in the heart, visible in all humble deeds; in the same way, patience, meekness, selflessness, obedience are called and are the essence of virtues, and yet they are not specific deeds, but something hidden in their corresponding deeds, lying at their foundation, something constantly abiding in the heart, embedded in it, namely, unceasing love for these deeds. These good dispositions are the essence of virtues. He is not angry who does not scold his offender, but he who has kindness in his heart towards him. It is not the one who bows and quickly says: I am listening; he has respect and obedience; but the one who nourishes these virtues in the heart and embraces them with feeling. “The heart is the beginning and root of our actions,” says St. Tikhon. “What is not in the heart is not in the thing itself. Faith is not faith, love is not love, when there is nothing in the heart, but there is hypocrisy; humility is not humility, but pretense when it is not in the heart; Friendship is not friendship when it only appears outside, but has no place in the heart. Where does God demand our heart from us: give Me, son, your heart (cf. Proverbs 23:26)” 34. A good man out of the good treasures of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasures of his heart brings forth evil things: out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (cf. Luke 6:45). That is why the Apostle commands: put on your clothes, as you are holy and beloved by God’s election, in the womb of generosity, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering (cf. Col. 3:12). Put on your clothes - that is, imprint these dispositions on your soul. Or again: the end - be all of the same wisdom, merciful, brotherly lovers, compassionate, lovers of wisdom, humble in wisdom (cf.: 1 Pet. 3:8). Why should all attention be directed to this? It is to cultivate love for the very virtues, meekness, humility, patience, etc., and not limit yourself to external affairs alone. At first, when a person perceives only the good yoke of Christ and begins to be zealous for Christian life, there are still no good dispositions in strength in the heart, there is no meekness, no patience, no humility, no self-control, unless by chance, due to a natural mood. Only that jealousy that arises in the heart prompts a person to desire them, search for them, strain for them. Zeal for a good Christian life does not combine all good dispositions, but is only their seed, conception and embryo. Although without it they cannot be imagined in the soul, however, even when it is there, it does not immediately bring them with it into the soul. But just as a seed grows and eventually produces a stem and branches, so this jealousy finally grows into good dispositions. The way a person who is zealous for salvation introduces good dispositions into his heart, which are not yet in him and which he is alienating for the first time, is through merciless self-coercion. He who prayerfully, without self-pity, forces himself to do every good thing, accustoms his soul to it more and more, his heart becomes more and more attached to this good, and finally loves it. Then the good that a person forced himself to do at first becomes embedded in his spirit and, as it were, natural. So, for example, someone has no patience. Straining towards it, although with difficulty and illness, but with desire, he finally acquires it. The same must be said about humility, lack of anger and other good dispositions: all of them, through work and sweat with prayer, are imprinted on the soul by the grace of God. This is what Macarius the Great teaches in many places. Saint Diadochus 35 in one place depicts how Divine grace, having bestowed upon man in Baptism itself a hedgehog in the image, then a hedgehog in the likeness, imprints on him afterwards, painting in his heart, virtue after virtue 36. What can we say about the good dispositions with which a person is born? They are not evil, but they do not have the qualities of virtue. This quality is acquired by him when, through the formation of jealousy, they are consciously acquired by a Christian. What exactly are these good dispositions? To this it must be said that there should be as many of them as there are types of good deeds: for at the basis of each of these there should be a special good disposition that characterizes them. There are, for example, matters of fasting; they are based on fasting or asceticism and so on. However, between them there must be a harmonious subordination or such a system according to which they have some initial ones, others derivative ones; since the main streams come from the source first, and then the stream branches off from the stream. And all these arrangements in general consist of a necessary mutual union, like the rings of one chain. So in a chain, if you take one ring, you necessarily lift the others, and finally the whole chain: so there is such a relationship between good dispositions that one naturally entails the other. No disposition comes to the soul alone. What exactly is the connection between them and what arrangement comes from which, you can find several indications of this both in the word of God and in the writings of the Holy Fathers. Thus, the Apostle Peter commands: having brought everything to diligence (diligence is sincere zeal), give to your faith virtue, to virtue reason, to reason self-control, to self-control patience, to patience godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, to brotherly love love (cf. 2 Pet. 1:5-7). Saint Macarius says: “all virtues, like some kind of spiritual chain, depend on one another, such as: prayer from love, love from joy, joy from meekness, meekness from humility, humility from submission, humility from hope, hope from faith, faith from hearing, hearing from simplicity” 37. Saint Isaac the Syrian 38 disposes of virtues in his own way, and, moreover, unequally, as you know. For example: “fear introduces us to the ship of repentance, transports us across the stinking sea of ​​life and guides us to the Divine pier, which is love” 39. In other places it is different, for example in the Words about the three degrees of intelligence 40. You can find a lot of similar combinations in Saint John Climacus 41; Theodore of Edessa 42 and others also have many of them. You can arrange them the way they are arranged in the Word for the consecration of the church in the Sukhotinsky Monastery. There this arrangement was applied to the structure of the church. There is nothing surprising that there is such a difference in the readings. It depends on who chooses which beginning and which path. If each of us begins to trace a genealogical line, then we can create a lot of them, leading along the paternal or maternal side and then also, along the line of their father or mother. There will be no lies, although there will be differences. Thus, in the various indications of the natural development of all good dispositions there is no lie, although there is disagreement. It would be good, however, to indicate their most natural degeneration and build them into a system! If I get around to it, I will depict for you in order all the religious feelings, that is, those that are formed in the heart as a result of our relationship to God. Based on this example, you can then judge the relationship between other virtues. And another thing is that you should care so much about this?.. The grace of God will arrange everything itself, but only zeal for a God-pleasing life is preserved. Naturally good dispositions will now enter into their order, and those that do not exist will begin to take root little by little, as the passions opposite to them are purified. Keep this in mind, and that’s enough. A strict system does not suit the Christian life - an active one. Here everything is almost being built expromtu 43. Listen! P.S. I enclose herewith the Word for the consecration of the church in the Sukhotinsky Monastery. You probably read it, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it. “Behold, the church of the living God has been erected and consecrated! This is also the place of the dwelling of His glory, the place of rest for the souls of the grieving, the place of feeding and drinking the souls of the hungry and thirsty - with the word of God and the Holy Sacraments, a place of sincere 44 communication with the invisible world of Angels and saints! Thanks be to the Lord, who crowned this good deed with success! May He bless those who began it, those who bore the labors of bringing it to an end, those who helped, assisted and everyone who came into contact with it in some way. This church is designated for you, sisters, who have left the world and have become ignorant of the Lord. You left, running, and settled in the desert so that you could more easily approach your beloved Lord and, with your eye undisturbed by the dust of worldly vanity, behold the beauty of His face. So the Lord shows a sign of His evangelistic approach to you, stretches out His hands to you to receive you, appoints a place where He is ready to listen to the desires of your heart, which is open to Him. I think that it is impossible to find a stronger motivation for you to hang around 45 in this house of God, if not constantly, then at least every time you are called here according to the rules of the Holy Church. I have no doubt that this has been and will be so. But I cannot help but remind you that it is not enough for you to appear before the face of the Lord in the church that exists outside of you; you need to build a church for the Lord within yourself, so that you can always have Him in you and with you. For if it applies to everyone, then how much more does the word of the Apostle come to you: don’t you know that this is the church of God... And therefore, if it applies to everyone, then how much more should the commandment apply to you: as living stone, be built into a spiritual church, the sanctity is holy, to offer sacrifices acceptable to God Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Pet. 2:4-5). It is all the more appropriate for you to think about this now, since the church built and consecrated now is a direct image of that invisible church that should be built for Him in our hearts. Add to the work already completed in building this visible church another work, which cannot have an end - about preparing your heart for an everlasting spiritual church to the Lord. Don’t think that it would be so tricky and so high that it would completely exceed your strength. You are already being built into this church. You just need to continue what you started continuously, and with the same zeal with which you started. To see, however, what exactly needs to be done, I will briefly depict to you the entire building of the church of the Lord in the heart. A place for the visible church is chosen and cleansed. We need to clear the place of the heart within us for the building of a spiritual church. This clearing is accomplished by repentance, that is, sincere consciousness of one’s sins and blaming oneself for them, so that one can stand before the face of the Lord unrequited and expect salvation from His sole mercy. The Lord does not love those who are righteous to Him, and is favorable only to those who cry out to him with a publican’s voice: God, be merciful to us sinners (cf. Luke 18:13). In the cleared area, the foundation is deepened and laid. The foundation of the spiritual church in the heart is faith and a firm determination to live by faith. Only faith, combined with determination, makes the interior of the building unshakable and even inaccessible to doubt and perplexity, or to inconvenience, opposition and sorrow. He who decides to live by faith no longer fears either sorrows or death itself: that is why he is considered to be invincible or standing on an indestructible foundation. Having laid the foundation, they then erect the building, laying stone on stone, fastening them with known substances and directing everything according to the proposed plan and scale. All this, in its corresponding properties, is or should be in the inner church; here the stones are different virtues, for which, when and where the opportunity presents itself: meekness, abstinence, patience, obedience, mercy, hard work, etc., which, being added to one another, create the restoration of the body of the inner church; the cement that holds together is, on the one hand, influxes through the Holy Sacraments of grace, without which everything we have remains dry, incoherent, fragile, and on the other hand, love, without which no exploits and no labors have value, or, as the Apostle says, everything is nothing; plan and scale - reasoning that determines the measure, weight and number of labors, enterprises and exploits, without this internal co-measurer, they can disfigure the entire building and, therefore, make all the labors already raised insignificant and useless. The skill for this reasoning, thorough and sound, is acquired by obedient living under the guidance of shepherds, spiritual fathers, elders and elders, who, for the first time, and sometimes for life, should constitute the only leaders in the creation of the heart for the Lord. The work of doing good, imbued with love, under the influence of God’s Sacraments, with the guidance of shepherds and one’s own reasoning, raises the building to the top. Then its roof will be formed by deep humility, which will save this building from the dampness of vanity and man-pleasing, from the dryness of arrogance and pride, from the shocking blows of willfulness and disobedience. All that remains after this is to lead the building and put a cross on it. Both will be accomplished by one act of devotion to the will of God, which is precisely the head of the virtues of self-sacrifice and the cross on which our selfhood is finally crucified. Here is the church! Do you want to know what makes up its outer fence? Unshakable fidelity to all the rules and regulations of the Holy Church of God, and in you, moreover, to your monastic rules. Behind this fence one can safely hide from all the storms and unrest raised by the spirit of the age, superstition and passions. As long as there is this loyalty, the building is safe; where it is not there, everything will go bankrupt little by little, until there is no stone left of everything left on stone. But we are still outside this inner church. It is necessary to enter inside it, to decorate it, to sanctify it, to make it fragrant, in order to worthily perform the holy priesthood there - to offer sacrifices favorable to God. For the Lord does not want to dwell only in us, but also to dwell with us in us. Are you asking how to go inside yourself? Attention, sobriety, composure. When thoughts are scattered, they all hover over external objects, but as they detach themselves from these latter, they gather inward and, as they gather, they detach themselves even more from the outside. Through this mutual interaction, inner sobriety finally matures, in which the eye of the mind looks inside the heart - and deep, unperturbed attention is established to what is there and to everything that comes there. How to decorate the inner church of the heart? Good thoughts, consisting of deep convictions in the truths of faith with corresponding feelings and dispositions, that is, thoughts about the Trinitarian God, His boundless perfections, creation, providence, the sacrament of redemption and the entire economy of salvation - about the future dispensation of everything and so on, which (thoughts) cannot but fill the hearts with either fear, or contrition, or hope, or courageous readiness for everything and so on, which all together makes up the beauty of the church of the heart. The illumination of this church is provided by the undisturbed, unceasing contemplation of the omnipresent God, without which there is no possibility of gathering inside or being filled with any good feelings, although it itself is mutually supported by these latter and matures together with them. This light of vision of God, illuminating and warming the heart, arouses in it incessant cries to God, or sighs from the depths, with the presentation to Him of various transient and incessant needs of the spirit, or with the expression of movements of love for Him - the Sweetest, which all constitutes the incense of heartfelt prayer, rising like the morning, or, like a fragrant censer, ascending to God. In the church of the heart thus fragrant, a spiritual sacrifice will also be performed, favorable to God, consisting of an offering to Him of consciousness, self-activity and freedom and expressed by a painful falling 46 to Him, in a contrite and humble heart. The Lord expects this sacrifice from us, He delights in it, and for its sake is ready to send down every good gift and every perfect gift. This completes the construction of the internal church to God and the internal sacred rites in this church. That's it! Whether this matter is difficult or easy, it is necessary. We cannot stop at external activity alone, although without it nothing internal can take place or be established. The external is done: let's take care of the internal. There is no doubt that it exists and, perhaps, for the sake of it, this external thing also exists; but one can be afraid that this visibility, so obvious, would not eclipse or obscure that invisibility, almost elusive. Therefore, be vigilant and do not allow the enemy to destroy the fruits of your labors by stopping you halfway. Son, give me your heart, says the Lord. And we'll give it back. Remember the parable of the ten virgins... What did the holy fools lack? Internal doing. Outwardly they were in good order - they observed virginity, did not break fasts, went to the church of God, and fulfilled everything else prescribed by the charter; but they didn’t care about the organization of thoughts and feelings. And their heart, instead of a church to God, was a wilderness, overgrown with all sorts of wild plants, full of reptiles and insects, or a deserted building, the dwelling of eagle owls and bats. Take care so as not to fall into their fate. What you have started is good and valuable, but if you complete it 47 as it should be. Otherwise, the very beginning would serve to condemn you - that you started and did not finish. And pray to the Lord and His Most Pure Mother, our Lady, to Whom this church is dedicated, may they show you the favor of His goodness, perfect in everything, and may your spirit, soul and body be preserved at the coming of the Lord, may God grant you the power to be strengthened by His Spirit in your inner man, to indwell Christ with faith in your hearts. Amen" 48. 0 virtue in the latter sense, that is, about virtue as a good deed, shall we speak? Because this has already been discussed. Isn't it a little? And it must be said that it is better to keep the memory from repeating it often. Listen now. Every fulfillment of a commandment in the proper manner, that is, with a true purpose, for the glory of God through faith in the Lord, and with legal circumstances, is a good deed; in the same way, indifferent actions also become good deeds, depending on the good purpose that a Christian attaches to them. In the Orthodox confession, good deeds are defined as follows: they consist in fulfilling the commandments of God, which a person observes willingly, with the help of God and with the assistance of his own mind and will, out of love for God and his neighbors, without having any obstacles from anywhere, actually the so-called 49. Thus, good deeds, in order to have a true value corresponding to themselves, are subject to the following conditions: 1) their subject is the commandment, everything prescribed in the word of God and regarding which a person recognizes himself as being in moral necessity, and not so that anyone thinks: let us do evil, that good may come (Rom. 3:8). However, even such deeds, which are not actually defined by law, are capable of taking on a morally good quality from the good purposes with which they are performed, although, obviously, their price cannot be great. Therefore, we can add: a good deed consists not only in fulfilling the commandment, but also in doing what is not contrary to the commandments, in accordance with their spirit and order; 2) this fulfillment must be willing, that is, not forced by circumstances, not dependent on habit and cold mechanical custom or on natural disposition, but must be motivated by the desire, desire, love, zeal to do good deeds, both this and this kind, and in general all those indicated by the commandments of God. From this we must conclude that until a person has yet acquired the full and decisive intention to succeed in all the commandments of God, until then his good deeds are not entirely pure and perfect. For without this it cannot be that they come from holy jealousy, and, more directly, they are done out of passion for feelings and some extraneous consideration; the main thing is that they are then not constant, but mixed with sins and passions. Such deeds do not have perfect, eternal weight, but they are not useless, as preparers and intercessors for the grace of God, which kindles the fire of jealousy. Remember the legend about the baker, who in annoyance threw a bun at a poor man in order to get rid of him, and then was rewarded with a vision for this and turned from sin to a pious life. Why can anyone who does not have zeal be advised: do some good deed, especially alms, and God will give the fire of zeal, a testimony and a source of spiritual life; 3) every good deed is good if done for God. Everything is for the glory of God. A Christian man must be entirely a sacrifice to God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who sacrificed 50 for us. The love of God will sustain us who have decided this... Christ died for all, so that those who live live not for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again (cf. 2 Cor. 5:14-15). Now we must hand over our deeds to God, so that on the Day of Judgment He will return them and reward the Christian. It must be said that only these deeds dedicated to the Eternal God are worthy of eternal reward. And here such a dispensation of the heart imparts to affairs a certain lightness, naturalness, a godly, attractive, detached face; 4) a truly good deed is done with the assistance of one’s own mind and with the help of God. Apparently, like every good deed, ascended from man to God, there is both God’s and man’s. In doing good deeds, presumption and self-confidence harm not only their purity, but also their success and perfection. For in general such things are hasty, immature, impatient, 51 and often not completed. Equally, renunciation of the proper use of one’s powers distorts affairs and all activities. This defect has even entered into the teaching of the Quietists and Quakers, 52 who expect inspiration from above in everything. There is no doubt that in extreme cases, others receive inspiration from the Lord; and in general one should not decide on anything important and decisive without a special call, so that, having begun to build 53, one would not be unable to finish the building, to one’s shame and humiliation of virtue. But in such cases, for the most part, it happens that a person cannot not only decide on such a thing, but even conceive it without this inspiration. To act in this way in ordinary cases is dangerous, because this opens a vast door to laziness and seduction. Now the person lives under education. He must purify and correct his stubborn heart by working against it. If the heart almost never wants good itself, and God will not send help and admonition to those who do not want and do not please, then you can, in anticipation of these heavenly inspirations, sleep through your whole life for virtue. Help comes from the Lord, but to those who act, and not to those who do not act. Make tension and help will come; 5) finally, a truly good deed happens without obstacles. Here we mean legal obstacles, that is, if the deed cannot be accomplished under legal circumstances, but either the place, or the time, or something else that does not allow it either to be completely good, or to appear in true perfection and fruitfulness. As for illegal obstacles, they not only do not interfere with the cause of being good, but, on the contrary, elevate it, according to their strength and persistence. The more valuable a task is, the more obstacles have been overcome in completing it. To do good deeds in accordance with their good nature and the legitimate requirements of circumstances, in opposition to lawless obstacles, and at the same time to do them in such a way that good and not evil comes out of them, is a matter of prudence, the science of which is taught by God’s grace and diverse experience in spiritual life. Ask the elders, and they will tell you (cf. Deut. 32:7). Also take the trouble to notice the following about these deeds: while jealousy, like an internal fire, constantly sets our forces in motion, and feeling and disposition remain in constant inner peace, like a field in which the fruits of deeds grow and multiply, deeds are something intermittent in us: they begin and cease, following one after another. However, a caring and prudent worker can establish an unbroken chain of good deeds in his life. This is because thought, word, movement, and deed can be turned into a good deed. Time of life is given to a person to collect good deeds. If now this time flows without stopping, and there is a continuously repeating point in its flow, then a person must take care that each of these points is occupied with good. Does sleep interfere?! But it can also be turned into good, namely into a matter of self-sacrifice; food the more... eyes - even more... Establish agreement between the outer man and the inner. God has placed undying zeal within, and you, without, offer continuous deeds... Between them, like poles, your nature will be purified and sanctified. A convenient means to this is provided by the fact that everyone’s life is always surrounded by an uninterrupted chain of circumstances that can give birth to good. Everyone will now see this, having carefully reviewed their day, for their own, that is, person, in their position, from beginning to end. It occurs to some people to limit themselves to internal affairs alone, without external affairs. This especially applies to those cases in which selfishness inevitably suffers greatly: for example, in asking for forgiveness and so on. No, God created man from body and soul; He wants his deeds to be carried out by his whole person, and not just by one part. Moreover, the deed itself is completely fruitful for the virtuous in its execution, or in its completion, and not only if it is desired, even ardently. Only a completed deed is a step forward in the degrees of moral perfection. He who once suffered an insult became taller, another time even taller, and so on. Meanwhile, those who only want to endure, but do not endure, remain in the same place and even move back, because as the desire is not fulfilled, it weakens. He who does not collect wastes. That is why zealots of perfection seek out opportunities for good deeds, and not only do not allow themselves to miss them when they present themselves. The more someone does truly good deeds, the higher and higher he becomes. Let's conclude! Be rich in good deeds, but be more concerned about good dispositions. When, however, there is true zeal for salvation, it will teach you everything, for it is very inventive. Help you, Lord! I am forced to draw from the proposed consideration of the sides or types of virtue one conclusion that is not useless in life. Please listen! Wouldn't it be useful? The three sides of virtue shown, as can be seen from their properties, are in continuous connection and interaction with each other. But the imprecise beginning of everything is zeal for the Christian life, confirmed by grace in the Sacrament of Baptism or Repentance. Through a continuous series of actions, it besieges good dispositions in the spirit and heart of a person. The hope and strength of moral life lie in these dispositions, which is why one should not abandon work and worries until they are established, as well as not weaken because they are not established as quickly as one would like. A recently planted tree is easily uprooted, but a long-rooted tree requires great effort from the one who would like to uproot it. Likewise, good dispositions at the beginning of a just-undertaken good life are unreliable, shaky, and changeable; but the more a person stands in the affairs corresponding to them, the stronger they become, the deeper they take root in the heart and turn into natural, as it were, dispositions. As good dispositions are introduced into the heart, evil ones are expelled from it, and the soul becomes more and more pure. On this basis, it is legitimate to distinguish between the different states of a virtuous Christian, according to his age of spiritual life. In the word of God, these ages are designated by comparing the improvement of spiritual life, either with the development of a seed, which first produces grass, then grain, and finally wheat (cf. Mark 4:28), then with the natural ages of a person, such as: infant, youth, manhood or perfection (see: 1 John 2:12-14; Heb. 5:14). Three degrees of spiritual growth are also designated by the Holy Fathers: beginners, advanced and perfect, or degrees of conversion, purification and sanctification 54 . It is very difficult to determine what is characteristic of each of these degrees. The general law of growth is that from the conception of life, as a spark or seed, to its complete development into a flame or a fruitful tree, or to its appearance in all the purity and completeness available in this life, all the time passes in feat and struggle, in which evil is eradicated and good is implanted: but where exactly the turn from infancy to adolescence, from youth to perfection, cannot be determined with accuracy. For the movement of spiritual life, like the movement of the shadow of the sun or the growth of the body, occurs without leaps with a wise and continuous gradualness. Only a few features, based on the word of God and the writings of the Fathers, can be indicated in this regard. Infancy. This is the period from the beginning of Christian life to the formation of the order of this life and the rules of action in general. It is necessary, for example, to establish how to behave in the external order of one’s life, and, moreover, in different cases and for different persons, so, however, so that this does not upset relationships and does not interfere with the spirit. It is very difficult to get on the true path, why this and that is tidied up. Likewise, in internal action against disturbing thoughts and passions, it is not possible to establish action in such a way that you can easily notice and conquer them. So, while the forms of life are being established, so to speak, during all this time the infantile period in spiritual life lasts, which, like a baby, is characterized by instability, immaturity, childish reasoning and childish words, as the Apostle Paul says (see: 1 Cor. 13:11). Infants in Christ are offered milk, not strong food (cf. Heb. 5:12-13), the beginning of Christ’s words (cf. Heb. 6:1), verbal and unflattering milk, so that they may grow for salvation (cf. 1 Pet. 2:2). Due to such unsteadiness and immaturity, they easily waver, and are often carried away by every wind of teaching, in the cunning wiles of flattery (see: Eph. 4:14), and in their very motives they allow more condescension than detachment from everything (see: 1 Cor. 3:1-3). However, they learn the remission of sins for the sake of the name of Christ - the knowledge of the Father (1 John 2:12-13) and the tasting of the goodness of the Lord (cf.: 1 Pet. 2:3). Knowing God as the Father is a very characteristic feature. For a long time a child does not understand and does not distinguish either his father or mother from strangers, but then he begins to distinguish between them, and at the same time his joy of life begins. And a sinner, until he turns to God, does not know Him, the Father who loves mankind: but, having turned, for the first time he sees him as a terrible Judge, then, having been cleansed in Baptism or repentance, he tastes His goodness and feels Him as the Father. Indeed, if we judge by the inner man, then the feeling of God's Fatherly care is the difference between a child and Christ. The Lord is their way: He invisibly guides them through this indecisive period of life. Their motives are more fearful. Saint John of the Climacus attributes primarily physical feats to these novices: fasting, sackcloth, ashes, silence, labor, vigil, tears, and more 55 . Age of adolescence. This is a time of struggle and feat to eradicate passions and plant good dispositions. Just as in a war, after establishing the order of the troops, the war begins, or among farmers, after preparing what is needed, sowing begins 56: so here, when the forms of life have been established, the decisive pursuit of evil within oneself begins, with the rooting of good. This does not mean that evil was tolerated in infancy, but that it is now pursued, so to speak, systematically, unacceptably. Just as in natural life a young man is faced with the work of educating himself, so in spiritual life. Why does the word of God say about spiritual youths that they are strong, that the word of God abides in them, and they have overcome the evil one (cf. 1 John 2:14). The Word of God, previously received with childish simplicity, now turns into their juice and blood, abides in them and gives them the strength of life, according to which they are not only hearers, but also creators of the word and with its power, like a sword, they reflect and defeat the evil one. The Lord Jesus Christ is the truth for them; that is, the truth of temptation and salvation, which resides outside everyone, now passes and dwells in their hearts. The characteristic feeling of young men is the feeling of strength in God. I can do everything in the Lord who strengthens me (cf. Phil. 4:13). The young man lives by hopes, which is why his motivations are characterized by the undoubted hope of achieving perfection and receiving eternal benefits, although this does not exclude other motivations. From Saint John of the Climacus they learn primarily spiritual exploits: lack of vanity, lack of anger, trustworthiness, meek admonition, immaculate prayer, love of money 57 . Male age. This is the time when the internal struggle subsides, and a person begins to taste the peace and sweetness of spiritual blessings. The farmer, after the harvest, eating the fruits of his labors, as well as the dough, leavened and leavened, fully formed - these are images of perfect age. The wise Sirach depicts the action of wisdom, how she first torments and tests her favorite, then turns to him, rejoices him and reveals to him her secrets (see: Sir. 4, 18 ff.). This last is the character of a spiritual husband. We attribute firmness, sedateness, steadfastness, and experience to our husband; and the word of God assimilates the same perfections to a spiritual husband: solid food is characteristic of him (see: Heb. 5:14), his senses are trained in the judgment of good and evil; knowledge of the beginningless, the original (cf. Heb. 5:14; 1 John 2:13–14); that is, the most intimate Divine properties and secrets are revealed to them, while in a young man and a baby more properties are revealed, such as goodness and power. Of their motives, love is more characteristic: for, having come to the measure of the age of the fulfillment of Christ, they truly in love grow into Him all things, Whose head is Christ (cf. Eph. 4, 13, 15). The Lord is their life, reviving and fulfilling them (cf. Gal. 2:20). Why, living no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again (2 Cor. 5:15), they impute all their skills (cf. Phil. 3:8) for the superior understanding of Christ. Saint John of the Climacus assimilates to them primarily life in the spirit and remaining motionless in God: an unenslaved heart, perfect love, the mind moving out of the world and into Christ, the introduction of heavenly light in the soul and thoughts during prayer, non-plundering, the abundance of God's enlightenment, the desire for death, hatred of life, the containment of heavenly mysteries, power over demons, the preservation of God's inscrutable destinies, etc. 58 . I will add two or three more comments about growth in spiritual life in general. 1) That limits cannot be assigned to him. Christians have the goal of being perfect, just as the Heavenly Father is perfect (cf. Matt. 5:48). The desire to imagine an infinite model on oneself should lead a person through infinite degrees; 2) that perfection does not concern any part, but embraces the whole person, both in spirit, and in soul, and in body, in all parts and powers of his being, and in wisdom (cf. Luke 2:52), and in faith (cf. Luke 18:8), and in hope (cf. Rom. 15:13), and in self-sacrifice and self-abasement (cf. Phil. 2:7–8), and in the mortification and sanctification of the body (cf. 1 Cor. 27; Rom. 8:11). In general, the perfect is characterized by everything that is assimilated in the word of God to the one blessed; 3) that all possible degrees of perfection on earth are only relatively higher; they do not mean final purity and maturity, much less exclude the possibility of a fall. Why does the Apostle Paul, on the one hand, command: be sure to stand and be careful, lest you fall (1 Cor. 12), on the other hand, he assures about himself: I do not think that I have attained to myself (Phil. 3:13). Therefore, there is no time when it would be possible to tell us: enough; but must continually begin; to unceasingly warm up the gifts of God (cf. 2 Tim. 1:6) and strive tirelessly to accomplish (cf.: Heb. 6:1). Macarius the Great testifies that even the perfect do not remain at the same degree, but sometimes rise, sometimes decrease, and that even it is impossible for them to always remain at the highest degrees, due to the unbearability of this for our corruptible nature 59 . Saint Climacus cites the example of Ephraim the Syrian 60, who, ascending to the height of dispassion, cried out to God: “weaken the waves of Thy grace for me; just as David prayed: weaken me, let me rest (Ps. 38:14)" 61. But enough about that! Let's see after this: where are we? A beginning may have been made... but whether a step forward has been taken after that, God knows. Although let there be care about one thing, so that jealousy does not go out. As long as it exists, there is still hope for success. Maybe sometimes we’ll do some good and add even a hair’s breadth to our height. And when it goes out, then everything will end. May the Lord be your protection and strength! I will add one more thought: about the high dignity of a true Christian life, or the high price of virtue, and, at the same time, its unenviable state in appearance. This contrast is very instructive. There is nothing on earth with which Christian virtue in dignity can be compared. What did the Savior call the only thing needed? - zeal for the salvation of the soul. But this is Christian virtue. What is more important than achieving the last goal? But it is achieved only through Christian virtue. What is more blessed than communion with God? But it is inseparable from Christian virtue. There are many objects on earth worthy of respect: arts, sciences, good government, wealth, virtues; but what is all this without virtue? What good is it to a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? (cf. Matthew 16:26). Everything else, except virtue, is like a mathematical zero and receives meaning and significance only from it. He who has acquired virtue has acquired an undetectable treasure. Everything else can be plundered here, and everything will certainly leave a person at the hour of death. And virtue safely passes this testing point and enters with man into the heavenly fatherland. But if, without such comparison with transitory things, we turn to the order of the Christian life - good, then its new extraordinary advantages will be revealed. A Christian who lives truly as a Christian has God as his Father, from Whom he is born and Who especially favors him, is the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ and a member of His flesh and of His bones, is a fellowship and secret place of God, the dwelling place of the Trinitarian God, a fellow servant of the Angels and saints. He received the invaluable grace to feed on the Body of Christ and through the word of God, as through a veil, to enter into the interior, to converse with the One True God face to face in pure prayer; he has heaven as his fatherland, and in it there is an inheritance that cannot be described in human language. We can advise everyone to read the Right Reverend Tikhon about the advantages of being a Christian, in the 9th volume of his works 62. More often a Christian should bring to mind this advantage of a good life, so that he can cry out more often: what do we have in heaven?! Judging by such a height of good Christian life, one should expect a bright fate for him. But the word of God does not promise this, and in fact this almost never happens. Anyone who begins to live as a Christian embarks on a difficult and sorrowful path, takes up the cross and with it follows in the footsteps of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ himself was dishonored, belittled above all sons of men and nailed to the Cross. He said to the apostles: you will be in a world of sorrow. I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you (cf. John 16:33; 15:19). The apostles said about themselves: until this hour we hunger, and thirst, and are naked... as if the world were to be trampled upon by all (cf.: 1 Cor. 4:11, 13). After them, and at any other time, those who want to live godly are persecuted (cf. 2 Tim. 3:12). This cannot be otherwise. The world, lying in evil, does not tolerate accusers. Satan does not tolerate opponents. But a Christian is a warrior of God against the prince of darkness, which is why he is the target for the arrows of the world’s anger against its prince. From the very beginning he encounters suspicions, reproaches of hypocrisy and hypocrisy; Then, one after another, personal insults will follow, deprivation of advantages, visible persecution, bitterness from everywhere, to which no one can give an account of those who produce it. But when in this way the external of a Christian man decays, his internal is renewed throughout his days. The cross is a ladder of ascent through the degrees of Christian perfection. In this meager vessel the treasures of the spirit are created. In it all the perfections of the parts and powers of man are imagined, that is, the perfections of spirit, soul and body, mind, will and heart; and, strengthening more and more, he, from a child in Christ, finally becomes a man, mature and ready for another world, the real one, from this preparatory world, he himself desires to be resolved and to be with Christ. Finally, the toiling wanderer ends his journey, painlessly throws off his wandering clothes, is received by the Angels, ascends to the throne of the infinite God and is taken to his place, in which he enjoys inexplicable bliss in spirit, from the mysterious sight of God, until at the Second Coming of Christ this lifeless thing is clothed with immortality. Then, filled with the integrity of his being, he will forever shine like the sun in the Kingdom of the Father. After this, the question of the union of happiness and bliss with a good life is resolved by itself: 1) in this life, for perfection in the spirit, Christians are not given the blessings here, but they only enjoy the inner spiritual blessings here and, despite all the sorrows, they continually rejoice and are filled with the peace of God, which surpasses all minds, from the feeling of God’s mercies; 2) in another life, without sorrows, this bliss in spirit appears in all its strength and exists only spiritually until the Second Coming; 3) at the Second Coming, our transformed body will also become a participant in this bliss, and then the righteous person will enjoy endless bliss with his whole being. This ending crowns the matter! Let the soul be jealous of him. And what are the troubles in life, what kind of trouble? A little... now, tomorrow it's over! With this I think I will conclude a speech on Christian virtue. Don't be angry at more! So would you like to now look at the dark side of human life, or listen to something about sin? I'll do it willingly. And the same thought occurred to me. From sin, which is the opposite of good, good will be clearer. What more do we need to know if not what sin is, so as not to be deceived by it? Many people do not consider it a sin, which is a sin; some sin is considered not entirely important, whereas it is very important, and in other respects we have many favorable judgments about sin... But in fact, it is still poisonous, and its poisonousness is not diminished by our condescension. Well, you’ll see for yourself, at least in a general outline! And sin, just like virtue, can be considered in three respects: a) as a matter, b) as a disposition or passion, c) as a state and sinful mood of the soul. A sinful deed is a transgression of the commanding or prohibiting commandment of God, or, as the Apostle says: sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4). Two especially features are immediately reflected in sin from words: crime and commandment. There it is an abuse of freedom, here it is contempt for the law. Sin occurs only in rational beings, incorporeal and connected to the body. As a special advantage, the Lord granted them freedom. But close to this advantage is one line and an abyss. Freedom is not bound: it can turn to God and can turn away from Him. But this possibility exists in freedom not so that the creature turns away from the Creator, but because it constitutes the nature of freedom. The goal and purpose of freedom is unconstrained service to God, its Creator, so that the creature, freely serving God and fulfilling His will, is awarded greater benefits and becomes the most spacious receptacle of bliss. It is obvious that a creature that deviates from the will of God abuses freedom. This is said in order to show that she abuses herself, not out of some necessity or fate, but arbitrarily, having, that is, the full opportunity to fulfill the will of God at the moment when she does not fulfill it. In this sense, the Orthodox Confession says that sin is the unbridled will of man and the devil 64. No one forced the devil to rebel against God; he did it on his own. Although our first parents were tempted by Satan, he did not bind their freedom, but only deceived them; therefore, when they transgressed the commandment, they sinned freely, of their own accord. And now, let manifold lust rise up against us, let the world and the devil fight; but all sin itself is our free deed, unconstrained, the fruit of an unbridled will. Sin is a crime or violation of the law. But the law itself remains unchanged. It is ruined only and destroyed in the person of the sinner. For example, unbelief is a violation of the law of faith in God; but both God and faith themselves remain inviolable. Both were ungodified only within themselves by the ungodly one, precisely because he did not accept, rejected, despised, and trampled upon this law. Hence contempt for the law is an integral feature of sin; contempt for the law, therefore, contempt for the will of God and resistance to God. Further, since the moral law is imprinted in the being of man and is internally understood and combined with his structure, then, by transgressing it, a person goes against himself, ruins and destroys himself, for the immutable condition for the well-being and health of any being is the undefeated development of the principles laid down in it. Therefore, we can say that sin is poison and the destruction of a person through unauthorized violation of the law. From opposition to the law, death is inevitably born and the wrath of God is kindled. Therefore, in general, sin is characterized by this unbridled will, this contempt for the law, this destructive force with which it acts back on the sinner. It follows from this: that we cannot say that sin consists in the shortcomings and imperfections of our powers; it is an inevitable consequence of our limitations. He is not omniscient and not omnipotent, therefore he cannot be a saint. True, our strength is limited; but the obligations that lie upon us are not endless, but correspond exactly to our nature. If they began to demand an angelic life from us, we could apologize for not being able to achieve it. And if, being human, we do not live like humans, how do we apologize? It is equally untrue that sin is a consequence of short-sightedness of mind, imprudence: he set the wrong goal, took the wrong means 66. All this happens in sin; but sin actually lies in the corruption of the will, by which we know what we should do, but we don’t do it because we don’t want to. To the one who leads to do good, and to the one who does not do it, it is sin for him (cf. James 4:17). As for the origin of sin, it is amazing both in the devil and in man. Imagine the purest and most perfect rational creature, like an Angel, who had just emerged from the hands of the Creator with high virtues that brought him closer to the Creator; he receives the commandment and soon afterwards, knowing completely the will of his Creator, knowing His prohibition, what is pleasing to Him and what is displeasing, he chooses what is displeasing in opposition to Him. You don’t see a single thought on which an explanation for such an action could be based. This is an incomprehensible moral mystery! A thought or inner word was born in the spirit and produced so much evil that the whole world was filled with it, and such strong evil that it will endure forever, although, undoubtedly, to its own destruction. “Such is the essence of freedom! A free being is an imprecise beginning of affairs about which it is not always possible to answer: why? Just because I want, and I want because I want. Likewise, the birth of sin in man is inexplicable, for he also sinned, knowing everything. In a fallen sinner, the birth of sins is still understandable, for the one who sinned became a slave of sin, instilled sin into himself, accepted it, as it were, as a rule. But from what and how did the fall of the pure man, the first, or now the fall of people who succeeded in goodness, who knew its sweetness, who were worthy of the special favor of God, righteous people? The following passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews sheds some light on this: Take heed, brethren, lest in any of you there be a deceitful heart, full of unbelief, that will depart from God. But console yourself every day, until today you are reproached, so that no one will be hardened by you through sinful flattery (cf. Heb. 3:12-13). It is indicated here that sin begins with unbelief, weakening of conviction in the truth, and clouding of the mind. It casts a certain shadow on the truth, on God, His law and the Divine order, and therefore removes them from consciousness as this shadow increases. This is what the devil did in the beginning, darkening the face of God in the minds of the first parents. This is where everyone’s sin begins. Therefore, it is the duty of those who do not want to sin to purify their faith as often as possible. Then unbelief is joined by sinful flattery, the expectation of great sweetness, which will come on its own, without any labor, as soon as you sin. This aspiration rivets the attention and heart to the subject of sin. Then one thinks and desires only this one thing. Law, truth, the needs of the spirit, the word of God - everything becomes nothing. A person has become hardened towards them, or he has already established himself in stubbornness and disobedience, he is ready to say: go away, or he has retreated from God... Having no fear of Him, like an ardent beast, he rushes to sin. At the foundation and very depth of everything lies an evil heart: dishonesty, inner deception before oneself and God, whom, however, it does not reject. It immediately abides in the entire production of sin and sets everything in motion and covers it with itself. Thus, the mechanism of sin is somewhat visible. But everything is not its complete explanation. For where does this dishonesty and deceit come from in someone who was previously conscientious and straightforward? Further, where does unbelief come from in someone who has breathed faith, where does sinful flattery come from in someone who hates sin, or hardening in someone who is gentle and submissive? Remember the example of a holy ascetic who succeeded to the point that an Angel brought him food. How did it happen that he, leaving the desert, fled into the world? And he would have run away if God’s mercy had not restrained him. So, sin is a mystery... we all sin and are extremely guilty of sins, but we cannot tell ourselves why we sin. Therefore, not only through a mediocre conclusion, but also directly the conception of sin can be traced back to the devil. He brings shadows and darkness to the soul and, keeping it, as it were, in some kind of intoxication, brings it to the point where it gives birth to sin, first within itself, and then outside. However, this does not excuse the soul, for temptation is not a necessity. Sin is always an unauthorized deviation from God and His holy law to please oneself. Watch and pray: do not lead us, Lord, into temptation! To introduce you more closely to sin, I will list its different types, for in them its evil and dark nature is more obvious. Let us take as a guide the simple thought of sin. Sin is a crime of a commandment that commands or prohibits doing something, an arbitrary, unconstrained crime. Hence: 1) there are sins of omission and violation of commandments. The Lord commanded: turn away from evil and do good (Ps. 33:13); one must do one thing and not do another. Therefore, when we do what we should not, we commit sin, and when we do not do what we should, we also commit sin. Both violation and failure to fulfill a commandment are sins. The former is more criminal than the latter, since violation of the commandment requires special effort and cannot occur otherwise than from great perseverance and corruption of the will. It must, however, be remembered that omissions can be very important and are often more important than the violations themselves. This should especially be said about those cases in which this omission depends on constant and ever-present neglect of the law or from contempt for it, as well as about those in which duties are omitted, either important in themselves, or those whose omission entails harmful and destructive consequences for others. Such is the omission of their duties by a father, priest, teacher, etc. The word of God deliberately indicates the guilt of the omission in the most decisive case, namely at the Last Judgment. Thus, the inaccessible slave who hid his talent is told: cast him into utter darkness (cf. Matt. 25:30); and to those who are hard-hearted towards the poor, it will be said: you have not created anything... get away from Me (cf. Matt. 25:40-41). Therefore, every zealot for moral perfection must restore in his conscience in every possible way a sense of obligation to the positive prescriptions of the law and fulfill them; in the event of a violation, arouse corresponding regret and grief about it and cleanse it with repentance, because often not only the uneducated, but even those who are quite knowledgeable in their duties, just because they have not committed major violations and crimes, say: what have I done? – not attributing any omissions to anything, no matter how important they may be; 2) more variety is introduced into the area of ​​sin by its property that it is a violation or omission of a commandment, unconstrained, free. Since all free actions are performed by the interaction of reason and will, then, according to which force is more involved in sins or has more influence on them through its wrongful action, whether reason or will, sins receive different names, shades and types. The task of reason in moral activity is to understand to a person his duties and then, in the very fulfillment of them, to strictly monitor how, what and where to fulfill them. From the failure of the mind to properly fulfill its duty in one case or another, sins of ignorance arise, on the one hand, and sins of imprudence, on the other. Anyone who remembers himself and his purpose should, to the best of his ability and ability, collect knowledge about his duties and clarify for himself what and how to do. This is why everyone is given conscience, this unwritten law, by which, even without studying, they learn their duty; in Christianity, this is supplemented by the word of God revealed to everyone, continuous preaching in the Church and the oral word of the shepherds, regarding whom it is written: ask your father, and your elders will tell you, and they will tell you (Deut. 32:7). And one more thing: be careful to do everything according to the law, which the priests will tell you (cf. Deut. 24:8). With all this, however, it often happens to almost everyone to say: ah! I didn’t even know - that is, to reproach myself for ignorance, especially when it comes to individual cases. But on the other hand, not all ignorance is equally sinful. Regarding this, it should be noted: a) whoever lives in simplicity of heart, trying to the best of his ability to both recognize and implement what he has learned, and at the same time does something illegal, without suspecting sin, with a clear conscience, without any doubt or hesitation - that, in fact, one sin is the sin of ignorance, that is, such a bad deed that is done by a person, but is not fully blamed on him; b) every person who is inattentive to himself and his duty, living in carelessness and indifference to his salvation, does not apologize when he does something bad out of ignorance. For since he has no love for good, even if he recognized it, he probably would not do it; he does not recognize him by this lack of love or constant reluctance to virtue. Such a person sins twice: both in that he does not know and does not recognize, and in those deeds that he does out of this ignorance. In the reluctance to learn duty lies a secret desire for the opposite; c) such ignorance is all the more guilty, the more depraved the will shows, namely: the more important the unknown object, for example, the objects of faith and, especially, its most important members, duties directly related to one’s title; the easier it is for someone to learn what he does not know, either by ability or by external means; the more someone not only has, but also feels motivated to do so; d) the very height of wickedness is ignorance, when someone does not know not only out of negligence and carelessness, but also out of disgust or contempt, while remaining, however, in an order that he does not like. These are those who call themselves Christians, and yet they blaspheme Christianity, although they do not know it as they should. And that is, it is a person’s duty to be attentive to himself and his affairs. Therefore, if someone knows his duty or how he should act, but in the very performance of duty, or acting according to duty, does not pay attention to himself and, as a result, makes various mistakes and offenses, then he sins, and sins of this kind are called sins of imprudence and rashness. Regarding this type of sins you should know: a) that in our present state of disorder of forces, or their mobility and instability, it is impossible to discern everything both inside and outside. Therefore, if one of those who strictly watch themselves, living with a cheerful heart and a sober thought, reluctantly, without knowing how, falls into some sin in thought, word or deed and then, noticing it, immediately rejects it with heartfelt hatred, and sanctifies himself with a repentant prayer: cleanse me from my secrets (Ps. 18:13); Moreover, the offense is innocent: it is a matter of weakness, but not of malicious intent. Only the main thing: having noticed it, you must reject it with your heart, for whoever accepts it later and enjoys it, will later choose what he has not seen before and what he has done without knowing or choosing; b) the one who, although attentive to his duty, has a desire to be serviceable as it should be, only at the hour of action allows himself to indulge in the desire of his character or feelings of the heart, for example: hot temper, cheerfulness, severity, false condescension, etc.; Those matters are matters of criminal imprudence, and therefore sinful. And their sin is all the more significant the more important the subject of their deed is in itself and in its consequences, the more experience has exposed the unkindness of such behavior and the easier it is for a person to correct such a mistake. Guilt here is diminished only by trying to correct oneself, which is not done suddenly, but gradually and therefore among falls; c) a person who is absent-minded or who is decidedly careless and has an unfavorable view of virtue and morality is fundamentally an evil sinner. His sinfulness is all the more serious the more shameless his negligence 67, the more urgent his contempt for duty and the clearer his consciousness of all this. So be sober and stay awake! Gird up the loins of your thoughts. You have to look at your feet with both eyes so as not to stumble. And pray: direct my steps according to Your word. God help you! Let us continue in the footsteps of sin! When they want to distinguish sins by the participation of a person’s will and initiative in them, they turn either to the origin and beginning of sin, or to its formation from thought into deed. Just as in general all the deeds of a person either come directly from his person, or are carried out as a result of the demands and excitement of others, coming from outside or from his lower powers: so some commit sins out of the infatuation of depraved desires, and others out of a cold-blooded consideration. The latter are sins of anger or maliciousness and debauchery, and those are sins of passion and infatuation. There is no need to point out that sins emanating from a depraved and evil mind and heart are of the last degree of severity. For here man himself becomes, in his own person, the source of evil, and therefore a close analogue of the evil Satan, who delights in evil and only thinks about it. Such a one is already in the depths of evil, into which he has come carelessly (cf. Proverbs 18:3); or: he will not sleep unless he does evil (cf. Proverbs 4:16). But even about sins of passion it must be said that they are in no way excusable. It is true that now our nature is passionate, weak, upset and prone to evil, but this does not make it necessary to agree to its evil demands. This consent is always in our hands, especially among those to whom strength has been given and strong help has been promised for the appeal (see: Phil. 4:13). Therefore, to call sins of infatuation and passion sins of weakness only means opening a vast door of relaxation and impurity into the moral world. Through experience they want to assimilate this title over the drives of lust, taste, instinct, the movement of fullness or the play of life. Apparently, where there is more evil, they want to be lenient. No matter how strong the passion, if the object is chosen and desired, then the deed exposes the depravity of the will and eating is immoral. From here, perhaps only those should exclude cases in which there is an instantaneous, unexpected effervescence of passion, and yet so strong that a person, as if in intoxication or darkening of the mind, is carried away to sin. But such cases are very rare and can only occur once in one person. And in general, the greater or lesser guilt of this sin depends on the lesser or greater strength of attraction, on the greater or lesser old age and the news of passion, on the greater or less clear consciousness of one’s condition. New shades of this type of sin arise from the fact that, voluntarily or involuntarily, passion boils up from within, by itself or due to external excitement. In the latter respect, the circumstances of place, time, persons, etc. often present convenient opportunities for sin, and often entice one into sin, arousing passion. But this does not excuse sin, but on the contrary, and at the same time, the more sinful the sin is, the more the incident that involved it was foreseen and was at our disposal. For here, obviously, the one going into the fire wants to get burned. Whoever goes to such a house, where either thoughts or heart become worse, is to blame if he then does something bad. But even in unavoidable circumstances, it is more likely to suffer damage, to show the experience of self-sacrifice, rather than to plunge the spirit, for which the body, the world, and time, into danger. The method of the formation of sin from thought into deed is defined with precision by the Holy Fathers, and the guilt of everyone in this course of action of the moment is also determined with precision. The whole course of the matter is depicted as follows: first comes the preposition, then attention, then pleasure, followed by desire, then determination and, finally, action 68. The further a moment is from the outcome and the closer to the end, the more significant, depraved and sinful it is. The height of guilt is in the deed, and there is almost no evidence of it. A preposition is a simple representation of a thing, whether from the action of the senses or from the action of memory and imagination, presented to our consciousness. There is no sin here when the birth of images is not in our power. Sometimes, however, guilt passes here indirectly, when, for example, a seductive image comes to mind because of the permission given to dreams. An image is often evoked spontaneously; then, in terms of its quality, this matter becomes a sin, for a person is obliged to keep his mind in Divine things. Attention is the establishment of consciousness or the eye of the mind on the born image in order to examine it, as if to talk with it. This is slowness in a single or polysyllabic thought. This action is more in the power of man: for an image born against the will can be immediately expelled. That is why it is more guilty. He who inwardly looks at a criminal subject exposes the bad mood of the heart. He is like someone who introduces an unclean animal into a clean living quarter, or who places a disgusting wicked person together with honest guests. Sometimes, it is true, an object attracts attention with its news and astoundingness, but everything, after its impurity and charm is recognized, must drive it out, for otherwise consent will be involved, and from being involuntary, this matter will become voluntary. In general, this moment is very important in moral life. He stands at the transition to business. He who drove away thoughts extinguished all warfare and stopped all production of sin. That’s why it’s advisable to pay all your attention to your thoughts and fight them. All the rules of the holy ascetics are primarily directed here. From here it goes without saying what price the sins of imagination and self-willed dreams bear. Where it pleases them, there they sin. But this sin is more sinful if some external means are used, for example, reading, hearing, seeing, talking. These latter are also assessed as cases of sin. Delight is an application to an object following the mind and heart. It comes when, as a result of attention to an object, we begin to like it, and we find pleasure in looking at it intelligently, cherishing it in thought. Delight in sinful objects is already downright sin. For if our heart must be devoted to God, then any combination of it with other objects is a violation of fidelity to Him, a break in the union, betrayal, spiritual adultery. One must keep one’s heart pure, because because of it the thoughts of the mind become evil (see: Matt. 15:18–19), when, that is, it begins to delight in them lawlessly. There are, however, delightful movements of the flesh and heart, which are in no way dependent on arbitrariness, which are all movements of needs. Which they, innocent at the beginning, immediately become not innocent, as soon as they are recognized and are covered with favor towards them or consent to illegal satisfaction with them. At the beginning they are natural movements, and then they become moral. Therefore, they say, when you notice them, become indignant. From here it naturally follows that we should think about aesthetic pleasures. They are criminal to the extent that their content or form is incompatible with the purity of heart and morals. The same applies to the masterful works of artisans: to approve them with the mind for their suitability for the purpose is a proper thing; and surrendering oneself to their effect, for the sake of empty momentary pleasure, is bad. And in general, when we go to sleep, we pray for forgiveness if we have seen someone else’s kindness and were wounded by it in our hearts, so that we can cleanse our hearts of all hobbies during the day. In many cases, however, pleasure bursts forth either necessarily or uncontrollably. There is one rule: do not deign, reject, be indignant. From pleasure there is one step to desire. The difference between them is that the soul that delights remains in itself, on the contrary, the soul that desires inclines towards the object, has a desire for it, and begins to look for it. It cannot in any way be innocent, for it is accomplished by consent or is born contemporaneously with it, as if from under it; consent is always in our will. Determination is distinguished from desire by another feature, namely in that the composition or condition of its birth includes confidence in possibility and a vision of means. The person who wishes has expressed his consent to the matter, but has not yet come up with anything and has not taken any steps to achieve his goal; For the one who has decided, everything has already been examined and decided; all that remains is to set in motion the members of the body or other forces to carry out affairs accordingly. When, finally, this is accomplished, then all the work of sin ends and the work appears - the fruit of corruption, conceived within and giving birth to lawlessness without. After pleasure, the desire for action is as quick as the fall of a heavy stone down a steep slope. Therefore, the general rule is: fight and drive away thoughts while your heart is not yet wounded by them, for then victory is very difficult, if not impossible. In the main course of the formation of sin, it is noticeable how one after another the powers of man are combined with sin. After the heart is defiled in pleasure, the will is defiled in desire, and in determination, through the invention of means, the mind also becomes a participant in this defilement; in fact, finally, the very powers of the body are imbued with sin: and the whole person has become a sinner. 1) even the one who desired or expressed consent to the matter internally, in a moral sense, committed a sin before God, who sees the secrets of hearts. Whoever conceived lust gave birth to sin (see: James 1:15), says the Apostle James, and he who lusted after his wife has already committed adultery with her (see: Matthew 5:27), says the Lord. However, the one who decided to sin more than him, due to greater effort of strength to sin, due to the greater volume of internal sin, due to greater stubbornness and corruption of the will. From determination to action there is one line; 2) although in desire and determination there is already sin, it should not be concluded from this that the sinful deed itself has nothing to add to their sinfulness, and it is no more sinful than them. The one who has decided can still or has time to abandon the matter and, therefore, having once resisted the law, show him obedience another time, when he presents his demands in conscience, meanwhile, the one who has done the deed violates the law both internally and externally. The one who carries out the work throughout his entire continuation struggles with his conscience, which does not cease to admonish him, therefore, he further corrupts himself and upsets his moral nature. He who does the work fills himself entirely with sin, bends all his strength and his whole being towards it and directs it; therefore, in the first case it already lays the foundation for habit, for those who have done it once will do it sooner and more willingly another time, and so on, especially carnal sins. Finally, the evil consequences of sin begin to appear after it has been committed. Temptation, health problems, damage to oneself and others come from deeds; 3) from here it is self-evident how to think about sins that are not committed by deed not out of free will, but out of need or external impossibility. The severity of this sin is almost equal to the deed. The difference between them is only in the consequences, and moreover, all the internal consequences already exist, only the external ones are missing. In this regard, the difference is less or more significant, the less or more bad consequences should be expected from the case. Where they do not exist and do not exist, there, one might say, the difference disappears; 4) on this basis, internal and external sins are distinguished. The number of external sins can also include the sins of others, imputed to us: for in this case, others are, as it were, performers of our internal sin, the same as our strength and our body are for our desires. For how do we become participants in the sins of others? Because of this, if the sin they commit is our depraved desire, and in their deed we do not only reveal it to others, but by the very deed we have and nurture within us contempt and disrespect for the law of morality violated by others, just as this is also seen in our conscience. After this, it goes without saying that how much someone else’s sin is imputed to us, how great is our participation in it, and how much is our contempt for the moral law. The ways in which this is done are: an order more or less strict, advice more or less convincing, agreement, with more or less pleasure, temptation more or less intentional and flattering, non-notice or permission, with more or less indulgence, also approval, non-opposition, non-announcement. How important the sins of others can be can be judged by how sinful is the sin of a parent who does not stop his children, or an educator who does not correct the weaknesses of his pupils or is educated incorrectly, who dispels temptation everywhere with books, paintings, and statues. In general, the easier it is to stop evil and promote good, the more evil and immoral is our participation in the sins of others. So you see how things are going! Therefore, I add again: it is appropriate to be sober and watchful, to pay attention to yourself and guard your heart from every attack of sinful defilement! Finally, sins also differ in varying degrees of importance. There is not much to say about this. From a simple and brief examination of sins, it is clear that they do not have the same degree of importance and strength, but there are weak, evil and evil ones. This different importance of them sometimes depends on their subject, and sometimes on the degree of corruption of the heart participating in it. In the first respect, sins are called grave and light. Just as the duties that fall on a person are not of equal importance, so the violation of these duties, or sins, are not equally grave. And the rules for determining this gravity correspond to the rules for determining the importance of duties. Namely: sin is the more serious the more it brings disorder into the moral world, that is, the more it is opposed to the moral Christian spirit of life, love for God and neighbors, for example, blasphemy or immodest standing in church; the more conscience and revelation are applied to a certain matter of grounds that bind us by necessity in relation to it, for example, disrespect for parents and the common man; the more significant the amount of matter of sin... for example, to steal a little or a lot, to offend in word or deed, for the first time or not for the first time. But all this is, as it were, only a mental yardstick for determining the severity of sins. In reality, it is subject to a wide variety of conditions, which, it must be said, are not easily determined by theory. It is necessary to remember, however, that this distinction between grave and non-grievous sins is not at all intended to be more daring and bold in other sins. Every sin is a grave sin, because it offends God. Therefore, in general, everyone should be careful. Only there are different degrees of severity of sins, so different that some sins seem light compared to others, why this lightness is only relative. Knowing this is not useless for moral internal order, for the refinement of moral feeling, especially for avoiding disturbances of conscience or healing this illness. For at almost every step one thinks that he has sinned gravely. Such a decisive, measured, numerical definition of the severity of sins will be very enlightening. But even for the careless it can be a saving grace to shock and frighten if, out of self-forgetfulness, he thinks too frivolously about his sin and vicious behavior. Just as virtue does not consist in one act, but even more in the inner disposition, so does sin. Therefore, the differences in the importance of sins are more significant according to the internal sinful disposition. In this regard, sins are divided into mortal and non-mortal. A mortal sin is one that robs a person of his moral and Christian life. If we know what moral life is, then the definition of mortal sin is not difficult; Christian life is zeal and the power to remain in communion with God by fulfilling His holy law. Therefore, every sin that extinguishes jealousy, takes away strength and relaxes, distances one from God and deprives Him of grace, so that after it a person cannot look at God, but feels himself cut off 71 from Him; every such sin is a mortal sin. This sin is spoken of when it is said: there is sin unto death (1 John 5:16). And one more thing: she who feeds generously dies alive (cf. 1 Tim. 5:6). Or: he who does not love remains in death (cf. 1 John 3:14). Such a sin deprives a person of the grace received in Baptism, takes away the Kingdom of Heaven and delivers it to judgment. And all this is confirmed in the hour of sin, although it is not accomplished visibly. Sins of this kind change the entire direction of a person’s activity and his very state and heart, forming, as it were, a new outcome in moral life; why do others determine that mortal sin is the one that changes the center of human activity? This abstract definition of mortal sin becomes closer to our deeds through the following rules or conditions by which sin becomes mortal. Namely, he is mortal if anyone transgresses the clear commandment of God with desire and pleasure, with awareness of himself and the sinfulness of the deed. If there are degrees in death, then it must be said: sin is the more deadly the more important each of these aspects of sin is. At the same time, it should be noted that the importance of the subject, as is self-evident, given the awareness of its sinfulness, leaves no doubt about the mortality of the sin committed; but even in relation to objects of lesser importance, sin can be mortal, judging by the corruption of the will with which it is committed, or the contempt for the law through it, or the boasting through it of the incoherence of moral laws. The Orthodox Confession describes mortal sins in detail 72 . They are divided into three classes. The first includes sins that serve as a source for other sins. The second is sins against the Holy Spirit, namely: immeasurable trust in the goodness of God, despair, opposition to the clear truth, also envy of the spiritual perfections of others, growing old in anger, postponing repentance until death. The third is the sins that cry out to heaven, such as: free murder, sodomy, insulting the poor, widows and orphans and depriving mercenaries of bribes, insulting and annoying parents. Immortal sin, otherwise venial, in contrast to mortals, is one that does not extinguish spiritual life, does not alienate a person from God, does not change the center of his activity, in which one can turn to God without embarrassment and converse with Him in prayer sincerely. There are countless sins of this kind, and no one is free from them except the Lord Jesus Christ and the Most Pure Mother of God. Therefore it is said: if we speak that we are not imams of sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (cf.: 1 John 1:8); or: by me we all sin (James 3:2); also: the righteous will fall sevenfold (cf. Proverbs 24:16); for there is no righteous man on earth, who will do good and not sin (Eccl. 7:21). It is difficult, however, to determine what exactly these sins are, especially since the immortality of sin depends on the inner disposition of the spirit, and not on the mere unimportance of its subject. We can only definitively say that all sins of innocent ignorance, unintentional imprudence, sometimes indecency and slight indiscretion are immortal sins, excusable, especially because the intention and desire to do something unkind was not involved in them. Whoever, seeing them in himself, condemns them with disgust, they will be forgiven. In general, everything that is easily bad, committed without consciousness of badness, is a venial sin. The badness of such deeds and the proximity to mortal sin increases with the awareness of their badness when committing them. This should especially be said about indifferent things, when they are done not with a bad purpose, but also not with a good one, but in their natural order. In the latter case, they can borrow badness from the effect they have on the human soul. For example, a walk can leave one's thoughts distracted and arouse movements of lust. Anyone who notices that it has a bad influence on him, and at the same time realizes that for this very reason he is obliged to stop it, and yet does not stop, obviously, although easily, offends his conscience, violates its peace and purity. It is obvious that this kind of sin has already emerged from the immortal and has come very close to the mortal; and increasing frequency will really turn him into one. For most of all, the life of the spirit freezes from entertainment. Therefore, in general, it is prescribed to avoid as many venial and immortal sins as possible, especially from the time their sinfulness is recognized. He who sincerely loves God should not allow the purity of his heart to be stained before Him out of some unimportant and empty habit. Moreover, small sins are already akin to sinfulness and therefore pave the way for great sins. The one who despises, little by little, will fall (Sir. 19, 1). We also need to think whether we are not deceived in the fact that this is a small sin: perhaps it is big and evil in our essence! Enough, I think, about sinful matters. And from this you can understand how we walk in the midst of snares! Let us cry out: deliver us from those who catch us! Save yourself! b) Now about sin as a disposition A sinful disposition, otherwise a sinful inclination, passion, is a constant desire to sin in a certain way, or love for some sinful deeds or objects. So, for example, absent-mindedness is a constant desire for entertainment or love for it. Such attachments or sinful tendencies are of great importance in moral life. There is a strength of evil in them, just as there is a strength of good in good dispositions. What fortresses are in the state, they are in the soul. Through them, sin or Satan erects fortresses for itself in the hearts and acts safely from them, without fearing the opposite side. Passion in relation to human activity is true spiritual slavery: for a person, as if led by it, is led to evil, even realizing his misfortune, even not even though it is his. Just as a bound slave is drawn by his captor wherever he wants, so passion does with a sinner. “Great,” says St. Chrysostom, “custom is tormenting, because it turns into a true need” 73 . For those who are overcome are those who work (cf. 2 Pet. 2:19). He who commits sin is the servant of sin (John 8:34). Human nature here suffers complete humiliation from sin. Others will abstain for a little, but then, on occasion, passion flares up like fire and carries them away to ordinary affairs. Others are tormented, tormented, and damn themselves when the passion subsides; but as soon as she begins to move, she unquestioningly submits to her and willingly surrenders into the hands of her tormentor. For some, its strength reaches such a degree that neither conviction, nor fear, nor shame, nor troubles, nor even death are strong enough to turn him away from his work. A person who works by passion is the poorest creature. If you look at passion in relation to God or at its meaning in the moral world, then it is true spiritual idolatry. If there is passion or love for sin, then its object, like an idol, stands in the heart, which therefore becomes a church for it, 74 and everything is sacrificed to it with willing obedience every time. You cannot work for God and mammon (Matthew 6:24), said the Lord. Whose heart is addicted to sin, for him he is God. Therefore, for a glutton, the belly is God (see: Phil. 3:19), for the covetous it is money (see: Col. 3:5). Where the passions come from, which of them are initial and which are the initial ones, why one has one and another has another, I will postpone consideration of this until another time. Here I will only remember that not a single person is born with a definite passion. Each of us comes into this light only with the seed of all passions - self-love. This seed then develops through life and free activity, grows and opens into a large tree, which with its branches covers all our sinfulness, or the entire area of ​​​​sins, because every sin is certainly already hiding under it or hanging on some of its branches. The main branches of self-love are: pride, covetousness, voluptuousness. All other passions are repelled from these; but among them not all are equally important. The most remarkable essence: fornication, gluttony, envy, laziness, rancor. In their strength they are equal to the first ones, with which together they constitute the seven primary passions, for they are the causative agents of sin and the parents of every other sinful inclination and passion. How and what passions further develop from them - see Orthodox Confession 75. From this it is clear that all passions are interconnected and mutually generated, like good dispositions, and have different strengths and sinful severity. There is no doubt that any passion is a grave and mortal sin, for it alienates one from God and extinguishes zeal for a noble life. However, passion is the more evil and criminal, the more evil and immoral its object, the more essential duties it violates, and the older it is. One should never think that passions are formed naturally, by themselves. Every passion is our business. The urge to do this or that sinful thing comes from the corruption of our nature; but to satisfy it, especially repeatedly, to the point of habit, is our will. Thus, pride is confirmed by frequent pride, laziness by frequent inactivity, envy by frequent envy, grumpiness by frequent abuse, and so on. In the composition of passion, one must distinguish between the heart's disposition and habitual actions that satisfy the passion. When a person is in a state of formed passion, then both are, one might say, equivalent. But before passion comes into force, although a passionate disposition, or passion, is already in the heart, the habit of acting accordingly can be very weak. On the contrary, when a person comes into himself, understands his danger from passion and decides to extinguish it, the passion is already hated, persecuted and persecuted by the person; but the habit of actions that satisfy passion, to which the parts and forces of the soul and body are tuned, continues to seduce for a long time, sometimes snatches satisfaction, as if against the will, sometimes carries away, as if uncontrollably. That is why it is necessary to work for a long, long time to eradicate the rooted vice, until the actions and movements of forces get used to the opposite turns. Entire books need to be written about the eradication of passions... Therefore, here I will mention a few things! It is an indecisive sign that someone is correcting his heart if he refrains only from external affairs that correspond to passion; for at the same time, passionate love can lurk inside, and, therefore, according to the heart, this person can remain passionate - incorrigible. Also, a flash of hatred towards passion and dissatisfaction with oneself for it, thinking and rethinking how to wean oneself from passion and overcome passion is an indecisive sign of this, for this state is momentary: it will pass, and the heart will again make peace with passion. But if someone, from this moment of indignation at passion, accepts a firm and decisive intention to pursue it and, without sparing himself, to eradicate it, then such a striving against passion is the true beginning of correction; and the reliability of correction depends on the constancy and immutability of intention and action against passion, for the end crowns the deed. A good start is half the battle; but the other half is completed at the end of the race begun; or, better yet, until death, a passionate person who corrects himself should think that he has only done half or has only just begun. Sometimes people quickly get used to passionate affairs; but since the forces of the soul are more mobile than the material members of the body, it is generally not advisable to believe that passion is extinguished, as if it no longer exists or has died. At any time it is better to compare it with a pretended snake, which is ready to bite at any opportunity, or with a dead insect, which under favorable circumstances easily comes to life. Therefore, watch and pray! However, in this respect, there is no small difference between people who stand in goodness - namely, between those who were not previously slaves to passions and those who were slaves to them, but have corrected themselves. What is decent for some may not always be accepted by others. Those can act with greater freedom; the latter should always walk as if near a fire. This resolves the bewilderment: how did some saints allow themselves benefits and consolations? Why do we need such rigor?! Because they were whole, and we were broken. Just as those who have had any members dislocated, after the latter are established in their places, are not allowed to act freely, but are ordered to exercise extreme caution, so those who have fallen in passion and are corrected need strict caution all the days of their life. The question is: what should we think about certain sensory habits towards things and matters of indifference, that is, habits of satisfying the needs of the body and feelings in a certain, definite way, for example, the habit of certain food, color, etc.? Like love for the sensual, this is impurity, but when its object is an indifferent thing and especially does not entail disorder in the spirit and pious state, then this is an excusable matter, what was previously called immortal sin, light and forgivable. True zealots of piety, however, devoting their hearts to God, immediately notice that, although small, these empty habits still pose an obstacle to this, just as a long dress prevents you from walking quickly; Therefore, they try to free their hearts from them, so that just as they are indifferent, so the heart will be indifferent in relation to them. Whatever the habit, it is still a connection 76. Anyone who is inattentive is a slave to passions and habits. Coming to his senses, he must, of course, turn all his attention and diligence to the passions, for in them is the seat of sin. But, having overcome them, one must therefore renounce habits, so that, like a free dove, one can fly and rest in the One All-Blessed and All-Pleasing God. And this is how it is fitting to pray: create a pure heart in me, O God! And work out your salvation with fear and trembling! God alone knows what the coming day will bring forth. But this is our consolation, that the Lord is near to all who call on Him in truth. c) Finally, a word or two about sin in the last respect, that is, sin as a state, or sinful mood The sinful mood of the spirit is easy to determine by its contrast with the mood of the virtuous spirit, as it was depicted before... Thus, there is no thirst for the Divine in it; he does not feel or even taste any sweetness in it, and some even turn away from it and run away; no strength: I would often like to, he says, but I can’t overcome myself; there is no communion with God: he has turned his eyes away from God and not only does not look at Him, but also does not want to look and is even afraid. His inner feeling and conscience assure him that he has fallen away from God, is being denied by Him; instead of the desire to walk in the will of God, he has self-will, or he chose his own will as the beginning of his activity, he does what he wants; instead of expecting heavenly help, he has arrogance or, in general, earthly means that are in his hands: property, patronage, etc.; he has no need for protection from faith and the Church of Christ. Christ and the Holy Church become for him something extraneous, not entirely necessary, if not superfluous. The main ones, however, between these traits are: life in one’s own will with aversion from God or inattention to Him and His law. Other traits are already collected around this and develop from this. However, judging by the circumstances, in some people one, and in others another, traits stand out because of others, it can be more obvious and evil. Also, judging by the strength of each of these elements, the sinful state itself is more or less stubborn and depraved - all this is in contrast to the good mood of the spirit. And the conditions for determining the degrees of sinfulness are immediately visible from such an opposition, namely: the more someone strives for the lusts of his will; the greater the volume of sinful deeds it takes on its share; the more persistently in overcoming external and internal obstacles, especially from outside admonitions and suggestions of conscience; The more depraved the goals in sinful acts are, the worse, the more evil and dangerous the sinful mood is. This all increases because someone has received more gifts and benefits, and has especially tasted the grace of Christ, has had more external and internal stimulation, knows more and more clearly the order of moral life, good and evil. Finally, the relationship of the sinful state, passionate disposition and sinful deed in sin is exactly the same as in the virtue of the good sides corresponding to them. He who has turned away from God to his own will, by frequent repetition of the same sinful deeds, precipitates an addiction to them in the heart. The only difference is that a good person struggles with passions and reluctance to do good, and a sinner with a conscience that prohibits him from sinning and encourages him to come to his senses. The remnants of good resist sin, this evil that enters the heart: the corrupted will cuts off good in order for evil to reign. How this unfortunate and disastrous struggle of a person with himself to his own destruction occurs is partly depicted by the Lord in the parable of the prodigal son. Here you can see how from one simple, seemingly plausible thought, not driven away in due time, a vicious desire arises in the heart and its own will is formed; how he is then followed by deed after deed until he reaches the brink of corruption. So a stone thrown along the slope of a mountain stops at the very bottom of its abyss. On this basis, sinful ages are rightly distinguished, since they exist in true Christian life. In the word of God about the sinner it is generally said that he, having prospered more and more in worse things (cf. 2 Tim. 3:13), finally comes to the depths of evil (Prov. 18:3); The degrees of descent into this depth are also signified, for example, he hurts with unrighteousness, conceives illness and gives birth to lawlessness (cf. Ps. 7:15); or, more clearly, in contrast to the husband blessed in the first psalm, he follows the advice of the wicked, stops on the path of sinners and, finally, sits on the seats of the destroyers (cf. Ps. 1:1). The latter expressions can be taken as characteristic features of the sinful ages. There are also three of them: infant, youth, man. In the first, the sinner just went into sin, in the second he stopped in it, in the third he became a manager in his area. Infancy. This is a period of emerging spiritual life, not established in its forms, wavering, a time of struggle between the remnants of inner good and light with the incoming evil and darkness. Here the person who indulges in sin still thinks to give up on it; little, little, he tells himself, and I’ll give it up. Sin still seems to him like a joke, or he deals with it like a child playing with a toy; he just seemed distracted and reckless. But in this child, in this state of whirling, the foundations for the future terrible state of the sinner are invisibly laid. Its first features, its first lines are placed at the first moment of separation from God. When This light, This life and power are hidden from a person or a person hides himself from Him, the mind begins to go blind, the will to relax and not be happy, the heart to become callous and imbued with insensibility, which all makes a person often say to himself: no, I’ll stop. But time passes and evil grows. Someone steals truths from the mind, one after another; he no longer understands much even of what he clearly understood before, he cannot keep much in his head, due to the heaviness and incapacity of it in the present time, and finally he becomes completely blind: he does not see God and Divine things, he does not understand the real order of things, nor his true relationships, nor his condition, nor what he was, nor what he has now become and what will happen to him... he enters into darkness and walks in darkness 78 . The will, prompted by conscience, still sometimes cares and accepts concerns about the salvation of a person... sometimes he tenses up, rebels, refrains from one thing or another in the hope of completely recovering, but he falls again, and the more he falls, the weaker he becomes. Previous stops and refusals to do things, real ones, turn into only fruitless intentions, and from intentions - into cold thoughts of correction; finally this too disappears. The sinner seemed to wave his hand: so be it, let it go, maybe it will stop somehow! And he begins to live as he lives, indulging in vicious desires, refraining from obvious deeds when necessary, without worrying about threats or promises, without even worrying about the obvious corruption of soul and body. Sin is a disease and a plague. It greatly torments the soul after the first experience. But time smooths everything out. The second experience is more bearable, the third even more bearable, and so on. Finally, the soul becomes numb, just as a part of the body becomes numb from frequent friction against it. There were fears and horrors, and thunder was ready to burst from the sky, and people seemed to want to pursue the criminal, shame gave no rest and did not allow him to show himself to the light; and then, finally, everything is fine! A person boldly and fearlessly continues to sin, not even being able to understand why he had such anxieties before. When blindness, negligence and insensibility were thus formed, it is evident that the sinner man stopped on the path of sinners. All good rebellions have subsided... He calmly, without embarrassment and anxiety, remains in sin... Here he enters the period of youth. Age of adolescence. This is a period of remaining in sin or standing in the path of sinners in blindness, insensibility and negligence. The highest powers of the human spirit are struck by lethargic sleep, and the forces of sin have prevailed over them and seem to enjoy peace. At first it is like a point of indifference. But from this point begins the subjugation of the human face to sin. His forces, one after another, are brought to the foot of sin and worship him, accept or recognize his royal power over themselves and become his agents. The mind worships and accepts the principles of unbelief, the will worships and indulges in depravity, the heart worships and is filled with timidity and fear of sin and the sinful principle. The sinner does not always sleep; sometimes he wakes up. At this time I would like to leave everything, but I am afraid to start this matter due to some incomprehensible timidity, for which it is impossible to give an account. Man is so intimidated by the tyranny of sin that he does not even dare to think about indignation against it. Here is evidence of how deeply the strength of the spirit falls through sin and how blasphemous slavery to it degrades the noble face of a person! At first the mind just does not see or loses everything that is true, but as time goes on, instead of truth, lies enter into it. Here it all begins with doubt or simple questions: why is this, isn’t it better this way or that way? At first these questions are passed without attention, only a certain shadow, like a cobweb, is cast on the heart; but, adhering closer to him, they become close to him and become aware of him; the feeling of doubt is the seed of unbelief. They begin to speak freely, then stitch together witticisms, and finally despise and reject everything Divine and holy. This is unbelief! And the will sleeps in carelessness, acting on evil principles, without noticing how good principles are crowded out by them. She can remain calm, without sharply expressing her inner corruption, but where they begin to disturb her, where they want to force her to act according to other principles, there she expresses all the obstinacy of her character, not respecting either the evidence of her convictions or even extremes: she goes against everything, setting herself up as the main rule for everything. Whether the law of conscience will instill this in her, or positive laws, she says: go away, I don’t want to know such paths; and this is for nothing other than corruption of character. Thus, a sinner, intimidated by timidity to rebel against sin, who has accepted the principles of lies through unbelief, who has willingly adopted depraved rules, proves himself to be sufficiently reliable to be elevated to certain government positions in the sinful kingdom. Such a one is seated on the seat of the destroyers. He entered the age of a husband to manage part of the affairs of the sinful kingdom. Male age. This is a period of independent, persistent action in favor of sin, against everything good, which is why a person comes to the brink of destruction. The degrees of his fall are determined by the degrees of resistance to light and good. For even when he lives like this, his conscience does not cease to disturb him. But, having accepted other principles, he does not listen and goes opposite. Sometimes he just does not heed this voice, in a state of unrepentance, sometimes he rejects and arms himself against it, in a state of bitterness, sometimes he deliberately betrays himself to destruction, in a state of despair. This is the end where the sinner’s beloved sin finally brings him. Thus, three ages of sin give nine states. To these can be added three more states of imperfect conversion of a sinner, or conversion of an unfinished and immature one, namely: the state of slavery, when, out of fear of God’s punishments and threats, they hold back their hands from more important sins, without being ashamed to harbor evil passions and thoughts; self-delusion, when they consider themselves perfect, based on indecisive and initial only deeds of good; hypocrisy, when they stop only at external works of piety and base their hope on that. And there will be twelve states of sin, outside the good path. Most people get stuck in the first three and the last three. But there are a lot of them in the second and third. As a consolation to our sinful race, we must say that while a person is in this life, no matter what sins he commits, he always has the opportunity to return to the merciful God, who has mercy on those who repent. Human nature is so good and kind that man cannot completely distort it here with all his lies. Only as long as he does not repent, while he is bitter, while he despairs, he cannot be pardoned, and if he does not change this character, does not begin to cry and hope, then he will go down to the grave and perish forever. The devil is the culprit of all evil. If it weren't for him, there would be no despairing people. And this is what he first repeats: God is merciful; and when a person sins a lot and decides to repent, he is frightened by the terrible justice of God. But who can depict all the cunning and malice of Satan and with what nets he entangles sinners who succumb to him! The sinner, who has come to his senses, is horrified and cannot understand how he could do this and that, although before it seemed so easy to him. A person always sins in some form of self-forgetfulness. How great is the evil of sin! Sin insults the infinite greatness of God. By despising the law, we despise the Lawgiver Himself and insult Him. This should not be understood in such a way that all the bliss of God is violated by this insult, for He is beyond all touch from creation; but in such a way that on our part everything is already done to insult His boundless greatness, just as a simple citizen, although the royal majesty remains inviolable, insults him with his deeds. In this regard, sin is an infinitely great evil. But the truth demands that the insult be satisfied. Satisfaction must equal insult. For an infinitely great insult there must be an infinitely great satisfaction. This is where the grief lies! Having the opportunity to make an endless insult, a person does not have the opportunity to make due satisfaction for it. It remains for man to be eternally guilty and, therefore, eternally punished. Such are both the first sin and all subsequent ones. Every time a person sins, he plunges himself into endless evil. The Apostle writes about a Christian man that, by sinning after Baptism, he crucifies the Son of Man (see: Heb. 6:6), tramples the blood of the Testament and stands in the ranks of the crucifiers who shouted: His blood be on us and on our children! (cf. Matthew 27:25). Having separated from God and Christ, man through sin joins the horde of Satan and becomes an ambush place for him, from where he fights against God, mocking His boundless mercy and the blindness and madness of a Christian. God gave His only begotten Son, says Satan, but I already know how to control people. Afterwards, at the trial, he will place all the blame on the person himself and increase it even more in order to more quickly bring him to hell. And what does sin produce in man himself? He perverts him and, as if plunging him into darkness, into dreams of fantasy, vanity of desires and disorder of heartfelt emotions, he circles him all his life, not allowing him to come to his senses. Meanwhile, the torment of passions eats up both soul and body. The sinner is a smoldering creature. Judging by this malignancy and this ugliness of sin, the sinner would have to begin all-round suffering here. But according to the destinies of God, this does not happen. A sinner often rejoices and revels in earthly happiness, as much as he can or as much as God allows, partly for reward for some good deeds, partly for admonition. But under this apparent happiness there is always hidden a constant collapse of the spirit, at times only flooded with sensual rapture, and even then not completely. The sinner is always gloomy and seems to be afraid of something. Demons come to a dying unrepentant sinner and, having snatched away his soul, cast him into a place of darkness until the Second Coming. Here, for now, the spirit alone is tormented, but when, after the Second Coming, it unites with the body, it will suffer with the body for endless centuries, and it is impossible to depict those torments! Let's finish with this. You now have a general outline of Christian virtue and non-Christian sin. This is enough to understand how good the first is and how bad the second is. And if you start describing everything, there will be no end! Let us turn away from evil and do good. God bless you! A good desire has come to you to learn in more detail how a Christian virtuous life is imprinted on a person’s entire being and on all the functions of his powers. But I don’t know how to satisfy your desire. This will lead very far. I'll start writing little by little. If I have time, I will have time, but if I don’t have time, so be it. This matter is not unimportant. Here you can see most clearly what Divine grace produces in a person, for the sake of man’s obedience to the instructions of the word of God, and what happens to a person when, remaining with himself, he follows the suggestions of his will and his mind, and even more so when he indulges in some passion or sin. The distinctive feature of the Christian life is that it is a life of grace. Therefore, its fruits, or its effects on our being, include not only that which can produce virtue in us in general, but especially that which produces in us, for the sake of the desire for good and work for this, Divine grace. Equally, the non-Christian life that is opposite to it is distinguished not only by what produces sin in a person, but also by what happens to him as a result of the fact that he loses or does not accept Divine grace. So as not to be confused in words, I will mean one and the other with the corresponding words: Christian, non-Christian, grace-filled, graceless, zealous for the Christian life, devoted to sin and passions. For the first time, I will extract for you from the word of God the general features that denote this and that life or a person holding on to this or that life. If we collect all the passages of Scripture related to this, then in them we will find answers to the following questions: what is this and that life by its origin, by its actions, by its general spirit, by the society in which it develops, and by its destiny? A person outside of Christianity, or in sin, comes naturally from the first Adam, who fell, by natural birth, and in his internal, moral properties is considered to be completely similar to him, that is, in a state of falling away from God. Being thus its true expression, it is also called old, as if existing as long as the human race, or not containing anything new, the same as everyone has been since ancient times. The Apostle writes that we put on the image of the earthy (see: 1 Cor. 15:49) at birth, and if we do not put off this old man (see: Eph. 4:22), then we will forever remain the same as the earthly one (see: 1 Cor. 15:47-48). The actions of this man like Adam, like the old man, are predominantly sinful. He has a diligent mind for evil from his youth (see: Gen. 8:21), because he was conceived in iniquities and born in sins (see: Ps. 50:7), even sold into sin (see: Rom. 7:14). This sinful power, which entered into him through birth, rules in him with irresistibility, lives like a master (see: Rom. 7:20-23); so that the whole being of man with all his members is nothing more than the body of sin, and his powers are instruments of unrighteousness (see: Rom. 6, 12-13). Therefore, his eyes are filled with fornication and constant sin (see: 2 Pet. 2:14); the grave was opened by his throat (see: Rom. 3:13); he is uncircumcised in heart and ears (cf. Acts 7:51); His nose flows for evil and is quick to shed blood (cf. Isa. 59:7). This foundation of inner life indicates some other origin in the spirit, namely from the devil. For first the devil sinned, and then all people, who are sinners only from the devil, which is why they are called his children (see: 1 John 3:8, 10), the seed of the serpent (Gen. 3:15) or, directly, serpents, brood of vipers (see: Matt. 3:7; Lk. 3, 7; Matt. 23, 33), and the devil is their father (see: John 8, 44). Due to this kinship with the devil, they are the true successors of his spirit, the spirit of fighting against God, enmity against God and opposition to Him, open and secret. Everything holy and Divine is generally unpleasant to all of them, and to some even disgusting. They say to God: get away from us; or: that the Most High, we do not know God (Pharaoh) (see: Ex. 5, 2); They do not accept the Spirit of God (see: John 14:17), they hate and persecute the people of God (see: 1 John 3:13). The entire totality of such people, the offspring of the devil, filled with the spirit of resistance to God, constitutes the dark region of Satan (see: Acts 26:18), in which he lives, has his own depths (see: Apoc. 2:24), or throne, and, as the prince of this world and the God of the age (see: 2 Cor. 4:4; John 12:31), rules everything through the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spirits of wickedness in high places (see: Eph. 6:12). This region is a world lying in evil (see: John 5:19), full of defilements (see: 2 Pet. 2:20), wallowing in lusts (see: 2 Pet. 1:4), blinded (see: 2 Cor. 4: 4) and in blindness, raging and persecuting all that is holy and all the saints and those who are zealous for holiness; a world, one love for which is enmity towards God and whose friend is the enemy of God (see: James 4:4). The spirit of blindness and stubborn violence is the direct spirit of the world or Satan (see: 1 Cor. 2:12). The fate of these people is pitiful! She is the same with the world and Satan. Being by nature children of wrath (see: Eph. 2:3), they then, throughout their lives, accumulate wrath for themselves on the Day of Wrath and the revelation of God’s righteous judgment (see: Rom. 2:5); their end is destruction (see: Phil. 3:19), and they are reserved for dark darkness forever (see: 2 Pet. 2:9:17; Jude 1:13). Not one of these will be saved except under the condition of conversion and repentance for the sake of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, through the action of grace-filled rebirth. He who believes in the Lord will not be condemned, but he who does not believe is already condemned, for he does not believe in the name of the Only Begotten Son of God (cf. John 3:18). Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3). He who believes in the Son will have eternal life, but whoever does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him (cf. John 3:36). In a person who has conceived a true Christian life within himself, all these sides are completely opposite. Thus, he is born from above and in a completely new way, that is, by water and the Spirit (see: John 3:3), through communion with Christ, the only true source of truly human life, and through clothing in the image of this heavenly man - the new Adam, the new ancestor of true people (see: 1 Cor. 15:49), which is why he is called the new man, who has put off the old (see: Eph. 4:24), a new creation in Christ Jesus (see: 2 Cor. 5:17). Born not from carnal lust, but from God, he accepts the realm of being a child of God (cf. John 1:12-13), for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, who most sincerely partook of flesh and blood and makes believers partakers of the Divine nature (see: 2 Pet. 1:4), who, because they are led by His Spirit, are sons (Rom. 8:14), those who have received the Spirit of sonhood, by whom they cry: Abba, Father (Rom. 8:15) and who obeys their spirit, that they are sons (see: Rom. 8:16). In the feeling of this sonship, they enjoy God’s favor, are filled with love for God, and out of love are zealous for His glory. Everything Divine is, as it were, their own. By this origin, in them both the spirit of life and the deeds themselves are holy and Divine. Even before the foundation of the world, they were determined to be holy and blameless in love (see: Eph. 1:4) and after the fulfillment of the times, they were created in Christ Jesus for good works, that they might walk in them (see: Eph. 2:10); and indeed, they walk in newness of life, in the likeness of the lordship of the risen Lord (see: Rom. 6:4), as zealots for good deeds (Titus 2:4). For just as the root is holy, so is what is grafted into it holy, according to the holy one who called (cf. 1 Pet. 1:15). All these together constitute the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the holy tongue, the people of renewal - to proclaim the virtues of Him who called them out of darkness into His wonderful light (see: 1 Pet. 2:9); all are built into a spiritual church, the holiness is holy, offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 2:5), are built into a habitation of God by the Spirit, into a Holy Church in the Lord (see: Eph. 2:21-22), from the worthless the whole body is composed and put together in decency, with every touch of alms, according to the effect in measure each united parts, the regeneration of the body creates the creation of itself through love (cf.: Eph. 4:16), and thus constitute the body of the Church, of which Christ is the head, fulfilling all things in all (Eph. 1:23), and they are His ods from His flesh and from His bones (cf.: Eph. 5:30; Col. 2:19). Such people, all in their entirety and each in their parts, while still here under God’s special favor, are especially favored for high rewards in the future. If God is for us, the Apostle cries, who is for us? Who will follow the chosen ones? God justifies (cf. Rom. 8:31, 34). This is here, but in the future they, like children, are heirs: heirs to God, and heirs to Christ. The glory and greatness of this inheritance are so high that all creation longs for it (see: Rom. 8:21). Just as each of them is a son, there is also necessarily an heir of God, Jesus Christ (Gal. 4:7). Therefore, their residence in heaven is, from where they look for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humility, so that it may be conformed to the body of His glory (cf. Phil. 3:20-21). In appearance they are strangers and strangers, but in deed they are holy cohabitants and close to God. They are here only for a while; and their fatherland, where they are registered as citizens, is not here, but in heaven. I'll limit myself to this. See how gloomy the first is and how joyful the second is! Of course, there are different degrees on both sides; but more or less everything prescribed is characteristic of each degree. Others will be horrified at how gloomily sinners are depicted; what to do? such a gloomy face of theirs was not written by man, but by the untruthful word of God. Now, the further we go, the more this general outline of both sides will be justified. Wait! The previously indicated opposition between people living according to the spirit of Christ, under the influence of God’s grace, and people who are alien to this spirit and rejecting grace, will be revealed even more clearly when you see what is the state of the general structure of all human nature and its main properties and what is the state of its strengths and abilities. The general structure of human nature is determined by the combination of its different strengths and abilities and different parts of its composition. Thus, all the diversity of our internal conscious actions comes down to three initial principles, or forces: cognizing, desiring and feeling. Yet all these forces are concentrated and converge in our face, in our personality, in what speaks within us: I, which is the fusion and indivisible unity of all forces. They are centered in it and emanate from it as if from a focus. Further, the fact that knowledge, desires and feelings appear in us not only at different degrees, but even in opposite directions, forces, among other reasons, to admit in the composition of the human being three parts: spirit, soul and body, 79 of which the character of the first is detachment from the sensory, the latter is immersion in it, and the middle is the compatibility of both. The goal and purpose of the former is communication with God and the spiritual world, the latter is mediation in communication with the sensory world; The middle must ascend from the sensual through the spirit to God and be inspired, and from God through the spirit bring down spirituality to the sensual. These parts in our composition do not lie one next to the other, but all, as well as abilities, converge in our person (I), are assigned to him and are constant means for him. The face of a person (I) is the unity of spirit, soul and body. The essential properties of a person include: 1) the fact that he is gifted with consciousness, can talk about himself - I, or have a person. This is the property by which a person, affirming his own existence and the existence of things outside himself, distinguishes them from himself, and himself from them, speaks about himself - I, and not they, and about those - they, and not I. It receives the name self-awareness when it turns inward, to itself exclusively. In this turning into itself, it can again distinguish itself from its actions or its being from what comes from it, rising, as it were, above both. Moreover, since alien, third-party forces can be applied to our being, then, conscious of his being, he can recognize himself not as himself, but as another person (among those possessed by demons); 2) reasonable-free independence. Independence belongs to a being, which is not a manifestation of another being, but is itself the source of all phenomena emanating from it. There are many such independent beings (substances). A distinctive property of human independence is that he not only performs actions, but also sees them, not only sees, but also rules them according to his own discretion and reason. This property is synonymous with rational freedom; 3) vitality. Man is a living being. There are dead forces, for example electricity, magnetism. At every moment they are what they should be, they do not develop. A person at the moment of origin is not what he should be, but develops, forms, grows, and succeeds. And the plant at first, in the seed, is only a future possible plant; becomes a real plant through the acceptance of alien elements and assimilation of them to itself. The growth of a person’s spiritual nature occurs in a different order. She matures with a variety of her own works: thoughts, feelings and desires, which, turning inward, are deposited, as it were, in her and constitute food for her or an element of growth. Therefore, the property of its life can always be determined by the property of its actions. The most special feature of life characteristic of man is immortality, which presupposes his endless perfectibility. Now the question is, what is the state of the relationship between the constituent parts of the human being and his abilities and his essential properties before a person begins to live like a Christian, and after he decides on this matter and becomes stronger in it. The natural relationship of the constituent parts of a person should be, according to the law of subordination of the smaller to the larger, the weaker to the stronger, as follows: the body should be subordinate to the soul, the soul to the spirit, and the spirit, by its nature, should be immersed in God. Man must dwell in God with all his being and consciousness. Moreover, the power of the spirit over the soul depends on the Divinity inherent in it, the power of the soul over the body depends on the spirit possessing it. After falling away from God, there occurred, and was bound to occur, confusion in the entire composition of man: the spirit, having moved away from God, lost its strength and submitted to the soul, the soul, not elevated by the spirit, submitted to the body. Man, with his whole being and consciousness, is mired in sensuality. Man, before accepting new life in the Lord Jesus Christ, is precisely in this state of degraded correlation of the constituent parts of his being, the likeness of which is represented by a telescope, when its constituent parts are pushed into one another. Thus, the word of God, speaking about sinners who forget God, almost always calls them carnal, rarely spiritual, and not only does not call them spiritual, it even considers them the opposite of such. Even about the first, antediluvian world, God said: My Spirit shall not abide in these men, for they are flesh (cf. Gen. 6:3). It is clear that devotion to the flesh extinguishes the spirit and alienates us from God. The prophet David says: a man who is ignorant of honor has become like foolish cattle and become like them (Ps. 48:13), that is, the honor of God-likeness reflected in his spirit has been replaced by bestiality, having given himself over to the flesh. The Apostle Paul says about the state of people before accepting grace in Christianity that then they were in the flesh, because sinful passions acted in them (cf. Rom. 7:5), lived in the lusts of the flesh, doing the will of the flesh and mind (cf. Eph. 2:3), or, as the Apostle Peter says: in the wake of carnal lust they followed defilement (cf. 2 Pet. 2, 10). The Apostle Jude directly calls the unbelievers bodily, having no spirit (see: Jude 1:19). And in general, in the word of God, all evil is attributed to carnality. Those who are in the flesh, carnal wisdom, but carnal wisdom is death and enmity against God (cf. Rom. 8:5-7), those who submit to whom God cannot please (Rom. 8:8), which is why they will reap corruption from the flesh (cf. Gal. 6:8). Spirituality in a person who has not received grace or has lost it, like a cloud, stands between the person’s face and God, cutting off communication between them. Anyone who is enslaved primarily to it, or is a spiritual person, does not accept even the Spirit of God (cf.: 1 Cor. 2:14). The predominance of the soul, as well as the predominance of the body, is the negation of life in the spirit. The Holy Apostle James, having enumerated the passions with which a person who does not accept the Spirit of God satisfies and acts, with greater dexterity, adds: this wisdom is not from God, but earthly, spiritual, demonic (cf. James 3:15). The words: spiritual, earthly, not God’s are unambiguous... Where is the spirit of this kind of people? In them; but, being subordinate to the soul and body, he is exhausted and almost does not act in the way characteristic of him. His presence in them can be recognized, on the one hand, by the boundlessness of some spiritual and sensory aspirations, which are not characteristic of the soul and flesh by their nature, on the other hand, by the often occurring states of these people, in which they renounce the earth, contrary to the demands of the soul and flesh. In the latter case, the spirit attempts to gain its rights. Torment of conscience, fear of the Judge God, constant melancholy - this is the essence of his effect on the soul, his groans, echoing in the spiritual consciousness. So in sensual and spiritual people the spirit smolders like a spark under the ashes. Arouse him, or, better yet, do not prevent him from being aroused by the word of God, passing to the division of soul and spirit (see: Heb. 4:12), and he will appear in all his strength and authority. In a person who has clung to the Lord Jesus Christ and received His grace, all this has a different appearance. As is characteristic of the servant of Christ, he crucified his flesh with passions and lusts (cf. Gal. 5:24). From the first time, when he still intends to work for the Lord, he already determines himself to mortify himself, and then constantly does not walk in the flesh, but in the Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:1, 4), mortifying the deeds of the flesh with the Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:13). He is, as it were, not in the flesh, but in soul, and should not be of the flesh, even if he should live according to the flesh (cf. Rom. 8, 9, 12). Having received the word, which goes to the separation of soul and spirit (cf.: Heb. 4:12), he takes the soul into his power and sacrifices it to God (cf.: Matt. 10:39), begins to cleanse himself of the lusts that wage war on the soul (cf.: 1 Pet. 2:11), subordinate it to the word that can save (cf.: James 1:21), and thus transforms her whole, edifies her in the spirit through faith or obedience to the truth (cf.: 1 Pet. 1, 22; Jude 1, 20), accustoms her to give herself up for good (cf.: 1 Pet. 4, 19), and circumcises her heart in the spirit (cf.: Rom. 2, 29), and makes everything pleasing to God, even if he does, to create from the heart, which she did not want to do before (see: Col. 3:23). Working in this way to God with all his soul and from the soul (Eph. 6:6; Matt. 22:37), he finds peace for his soul (Matthew 11:29), seeing the end of faith - the salvation of the soul (cf.: 1 Pet. 1:9), which, like a quota 80, he had for his soul (see: Heb. 6:19). As a result of this, his spiritual life completely absorbs his carnal and spiritual life. He glorifies God in his soul and body (cf. 1 Cor. 6:20); with him everything is done in the spirit and by the spirit; he serves God and works in spirit and in renewal of the spirit (cf. Rom. 1:9; 7:6; Phil. 3:3), he is not lazy with diligence because he is burning in spirit (cf. Rom. 12:11); walks in the spirit and does not commit carnal lusts (cf. Gal. 5:16); sows in the spirit (cf. Gal. 6:8); filled with the spirit (see: Eph. 6:18); He inclines in spirit to hear the truth (see: 1 Pet. 1:22). Why is this so? A Christian walks in the Spirit because he lives by the Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:25), because the Spirit of God lives in him (cf. Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 3:16); that he became a temple of the Holy Spirit living in him, and was filled with the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13; 1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:22). This Spirit, coming through the word that separated soul and spirit, freed this last of his closest spiritual-carnal bonds, for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (cf. 2 Cor. 3:17), and thereby laid the foundation for a new, spiritually grace-filled life (see: Rom. 8:23). With such betrothal of the Spirit (see: 2 Cor. 1:22), the hidden person of the heart then matures in the incorruption of a meek and silent spirit (1 Pet. 3:4). A Christian is strengthened more and more by the Spirit of God - in the inner man; Christ dwells by faith in his heart, rooted and confirmed in love (cf. Eph. 3:16-17); for cleave unto the Lord; there is one spirit with the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 6:17); why does he seek the highest, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, the one on high is wise, not the one on earth, and his life is hidden with Christ in God (cf. Col. 3:1-3). From this it is clear that a true Christian and a non-Christian, or a false Christian, are in opposition to the constituent parts of the human being. What is first for one is last for another. For this one the first thing is the spirit, for this one it is suppressed; For one, the first thing is carnality; for another, it is denied, suppressed, crucified, and killed. The middle one - the soul - is obviously subordinate to the dominant one: in one case it is the spirit, in another it is the body. Therefore, only those who have become Christ’s have the true relationship between the parts of the human being: perfect spirit, soul and body (see: 1 Thessalonians 3:23). In them, therefore, is the truth of human being; Outside of Christianity, there is not truth, but a lie, like the ghost of a person. This word would not seem cruel to anyone. It is a pity for some pagans, who stand so highly in opinion, and some who call themselves Christians, but who have rejected his power, who are also not without noticeable merits. But be patient. As we go on, the truth we are pursuing will become clearer and clearer, that truly human life can in fact only be visible in Christianity, in those who are united with Christ and accept His Spirit. Now about the general state and correlation of the forces operating within us. These forces, starting from our consciousness or person (I) and returning to it, must remain in mutual connection and agreement with each other, under the control of their imprecise beginning. Interpenetration and mutual assistance in dependence on the actor is their natural state. But in sinner man, who has fallen away from God and remains in this fall, as experience represents, these forces seem to have fallen away from his face, becoming somewhat independent of him and self-governing. What do, for example, our ordinary words mean: I would do it, but I don’t want to; or: even if it’s not so good, I really want it; or: the heart does not lie, go with your heart; or: I would believe it, but the mind does not submit, the mind is the king in the head, where should I go with my mind? These and many other expressions mean that these forces are no longer in the power of man, but are either governed by themselves, or are subject to the influence of an outside force. Having fallen away from the face of man, they have lost their mutual point of connection, and at the same time they have ceased to receive mutual help from each other and no longer have what one usually receives from others. Thus, the mind is clouded, dreamy and abstract, because it is not restrained by the heart and is not governed by the will; the will is wayward and heartless because it does not listen to reason and does not look at the heart; the heart is uncontrollable, blind and blissful, because it does not want to follow the instructions of reason and is not sobered by willpower. But not only have these forces lost mutual assistance, they have taken a certain hostile direction against each other, one denies the other, as if absorbing it and devouring it. That is why the predominance of the heart is associated with weakness of the mind and inconstancy of the will, as if lack of character; the predominant desire for knowledge leads to a weakening of activity or carelessness of the will and insensibility or coldness of the heart; the predominance of the will is always accompanied by a one-sided direction, stubborn, not listening to any arguments: there the soul does not listen to any convictions and is inaccessible to heart shocks. Thus, the inner world of a sinner is full of arbitrariness, disorder and destruction. This state is evidenced primarily by experience, but in the word of God one can find many indications of this, although it depicts not so much spiritual forces and their state, but rather the deeds of man - the product of all forces. In this regard, the following places are very remarkable. Thus, the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans in the 1st chapter, depicts the great confusion and inner disorder that occurs in sinners and wicked people, resulting from falling away from God. Having understood God, he says, they did not glorify God (cf. Rom. 1:21), that is, they despised God, fell away from Him, rejected Him. The natural consequence of this was that their hearts became blind, their wills were wayward, their minds became mad: their thoughts became futile (with desires), their foolish hearts were darkened (cf. Rom. 1:21) and became fools (cf. Rom. 1:22). This natural consequence was followed by another, like execution from God... God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts (Rom. 1:24), that is, the waywardness of the heart, in the passion of dishonor (Rom. 1:26), that is, the persistent depravity of the will, in an unskilled mind (Rom. 1:28), that is, indiscretion, dreams and abstractions (taken away by practical reason). The same Apostle, in the Epistle to the Ephesians (see: Eph. 4, 17-20), calling pagans or unbelievers alienated from the life of God, here depicts the state of their soul, namely that they walk in the vanity of the mind, that is, in illusory, fantastic mental, ideal constructions, they suffer from petrification of the heart, that is, heartlessness and insensibility; They devoted themselves to student activity, that is, to the violence and passions of the will. Man, who turned to God and in the Holy Church was united with the Lord Jesus Christ and renewed in Him, is portrayed in the word of God in a completely opposite form. Thus, the Apostle Paul prays for the Ephesians (see: Eph. 3:16-19): may God grant them the power to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man, may He grant, that is, moral strength to the will through union with the Holy Spirit; may he allow Christ to dwell in faith in their hearts, may there be, that is, they have a heartfelt union with Christ the Savior, may they be able to understand, that is, from this experienced tasting of Christ the Lord may they draw spiritual understanding, and may they be filled with all the fulfillment of God, that is, from the totality of all this, or from their union with God with all their strength, may the fullness of the internal perfections characteristic of Christians be formed or, under this condition, their internal let it be a friend or a vessel that would be constantly filled with the tide of spiritual perfections from God... It is evident how in Christ Jesus the spirit of man becomes strong or a vessel fastened within itself. In the same Epistle (see: Eph. 4:22-24), the Apostle describes the essence of Christianity or the truth about Christ as follows: put aside for you, according to the first life, the old man, who is decaying in the lusts of deceit; this commands renewal of the heart; be renewed in the spirit of your mind - here is a change of mind, and put on the new one, created by God in righteousness and the honor of truth - here is a transformation of the will! This place indicates that in a Christian all the powers of his being are renewed together and simultaneously, and, moreover, all in one spirit and in one direction. In the Epistle to the Philippians, the Apostle depicts that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, is established in the heart, along with the indwelling of the God of peace in it (see: Phil. 4:7-9). In order not to disturb this world, he commands them: to turn all their thoughts or, in other words, the actions of all their abilities to what is pleasing to God, namely: the mind - to the true, the will - to the righteous, the heart - to the kind. Whichever soul does this becomes capable of becoming the dwelling place of the God of the world. Look, moreover, the Apostle first pointed out all these godly objects to the Philippians, and they understood them, accepted them and submitted to them, that is, they occupied themselves with them completely, to the best of their ability. The same combination of the activities of all forces in one, as the nature of Christian life, is indicated in the following places: in Col. 1:9-11 The Apostle prays for the Colossians, that they may be filled in their understanding with the will of God in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that they may walk in a manner worthy of God in every way pleasing them, etc.; in Col. 2, 2-7 The Apostle prays for everyone, that the hearts of all may be comforted in love, and in all the riches of knowledge of the mind, in the knowledge of the mystery of God and the Father and Christ... and so on; Col. 3, 12, 13–16: put on your wombs of generosity... let the peace of God dwell in your hearts... Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, etc.; Eph. 5:13–19: Be careful how you walk dangerously, not as if you were unwise, but as if you were wise... do not be foolish, but understand that there is the will of God... be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourself in psalms and songs and spiritual songs and so on. From them it is clear that in the soul of a true Christian there is absolutely no disorder that is inevitable in a person who is not part of the Spirit of Christ. All his abilities act together, are directed towards one thing, are subordinate to him as a person - which is why wholeness, completeness, and health are attributed to him. In the rules of holy ascetics on how to feed your soul with the truth of God through reverent meditation on it, it is clear how by deed itself all forces must be combined in one. The elders of God usually command to adhere to the following order: focus your attention on the subject you have chosen, for example, the presence of God, death, Baptism, and consider it from different sides. At the same time, try to carry every thought that is born to you into feeling or implant it in your heart, for example, from the thought of the proximity of death, give rise to fear or repentance, from the thought of the vows of Baptism - joy or sadness, and so on. Conclude every reflection with the conclusion of rules for yourself, in relation to your life and your circumstances; for example, God is everywhere, sees everything, and therefore sees me; I will not allow evil thoughts - I would rather die than sin; and in such and such a case I will do this and that, so as not to anger God, who sees me. In this way, obviously, all the forces of the spirit or the entire composition of a person’s inner life are consolidated; all life is constantly moving and renewing itself. There is another rule that shows how you should keep all the powers of the spirit in your hands, namely: in the morning of prayer, sit down and figure out what you need to do during the day, where to be, what and with whom to meet, and in relation to this, determine in advance what to think where, what to say, how to hold your soul and body, and so on. This means that a true Christian must control himself, be in charge of all the movements of his soul, and not allow them to happen by themselves, as if without his knowledge. He must himself be the master of everything that happens within him, the master of his powers. From everything that has been proposed, you can see that in a true Christian all forces in their activity depend on himself, and do not move autocratically, that in this activity they act together everywhere, without fragmenting or separating one from the other, mutually helping themselves and mutually elevating the common life of the spirit, so that from this it is whole and strong, it is a worthy vessel of the God who abides and rests in him. The sinner does not have this, but everything that is contrary is there, as we have seen. He himself does not see this and says about himself that he is safe and healthy - which is his trouble. But even those who have renounced their sins must be careful not to fall, even temporarily, into such disintegration of forces as occurs in those given over to sin... for this too is dangerous. Realizing this, save yourself! Following a change in the ratio of a person’s constituent parts and his main abilities, the essential properties of his face cannot but change, for this face is the center of both parts and abilities. Therefore, the state of these latter is directly reflected in the former and determines it, just as it is determined inversely by it. Among these properties, consciousness occupies the first place. It is a property that is initial for others, it is a direct property of a person and, as it were, an interpretation of it. In its production, it, positing the existence of itself and the existence of beings outside of beings, distinguishes itself from them and them from itself. Consequently, the condition for the perfection of consciousness or for its standing in its rank is the elevation of our face both above ourselves and above the outside world. Where this exaltation is absent, consciousness must be cloudy, vague, unconscious, or approach animal well-being. But about a person, before he perceives the good intention to live holy, in a Christian way, about a person who works at sin and passions, it is undoubtedly known that he does not rise above the external world, but, on the contrary, is carried away by it, lives in it, as if dissolves with it, which is why he is called external, living outside himself, having gone beyond himself. He comes to his senses already in circulation. He considers the well-being of his external things to be the well-being of his own person and, on the contrary, their lack of well-being as his misfortune. That is why an attempt at damage or damage itself to clothes, home, furniture, place, etc. deeply shocks him, strikes him to the very heart. He also does not rise above his inner world, but just like external things, he is carried away by the mechanism of his internal movements. They usually say: I was lost in thought, I was in a state of oblivion, I don’t remember what happened with me and around me... that is, at that time he was carried away by the movement of thoughts; or: he was beside himself with joy, heartbroken, lost his temper in his heart... that is, he gave himself over to the movements of his heart; or: you won’t remember in your troubles and worries: this is needed, another is needed... that is, he is constantly driven forward and forward by the diverse desires of the will. It is obvious that one given over to sin has no power over internal movements, but is, as it were, pressed into them, drawn by them, like a warrior cramped inside a regiment. And this is not just for one hour, but constantly. Such is the law of his inner life: to conduct himself as if he were a slave. And so a sinner cannot have a clear consciousness. He doesn't exist. He walks as if in a fog, as if stunned, spinning as if in a whirlwind. Just as a half-asleep person weakly distinguishes objects from himself and is half-conscious only of himself, so is one devoted to passions. This phenomenon is very strange: in his pride he does not consider anyone higher than himself, and yet he is weakly aware of himself. A special turn of consciousness is self-consciousness, or self-knowledge. It is predominantly turned inward and distinguishes itself from its actions, again rising above both. This self-awareness is even weaker in a passionate person, devoid of grace. For for this you need to know your actions, know yourself and separate yourself from your actions. – there is no sufficient knowledge of one’s own actions. He does not know not only what was done yesterday, even today, or in a few hours. He is constantly in caring action, but does not know what he was doing, as if these actions did not take place on his behalf. This is because, too carried away by the flow of his own actions, he does not have time to look back at himself; – there is no knowledge of oneself, for this knowledge is composed of knowledge of one’s own actions and one’s relationship to everything else that exists. But there is neither the last nor the first in it. Therefore, he will not say what it actually means, what awaits him, what state he is in, what his main mood is, his main illness and how to help it; – therefore there is no distinction between oneself and one’s actions. This is the most dangerous of the deceptions of the sinner’s face. He considers everything that arises inside to be himself and stands for it as for himself, as for his life. That’s why he doesn’t want to deny himself anything. Meanwhile, how much is inside us from outside, from Satan and the world, except for what arises from the sin living in us, which we also should not consider ourselves? For all these reasons and experiences, one must assume that the sinner does not know himself properly. This state of consciousness and self-awareness among sinners who have lost grace, and among infidels who have not accepted grace, is called sleep; why does the Apostle say to each of them: Arise, sleep (Eph. 5:14); also blindness, sitting in darkness, and even direct darkness. Each of these is blind, let go, accept oblivion (2 Pet. 1:9). The sinner lives in self-forgetfulness, sees as if in darkness, and even more, walks like a blind man. Therefore, the Savior, as promised, came to open the eyes of the blind, to bring from the chains bound and from the prison house those who sit in darkness (cf. Is. 42:7). The sinner, as if in a prison, is imprisoned in his inner darkness of self-ignorance and self-forgetfulness, from which he is driven out by the Savior. Recalling this good thing, the Apostle Paul says: sometimes there was darkness, but now there is light in the Lord (cf. Eph. 5:8), that is, as before, in you, due to the thickness of the darkness, nothing was visible, so now everything is visible, by the grace of the Lord. And indeed, the consciousness of one living gracefully in Christ is not at all the same as the consciousness of one working against sin and passions. They are as different as light and darkness. The first action of the grace-filled awakening of a sinner is to extract the soul from the mechanism of his internal and external life and to rise above its flow... Here, therefore, lies the first opportunity for true and complete consciousness. From this moment it begins, for the first glance of a person under the influence of grace is drawn to his essential relationships; Its light falls on them first of all. Then the one who is attentive to himself does not descend from this height of spirit. His eye is raised above everything that is his and above everything that comes into contact with him, and he is aware of and sees everything clearly, like some kind of guard. This property of one who has been blessed in the word of God and in the instructions of asceticism is called wakefulness and sobriety. The mechanism of internal and external life constantly strives to draw them into itself again, as if into a whirlwind or some kind of abyss; they keep to themselves. The tension of remaining within oneself is a feat of sobriety or wakefulness, the most important and initial one in spiritual life. As you perfect your sober vigilance, your consciousness rises above itself. Thus, Christians are commanded to be sober and watchful, to be sober in prayer or watchful in prayer (see: 1 Pet. 5:8; 4:7); and in general, to be fully awake: you, brothers, are in darkness, so that the day will come upon you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day: the nights are unbearable, lower than darkness. Moreover, let us not sleep, like others, but remain awake and sober. Those who sleep are asleep at night. Let us, being sons of this day, be sober, putting on the armor of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation (cf.: 1 Thessalonians 5:4-8). Such guarding over oneself is commanded to Christians, therefore, it is in them as a property. The same thing is depicted in the rules of holy ascetics, that there is new proof of the quality of a Christian, that he clearly sees himself, everything that is his own and everything around him. Thus, St. Philotheus writes: “from the morning one must firmly keep God in memory and, constantly maintaining spiritual prayer to Jesus Christ, courageously and adamantly stand at the door of the heart and on this spiritual guard kill all the sinners of the earth” 81 As a result of this, self-consciousness, as a further development or only a special turn of consciousness, is in a true Christian at the highest degree of perfection. So: - he clearly knows his actions, the actions of not only one day, but weeks and years, from the time of awakening, he knows not only numerically, but by their strength and meaning, with motives, purity and impurity, completely. Then he has his daily confession; – distinguishes itself from actions. All wise tactics in spiritual warfare are based on this, for the very first thing here is the consciousness of the enemy. Then every movement he makes is now assessed, where it comes from and what it means. In this regard, his gaze into himself is so deep that he not only sees generally wrong movements, but also distinguishes between them his own from those that are not his own. This is the distinction between things or thoughts known among holy ascetics; - knows what he means himself, what awaits him, what state he is in, in what relationships to others... Of all these properties, that inner light is composed, which is attributed to true Christians and according to which their whole life is called walking in the light or doing a day. The second property of the human face is rationally free independence. The state of this property is already determined by the state of consciousness, for they serve as a mutual reflection of each other. Consequently, in its true form it occurs only among true Christians, and among those given over to sin one can only see its shadow. The independence inherent in man is distinguished by rationality and freedom. Reasonableness requires that actions be carried out according to one’s own discretion, one’s own goals and one’s own reasonable order. Its distinctive sign is that thought always precedes desire; on the contrary, where desire rules thought, there the absence or disadvantage of this property is not subject to any doubt. This is true for a sinner who is not led and strengthened by grace. We have already seen that he is devoted to the mechanism of internal movements; and the word of God says about him that he does only the will of the flesh and mind (Eph. 2:3) and walks in his own lusts (cf. 2 Pet. 3, 3), that is, as he wanted, he does so, whereas one should act as a person finds consistent with his own purpose. Freedom consists in having actions without any violence or attraction from the outside or from the inside, directly from the face. Its distinctive feature is independence and ease. If someone wanted to do something at his own discretion, and yet was forced to do otherwise, then this freedom would obviously be in bonds. This is how she is depicted by the Apostle Paul in a sinner, about whom he says in his own person: I do this if I do not want, but if I hate this I do it (cf. Rom. 7:15). These bonds are imposed: - sin living in us: I no longer do these things, the Apostle says there, but sin living in me... For I see another law in my lives, fighting against the law of my mind and taking me captive by the law of sin that is in my lives (cf. Rom. 7, 17, 23). The power of this sin is most experienced, felt and known from experience by those who have come to the consciousness of their dominant passion and are going to overcome it. He sees how he is led after his lust, attracted and seduced, like a slave (see: James 1, 14). Therefore, such in the word of God are called slaves of sin (see: Rom. 6:7-20), sold under sin (cf.: Rom. 7:14); For if anyone is overcome, he also has to work (2 Pet. 2:19); - peace. A person who has not accepted the power of grace is dominated by the force and power of passionate worldly customs and the spirit acting in the world, to the point that it cannot even occur to him to decide to do anything contrary: it is absolutely impossible, it is so accepted. This expresses the general consciousness of one’s slavery to the spirit of the world. This power is supported by some fear or fear for life. For otherwise it is necessary to leave the world; where to?! Therefore, in the word of God they are called enslaved under the elements of the world (cf. Gal. 4:3), walking in the age of this world (cf. Eph. 2:2), according to human tradition and in the elements of the world (cf. Col. 2:8); - the devil. He works through the world and sin that lives in us; therefore, for the most part, his bonds are hidden. But if a repentant person looks around and reflects on his previous life, he will find that on his path to destruction the most cunning intelligence was observed, not his, nor, indeed, other people’s. Whose is it? Obviously, whose - murderers from time immemorial. Consequently, it must be said that every sinner, like all sinners, are persons at the disposal of the evil spirit, or are his slaves. This slavery is expressed in the sinner’s aversion from everything sacred and in his powerlessness to attract himself to anything like that. In the word of God, sinners who are alien to the Spirit of Christ and His grace are directly called slaves of the devil, kept in his domain (see: Acts 26:18) and snares, and are living caught from him into his own will (2 Tim. 2:26). Thus, the second property, rationally free independence, is found in people who have not accepted the beneficial, restorative forces into themselves, in a bad and humiliated state. On the contrary, for those who have received these powers, it appears in its true meaning. As for rationality, it operates with all its might because they are extracted by the power of grace from their internal mechanism and elevated above their actions; especially because, from the moment of turning to God and reuniting with Him by grace, every action they take is carried out only in accordance with the consciousness of God’s will for him - every action, both internal and external. They no longer live by human lusts, but by the will of God in the flesh for the time being (cf. 1 Pet. 4:2). Life according to the will of God is, to the highest degree, rational life. Here the will of God, through its mind submissive to its suggestions, rules all affairs and the entire course of life and leads a person to his final goal... Hence the structure, the wholeness of life. And only those whose lives are organized in the manner shown can be called free in the full sense. He alone is truly free whom Jesus Christ frees (cf. Gal. 5:1); There is only freedom where the Spirit of the Lord is (cf. 2 Cor. 3:17). A Christian who abides in the Lord Jesus by the Divine power of the Spirit enjoys the joyful state of freedom (see: Rom. 8:2). Sin does not possess it (see: Rom. 6:6-12); he is removed from the world (see: John 15:19) and is fearlessly ready to speak the truth before the rulers (see: Matthew 10:18); he tramples on the devil and all the power of the enemy (see: Luke 10:19). Therefore, he stands like a solid pillar, not shaken by any opposition; no coincidence of circumstances takes possession of him; but on the contrary, he disposes of them at his own discretion or behaves among them, without changing his mood and his main intentions. Finally, the last property of human nature - life - in a sinner, according to the instructions of the word of God, is completely lost. It hardly calls him anything other than dead, who only has a name as if he were alive, but in fact is dead (Apoc. 3:1). It produces this deadness from sin (see: Eph. 2:1-5; Col. 2:13), which gives birth to death (James 1:15), is the sting of death, biting everyone to death (see: 1 Cor. 15:56), and after which death follows as a quitrent (cf. Rom. 6:23). The deadening power of sin consists of: 1) in the alienation of man from God. The sinner is alienated from the life of God (cf. Eph. 4:18) and lives as if without God (see: Eph. 2:12). Communion with God, Divine and spiritual things constitute the natural food of our spirit, or, as it were, its element. Having fallen away from there, he is now forced to be not in his natural place and die, as if without food and without air; 2) in a disorder of strength and abilities. Human life consists of a harmonious combination of the forces of his nature and their interaction, according to their nature. If this legal relationship between them is taken away, as we have seen, then there is no life and activity in man, characteristic of man. In appearance he is a man, but in his inner mood he is not a true man. Just as an instrument that is out of tune by its appearance is one or the other, but by its sounds one does not know which, 82 so one should judge a person whose inner being is disturbed by sin. In this regard, it must be said that what is truly human, or what is characteristic of man, has died or been lost in him. Just as a dead person does not see, does not hear, does not move, so a sinner does not see, does not hear and does not move like a human being: he does things that are dead (see: Heb. 6:1, 9:14); 3) in the taking away and, as it were, killing of mental and physical strength. Sin is called poison: and indeed, it is poison. Just as rust eats iron, so it eats soul and body. It robs the mind of liveliness, quick wit, and speed, the will of strength and stamina, and the heart of taste and tact. The toxicity of sin for the body is obvious to everyone. In this regard, a person who labors under sin is the same as someone who is dying or languishing before death. How palpably this is expressed in the continuous joyless state of a sinner! There is joy in life, but there is no joy in the wicked; 4) according to God’s definition, every person has a law: you will surely die (cf. Gen. 2:17). Everyone who enters this world enters the realm of death and through temporary death must fall into the second, eternal death. This is the natural order of life for a person who has fallen and remains in the fall. Change in him is brought about only by Divine grace. Having come, she gives birth in man to true life in Christ Jesus. He who has received grace into himself places in his corruption an incorruptible seed, which grows into the tree of life. Whoever is worthy of this is taken from the jaws of death, and whoever is not, remains in death (1 John 3:14); he who does not believe will not see the life (cf. John 3:36). Thus, the believer, united with Christ, accepts new life (see: Rom. 11:15) and therefore passes from death to life (1 John 3:14); from the dead becomes alive (see: Rom. 6, 13). This depends on the fact that in this case a person is united with God, the source of life. He already has the Son in himself, and with Him the life (cf.: 1 John 5:12) and has received the life-giving Spirit (see: Rom. 8:9-11); his belly is hidden with Christ in God (cf. Col. 3:3); for no one lives for him, but Christ lives in him (cf. Gal. 2:20). The power of new birth and life begins to destroy sin in a person, and at the same time destroy the consequences of sin - the disorder of the forces and parts of his being, or restore in him true life, which multiplies in him, grows, comes from strength to strength and fills him with joy. And here, having been worthy to receive the spirit of life, he will live forever, for the second death will not have power over him. This new life is now hidden in those who sincerely work for the Lord, and even for the most part is hidden from them. It matures, as it were, under the cover of decay, building and composing there a new man, or a man of eternity. But then, like a fruit from a tree or a tree from a seed, from it this life will appear in the whole world. She perceives her power gradually, like leaven gradually filling the dough, for she gradually removes our parts from death, one after another... Having filled everything, she leaves the corruptible to decay, and betrays the living or transfers it to the realm of life, to the Divine world. Enough. That's right, you'll get tired reading. But I didn’t want to put off until another time the explanation of any of the properties of our nature. It’s better to look at everything and read it in one breath. Help yourself! Now I turn to a detailed indication of the actions of a truly Christian life - grace-filled - and the actions of sin on each particular strength and ability of a person. Here it will be clearer how what part of us is affected by sin, how the harmful dew affects the color, and how later in the converted sinner God’s grace revives it again and reveals it in its true form. Previously, it was mentioned that there are three forces in us, and it was shown in what state they are, in what ratio in the sinner and the righteous. But that was said in general; now more about the same. And look. It is not surprising to note that within us there are three types of actions: thoughts, ideas, considerations; desires, inclinations, enterprises; and feelings of all kinds. But just as in the composition of our being it is impossible not to distinguish three parts: body, soul and spirit, then those three types of actions appear in us at three degrees, or in three states, namely: animal, mental and spiritual. Now placing a special force at the basis of each of these circles of actions, we must recognize the nine-fold hierarchy of forces, which in our inner world are qualities 83 and act under the cover of the body, this gross material-elemental composition, just as in nature the nine-fold hierarchy of material forces acts under the gross composition of our planet visible to us, and how in the invisible, spiritual world there are nine ranks of angels. Little by little I will describe to you each of these nine forces under the influence of sin and the influence of grace. Where to start? I’ll start with those forces that are engaged in knowing things or showing people the truth. I don’t know if I can tell everything related to this in such a way that it doesn’t sound like school. But in every possible way, do not ignore what is written. How much in life for many depends on the fact that they misunderstand the weight and value of their mental powers! Between these forces, at the lowest level, there is observation with imagination and memory, with which materials are collected; then follows reason, by which these materials are transformed into knowledge; above all of them rises the mind, which cognizes the invisible and spiritual and inner aspects of things already known by reason. First about reason, or the highest ability of knowledge. R.S. I apologize. Due to circumstances, I cannot continue to write to you about everything, as expected. Here are the notebooks in which my notes about that have been collected for a long time. Read them and don't be angry at anything else. A) About the beginning of Christian life Just as in the matter of cognition the principle accepted as the basis serves as a guide in mental labors and imparts its character to them, so in life all affairs, undertakings and enterprises are organized according to the principles that a person places as the basis of his activity. It is obvious that the property of the beginning here also leaves its characteristic stamp on the entire range of actions carried out under its influence. It would seem that the life and deeds of Christians should be imprinted by one character, moved by one spirit. 1) The beginning of moral life in general It would seem that the life and deeds of Christians should be imprinted by one character, moved by one spirit. It goes without saying that if you define: a) the main goal to which all a person’s aspirations and labors should be directed, and indicate: b) the means that the Lord has given him to achieve it, then this will naturally outline: c) the main guiding rule for his entire life. a) Man’s final goal is in God, in communion or living union with God. Created in the image and likeness of God, man by his very nature is in some way of the Divine race. Being of the race of God, he cannot help but seek communion with God, not only as his beginning and prototype, but also as the supreme good. That is why our heart is content only when it possesses God and is possessed by God. Nothing but God calms him down. Solomon knew a lot, possessed a lot and enjoyed a lot, but all of this finally had to be recognized as vanity and ruin of the spirit (see: Eccl. 1, 8, 14, 17-18; 3, 10-11; 8, 17). There is only one peace for man in God. What do I have in heaven and what do I desire from You on earth? My heart and my flesh have disappeared, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God forever (cf. Ps. 72:23-26). “Life in God, teaches Basil the Great 84, alienation and distance from God is evil” 85, more intolerable even than future torments in Gehenna, is the most severe evil for a person, like the deprivation of light for the eye and the taking of life for an animal. Therefore, it is suggested to us: seek the Lord, seek His face without fail (cf. Ps. 104:4). The Prophet Moses made seeing the face of God the cornerstone of his desires, and after God had already revealed through him and in him so many extraordinary actions of His goodness and omnipotence: if I have found grace before You, show me Yourself, so that I can see You rationally (cf. Exodus 33:13), he prayed. With what fear the prophet David cried out to the Lord: cast me not away from Thy presence (Ps. 50:13), knowing that those who separate themselves from Him will perish (Ps. 72:27)! With what desire he always rushed to God: my soul thirsted for God (cf. Ps. 63:2); In the same way that the trees desire for the springs of water, my soul desires for You, O God (Ps. 41:2)! With what warmth I rested in Him alone: ​​it is good for me to cleave to God (Ps. 72:28)! But our good does not lie in this one aspiration of all desires towards God. Thirst without quenching, hunger without satiation, need without satisfaction is sorrow, illness, torment. Seeking God, we want to find Him, we want to possess Him and be possessed by Him, to sincerely commune with Him, to be in Him and to have Him in ourselves 86 . This living, internal, direct communication of God with man and man with God is his final goal. This is how this communication is depicted in the word of God. Thus, God Himself speaks of some: “My Spirit shall not abide in these men, for they are flesh” (cf. Gen. 6:3), and promises others: “I will dwell in them and walk around” (2 Cor. 6:16). “Listen,” Saint Chrysostom says to this place, Who dwells in you! You carry God within you” 87. The Savior promises a certain inner dwelling of God in the human heart when he says: we will come to him and make our abode with him (cf. John 14:23). Saint John the Theologian teaches that when someone abides in love, then not only he abides in God, but God also abides in him (see: 1 John 4:16). The Holy Fathers elevate living communion with God to the deification of man. Thus, Saint Gregory the Theologian 88 depicts man as a living being, through the desire for God achieving deification 89 . Theodore, Bishop of Edessa, teaches about the purpose of man: “the purpose of our life is bliss, or, which is the same, the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God, which consists not only in ripening the royal, so to speak, Trinity, but also in receiving Divine influence and, as it were, accepting deification, and in this influence finding the completion and completion of all shortcomings and imperfections. This is what the food of mental powers consists of, that is, in replenishing deficiencies through the Divine influence” 90. In almost every Conversation with Saint Macarius one can find a reminder of the living communication of the soul with God. Thus, in Discourse 46, he teaches “that God created the soul of man in such a way that it might be His bride and accomplice, and that He might be one co-creation and one spirit with it.” Therefore, “if the soul cleaves to the Lord, then the Lord, moved by mercy and love, comes to it and cleaves to it, and so there is one spirit and one dissolution and one mind there is a soul and the Lord” 91. “It is necessary for a person,” he says in another place, that not only he himself should be in God, but that God should also be in him” 92 . No one would think, however, that a living union with God is the disappearance of the soul in God with the violence of its independence and freedom. No: although the soul really stands under Divine influence, touches in some way God and is imbued with His power, it does not cease to be a soul - a rationally free being, just as red-hot iron or coal, penetrated by fire, does not cease to be iron and coal. Only through this communication does she acquire the fullest and fastest power to act according to the will of God - freely, but also unquestioningly. On the other hand, it would also be wrong if anyone began to think that when communion with God is the final goal of a person, then a person will be granted it after, for example, at the end of all his labors. No: it must be an everlasting, continuous state of a person, so that, since there is no communication with God, since it is not felt, a person must admit that he is outside his goal and his purpose. The state in which a person realizes that the true God is his God and he himself is God’s, that is, he says in his heart to God: My Lord and my God (John 20:28), like the Apostle Thomas, and to himself: I am God’s - I am God’s (cf. Is. 44:5) - such a state is the only true state of man, is the only decisive sign of the presence in him of the beginning of a truly moral and spiritual life. And so far from the truth are those who set man’s last goal to be man himself, no matter how pompous names they adorn it with, the development, for example, of spiritual powers or the desire for improvement. With such a goal, people are separated by caring only about themselves and get used to turning everything into a means, not even excluding God Himself, whereas, in fact, man, like everything created, is a means in the right hand of God for the purposes of His Divine Providence. The Lord created everything for His own sake (cf. Proverbs 16:4). Therefore in Him we live, we move, and we are (cf. Acts 17:28), as from Him, and by Him, and in Him are all things (cf. Rom. I: 36). It is unfair to make a person’s last goal the only good of his neighbors, that is, people, even in the sense that all his concern should be directed to the well-being of society. Contributing to the common good is unquestionably a person’s duty, but not the first and not the exclusive one. If we put this as the first duty, then every person will turn his thoughts and hearts to others, and not to God, and, therefore, all together will form a society of people, closed in themselves, but with their souls cut off from God. It will be a body without a head. On the contrary, during communion with God, all people, converging on this single goal, are united not only in thought, but in deed itself, and all, filled with one spirit and one strength, form a single, living and harmonious body. It is only under this condition that a true and reliable union between people can be created; b) that's the goal! The question is, what is the path to this goal or how is a person adapted to it? Unreasonable creatures reach their destination without knowing it, by their very nature or structure. Man, a rationally free creature, must himself be aware of his goal, know the path leading to it, and freely determine himself to follow this path steadily in order to achieve his goal and fulfill his purpose. From this it goes without saying that as soon as it is indicated: aa) the meaning of moral freedom and its true use, as soon as it is determined: bb) the path that it must choose, and: c) the grounds on which it must do this are indicated, then the totality of all these concepts will depict how a person is adapted to his goal, to which he must strive with his whole being, and, consequently, everything that is required of him in order to be true to his purpose, or, what is the same, to be in communion with God; aa) having deigned to accept a person into living communion with Himself, the Lord granted him freedom so that this communication would be carried out in a God-worthy manner, that is, he granted him the power to direct his internal and external actions according to the vision of the goal, or at his own discretion. For a person must first control himself in order to then surrender himself to God. God, having created the being of man, gave him to himself, so that he could do what he wanted with himself and with his own strength. Create man yourself from the beginning, says the wise Sirach, and leave him in the hands of his will (Sir. 15:14). Freedom belongs to a person’s face and constitutes his characteristic feature. The person himself must be in charge of his thoughts, desires, feelings and the affairs corresponding to them. In this sense, he himself is a government official. The forces closest to consciousness constitute his inner council, with the help of which he decides all his affairs and undertakings. Demands come to a person from different sides, both from the outside and from the inside, but, with all their strength, the very action inspired by them never occurs until there is a conscious decision on it from the person himself. The essence of freedom lies in this decision or consent to a matter. No force can forcibly remove it. One word: I do not deign - disarms all power and all violence 93 . This is how man is portrayed everywhere in the word of God. Here the most necessary orders for him are offered to his freedom and election. So, Moses, having depicted to Israel what his life and death, blessing and oath are, convinces him: choose your life, that you and your seed may live (cf. Deut. 30:19). Choose for yourselves, Joshua tells the same people, whom you will serve (cf. Joshua 24:15). We hear the same thing from Sirach: he offered you fire and water, and if you want it, stretch out your hand. Life and death are before man, and if he pleases, it will be given to him (Sir. 15, 16 – 17). And the Savior, having come to earth, does not bind freedom, but offers a choice: whoever wants to follow Me, etc. (see: Matt. 16:24); if you want to be perfect (Matthew 19:21). He does not forcefully enter the house of the soul, but stand, he says, at the door, and it will do no good if anyone hears (cf.: Rev. 3:20). God does not force us, says St. Chrysostom: “He gave us the power to choose good and bad, so that we could be good freely. The soul, as a queen over itself and free in its actions, does not always submit to God, and He does not want to forcefully and against the will to make the soul virtuous and holy. For where there is no will, there is no virtue. It is necessary to convince the soul so that it will become good of its own free will” 94. In freedom, a certain independence is given to man, but not so that he is self-willed, but so that he freely submits himself to the will of God. Voluntary submission of freedom to the will of God is the only true and only blessed use of freedom. The will of God is the principle according to which a person must arrange his actions. It alone should decisively guide him in his personal orders. Under this condition alone, his freedom will receive scope and breadth, for there is nothing free either in man himself or outside of him. Everything is arranged according to certain laws of the Divine will, which after this is alone and remains completely free. Therefore, only the will of God can be a decent field for freedom. Submitting to it, human freedom becomes, as it were, unlimited or enters into a certain boundless region: we walk in breadth, as we seek Your commandments (Ps. 119:45), says the prophet David. “Look what inexplicable mysteries are accomplished in the soul,” says Macarius the Great, how the thoughts of its mind expand and spread into the length, and breadth, and depth, and into the height of all visible and invisible creation” 95. On the contrary, with any other use of freedom, on the one hand, the good of man will suffer, on the other, freedom itself will fall into constraint. The whole man in his composition and powers, as well as the whole order of things surrounding him, are sealed by the law of the Divine will. If a person with such powers and in such a world begins to act according to principles alien to the will of God, then he will necessarily come into conflict with himself and with the world: he will upset himself and be subject to disastrous influence from the outside, that is, the person will inevitably suffer and suffer. Moreover, the very use of his freedom will be limited. By willfully deviating from the will of God, a person inevitably falls into certain bonds and loses a significant part of the perfections possible for him. “If a person is free,” asks Saint Tikhon, then he can do whatever he wants? And he answers: “No. Freedom is not about living willfully. This is not so much freedom as slavery - true, hard. Those who disobey God fall under the heavy yoke of the tormentor-the devil and sin, become the poorest captives of passions and are under a legal oath” 96. So man, a free creature, having deviated from the will of God, falls into a region of darkness, enveloped in the wrath of God, where he comes under the power of Satan, sin and passions, raging in himself and in others; bb) in this way, the path that we must freely choose in order to fulfill our purpose is indicated, namely, the path of the will of God. God alone, who deigned to create us rationally free and gave us this high purpose - to be in living communion with Himself, can show us the right path by which we can achieve this communion with God and remain in it. What man can know the counsel of God? Or who can imagine what God wants? Who knows His will? (cf.: Wis. 9, 13, 17), if He Himself does not open it. This announcement of the will of God to rational creatures or an indication of how they should control their internal and external actions in order to please God is the commandment of God, or the moral law - the law of the Lord is immaculate, converting souls, the testimony of the Lord is faithful, making children wise, the justification of the Lord, gladdening the heart, the bright commandment of the Lord, enlightening the eyes... (cf. Ps. 18, 8–9). Therefore, unswerving adherence to God’s law, willingly walking according to His commandments, faithful fulfillment of His justifications is the only reliable path to communion with God. Only the one who created that person will live in them (Gal. 3:12), the Apostle teaches. If you want to take it into your belly, keep the commandments (Matthew 19:17), the Lord said to one zealot for pleasing God; and he promised everyone in general: if you have My commandments and keep them, he is the one who loves Me... If anyone loves Me, he will keep My commandments: and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him (cf. John 14:21, 23). Therefore the word of God calls the law a way, a light, a lamp shining in dark place (see: Ps. 118, 32, 35, 105; 2 Pet. 1, 19), and by fulfilling it he assimilates those benefits that can only flow from communion with God. A man who keeps the law grows like a tree with flowing waters; it will yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall off, and everything that he does will prosper (cf. Ps. 1:3). That is why God Himself, with such care and with some, so to speak, persistence, always revealed His will to people and gave them His laws. He imprinted His first law on the conscience, according to which even the pagans, who do not have the law, create the law by nature, being a law for themselves (see: Rom. 2:14). “The soul is truly a great thing, God’s and wonderful,” says Macarius the Great, when it was created, God created it in such a way that no vice was put into its nature; on the contrary, He created it in the image of the virtue of the Spirit, put into it the laws of virtues - prudence, prudence, love and other virtues” 97, so that, as Saint Chrysostom notes in one place, so that no one would be accused of ignorance of the law 98. Then, when, as a result of the fall, this internal law became darkened or covered with a veil, and, moreover, another law was formed in us that was at war with the law of God, then the Lord sent the written law in order to restore, cleanse from impurities and clarify this internal law in the minds of people and provide them with the most reliable guidance to piety and pleasing God. Finally, when this law, clarifying the requirements of the will of God, at the same time illuminating the life of man in its relation to the law and, like a mirror, presenting its face, always almost unclean and ugly, only convicted people of their iniquities, and did not correct them, only showed the path, and did not give strength to walk along it, then the merciful Lord promised to open a different path for people and give a new law. And I will give them another way and another heart... that I may write My laws in their thoughts and in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be My people (cf. Jer. 32:39, 31:33). And he really gave and continues to give this law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus (cf. Rom. 8:2); c) despite, however, such importance of the law, it still stands, as it were, outside freedom. In order for a free being to follow the path of the law, their voluntary combination must first occur, and for this there must be grounds on which a free being must voluntarily bind itself to the law. A being involuntarily drawn to a certain type of activity is no longer free, just as a law, without compulsory grounds for its fulfillment, is not a law. It is self-evident that these foundations cannot lie either in freedom, because it must still only accept them in order to subordinate itself to the law by force of them, or in the law itself, because it does not have autonomy and independence. They must be sought in the source of freedom and law - in the will of God, who granted freedom and prescribed the law. In other words: the reasons for which a person must voluntarily subordinate his freedom to the law of God are the same ones for which the will of God is sacred to us. The will of God must be sacred to us because it is the will of God. God is our King. We unquestioningly, but willingly, must obey everything that is His determination. One name - God - should make us bow to His command, for He is the Lord of all. Therefore, when a commandment is given or judgment is pronounced against any nation in the word of God, it is always said: thus or this saith the Lord. For who is there that can oppose Him? (Job 23:13), as Job says. Such unconditional and at the same time free obedience to God is naturally formed in us: a) on the one hand, from the consciousness that God is our Creator and Provider. Our life is from God, our strength is from God, our destiny and everything we have is also from God: how can we disobey Him? Therefore, the 24 elders, having bowed to God Almighty, sang thus: Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for Thou hast created all things, and by Thy will they were created (cf.: Rev. 4:11). The prophet David prays: give me understanding, and I will learn your commandments. Why? Because Thy hands created me and created me (Ps. 119:73). Further, he confesses to God: I have not forgotten Your law, I have sought Your justifications. Why? For I am Yours... I will take my soul into Your hand (cf. Ps. 119, 94, 109); b) on the other hand, from the consciousness that He is our Judge and Rewarder. Although God has given us freedom and, therefore, some independence, he nevertheless wants us to certainly achieve our destination, and precisely through His commandments. Therefore, he does not allow us to walk with impunity in the wills of our hearts, but persecutes us with justice in order to bring us to obedience. Let not a single one become weak and dishonorable (cf. Sir. 15:20), says Sirach. Therefore, although he says: if you want (cf.: Matt. 19, 17), but, at the same time, he adds: if you do not want, you will listen to Me, you will girdle the sword: for the mouth of the Lord says this... My wrath will not cease against those who are opposed until they submit (see: Isa. 1, 20, 24). These two sensations, which, however, are not always clearly recognized, imprinted on all sides in the heart, form in it reverent fear or a feeling of our complete dependence on God, which forces us to voluntarily submit to the determinations of God’s will, or to the law. In our soul, it is this feeling of complete dependence on God that serves as the only basis for the subordination of our freedom to the law. Therefore, whenever this feeling weakens, people indulge in lawlessness, and vice versa - those who indulge in lawlessness console themselves with a certain independence from God. They say to the Lord: Depart from us, we do not want to follow Your ways. What is worthy that we should serve Him? (Job 21, 14–15). The Lord will not see, but God will understand Jacob (Ps. 93:7). Darkness surrounds me, and the walls close me... The Most High will not remember my sins (Sir. 23, 25). So Basil the Great says that all evil “comes from the fact that they abandon the Great and True One King of all and God... and want to rule in spite of the Lord rather than themselves be under the rule of the Lord” 100. In general, the source of wickedness in the word of God is considered to be forgetfulness of God (see: Deut. 32:18) and apostasy from God (see: Deut. 32:15). But this feeling of all-round dependence is only an intermediary, so to speak, link between law and freedom. The very combination of freedom and law is again produced by the spontaneous submission of oneself to the law, or the will of God. For all the reasons, God does not forcibly bind us, but leaves us free, so that we subjugate ourselves and offer Him freedom as a sacrifice - the only thing that a person can make of himself, an offering to God, worthy of God. The sacrifice of freedom to God consists of the true character of a moral and pious life, or, what is the same, it consists of the determination to dispose of one’s internal and external actions in no other way than according to the will of God. With this determination, a person’s moral life begins and is maintained. The Word of God portrays it under the guise of an oath and a free offering to God: I swore, says David, and set them to preserve the fate of Your righteousness. The freedom of my lips is favored, O Lord (cf.: Ps. 118, 106, 108); then under the guise of humility before God and turning to Him, for example, in Job: if you turn and humble yourself before the Lord, and commit injustice far from your dwelling... the Almighty will be your Helper (cf. Job 22, 23, 23; Hos. 6, 1); then, under the guise of seeking the Lord: seek the Lord, and whenever you find Him, call: when he draws near to you, let the wicked leave his ways, and the wicked man his counsels, and let him turn to the Lord (cf. Is. 55:6-7); then, finally, under the guise of disappearing in the law and God: my eyes disappear into Thy salvation and into the word of Thy righteousness (cf. Ps. 119, 81-82). Let us conclude from this that when a person, in a sense of his complete dependence on God, defines himself or decides to steadily and always walk in the will of God, or the law of God, then he will reach his goal or fulfill his purpose. For you can say to everyone: make up your mind and fulfill the law, and you will be in constant communion with God. At the same time, as man submits himself to God, God is assimilated to man, and man is assimilated to God. For this is what the Lord Himself says: They will be my people, and I will be their God: until then they will turn to me with all their hearts (Jer. 24:7). The Holy Prophet David says: You are my part, O Lord, and have decided to keep Your law (Ps. 119:57), that is, desiring to have God as mine forever, or, what is the same, to be in communion with Him, the Holy Prophet decides to always fulfill His holy law. In Job, this is depicted under the guise of boldness towards God. He says that he who turns to the Lord and humbles himself before Him has Him as his Helper and will himself take boldness before God, looking cheerfully up to heaven (see: Job 22:26); and the wicked - to have food when there is boldness before Him (cf. Job 27:10); c) from here the main principle of moral life in general can be expressed in the following rule: do the will of God in order to be in communion with God, or: remain in communion with God by actively fulfilling His holy will. This rule is spoken continuously throughout the entire space of the word of God, and its fulfillment is the source of all blessings, and failure to fulfill it is the source of all evils. God promises Abraham a blessing - and not only to him, but also to his seed after him, under the condition of being well-pleasing: be well-pleasing to Me (Gen. 17:1); God chose the people of Israel, and this people surrenders itself to Him, crying out with one accord, “Let us do and listen to the Lord” (Ex. 24:7). And the Savior says: not everyone who says to Me: Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom: but do the will of My Father who is in heaven (cf. Matt. 7:21). 2) The beginning of a moral Christian life The principles of moral life in general are depicted as the being of the first covenant, or the spiritual life of man in his primitive state. Like a submissive child, he would humbly walk in the will of God and thereby be in His favor and remain in constant communion with Him. Man already possessed everything necessary to achieve this goal, namely: freedom - pure, unconstrained, a consciousness of the law - definite and obvious, a feeling of fear of God, or dependence on God - strong, and therefore I resolve to walk in the will of God unperturbed. Just as through creation itself man was placed in his destiny, so he would remain in it with the powers and means that the merciful Creator and Provider gave him. But when man fell, he suffered a complete breakdown both in himself and in his relationships. Communication with God is interrupted: a person is under an oath and does not dare to look at heaven; free initiative is bound by sin and passions; the law has darkened; the feeling of dependence has weakened, and at the same time the determination to walk in the will of God has weakened, to the point that it is impossible for a person to return to it. He is held in the bonds of sinful slavery by the prince of darkness - the devil. Meanwhile, even after the fall, man remained a man. Its purpose and goal is the same communion with God; the path to this goal is the same - walking in the will of God, to the fulfillment of which he must determine himself by the feeling of his dependence on God. And yet, out of all this, a person cannot fulfill a single requirement on his own. At all points he needs Divine, extraordinary help. Therefore, the Triune God - the Father, through His Only Begotten Son and the Holy Spirit - was pleased to establish a kingdom of grace on earth, in which the extreme spiritual needs of man are satisfied. Here, a person who has fallen away from God is reunited with Him through the Lord Jesus Christ, as the only Mediator, reconciling God with people and people reconciled with God, leading to the source of true life; the weakened free initiative of man is restored by Divine grace; the lack of fulfillment of the law is made up for by faith in Christ the Savior; the feeling of dependence on God and the determination to walk in His will are resurrected in repentance. As a result of repentance, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, Divine grace descends into a person in the Sacraments, which, reviving him, unites him with the Lord Jesus Christ, and through Him and in Him with God. These are the most necessary conditions for a true Christian life. It is so obvious that the most important thing in it is: a) communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, in which the source of true life is revealed to man, and on the path to communion with Christ the Savior and in communion with Him, the following are necessary, both in the person himself, and partly on the part of the person: aa) repentance and: bb) faith, - and from above - conceiving, forming and fulfilling in a person’s being a new life in Christ: c) Divine grace. By explaining these aspects of Christian life, the following will be revealed: 3) the main beginning of Christian life. a) Communion with the Lord Jesus Christ Now there is no other way for a person to enter into a living union with God than through Jesus Christ. No one can come to the Father except by Me (cf. John 14:6), says the Lord. Therefore, there is one God, and one Mediator of God and men - the man Christ Jesus (cf. 1 Tim. 2:5), by whom alone we have bringing to the Father (cf. Eph. 2:18). Man who fell away from God suffered three evils: he was subjected to the curse of God, he was upset in himself and fell under the power of the devil - three evils that again, by their force, keep a person in a state of falling away from God, so that approaching God is only possible with the elimination of these evils. The Lord Jesus Christ delivered us from all of them: - took away the oath from us by His death (see: Gal. 3:13), for He was sacrificed for us (see: 1 Cor. 5:7), and we are sanctified by the offering of His body (see: Heb. 10:10). In Christ, God reconciled the world to Himself (see: 2 Cor. 5:18-19) and through Him gave people boldness to come before Him (see: Heb. 10:19). Therefore, the Apostles begged everyone on behalf of God to be reconciled with Him in Christ Jesus (see: 2 Cor. 5, 18-20); - healed our disorder, becoming for us a strength for salvation (see: Rom. 1, 17; 1 Cor. 6, 14), being filled with which, we are strengthened (see: 1 Tim. 1, 12) and can do all things (see: Phil. 4, 13). He revives us from dead sins (Eph. 2:3) and frees us from the law of sin (see: Rom. 8:2; John 8:36). And in general, without Him we cannot do anything truly good (see: John 13:5); - destroyed the works of the devil, abolished him, who had the power of death (see: Heb. 2:14), condemned this prince of the world and cast him out (see: John 12:31, 16:11); therefore He draws all believers out of darkness into His wonderful light and from the realm of Satan to God, putting on them the whole armor of God, as if they were able to withstand the wiles of the devil (cf. Eph. 6:11). But this unsearchable wealth of Christ (see: Eph. 3:8) is hidden in Himself. For people he is truth, sanctification, deliverance (see: 1 Cor. 1:30), life (see: John 1:3; Col. 3:4) and the only source of all heavenly blessings (see: Eph. 1:3, 10); in Him we are made alive, seated in heavenly places (see: Eph. 2:5-6), adopted as sons of God (see: Rom. 8:4-17), but in such a way that only those people who enter into living communion with Him and are so closely united, like members with a body, are truly worthy of all the benefits contained from us in Christ and revealed in Him to fallen humanity (see: 1 Cor. 6:15) or like branches with a vine (see: John 15:5). Therefore, communication with the Lord Jesus Christ is commanded and depicted as the only and supreme good. So the Lord Himself says to the Apostles: be in Me, and I in you (John 15:4). God the Father, through the Apostles, calls us precisely into the communion of His Son, our Lord - Jesus Christ (cf.: 1 Cor. 1:9); The Apostles call believers partakers of Christ (cf. Heb. 3:14); they pray to God to let Christ dwell in their hearts (cf. Eph. 3:17); they regret those who have become estranged from Christ and are sick until He is again imagined in them (see: Gal. 4:19, 5:4); They testify about themselves that they no longer live to anyone, but Christ lives in them (cf. Gal. 2:20), and they command everyone to put on Christ (see: Rom. 13:14), setting this as the goal of the Divine economy: that we may be in His true Son, our Lord Jesus Christ (see: 1 John 5:20). Thus it is revealed that the only means of communication with God is communication with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Savior Himself revealed this secret to the holy Apostles, saying: I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you (John 14:20). Therefore, he taught that the Father loves only those who love Him (the Son), comes to them and, together with Him, makes His abode in them (see: John 14:23, 16:27), and prayed to the Father: that all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You, that they also may be one in Us (cf.: John 17:21). Believers are granted sacramental communion with our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrament of Baptism. Here they become members of the body of Christ and put on the Lord, as the Apostle teaches: as many as were baptized into Christ, they put on Christ (Gal. 3:27), and at the same time they were made worthy of those benefits that the Lord acquired for us: justification and rebirth. He who is immersed in Baptism is buried in Christ and receives the power of His death - the forgiveness of sins (see: Rom. 6:3-4). The baptized person emerges from the font in renewed life, like a new creation, as if sin does not work for anyone, which from now on no longer possesses him and does not reign in him (see: Rom. 6: 3-14). The Apostle speaks of these blessings: but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:11). The gifts communicated, however, capture the internal changes that must occur in the heart of one approaching the Lord before Baptism and which actually lay the foundation, beginning and embryo of a true Christian life. These changes are repentance and faith, as the Savior Himself demanded from everyone who came to Him, saying: repent and believe in the Gospel (Mark 1:15). They are produced in the soul by Divine grace - prevenient. In Baptism, grace enters 101 inside - into the heart of a Christian - and then constantly remains in him, helping him to live like a Christian and ascend from strength to strength in spiritual life. The reason for a bad life, revealed in consciousness and experience, is a weakening in us of the feeling of fear of God, or the feeling of dependence on God, a weakening that sometimes reaches an extreme degree - to the complete loss of this feeling. The principle of sinful life operating in us is selfishness or self-indulgence, otherwise egoism: selfishness. Selfishness is crushed, and the fear of God, or the feeling of dependence on God, is resurrected in a person in repentance. That person lives in a state of falling away from God, who lives only for himself and does not think about God and heaven or, in the words of David: does not offer God before himself (cf. Ps. 53:5, 85:14). Such a person is usually all concerned about something of his own: either about knowledge, or about art, or about a position, or about a family, or, even worse, about pleasure and the satisfaction of some passion; he does not think about the future life, but tries to arrange the present in such a way that he can live calmly and, as it were, forever; he does not turn inward, therefore he does not know his condition and the consequences that will come from his life, but he always considers himself something great and is driven forward by vain worries; he does not love others, but treats them as soon as decency demands - therefore he is ready to offend if this does not denigrate himself; he sometimes does good deeds, but they are all properties of the soul, 102 imbued with his general spirit of self-love, which robs them of their true value. All this is confessed by everyone who has turned to God, but the unconverted one, while he remains in this state, no matter how strictly he sometimes begins to examine himself and his life, cannot convince himself that his deeds are insignificant and evil. Satan, possessing man through sin, living in man, along with his selfhood, strikes his spirit with all its might, like a lethargic sleep. Therefore, he suffers from blindness, insensibility and negligence. A person in such a state cannot feel himself until the light of Divine grace shines in his sinful darkness. Satan brings darkness upon him, entangling him in his nets, from which no one will arise 103 without admonition from above (see: 2 Tim. 2:26). No one can come to Me, says the Lord, unless the Father, who sent Me, will draw him... Everyone who hears from the Father and is skilled will come to Me (cf. John 6:44-45). Therefore, the Lord Himself stands at the door of the heart and pushes, as if saying: arise from sleep and rise from the dead (cf. Apoc. 3:20; Eph. 5:14). This voice of God - calling - comes to the sinner either directly, right in the heart, or indirectly, mainly through the word of God, and often through various external events, in nature and in the life of himself and others. But it always falls on the conscience, awakens it and, like lightning, illuminates (clearly presents to consciousness) all the legal relationships of a person that were violated and perverted by him. Therefore, this action of grace always opens with strong restlessness of the spirit, confusion, fear for oneself and self-contempt. However, it does not force a person, but only stops him on the vicious path, after which the person has the complete power to either turn to God, or again wallow in the darkness of self-love. In the parable of the prodigal son, this state is expressed in the words: having come within himself (cf. Luke 15:17). In a person who has heeded (not resisted) the action of grace, calling and enlightening his inner darkness, a special ability to vividly perceive revealed truths is revealed, as if some special heartfelt hearing and understanding: eyes are opened (cf. Acts 26:18), the spirit of wisdom acts in the knowledge of truth (see: Eph. 1:17). Examples of this are provided by all those who apply (for example, Mary of Egypt, Evdokia and others). Revealed truths can be studied without the assistance of the Lord, but then they, being formed in the mind, usually do not penetrate deeply into the heart. Under the influence of grace, the heart feeds on them, taking them inside itself, completely assimilating and holding them in itself - it becomes, as it were, an unwaterable sponge. At the same time, since Revelation consists of the law and the Gospel, then, perceiving revealed truths in the heart, the convert experiences two kinds of changes: some difficult and joyless, others relieving and calming the soul. However, according to the state of the person who turns, first of all the law falls on him with all its burden and tortures him as a culprit. A series of changes of this kind in the heart constitute the totality of repentant feelings. In this order, first of all, the following occurs: 1) knowledge of sins. The law shows a person all the actions that are obligatory for him, or the commandments of God, and consciousness presents a whole field of actions that are contrary to them, with the assurance that they might not have happened, that everything is a matter of his freedom and is often allowed by him with the consciousness of their illegality. The consequence of this is the internal conviction of a person for all omissions and violations: a person feels completely guilty before God, unapologetically, unrequited; 2) hence, further, painful, sorrowful, crushing feelings about sins are crowded into the heart from different sides: contempt for oneself and indignation at one’s own evil arbitrariness, because one is to blame for everything; shame that I brought myself to such a humiliating state; painful fear and expectation of near evils because you have offended the Almighty and Most Righteous God with your sins; finally, a confused feeling of helplessness and hopelessness completes defeat: a person would like to shake off all this evil from himself, but it seems to have grown together with him, he would even like to die in order to rise in a better state, but he does not have the power to do this. Then a person begins to cry out from the depths of his soul: what will I do, what will I do? - how the people cried out from the denunciations of John the Baptist (see: Luke 3, 10, 12, 14) and from the words of the Apostle Peter after the descent of the Holy Spirit (see: Acts 2, 37). Here everyone, even if he were a ruler or some other famous person in the world, feels that he is caught by the judgment of God and is completely subject to its power, that he is a worm, and not a man, a reproach of people and the humiliation of people (Ps. 21: 7) - that is, all human selfhood turns to dust and the consciousness of service to God is resurrected, or the feeling of dependence on Him - complete, inevitable. Such feelings are immediately ready to bear fruit, to arouse, that is, to submission to God or, in the present case, to correct oneself and begin a new life according to the will of God. But at the same time, a person is oppressed from above by the feeling of God’s wrath and God’s oath, and within himself he is disarmed by the consciousness of his powerlessness to overcome himself, due to the power of passions and corrupted will that has already been tested many times. That’s why he stands as if amazed, not even daring to make a single movement. Here, on the one hand, faith comes to him as timely help, and on the other, grace-filled power that helps in doing all good. Constrained by the strict reproof of the law, the sinner could not find consolation anywhere except the Gospel - the sermon about Christ the Savior, who came into the world of sinners. Without Jesus Christ the Lord, it would be impossible for sinners convicted of the law to avoid despair, which is why it is proclaimed that it was for them that the Savior came. He did not come, He says, to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (cf. Luke 5:32); also: the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost (cf. Luke 19:10). “This is to whom the gospel consolation is preached, teaches St. Tikhon, to the poor, that is, to those who recognize their spiritual poverty, do not find in themselves any truth before God, but see only damnation; contrite hearts, that is, those whose hearts, like an arrow, are wounded by sorrow for sins... The law is always a nurturer in Christ (cf. Gal. 3:24). Showing our guilt and weakness, he forces us to look for another means and, as if taking us by the hand, leads us to Christ, for in the cramped conscience there is no other refuge than Christ, Who Himself bore our sins on His body on the tree (cf. 1 Pet. 2:24) and Whom, knowing no sin, God made sin for us, so that we may be God’s righteousness in Him (cf. 2 Cor. 3:21)... In order for the faith of the Gospel to be conceived in the heart, it is necessary to first know one’s weakness and vividly feel the wrath of God, the oath, judgment and condemnation determined on sinners. Then already in the heart, with this fear, as if by fire, purified and prepared, faith is conceived from the Holy Spirit" 104 . Just as the thirsty earth receives rain and just as someone weary from the heat is revived with cooling moisture (see: Is. 18:4), so a soul tormented by conscience drinks in the gospel of the Gospel and a contrite heart joyfully listens to the comforting messages of faith. Here everything is preceded by the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the knowledge of the dispensation of salvation in Him, what the Apostle asked of the Ephesians: that he might lead away (Eph. 1:18). Such knowledge is a necessary condition for the birth of faith or the point from which its formation begins, for how can one believe without knowing the subject of faith? Therefore, the Apostles were sent to teach people how to preach, to show, that is, what the truth is (see: Matt. 28:19). How will they believe, says the Apostle, if they do not hear from the preacher? (see: Rom. 10:11, 14–15). For someone who thirsts for salvation, this knowledge is accompanied by pleasure, occupies him completely, embraces all his attention and leaves behind a desire to hear more, learn more, learn more. A weak similarity to this is presented by the Athenians and Agrippa and Festus during the preaching of the Apostle Paul (see: Acts 17:32, 26:28–32). But this is not what faith is all about. Knowledge, sincerely accepted, is followed by a heartfelt conviction in the truth of the Gospel, or in the fact that the salvation of the human race has really worked out as it is preached, and that there is and cannot be any other basis for the salvation of people than in the Lord Jesus Christ. This heartfelt conviction is the distinctive quality of faith. Many know with their minds the economy of salvation, but not all of them have faith. A true believer is so committed in his heart to faith in Christ that he not only fearlessly confesses Him, but also stands for this confession to the point of bleeding: it is dearer to him than life itself. The pinnacle of the perfection of faith is the lively personal conviction that the Lord saved me as well as everyone, just as He removed the curse from everyone, so from me, just as everyone’s Life is the same as mine. “A true believer,” says His Grace Tikhon, confesses with the Apostle: “By faith I live the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2:20). The Son of God loved the whole world and gave Himself for the whole world, but the Apostle Paul appropriates this great benefit of His to himself by faith. And Saint Damascus 105 sings: you have shepherded all man... before me... come, seeking me who is lost (voice 2, song 4)" 106. “In such faith lies the whole essence of Christian blessedness” 107, for from it a real feeling of salvation in the Lord is revived in the heart, a feeling of freedom from the curse and wrath of God, a consciousness of one’s own reconciliation with God in the Lord Jesus Christ. “Such faith (says His Eminence Tikhon) frees from sin, oath, hell, brings with it spiritual joy, joy in the Lord the Savior, about His goodness and love for mankind, peace and tranquility of conscience, as the Apostle says: justified by faith, peace be upon the imams to God by our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Rom. 5:1)” 108. What happened in the hearts of the Galatians under the influence of this faith, the Apostle speaks about it this way: what then is your blessedness? I testify to you that, even if it were mighty, your hair would have gone wild (Gal. 4:15). All saving actions of faith, which are mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, belong to such faith. Its main fruit and, as it were, the foundation of all others, is justification. “She (Reverend Tikhon) mysteriously unites the soul of a believer with Christ, like a bride with a groom (see: Hos. 2:20; 2 Cor. 11:2). At the same time, Christ takes away from such a soul the oath, condemnation, all the filth of sin, and instead gives it blessing, purity and holiness (see: 1 Cor. 1:30). Like some kind of wife, He clothes her in the pure scarlet robe of righteousness, so that before the eyes of Him and His Heavenly Father she will appear pure and, like a royal daughter, clothed and adorned with spiritual utensils (cf. Ps. 44:10). Contemplating this good, the Prophet, in spiritual joy, exclaims on behalf of the soul that has been granted this: let my soul rejoice in the Lord, for he has clothed me with the robe of salvation and clothed me with the robe of joy: as a bridegroom, place a crown on me, and as a bride, adorn me with beauty (cf. Is. 61:10)" 109 . One must, however, know that just as such a gift by faith is bestowed in the Sacrament of Baptism itself, where, as Chrysostom says, 110 during the immersion of the body in water both truth and adoption are given to us, so here the last feeling of faith is also impressed, that is, the real feeling of salvation and justification in the Lord, for one cannot feel what does not exist. Consequently, in Baptism, received with faith, faith itself is completed. cv) Grace (helpful) A person, as if destroyed by the court of the law, as he enters the realm of faith, comes to life with joy in his heart, lifts up his head, killed by sorrow, comes into tension, relaxed. The more faith grows, the more confidence in the possibility and fruitfulness of efforts to fulfill the law with God’s help is rooted in him; at the same time, a good intention is formed and strengthened to determine oneself decisively to serve God by walking in His law. Until a person is convinced of God’s mercy and help, he cannot make a decisive intention to live according to the will of God (see: 1 Pet. 1:3). Therefore, when the feeling of trustworthiness in God and God's blessing, poured into the heart by faith in the propitiatory death of the Lord Jesus, assures him that God will not despise him, will not reject him, will not abandon him with His help in fulfilling the law for the sake of the Lord, then, having established himself on this feeling, as if on a stone, a person makes a decisive vow to leave everything and devote himself to the God of all, without any restrictions, he is inspired zeal for all-round purity and holiness, with hatred of sin, with fear, however, of the hope of Divine power and help... This is where a turning point in the will takes place: a person is in the same state as the prodigal son was when he said: “I have arisen, I am going.” This decisive intention, however, is only a condition of life according to God, and not life itself. Life is the power to act. Spiritual life is the power to act spiritually, or according to the will of God. Such power has been lost by man; therefore, until it is given to him again, he cannot live spiritually, no matter how much he sets his intentions. This is why the outpouring of grace-filled power into the soul of a believer is essential for a truly Christian life. A true Christian life is a life of grace. Man is elevated to holy determination; but in order for him to act on it, it is necessary that grace be combined with his spirit. With this combination, moral strength, signified only by the first inspiration, is imprinted in the spirit and remains with it forever. This restoration of the moral strength of the spirit consists of the action of rebirth performed in Baptism, where both justification and the power to act according to God in the truth and honor of the truth are sent down to man (cf. Eph. 4:24). Thus, true Christian life begins in Baptism, which is called the washing of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Tit. 3:5), new birth (1 John 3:5, 9), and the baptized person is a new creation in Christ Jesus (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17) 111. From now on, the grace that has taken possession of man remains in him, helping him to be faithful to the Lord until death, in order to receive the crown of life (cf.: Apoc. 2:10), for all believers are preserved, through faith, only by the power of God, into salvation, ready to appear in the last time (cf.: 1 Pet. 1:5). Having received this power, a person walks reliably in fulfillment of the Divine law, or walks like a lion, trusting, under the continuous shadow of Divine grace, with joy, together with fear, surrendering to its guidance (see: Ps. 2:11) and striving in deeds pleasing to God, in a sense of his strength in God, with a deep consciousness of his powerlessness. The whole life of a believer after this flows in the following order: with humble submission and desire he accepts the grace-filled sanctifying means - the word of God and the Sacraments, and grace at this time produces in him various actions of enlightenment and strengthening. From this, with the continuation of the field of earthly life, the spiritual life of a Christian gradually grows and ripens, ascending from strength to strength by the Lord’s Spirit (cf.: 2 Cor. 3:18), until he comes to the measure of the age of the fulfillment of Christ (cf. Eph. 4:13). Therefore, he does not, in fact, have a single action that he would perform without grace and which he would not consciously attribute to it. They actually relate to it, both at the beginning, because it excites, and in completion, because it gives strength. God is the one who acts in him, and who wills, and who works for good pleasure (cf. Phil. 2:13) 112. Man has only his own ardent desire to remain in this order of Divine preservation, in a morally good life, and a decisive surrender of himself to the guidance of God. 3) The main principle of moral Christian life and its character So: a) the last goal of man invariably is to communicate with God. Therefore, when he fell away from God and could not restore communion with Him himself, then, by the good will of God, the God-man Christ Jesus appeared, so that through Him man would enter into communion with God. Thus, the final goal was fellowship with God in Christ Jesus our Lord. No one can come to the Father except by Me (cf. John 14:6), says the Lord. b) the path to the goal assigned to a person invariably is walking in the law of God, in the commandments, or in the will of God. He who created that man will live in them (Gal. 3:12). Therefore, when a person became a transgressor of the law, he could not hope to achieve his goal otherwise than by assimilating someone else’s righteousness. This internalized righteousness makes up for the lack of legitimacy in our lives and gives us the opportunity to be close to God. For the weak of the law, in whom the flesh was weak, God sent His Son in the likeness of the flesh, sin and sin, condemn sin in the flesh, so that the justification of the law may be fulfilled in us, walking not in the flesh, but in the Spirit (Rom. 8:3-4). This assimilation is accomplished through faith in Christ. Therefore, it must be said: the path to the goal for man is still the same - fulfillment of the law, but only completed by faith. All a person’s sins before conversion and all falls after conversion are blotted out by faith, so that in general our entire life in the eyes of God is righteous only through justification by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; c) achieving a goal must invariably be a matter of human freedom. Therefore, when, through a crime, a person lost the perfection of his freedom and fell under the yoke of sin and the devil, then he could only rise to the state of moving towards the goal by breaking these bonds by Divine grace, and, having received it as help, resist and overcome his enemies. Man himself now acts in goodness, but not otherwise than under grace. He is strong in God (cf. 2 Cor. 10:4). So, even now a person moves freely towards the goal, but with a freedom resurrected and constantly strengthened by grace; d) the fulcrum for moral life is invariably a feeling of dependence on God, and its essence is the donation of freedom to God. Therefore, when all this has been destroyed by sin, a person begins to live in the spirit in no other way than when the feeling of dependence on God is resurrected in him by Divine grace acting on him in repentance, and, as a result, through faith, the determination arises to subordinate himself entirely to the will of God, or to sacrifice his freedom to God. This is evidenced and sealed in Baptism, where a person denies Satan, all his works and all his ministry, and in faith surrenders to the Lord Jesus Christ (which is why Baptism is called a question of good conscience, or a promise [see: 1 Pet. 3:21]). So, now the beginning and character of a person’s moral life is the donation of freedom to God in a feeling of dependence on Him, made by a vow in Baptism (or repentance), as a result of a change of will from repentant contrition for one’s corruption. After this, the general principle of moral life: remain in communion with God by freely active fulfillment of His will - should be presented like this: remain in communion with God in the Lord Jesus Christ, active, under the guidance and strengthening of grace, walking in the will of God, fulfilled and accomplished by faith in the endless merits of the Redeemer, as you were solemnly promised before the Church in Baptism (or the Sacrament Repentance). Judging by this beginning and by the very composition of true Christian life, it must have the following essential and distinctive properties, by which anyone can reason about himself, even if he is in faith (cf. 2 Cor. 13:5). The true Christian life is: - hidden with Christ in God. Having been confirmed in mind and heart in God through the Lord Jesus Christ, a Christian acts before the face of God, according to the will of God, for the sake of the glory of God, by the power of God. With his attention and heart he is immersed in God; – detached from the sensual, or dispassionate. A Christian so rises above everything that is in him and around him that he is alien to all worldly attachments and earthly hopes: he seeks the highest, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). He who approaches Christianity, trusting in this only thing, is the most damned of all people (cf. 1 Cor. 15:19); - selfless. Having experienced what walking in the will of the flesh and thoughts can lead to, a Christian, for the sake of pleasing God, rejects with hostility all of his own will, simply because it is his own, and always, when the will of God demands it, he treats himself without regret, even with severity, both in relation to the natural movements of the heart, mind and will, and in relation to the passions and demands of the flesh and the world; – militant. By grace a Christian has already been born into a new life according to God, but the seed of evil hidden in him has not yet been destroyed. From this, throughout all earthly life, the flesh lusts for the spirit, and the spirit for the flesh (cf. Gal. 5:17). Standing on the side of good and accepting the attacks of sin, a Christian, clothed in all the armor of God (Eph. 6:11), resists him and defeats him; - vigilant and sober. In order to be ready to meet and be able to repel the continuous and unexpected attacks of spiritual enemies from without and within, especially from demons, a Christian is sober, watchful, and pays attention to himself (see: 1 Pet. 5:8; 1 Tim. 4:10). From morning to evening he stands at the entrance of his heart, watching for the creeping evil enemies of inner peace and purity; – self-coercive. All his forces, both spiritual and physical, are in tension, either to confront his inclinations towards evil, or to force himself to do good. These are two essential directions of the will that decides to serve God; - difficult, but also sweet. The Christian strives to enter through the narrow gate (Luke 13:24), but also tastes truth, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom. 14:17); – thorough. With the fire of pious zeal, a Christian, always abundant in the work of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 13:38), forgets what is behind and reaches into what is before (see: Phil. 3:13), transforming from glory to glory in order to come to the measure of the age of the fulfillment of Christ (Eph. 4:13); – strong in God, therefore prolific and self-abasing. A Christian feels within himself, as the Apostle said: I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me (cf. Phil. 4:13), and, together, he confesses: what is in me that I would not accept? (see: 1 Cor. 4:7) - why he seeks and finally expects justification from the one Christ the Savior, despite all the abundance of good deeds. B) A detailed indication of the actions of a Christian life of grace and a life of sin on all human abilities 1) About cognitive abilities a) About the highest ability of knowledge, or reason The subject of the knowledge of reason is the Supreme Being - God, with His infinite perfections, and the Divine, eternal order of things, reflected both in the moral and religious structure of the spiritual world, and in creation and industry, or in the structure of creatures, and the course of incidents and phenomena of nature and humanity. All these are hidden, mysterious objects, and the mind in its true form is a contemplator of the mysteries of the Divine, spirit and the material world. The possibility of such knowledge 113 is based on the fact that our spirit itself is from the spiritual world and has some predisposition towards it, some of its aspirations and demands. Thus, experience shows that we have a need for the Divine, a moral order, an order of industry, a better eternal life, and other things, and there is a common faith in all these things. Such demands, beliefs, aspirations are usually called ideas, or an indefinite contemplation of something better in existence and perfection than what we know around us. These ideas, as much as they assure that our spirit is from another world, also show that it is not deprived of the opportunity to cognize it. It is well to remember that from the fact that we have ideas, one can only conclude about the possibility of knowing and contemplating the invisible, spiritual world, and not to its reality, just as from the presence of visual power in our eye, only the possibility of seeing things is visible, and vision itself is subject to its own conditions. Whoever considers ideas to be actual intuition makes a big mistake. Ideas only prove that there are invisible things, just as the demand for food proves that there is food; but what those objects are, what they are, where they are—this still needs to be found out. Moreover, this indication of the existence of the invisible world is not direct, but mediocre, inferential. It is convincing only by his strong desire, and not by itself, so that if the desire of those invisible things is diminished or destroyed, the very conviction of their existence will be diminished or destroyed. In such a state, spiritual knowledge, or reason, is found in every person who comes into this world. It appears in the form of demands from the invisible world, accompanied by conviction of its real existence, but without real and true knowledge about it. Reason is only a visual force of the spiritual world. It is obvious that, for the further development or multiplication of this knowledge, it is necessary to exercise this power of spiritual vision with real vision, just as the visual power of the eye exercises and diversifies the experience of our vision with real vision. And for this it is necessary to enter into direct communication and contact with that world, just as the sensory eye enters into such communication with sensory things, that is, it is necessary to be in communion with God and the spiritual world. Without this communication, spiritual knowledge will forever remain in our spirit in the form of a presumptive requirement and will never rise to the level of clear, real, definitely convincing knowledge, just as a blind man with his eyes closed, whose power of vision is, however, intact, will only know that there are certainly luminous and illuminated things, but he will definitely not be able to know them until his eyes are opened. The reason for this is the fall into sin and remaining in this fall. Together with the falling away from God, our spirit has fallen away from everything Divine and spiritual, does not enter into direct communication with God, does not see Him, does not contemplate, it has become blind to Him. It is necessary to return him to his previous state so that he can know Him clearly and definitely. If now this condition can be fulfilled only when a person accepts the restorative powers in Christianity, then it is obvious that outside of true Christianity, which is actively assimilated, the mind is blind, does not know spiritual things, but only demands knowledge of them, has ideas about them, but vague, unclear, conjectural. Meanwhile, the objects of the invisible world, by their height and especially by their kinship with our spirit, cannot but occupy a person, cannot but arouse in him the desire to unravel them. This is always the case. A rare, lulled soul does not want to find out: what is this world? Many people are working on it. What kind the fruit of this labor? If one way to its true knowledge is spiritual experience, from the actual tasting of spiritual things, possible for a person restored by grace: then it is obvious that self-made knowledge of it should not promise much. To be convinced of this, you only have to look at the methods that, outside the true path, the mind uses for this, left to itself. Of these, two are known: one consists of a conclusive ascent from the lower to the higher; the other hopes for the clarification of ideas by their mechanical transition from one force to another within us. In both, the ambiguity and incompleteness of spiritual knowledge is recognized and the question is resolved: how to understand and supplement this knowledge? By the first we mean this: to conclude from actions to the cause of everything - God, attributing to Him to the highest degree what can be characteristic of Him, and denying what cannot be characteristic of Him. There is no doubt that in this way a lot can be explained about the secret realm of ideas; but, besides the fact that such knowledge does not concern the entire volume of invisible things, but only one Divinity, although this is the main subject, it is also not direct, not immediate, therefore, it also remains conjectural. Therefore, it does not satisfy in any way, but always makes one expect new confirmations and evidence, as Plato very strongly expressed it 114. In front of him, one can only say: it seems so and so; but when will anyone say: maybe it’s not so? – the mind doesn’t always have something to answer to this. This is all the more necessary because here experience leads to many unsolvable questions, regarding, for example, Divine providence or the too great influence of a substance on the spirit. How many people, looking at the secret, incomprehensible connection of events, say: is there someone who sets all this in motion? is there freedom? what spirit? – and so on. And this forces the mind, if not to remain in decisive doubt, then often with sadness to experience strong attacks from this enemy of truth. Here is the fruit of the method shown. And there is no need to say that if it is used incorrectly, it can lead to dangerous misconceptions, as has already happened in reality. Why did Epicurus 115 remove God from the rule of the world? Because he judged Him according to his mood, because he loved to indulge in sweet inaction and peace. Why did Origen 116 come to the idea that eternal torment is incompatible with the goodness of God? Because he judged Him according to his kindness and gentle disposition. Likewise, others can and do imagine God only as a formidable and indiscriminate despot. How is eternal life not portrayed? And about Angels, and about methods of salvation, and about other things, how are they not judged? Everyone judges by himself, by his own knowledge and his own mood. And obviously in all this they distort the truth and turn it into a lie, because they are going the wrong way to the knowledge of those things. There is almost nothing to say about the second method. It resembles a fabulous march of ideas in our inner world. According to him, first ideas fall into consciousness, from here into the heart, then they are accepted by fantasy, then, finally, by reason, which builds concepts, judgments and conclusions from them. It is obvious that this image is completely alien to experience, is fictitious and cannot be recognized by anyone. However, it very clearly shows that the mind itself does not know how to cognize the invisible world, has lost the true way to do this and comes up with this and that, and in this confusion falls into the ridiculous and absurd; for if an object is not completely visible, you need to go towards it, and not spin around or take different positions yourself, remaining at the same distance from it. What is unclear in ourselves is incomprehensible, how can something in ourselves become clear? Granted, however, it is possible to force out some thoughts from oneself during this turning or friction of ideas; It’s still not clear where they can acquire credibility and the power of conviction. If the ideas themselves are only conjectural, then what about everything developed from them? So, in the mind, which is at a distance from God and His grace, the knowledge of the spiritual world, which it obtains from the development of ideas of supposed dignity and in ways that are incorrect and unreliable: 1) it is self-supposed, everyone is perplexed, excluding no one. What and how? - such a mind will always pose these questions to itself and will never solve them on its own; 2) is always almost incorrect, because it is not taken from the nature of those things, but is formed from other, opposite things; 3) and by itself it can only concern a small part of everything - the most obvious, what is the existence of God and His properties. As for the laws of the Divine world government, the moral and religious order of the spiritual world, and especially the mystery of the salvation of the human race, this is either not at all in thought, or appears in the form of the most dreamy assumptions. It should be noted that even when the mind is given access to Revelation, even then, although absurd opinions are corrected, the missing is replenished, but conjecture still remains, to whatever extent. And then he knows these objects as speculation, and until he tastes them in action, he does not know how they really are. Therefore, very many truths, and among them the truths of salvation, are contained in the mind as something alien, placed there from the outside, but not dissolved with the very nature of the mind. That is why, further, even after their complete study, their meaning is still interrupted by doubts and perplexities, indecision, ready to waver, like a stem from the light breath of the wind. This is what Saint Macarius of Egypt says about such knowledge. “I consider those who proclaim spiritual teaching without having tasted or experienced it to be like a man walking on a hot summer afternoon through an empty and waterless country; then, from a strong and burning thirst, he imagines in his mind that there is a cool spring near him, with sweet and clear water, and as if he drinks from it to his fill without any obstacle; or - to a person who has not tasted honey at all, but is trying to explain to others what its sweetness is. Such, truly, are those who, without having comprehended by deed and their own inquiry what belongs to perfection, sanctification and dispassion, want to instruct others in this. For if God grants them at least a little sense of what they are talking about, then they will, of course, learn that the truth and deeds do not resemble their story, but differ very much from it” 118. “Those who have within themselves the Divine wealth of the Spirit, if they communicate spiritual teaching to someone, then, as if bringing out their own treasure, they give it to them. On the contrary, those who do not have this wealth inside the heart, from which flow good Divine thoughts, mysteries and extraordinary utterances of verbs, grasping only a few flowers from both Testaments of Scripture, wear them on the end of their tongues or, having been listeners of spiritual men, are vain about their teaching, offering it as if their own, appropriating for themselves someone else’s acquisition” 119 “Even those who practice virtues are adherent to the word of God, but have not freed themselves from passions - and they are like people walking at night by the light of the stars, which are the commandments of God; for since they have not yet completely freed themselves from darkness, it is impossible for them to see everything well... They do well that they turn to it (to the prophetic word), as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day begins to dawn and the morning star will not shine in our hearts (see: 2 Pet. 1, 19). But many are in no way distinguished from those who walk in the middle of the night completely without light and who do not use even the small radiance that is the word of God, which can shine on their souls, and therefore (almost) resemble the blind. This is the state of mind or awareness of the invisible world among people who are not blessed! In what form it is in those who have received the Spirit of grace can be judged by its opposite, that is: it must be clear, living, experimental, undoubtedly true, because it is borrowed from the experimental tasting of the very things invisible; it must be complete: to know God, and His properties, and the laws of the world, and the mysteries of redemption, especially the latter, because through redemption the mind is introduced into that world. Again I refer those who want to to Saint Macarius. Let them see how he depicts this spiritual knowledge. Briefly, his thoughts can be summarized as follows: the eye of the mind was closed by the fall, and man was plunged into darkness. The grace of the Holy Spirit, through rebirth, bringing a person into living communion with the Lord Jesus Christ and God, introduces him into the spiritual world and shows him all the hidden secrets of God, which he learns here experimentally, truly, fully. “When a person transgressed the commandment of God and lost his heavenly life, then he became bound, as it were, by two chains: firstly, a chain of everyday worries... secondly, an invisible chain; for the soul is bound by the spirits of evil by certain bonds of darkness, so that it can neither love God, nor believe in Him, nor engage in prayer as it desires” 121. “When Christ, this first and essential grace, sent the gift of the Spirit to the Divine disciples, then from then on Divine power, overshadowing all believers and dwelling in their souls, heals sinful passions and frees them from darkness and death; but until that time the soul was wounded, kept under guard and enveloped in sinful darkness. And even now the soul, which has not yet been worthy to have communion with the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit, which would actively overshadow it with all its strength and fullness, is in darkness, but for those on whom the grace of the Spirit of God has descended and in whom it has settled in the depths of the mind, the Lord is, as it were, a soul: whoever unites with the Lord, says the Apostle, becomes one spirit with the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 6, 17)" 122. “We all, that is, born of the Spirit with perfect faith, behold with open face the glory of God... When someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away (see: 2 Cor. 3:16). The Apostle clearly showed by this that a veil of darkness lay on the soul, which, since the time of Adam’s crime, had free entry into humanity; now, through the illumination of the Spirit, it is removed from believers and truly worthy souls. It was for this very reason that the Coming of Jesus Christ took place, for it pleased God that true believers should come to this measure of holiness” 123. “Grace, coming through the cleansing of the inner man and mind, removes the veil of Satan, which was placed on people after the crime, and cleanses the soul from all filth and unclean thoughts, desiring that, returning to its own nature, it would see with open and clear eyes the glory of the true light. Such people are still admired in that century and see the beauty and wonders there. Just as the bodily eye, undamaged and healthy, freely looks at the radiance of the sun, so these, through an enlightened and purified mind, see everywhere the unapproachable radiance of the Lord” 124. “Just as it is impossible without eyes, tongue, ears and legs to look, speak, hear, walk, so it is equally impossible, without God and the action communicated by Him, to participate in Divine mysteries, to comprehend Divine wisdom, or to become rich in spirit. For the Greek sages practiced the sciences and zealously engaged in verbal debates, but the servants of God, even if they were unfamiliar with the sciences, are improved by Divine knowledge and the grace of God” 125. “Blessed indeed and happy in life and supernatural pleasure are those who, through an ardent and virtuous life, have received an experienced and tangible knowledge of the heavenly mysteries of the Spirit and have their home in heaven! They are superior to all people, and here is clear evidence of this: which of the strong, or wise, or intelligent, walking on earth, happened to ascend to heaven, perform spiritual deeds there and see the beauties of the Spirit? Meanwhile, apparently a beggar, extremely poor and humiliated, not at all known even to his neighbors, falling on his face before the Lord, under the guidance of the Spirit, ascends to heaven and in the firm faith of his soul enjoys miracles there, acts there, has a home there, as the Divine Apostle says: our life is in heaven (Phil. 3:20); and one more thing: what the eye has not seen, what the ear has not heard, and what has not entered the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love Him (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9); and then he adds: but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 2:10)” 126. “He who has grace rooted in the soul and dissolved with it... has known through experience another wealth, another honor and another glory, and feeds the soul with imperishable joy and feels and fully enjoys it through communication with the Spirit” 127. “As much as there is a difference between an intelligent shepherd and dumb beasts, so much does such a person differ in meaning, knowledge and reasoning from other people, for he has a different Spirit and a different mind, a different meaning and a different wisdom than the wisdom of this world” 128 (“Manifold Revelations of Grace” 129). “The Divine Apostle Paul accurately and clearly showed that the perfect sacrament of Christ is experienced by the believing soul through the action of God, which is the radiance of heavenly light in revelation and the power of the Spirit, so that no one would think that the enlightenment of the Spirit occurs only through the knowledge of the mind, and through ignorance and negligence would not be in danger of deviating from the perfect sacrament of grace” 130. “This radiance of the Spirit is not only illumination of the mind and grace-filled enlightenment, as said above, but is a constant and unceasing radiance of essential light in souls” 131. “And the light that shone on the path of blessed Paul, through which he was caught up to the third heaven and became a hearer of ineffable mysteries, was not any enlightenment of thoughts and mind, but the essential radiance of the power of the good Spirit in the soul, whose extreme brilliance blinded the bodily eyes, unable to bear it, and by which all knowledge is revealed and God truly appears to the soul worthy and loving of Him” 132. “Every soul, for its effort and faith through the action and assurance of grace, has been worthy to be completely clothed in Christ and united with the heavenly light of the incorruptible image, and now already participates in the essential knowledge of the heavenly mysteries” 133. “Just as at first... the definition of death for a crime... was revealed in the soul by the fact that the mental feelings, having been deprived of heavenly and spiritual pleasure, extinguished in it and became as if dead, so now, through the cross and death of the Savior, God, reconciled with humanity to humanity, again allows the true believing soul, still in the body, to enjoy heavenly light and the sacraments and again enlightens the mental feelings with the Divine light of grace" 134. “When you happen to hear about the communication of the groom with the bride, about choirs of singers, about holidays, then do not imagine anything material and earthly. This is taken only as an example of condescension, since those things are ineffable, spiritual and inviolable for carnal eyes, but fit the concept only of a holy and faithful soul. The communication of the Holy Spirit, heavenly treasures, choirs of singers and the celebrations of the holy Angels are understandable only to a person who has known this through personal experience, and someone who has not experienced this cannot even imagine it. And so listen to this with reverence, until you, for your faith, are worthy to achieve such benefits. And then you will see with the eyes of your soul and experience what blessings Christian souls can share in here too” 135. Everything that Saint Macarius the Great says is only the most extensive explanation or justification from his own experience of what the word of God says about the mind of a person who, for the sake of a holy life, has become a vessel of grace. He receives the anointing, which teaches all things (see: 1 John 2:27), enlightenment of the mind of the glory of God (see: 2 Cor. 4: 6), light (see: 1 John 2: 9-10), wisdom and revelation of spiritual things (see: Eph. 1: 17), spiritual knowledge (see: Col. 1: 9-10), the mind of Christ ( 1 Cor. 2:16). On the contrary, in a person who works through passions, the word of God sees darkness (see: Eph. 5:18), darkness (see: Eph. 5:8-11), ignorance of God and Christ (see: Eph. 2:12; Acts 3:13); True wisdom is hidden for him (see: 2 Cor. 4:4), and he cannot understand (1 Cor. 2:14). From this it is clear that reason in its true form and in all its beauty appears only in the spirit of true Christians. For those who are entangled in sins or do not care about the purity of their hearts, but accept the word of God, theoretical knowledge can come close to the knowledge of true reason, but this knowledge does not lie in their mind, but, as it were, on the mind, like dust, ready to immediately fly off, that is, it has not dissolved with its essence, why is not the presupposition inherent in it destroyed, and it is often attacked by doubt, sometimes very deep, especially from the side where the secrets lie redemption and the conditions for its assimilation... Whoever, having purified himself and dissolved with the truths, is not afraid of such attacks 136. As for the mind that does not know the Divine Scripture, incomplete knowledge of spiritual things, infidelity, and most importantly, conjecture are inevitable in it... And this is even with a good direction, that is, when a person, without indulging in vicious passions, zealously deals with such things and well-intentionedly wants to recognize them. If, moreover, he is inattentive to the most important truths, does not try to explain and learn them, and is devoted to passions, then we can say that he does not have rational knowledge at all, although he imagines he has it. A few thoughts, hastily grasped, memorized, accepted by ear - that’s all for some. For the most part, the qualities are ignorance or doubt and contempt. Such people, truly, have desolation in the inner sanctuary of our spirit, darkness and darkness are thick and impenetrable. Here are some thoughts about the mind! You need to confirm in yourself the idea that here we are talking about knowledge of the invisible world and spiritual things. Knowledge of the visible world and sensory things is a completely different matter. There are other abilities and other techniques at work here. The two should not be mixed. From this comes great evil... It is not difficult to recognize what is visible. Another, having learned some of this, says: Well, I know! - and stops there, not caring about the main thing. And others value him highly and consider him a teacher in everything, but he keeps telling them about extraneous things, but he himself doesn’t know the main thing. The ability directed to the knowledge of the visible, created, and finite is called reason. However, it’s not about the name, but about the characteristics. Special attention is paid to them. This reason seems to retain all its strength, whether someone is a Christian or a non-Christian, virtuous or vicious, especially if you look at it as it is among educated people who devote themselves to the thorough study of some sciences. By mixing reason with reason, they acquire great value for themselves, and others consider them great heads. They themselves are always ready to be content with what they know, while others would be glad to even reach what they have achieved; Moreover, another, comparing their multiplicity of knowledge, usually high-toned, expressed in intricately woven words, with the simple words of the saints of God, may perhaps come to the conclusion that the latter lack much compared to the former. It is all the more necessary to explain what reason should be and what it can be in different kinds of people. It is necessary to establish the concept of what is required of the intellect, or what it must put on the stage of knowledge. His activity is directly based on the imagination and memory, which, through the senses, whether by observation or reading and hearing, collect materials for him, providing information about everything that appears and exists outside of us and in us as everything exists and appears in spatio-temporal relations. All this material or all the information collected in this way, which has not yet been qualified, must be transformed by reason into clear concepts and build knowledge from them through thinking. The mode of activity of the intellect consists in the methods it uses in acquiring the knowledge at its disposal, namely: the intellect constructs inductions 137, composes concepts, judgments and inferences, or, in other words, makes generalizations, defines and develops thought. But we don’t need to dwell on this (formal) side of it. The content of rational knowledge (the material side of reason) is more significant. It consists of those aspects to which reason turns in the knowledge of objects, namely: the properties and composition of things, their causal relationships, that is, cause and effect, means and purpose, matter and form. That it is, indeed, inevitably of two types, depends on the fact that in reality, in reality, we see only beings and phenomena, what is and what happens. In the first case, there is nothing more to recognize, such as the properties and composition of a thing, just as in the second, there is nothing more to recognize except causal relations: from what? For what? How? The basis for reason in both cases should be observation and experience, and the tool should be generalization and guidance. How it works is clearer in the example. Let, for example, he want to recognize a person in his properties and composition. To do this, he needs to observe a person for a long time, over his actions and everything that happens in him. These observations will make up materials from the collection of which generalizations and guidance begin. Thus, dividing them into groups, the mind finds that within a person there are ideas, desires and feelings; Peering further into each of these circles of actions, he sees that they are all of three types: sensual, mental and spiritual. Taking all this back to the beginning, he will have to assume that there are three forces and three parts in man. The starting point for both is the human face. It turns out that a person in his composition is a combination of three forces and three parts, which, mutually interpenetrating, converge in one inseparable person. At the same time, through distraction, he will obtain clear ideas about the properties of each force and each part, and finally, what the very face of a person is like or what are the inalienable attributes of each human personality. This, as already indicated, is consciousness, freedom and life. From this example it is clear that, in relation to the knowledge of beings, reason inseparably ascends to the representation of composition and properties: from actions it goes to the forces that produce them, from forces - to their mutual correlation and structure. Knowledge of phenomena and incidents is built on the basis of knowledge of the properties and composition of beings and follows from them. Accurate knowledge of beings, forces and the laws of their activity serves as the beginning in explaining phenomena and incidents. Here the basis is the same: observation and experience, but the subject is different and the parties are different. More liveliness and intelligence are required from the mind here. Noticing the cause, guessing the goal, weighing the consequence - this is a more abstract activity, more giving scope for freedom of thought, but it is much more erroneous and less reliable. The task for reason is to determine the cause of the phenomenon, the means and law by which it occurred, the related circumstances of the phenomenon, its goals and consequences, the manner of its origin. The end of the work for the understanding is when it can satisfactorily answer the question with confidence: how could this or that phenomenon arise from a known cause, according to a known law, with certain aids and among known circumstances? The first definition is preparing oneself to answer the last question, that is, as if only material, the last is knowledge itself. From here it follows that knowledge in relation to phenomena is the contemplation of their origin, with the consciousness of the inevitability and necessity of this particular course, and not another of their courses, judging by the reason and related circumstances. So, for example, whoever will analyze the fall of Russia under the yoke of the Mongols will prepare himself for an accurate knowledge of it when he finds out who and how it was done, in what way, when, what contributed to it, what were the consequences of it; and then he will definitely recognize it when he is able to explain how, from the state of Russia and the properties of the Mongols, it was born and developed, due to temporary circumstances, in the form in which it happened. Judging by these obligatory activities, the following good qualities, or virtues, which can be called virtues of reason, can be required from reason or from a person relative to reason: 1) work. He must, with vigilance, find out everything exactly as it is, either from his own observation or from the observations of others. Anyone who develops any part of history knows how necessary it is and how difficult it is; 2) conscientiousness. Reluctance to work or half-work can force one to rush into a task and then, during its further production, allow omissions: hence there are big errors in generalizations and suggestions. When approaching them, a person must consciously say to himself: I did everything that I could and that was necessary, and based on everything I draw conclusions; 3) due diligence. Everything he does must be based on facts; Meanwhile, either their number or details may elude; It may happen that something insignificant will be more obvious, and most importantly, more secretive; many things may be insignificant, but one thing is important. An omission or mistake in the gaze can give the whole course of the work of the mind a perverse turn; 4) from this there is always a need to trust others, to consult with them, to obey their judgment when necessary, and in general, as much as possible, to attach less apodictic 138 immutability to one’s guidance and humbly acknowledge one’s small foresight. The opposite of these good qualities are the vices regarding rational activity: arrogance and dictatorship, imprudence, dishonesty and superficial frivolity. After such remarks, we turn to the definition of the state of mind of people alienated from God, and of people clinging to Him. For the former, it always appears in almost the wrong direction. If you look at people, you will find an infinite variety of them in this regard. However, judging by the sides that are indicated above, they can be distributed either according to the types of rational activity, or according to its virtues. Some predominantly remain with the methods that the mind uses in cognition of things (during its formal activity), and either want to build everything from their arbitrary abstract concepts, following the example of the scholastics 139, or are ready to affirm with equal force yes or no about the same thing, following the example of the empty-talking sophists 140. Scholasticism and sophism are inevitable for reason, given the poverty of materials, for it is an active force that requires activity; therefore, when there is nothing to direct his forces to, he rotates with them within himself, and as only forms remain in him, he walks along them, as if from one room to another. Here, with an uncorrupted character, he will be a pitiful scholastic, and with a spoiled one, he will be an empty and evil sophist. Others are more inclined to acquire knowledge (to material activities) and collect a wealth of information, and, moreover, about various kinds of objects. They usually have a huge memory, and their head is an endless store filled with all sorts of things. Work of this kind is necessary in the knowledge of things, but it should not stop there alone: ​​it alone is in some way even a negation of reason. Here, apparently, the materials have not been revised, not cleaned, but remain as they are, and either only burden the head, or are used indiscriminately. Intelligence and independence of mind are suppressed. Still others stand in the middle between them and do not lean towards either side. These are primarily criminals of the rational virtues, that is, they do not want to work and use their heads and have little conscientiousness, but only somehow; meanwhile, out of great arrogance, they want to pass judgment on everything, acting without any prudence. These are flighty, self-praising, know-it-alls. There are, however, in this middle, devoted to almost complete euthanization, who are content with what they somehow hear or see, but they themselves do not want to lift, so to speak, either their legs or their mental arms. The shortcomings shown obviously expose the unhealthy state of mind, as well as the painful state of the entire soul in which it is such. Judging by them, we can safely conclude that the reason of people who are not right-minded has been moved from its place, does not know its path, has lost its tact, taste and its characteristic techniques when considering cognizable things. That such shortcomings are not the consequences of any physical disorder of people, but the fruit of their moral damage, this is obvious from their very nature; and experience assures us that as soon as someone falls into any of the wrong directions shown, he will not get rid of it and will not think about it until he changes his whole life; at least for the most part this is so. In people who turn to God and receive restorative powers, one might say, first of all, these scabs fall away. They are no longer lazy to use their heads, they are not cunning in their thoughts, but they look at deeds and things as they are. That is why part of their subsequent struggle is a struggle with their mind, namely in those of its wrong actions, which were mentioned. Moreover, how do they approach a person? Through the sin of neglect and carelessness about oneself and one’s condition. Consequently, in general we can say that whoever has them is in sin and either has not yet been granted grace or has lost it. But who doesn't have them? Even those who spend their lives in scientific pursuits are not free from them to a greater or lesser extent. Some exceptions to this are represented by strong intellects (physicists, mathematicians, historians). Many of them have precise, laborious, and sophisticated knowledge, while they apparently stand outside the kingdom of grace both in their way of thinking and in their lives. They seem to hold the true middle ground in rational activity, that is, between its formal and material activity, and, as much as possible, fulfill the virtues of reason. Some visible successes persuade them to shun all help from above and encourage them to believe that they are safe and sound. But such self-confidence now exposes the unsoundness of their minds, for a healthy person always tangibly sees and points out his weaknesses and his infirmity. If now this arrogance is common to almost all strong minds, then all of them must be considered damaged. Moreover, we just don’t know the entire production of their armchair works, we don’t have the leisure to more carefully review their published works, otherwise we could always find there, as they do, considerable sins common to others, for example: stretching through abstract concepts in order to complement the gaps of experiments and maintain 141 our theories, contentment with a small number of facts, since they are in our thoughts, a tendency to see in everything a reflection of our thoughts with humiliation strangers, elevating oneself above all other people of the same class and in general the desire to quickly complete one’s work, regardless of whether everything that is required for the perfection and correctness of their thoughts has been completed or not; that is, they too fall into sophistry and scholasticism, then forget about the virtues of reason. After this, without fear of these strong heads, we can leave in force the previous conclusion that the mind of people who are wrong, given over to sin and passions, is generally upset to the point that, despite all the efforts of the many learned, he pays tribute to his weakness and does not have the strength to free himself from it. Everyone will be even more clearly convinced of this when he takes the trouble to delve into our ordinary concepts, judgments and mentalities, albeit in the course of one day, in the circle in which he lives. Almost everywhere here: 1) in terms of: ambiguity, confusion, lack of accountability, ignorance of their value and subordination, therefore - confusion and discord; 2) in judgments: rashness and haste, sensuality, variability, lack of evaluation, ignorance, talkativeness and buffoonery, superficiality; 3) in conclusions: short-sightedness and short-sightedness, lack of principle or conjecture, prejudices and sophisms. Also: unbelief, gullibility, stubbornness, cunning and resourcefulness, especially emptiness in word and thought, show that the mind for the most part does not use its rights and sits, as if in some kind of ambush, without action or acts, but wrongly. Not one of the people who do wrong and do not participate in the restorative grace of God is free from this. Suppose, however, that someone’s reason preserves the true middle between the previously shown extremes, carefully observing the duties that lie upon it, and successfully moves towards the proposed goal - will it still achieve everything that is needed? It should be noted that the understanding obtains some knowledge on its own, while it must obtain other knowledge in connection with reason. There are knowledges that reason alone can sometimes comprehend, but which reason alone, apart from reason, cannot comprehend in any way. To see what this is, let us imagine that every created thing is an exclusive object of reason? In addition to the factual, in every thing there is also something that is thought, understood and contemplated, its inner being, imprinted and expressed by its factual side. Each creature is a composition of forces and elements, harmoniously combined with each other, according to a known pattern or thought, which they must imprint on themselves. This thought, however, is not in a thing, like a visible part standing among other parts, but is something invisible, hidden under the visible, penetrating and animating it, and therefore more thinkable and contemplated than tangible. With all this, however, it is not something dreamed of, but is a thought that is actually inherent there. Just as in a painting a visible outline, a combination of parts, a variety of poses, colors and shades are inspired by some thought that the picture expresses and is imbued with - a thought that is inherent in the picture, but does not form a separate part along with others: so in every thing there is its own innermost thought - its life-giving essence, for the world, both in its entire composition and in its smallest parts, is infinitely wise, work of art of God. The thought of God about the world and its parts (the ideal world), contained from eternity in the mind of God, during the transition to time or when carried out by the infinite will of God, was invested with forces and elements, through which it appeared in reality, just as now the hidden plans of the Divine world government are carried out by a diverse combination of various phenomena of nature and humanity. And so in the world we always see the visible, manifested side, under it the forces and elements, and under them we must also see the thought of God hidden there. This thought is the goal of our efforts; comprehending it is knowledge itself, and everything else is preparatory information. Thus, the one who examines the picture, when he describes the colors, enumerates the members, describes their position and combination, still will not say anything about the picture, because he does not explain the main thing - what the picture expresses: so the one who, examining creatures, phenomena and events in the world, when he learns how everything is, namely: in things - the composition of forces and elements, in events - the combination of causes and their production with effects, still does not know either things or phenomena until he says what the thought of God is hidden in those and others, what they express, what their eternal meaning is. How a thing and an incident appear in reality, the senses let us know about this; the forces and elements hidden under the appearance are recognized by the mind through generalization and guidance; the question is, how can we recognize the thought they are expressing? The answer is simple: how is an artist’s thought recognized? Through the aesthetic sense - an ability identical to the ability that participated in the production of the picture. The same is true in relation to created things: it is possible to know their innermost, placed in them from the Divine mind, only through the power of the Divine property. This power in us is spirit, and in spirit is reason. So, when reason, through its labor, has reached the end, that is, to the node of forces and elements, has found out everything factual, it must take reason, as it were, by the hand and say to it: go and see what else is there. But it is obvious that this mind must be a sound mind, a seeing one, and not a blind and corrupt one, just as only a sound feeling understands the ideas of artistic works. A sound, sighted mind, as we have seen, is found only in those who, having turned from sin to God, have received grace, while among those who work in sin and do not have grace, it is distorted and removed from the truth. Consequently, knowledge of the hidden in things is possible only for the first, remaining inaccessible for the second. That the desire to unravel the hidden side of things is truly inherent in our spirit, every thinker provides evidence of this. A physicist wants to unravel the meaning of beings, forces, elements, a historian wants to determine the meaning of incidents, a psychologist wants to determine the meaning of each ability and the person himself. Obviously, no one is content with knowing the factual side, but everyone wants to penetrate deeper under it. This is usually called philosophy or ideality in knowledge. Despite all the naturalness, however, of such aspiration, its universality and, as it were, uncontrollability, it does not escape the necessary condition: to have a mind not only developed by Revelation, but also enlightened by grace. Without this, its constructions will be pure dreams: the proof of this is the entire history of philosophy; for when the mind is perverted, and the slightest part of what is true in it, by the force of conviction, is nothing more than an assumption, then the future, created by the mind on what is in it, will all necessarily have the same property: untrue and dreamy. The necessary consequence of this must be that the factual itself is distorted, and the mind sometimes gives itself the will to assert, as law, force and element, what does not exist in reality (today’s geologists). It becomes foggy, and then a tactile darkness falls over the entire field of knowledge. It’s not at all the same with a person who is pure in life, enlightened from above. He will not keep silent about the hidden when he feels it, but he will never pass off as contemplation of the truth that which is not such. He does not acquire omniscience, but it is stated that if knowledge of the hidden in things and phenomena is available to a person, then only to a person blessed with grace; for that region is actually the region of the Divine mind, where the mental treasures of God the King lie. Let no one hope to invade there by force or without permission. True philosophy is God-given wisdom. Having dissolved with the mind of God, the mind of man, clinging to God, can be introduced by Him into the mysteries of being and phenomena, for between the Revelations that Saint Macarius the Great assimilates to the enlightened spirit by the grace of God, why not understand the mysteries of creation and providence, when the knowledge of the mysteries of redemption, the most hidden and most mysterious, undoubtedly belongs to him. It is not for nothing that Saint Isaac the Syrian calls this spiritual mind the feeling of mysteries, the feeling of the hidden, the highest spiritual contemplation 142. Saint Maximus the Confessor 143 teaches: “just as the base of radii, rectilinearly emerging from one center, appears completely inseparable in the center itself, so the knowledge of a being united with God will be simple and singular about all the prototypes of created things contained in Him” 144. This also includes the testimony of Solomon that God gave him true knowledge of things, and that because they are hidden and revealed, he knew... (see: Wis. 7, 17-21). If anyone now wants to seek true ideas or ideal knowledge of things and philosophy, let him look for them primarily in the word of God, then in the writings of the Holy Fathers, then in our liturgical books. For example, when it is said that the Lord came to lead all things, that true Christians are kings and priests, that the linguistic descent of the Holy Spirit is the beginning and basis of the unification of all peoples separated by the confusion of languages ​​during the pandemonium, that our life is a pilgrimage, almsgiving is a precursor to sending treasures to heaven, and so on, all this represents true ideas, contemplation or feelings of the sacred. It is especially remarkable that those enlightened by grace often contemplate the meaning of things without special help from reason, that is, their reason does not yet know the actual structure of things or knows it partially, but they already contemplate their meaning; whereas, on the contrary, a man who is learned, but has forgotten God, broadly depicts real life and seems to exhaust everything in it to the smallest detail, yet he does not see and does not know how to say the hidden meaning in it. If we now value both of them according to their true weight, then, obviously, the first must stand incomparably higher than the latter, for he lacks something that can be done without, which is only a means and which can easily be replenished by anyone; the other lacks the main, essential thing, which he himself cannot fill. Therefore, when encountering, for example, some reservations in the works of the Fathers, against current experimental knowledge, one should not immediately humiliate them in one’s thoughts before some well-versed physicist. In his time, the real life of things was comprehended in this way, in ours - he admits this - later, perhaps, they will portray it in another way; but the true meaning indicated first will remain the same forever and ever. Reading, for example, the Conversations of Basil the Great on the Six Days, you will find two or three words there that real physicists contradict; but on the other hand, he almost constantly points out the secrets of the most precious things, which no physics can provide. After this, it goes without saying that the most perfect knowledge is represented by the one who combines the grace-filled enlightenment of the mind with a multi-knowing understanding. But taken separately, the former is much higher and more valuable than the latter. Such perfection of knowledge, however, in a spirit blessed, is the fruit of reason rather than reason, or, better, a consequence of the replenishment of reason with reason. What is going on in his very mind? The destruction of his imperfections, not only voluntary, but often involuntary, and his healing. Grace, having come, does not bring with it much information, but it teaches a person to pay attention and, as it were, obliges him to accurately examine things; she does not interpret to him the laws of thinking, but infuses him with a love of truth, which does not allow him to deviate from the right paths and rely too much on abstractions, therefore, puts him in the true middle and confirms him in it, which he cannot do on his own. Because of this, often a person who has not devoted himself to science becomes reasonable and sane, and through long life experiences finally acquires true wisdom, sufficient for more than just his share. A scientific person develops a special method of research, a special instinct for the discovery of truth and the true path to it, and this, with the help of rational virtues, which now, together with others, return to the heart, such as: work and the ability to work, conscientiousness, prudence, humble trust, especially with God’s blessing, imparts special properties to his mental labors: success, strength, fruitfulness. Such soundness of rational activity is obvious to everyone both in his ordinary behavior and in relationships: in concepts that differ, in addition to clarity, definiteness and distinctness, and in a certain depth of heart; in judgments distinguished by fidelity, prudence, tactility, distinctiveness; in reasoning characterized by strength, foresight, unity and harmony. Yet, taken together, such properties give him the title of a person of sound mind or sound mind. It remains to add two remarks about the influence of bad will on reason and what happens when reason prevails over reason. While the mind of the wrongdoer, on its own, having lost its point of support, barks here and there, the will little by little pours its corruption into it. Here the elements of the world spoken by the Apostle are compiled: carnal wisdom, demonic wisdom, that is, various convictions are formed to please the depraved will, such as, for example, that life will not end soon, and there is no end in sight, that there is only life in prosperity and happiness on earth, that one must maintain one’s name and honor, be that as it may, one must have strong hands, which one can turn to in case of need, one must be able to use circumstances and so on. All of them are contained in the mind without investigation, therefore they are prejudices; They are rarely expressed in words, but are stored deep in the heart and are known only to the person himself, coming to his consciousness in the form of secret thoughts, in his free time from troubles, and moreover, serving as a hidden spring that sets his affairs in motion. But if even without such damage on the part of the will reason remained, then much harm to the highest truths would be expected from its predominance over reason. This harm is all the more significant and seemingly inevitable when the will acts on it perniciously. It is known that the primary subject of the understanding is what is and happens in us and outside of us, and more - the latter; the support of his activity is experience: he begins with it, and not before. Hence the main property of rational knowledge is tactility. Reason begins with experience, which it transforms according to methods similar to itself. Whoever stands at the level of reason and primarily acts with it, little by little develops an inclination, which then turns into a permanent rule and mental disposition - only recognize as true what can be tactually convinced and what can be believed in a rational way. At the same time, little by little, the spiritual world must inevitably be obscured and knowledge about it lose significance. This knowledge is left to a person, as we have seen, presumably, while the understanding represents everything as tactilely obvious and forms the need for tactility. This in itself should cast a shadow of doubt on the spiritual world and spiritual things. Therefore, rational scientists in general can be called wavering people of little faith in relation to the invisible and spiritual. Join this unkind heart with passions, which has strong reason to desire that there be no other world and no other laws and hopes than the visible ones - then a person will not escape either doubt, or, even more, final unbelief. That the understanding, through its activity, composes general principles that are always applicable to business, this forms in it a strong trust in its understanding, a tendency to comprehend and to place its comprehension above all else. That is why he does not give due honor to Revelation, and if he accepts it, he wants to interpret it only according to his own understanding, or even recognizes as true only what is clearly understood in it. This disease is rationalism, which scientists rarely have in their hearts, although it is not revealed in words. Other bad mental inclinations from reason are imposed on the soul for the sake of the objects to which his labors are directed. Outside of us, where we live more by feelings, everything is material, everything is a composition of the elements, and all changes and phenomena there are nothing more than a consequence of action and reaction, hostility and peace between the elements. Whoever is constantly engaged in this alone, the thought is born, and then the beginning, that apart from substance, there is nothing. This unhappy mood or disease of the mind, called materialism, most often befalls those involved in chemistry and medicine. Always associated with it, as disastrous consequences, are the rejection of the immortality of the soul, God and the moral law of God. Further, the mechanism noticed everywhere in visible nature leads to the idea that everything is stamped with an inevitable necessity, which no hand can avert. Everything is subordinate to her, and she herself is subordinate to no one. This is fatalism, which the wise Stoics did not escape. The naturalness observed everywhere, or the fact that every thing achieves its goal by its own forces and everything that comes from it is the fruit of its activity, leads to the position that there is no flow into this world of other external higher forces, not even the power of God, to help and assist those who are in it. Therefore, there are no miracles, and there is no grace. A person can walk on his own and will get where he needs to go. This is naturalism. The mind gives birth to so many dangerous creatures when it is given too much power, given more than it should. Their existence is justified by experience. Here it is only explained how naturally they are formed in a person whose mind is not enlightened by spiritual knowledge, in whom, therefore, this knowledge remains conjectural, and has not been transformed into tactile through spiritual experience. And we can also add that if they naturally develop in a person who is not rightful, then they must be presupposed in every such thing, if not all, then some, if not in development, then in the seed. And indeed, a rare person is not tempted by them, a rare person sometimes does not like them, and a rare person, at least in his own way, does not come to the conclusion: and maybe so. Such light, after such darkness, shines in a person’s soul after he turns to God and receives grace! And firstly, all those who came from the corrupted will of the beginning immediately disappear, like darkness in a lit room or evil spirits from a consecrated place. Convictions opposite to them are formed in the heart, in the very process of conversion of the penitent. When impurity is expelled from the heart, then all its consequences are destroyed. He feels that life is short and he must rush into things, that he must embitter himself, that he must expect everything from God and not from himself, that he should not look at people’s opinions, and so on. Secondly, the harmful consequences of the predominance of reason are either completely prevented if conversion forestalls its development, or they are corrected here, and reason turns into a service force, submissive to reason. Since mental evil inclinations mainly arise from the tangibility of the knowledge of the mind and the conjecture of the ideas of the mind, left to itself, then with the destruction of this foundation, what is built on it falls by itself. This foundation is destroyed in the one who has repented, turned to God and clung to Him, for from that time on he begins to tangibly cognize spiritual things, as he previously cognized sensual things. This equality of tactility destroys the hesitation of doubt, and the fact that the most precious truths are offered in the enlightened mind inclines consciousness to its side and conquers it. When in this way, through this new path, a person learns many most hidden things, which he had not previously comprehended, but which he now clearly contemplates, then he naturally ceases to trust solely to his own understanding. Such a person will no longer think that there is no spirit when he lives in the spirit, or that everything is subordinated to inevitable necessity, when he feels the power that has come to him from above, from the outside, or that he can do everything himself, when he has only escaped the evil that oppressed him by the power received from God (example of Augustine 145). At the same time, a new life begins for the mind, and a new direction in man is scientific, if there was one or is being pursued. So before the mind acted as a master, so now it begins to act as a subordinate, on behalf of the spiritual mind. Therefore, just as before, when looking at things, a person saw nothing, could not and did not want to see, except the things themselves: so now he sees in everything the clearest reflection of the spiritual world, both in things and in phenomena. The whole world is truly imbued with the spiritual, the Divine (see: Rom. 1:20); but before this was not noticed, but now it is clearly contemplated. Then everything that exists and everything that appears turns into a vast and continuous teaching or an intelligent book, as Anthony the Great said. Now you can be convinced that this is really so by reading some Holy Father. Each of them constantly offers vision of the spiritual in the sensory or through the sensory. The Most Reverend Tikhon compiled four books from this, under the title: Treasure collected from the world. From this it follows that the integrity, completeness and truth of knowledge actually belong to people restored by grace and living in God. For others it is both incomplete and untrue. How true is the thought of Blessed Augustine, which he so persistently proved, that only life leads to the church of wisdom, and not vice versa! False directions of reason are usually spoken of in logics, and various means for avoiding them are proposed there. It is obvious what the price of these instructions is. No matter what logic says, you can’t do anything without internal change. To whom it is said: look, believe the Revelation, he, perhaps, will say the same to himself, but in his heart and in reality he will believe only in himself; or else: he will say that God’s help is needed, but he will rely only on himself. It is impossible to educate our soul in its abilities, as it should, without subordinating it to healing and restorative grace-filled means. Briefly: for one who stands outside these means, the knowledge is this: the spiritual world and its things are hidden as if by a cloud and fog; he believes them little or does not think about them; His rational knowledge is directed only to the visible, the real, the tangible; the hidden in things is not seen; causes are known only to those that are immediate and present; the intentions of Providence elude attention... Therefore, all knowledge of it is superficial: incomplete in composition, but in the general spirit it is corrupted, perverted by some wrong mental mood. c) About lower cognitive abilities The lower abilities of cognition are: internal and external observation, imagination and memory. They all act almost together, and what one does is immediately accepted by the other. What the eye saw, the image of it is now removed by the imagination and stored in memory, like in some archive. Everything external and internal that is subject to our knowledge and concerns our consciousness is certainly the subject of these abilities. They constitute, as it were, the entrance to our inner church, and therefore in the field of knowledge they have a significant value and - not only in the field of knowledge, but also in all human activity. From the initial activity of imagination and memory, when they only perceive objects, become aware of them, let the soul know about them, the subsequent activity must be distinguished, by which what was previously acquired is used for business according to the needs of the soul. Images compiled by the imagination and stored in memory are used either in the same form in which they were acquired, or in a modified form. The first activity is called memory, or reproductive imagination, the second - fantasy. In both, imagination and memory act together, only each in its own special way. In memory, the imagination gives an image, and memory testifies that it is the same one that was known before. Therefore, memory reproduces only the former and brings before the eyes of consciousness what was hidden in the depths of memory. The reasons for memory are: 1) for the most part, the connection of present images and objects with past ones (otherwise: association of ideas). Different types of this connection gave rise to different laws of memory, such as: the law of coexistence and succession, similarity and opposition, whole and parts, cause and action, means and ends, matter and form; 2) another, no less significant, part of the memory comes from the movement of the will and heart. A need or passion, being excited, involuntarily brings thoughts to objects with which it can be satisfied, as if attracting attention to them, just as vice versa - the image of a passionate object disturbs passion. This reason for remembering plays a significant role in life, and the first one plays a significant role in knowledge; 3) but there are also hidden reasons for remembering: not knowing why and how images of previous objects come, both in a calm state, and without any connection with present activities. They must be produced either from evil spirits, if the images are bad, or from good spirits - the Guardian Angel, if they are good. Fantasy creates completely new images, although from the same material and for the most part according to ready-made or already known models. It should distinguish between good activity - efficient and disorderly - unauthorized movements. In the first, she composes images for the concepts of the mind, helps with reflection, vividly imagining a thought in some image, imagines what is read and heard, and the like... in general, she acts in the interests of knowledge. In the second, he dreams or indulges in an unauthorized movement, in which he constructs various unprecedented stories, to please his heart, which is not ruled almost by consciousness, but on the contrary, it captivates our attention and occupies the whole person. The kingdom of dreams is a dream in which consciousness and self-activity fall and images dominate, sometimes under someone else's influence. There are two types of observations: one external, the other internal. Externality, or the perception of external things through the senses, is changed by the way of life not so much in its essence as in its use, for the feelings always remain the same, only they turn to the wrong objects - as a result of this, they receive a difference not so much in their production as in their content. This is immediately revealed as soon as you ask who saw what and who heard what, or where someone is more willing to turn their ears, eyes and other senses. Thus, in a state of sin, feelings are given over not to the interests of knowledge and not to the improvement of the soul, but mainly to please the passions. In this activity they are both governed by passions and, conversely, feed them themselves. Therefore, for example, the eyes are called full of fornication and incessant sin (see: 2 Pet. 2:14). Moreover, in this direction, they do not need to carefully examine objects, but only touch them a little, which is why the ability to observe more and more is muffled and lost. Meanwhile, the soul is all in the feelings incessantly: from this a tendency is formed in it towards the external, or towards life outside. Whatever the use of feelings, such is their content: objects are predominantly passionate; This is why some people cannot even imagine sacred objects. A person who has turned to God and lives as a Christian does not give free rein to his feelings, keeps them strictly in his power and turns them only where he sees fit, following the example of Job, who made a covenant with his eyes (cf. Job 31:1). Further, all of them are subordinate to the needs and benefits of the spirit, and they are guided, if not by knowledge, which is not universal, then always by a pious mood. Therefore, he looks only at what can edify, at holy images and so on. As a new property, the degree of feeling or attentiveness in them is noticeable in it: their job is to consider it in detail. Such activity, on the one hand, little by little creates the ability to clearly observe, which thereby acquires vigilance or accuracy; on the other hand, from the power of the soul over the feelings, or from their subordination to the soul, the feelings do not carry it outside, but give it the opportunity to remain within itself - inside. Finally, on this path, through the senses, true treasures are collected both for knowledge and for a virtuous life, such acquisition is acquired with which one can impeccably appear before the King of Glory... This is the same as if someone collected various jewels and presented them to the gaze of others. External observation at first seems to be of little importance in moral life, yet here it is of great importance. Through him the first food is delivered to the soul; and just as food has a significant effect on the body by changing its juices and composition, so observation in some way changes the composition of the soul and lays the foundation for character. In this regard, it is compared to the smell that penetrates a vessel that has just been made, but has not yet dried. This smell remains in him, if not forever, then for a long, long time. The same thing happens with the soul: the first objects of feelings form, one might say, the future person. It presents the soul with the first field for exercising its forces and produces their first bending and inclination. From here, not only a skill is formed in it, but also a tendency to deal with such and not other objects, for we are usually reluctant to take on what we are not used to. In this respect, the use of feelings is the same as the first direction of a tree trunk as it emerges from the ground. So, the use of feelings should not be considered unimportant. Internal observation is noticing what is happening in the soul through consciousness or inner feeling. This observation is the source of self-knowledge and knowledge of the human soul in general. It represents more of a difference in the fallen and the risen than an external one, for here this difference concerns not only the use of the internal sense, but also its very ability to observe. What leads to such a thought is that, although the soul itself is closest to itself, we still have very little knowledge about the soul, and what we do have is mostly one-sided and false. On the contrary, what a wealth of self-knowledge the holy ascetics have when they are healed or healed from a sinful illness! From this it is clear that the ability of self-observation in some is in the worst state, while in others it is in the full height of well-being. What is usually cited in psychology to justify the poverty of soul knowledge should be turned into condemnation of the sinful soul, or into denunciation of its disorder by sin, and not into justification for the lack of knowledge of the human soul. They say that impressions constantly arriving from outside captivate the soul and do not allow it to turn on itself. But if it is in a person’s power not to be carried away by external impressions, then the constant striving of the soul outward must look for another reason, namely: this is the need of the sinful soul - to flee from itself, where the stench of sin is, to the barn, where good is expected or expected. The tendency towards sensuality and visibility is one of the first traits and actions of damage. Consequently, there is nothing to expect good soul knowledge from someone in whom sin reigns. It can only be expected from someone who has renounced sin and is healing himself. In this it is, as it were, natural, for one of the first grace-filled actions is the return of the soul’s attention inward, with its distraction from the external. They say that everyday worries and work consume all the time: in the bustle there is no time to think about the soul and what is in it. The reason is not in external affairs and needs, but in the internal fussiness that drives a person forward. If we could pacify this inner weakness - vanity, then external affairs would still leave a lot of time for self-occupation. Failure is not due to lack of time, for what is the purpose of special time for looking after the soul, when this can and should be done in the midst of business? One must observe the active soul. So, strength does not lie in time, but in the non-turning of the soul on itself. And this non-conversion comes from the disorder of the soul by sin. Where this disorder is cured by grace and all human activity is turned to one need, then a calm flow of affairs is established, leaving the soul the opportunity to be within itself and vigilantly monitor its activity. External affairs and everyday activities then do not interfere with knowing your soul. Therefore, justification of oneself by these deeds must turn into condemnation. They say: mental activity is such that it is almost impossible to observe it, namely: it is instantaneous, fast, volatile, complex. It is impossible to establish a constant gaze on it and, if you do, it is impossible to decompose the contents of the observed action. But the soul is characterized by confusion, disorder of movements and excitement from inattention, carelessness and surrender to the arbitrariness of thoughts; and these bad dispositions come from sin or from the loss of power over oneself. He who is enthroned within himself by Divine grace holds his inner power, and therefore sees where everything is heading. He is characterized by sobriety or vigilance, due to which secretly coming disturbances do not escape his attention. Moreover, through long exercise in this inner work, he acquires the vigilance of the mental eye, which sees everything in himself accurately and definitely. Let us conclude: there are true obstacles to self-observation: appearance, care, theft of the mind. They are not a matter of inevitable necessity, but arise from sin. Consequently, as long as there is sin in anyone, there will be these obstacles and there will be no good knowledge of the soul. A person in a sinful state does not know his soul and cannot know. These obstacles are gradually eliminated and then completely disappear as sin is eradicated, and at the same time the very knowledge of the soul grows and comes to perfection. If now sin, and behind it these obstacles, lose their power only in people devoted to God due to the action of grace-filled forces, then it is obvious that true, lasting, complete soul-knowledge should be sought only among those who live truly as Christians. Anyone who, not being one of these, wants to know the soul, turn to the Holy Fathers, especially the ascetics, and draw abundantly from this source psychological wisdom. e) About memory and imagination These two abilities belong to the labor force, and therefore are usually the same as the whole person. What is the sinner’s memory filled with and what is the sinner’s imagination occupied with? Sinful objects that feed only passions. This can now be seen in the conversation. The sinner will not say a word about the spiritual, because his memory does not represent anything like that, as if he had never heard or seen anything like that. Of course, he saw and heard, but it was not assimilated and retained, because his soul was not in it. As a result of such alienation from spiritual objects, the ability to imagine and remember them is diminished: due to lack of exercise and reluctance, they do not know how to imagine and remember them. In a person who lives a Christian life, on the contrary, the entire content of memory and imagination is holy, pure, Divine. They are filled with spiritual objects, for which he has a special affinity, and together, he acquires a special ability to imagine and remember them. On the contrary, the recollection and imagination of vicious objects is alien to him: they are disgusting to him and therefore are not accepted by the soul. Just as the former easily imagines and remembers what is sinful and evil, so the latter easily imagines and remembers the spiritual and good. f) About memory, or reproductive imagination The state of recollection corresponds to the state of memory and imagination, for what is usually reproduced by memory is what is imagined and remembered. It is impossible, however, not to point out the sharp difference between the causes or laws of recollection, which are predominantly of quality and are in force among those who live in the spirit of Christ and among those devoted to the passions and the world. For the latter, the main reason for remembering is passionate excitement or movements of habitual needs, because this is their life. Accordingly, and from the laws of combination of images, those that operate in them are predominantly those that relate more to the external side of things than to the internal; the images in their heads are linked more according to external spatio-temporal relations than according to internal relations of causality, and then, finally, secret impressions or influences come more from evil spirits than good ones. There is an agent from Satan near the sinner, who follows him and darkens him, filling his head with passionate images. For the first, everything is the other way around: secret influences descend to them from the Divine Spirit who overshadows them and the Guardian Angel, who always accompanies them and assists them in everything; Of the laws of combination of images, those that apply primarily are those that relate to the internal connection of causes, properties, parts; passions and needs, if aroused, are suppressed at first. Moreover, there is a difference between them in the types of memories. There are involuntary memories, which come by themselves, and there are voluntary memories, evoked by the initiative of the spirit. For those devoted to passions, the quality of memories is almost exclusively involuntary, because by their nature they are devoted to the internal mechanism of movements. Those who live according to the spirit of Christ, on the contrary, predominantly have voluntary memories, for they control themselves and do not allow anything to appear before their consciousness without their knowledge; at least they have jealousy about this and an internal feat aimed directly at this is established: vigilance and sobriety... In it, as we have seen, two activities should be distinguished: efficient and unauthorized. In relation to the first, we can say that people who are alien to the spirit of Christ have little ability to present abstract concepts and truths in decent images; That’s why they are mostly distorted and ugly. On the contrary, if anywhere to look for a decent representation of these truths, then only among Christians, filled with the spirit of Christ, which gives them a special skill or instinct that determines the decency of the combination of images. The latter appears to both in this state. The main weakness of fantasy, one might say, is that sinners have a tendency to dream. This is not something accidental, but inevitable, as if akin to their soul, such that it is constantly present to almost everyone. The properties of this daydreaming, namely: removal from reality, entertainment, confusion, inconstancy of thoughts - make it clear to understand its cause. When a person moved from his true place and found himself in the false, untrue, then his thoughts rushed not to what is true, but to what seems to be such - to deceptive ghosts. Since firmness and constancy exist only in the real, thoughts that deviate from it must inevitably swirl 147 like a whirlwind, dust or frost. Hence, the sinful fantasy is constantly flighty. This frivolity both exposes and, in turn, produces a very dangerous state of mind. Its fruits, or its accompanying properties, include: 1) internal corruption: in the mind - avoidance of important and difficult activities and aversion to them, then superficiality or frivolity; in the will - inflamed passion. In dreams, I plays the first role in satisfying some of my passions. A person, staying in one place, takes revenge, scolds, hates, envyes, is proud, wages war, and so on... Since the whole soul is carried away by this, the dream defiles a person in himself. In feeling there is continuous defeat, for the blows of images fall directly on the heart and make the dreamer feel like one walking among thorns. But the main thing in this regard is the passion of the heart. Before you have time to look around, sort things out, your heart has already conspired with the subject and demands action. If a person is a slave of the heart, it is mainly due to the frivolity of fantasy or the dominion of images; 2) but evil is not limited to the internal: it goes outside and here illuminates everything around a person. A passionate person sees everything in rainbow colors, that is, things appear to them not in their true form, not as they are, but as they adapt and correspond to our feelings and our passions. Then, back, passions feed on them. A dreamer lives in a passionate atmosphere, composed of internal images and the external ghostly appearance of things; 3) whereas this is inside and outside a person, that is, when a self-willed fantasy, as if in some kind of prison, imprisons a person, Satan begins to rage in this darkness with all his might. When the imagination indulges in self-willed movement, then Satan comes into the heart and steals the word of God or good from it, like a seed sown along the way, and, on the contrary, sows its own evil, as in the parable the enemy man sowed tares among the wheat. Having come to his senses from dreams, a person finds that he is determined to do a certain evil, and does not know how and from where; 4) in this confusion, among disturbing images and enemy forces, as if in a child, passionate plans for sin are born, to the detriment of oneself and others: various kinds of intrigues, insidious searches 148 from envy, flattery and malice, intrigues, malicious communities, and most importantly - all enterprises to satisfy one’s main passion; 5) but, besides this, from the self-will of fantasy in a person who is inattentive to himself, permanent dispositions are also born, in which daydreaming turns into a permanent character. These are: a tendency to live in images, a tendency to make jokes, joke, idle talk, an aversion to mental work, a passion for reading empty books, for games, balls, theaters. Fantasy is most susceptible to damage from sin, or this damage is more noticeable in it than in other forces. That is why it is not suddenly healed for one who begins to work for the Lord, but gradually, although from the very beginning he makes a rule or makes an order, as much as possible, to establish or include this force in his rules. So at the very beginning he goes inside himself, calms the confusion there, collects his thoughts. Self-collection is an integral property of a soul that has turned to God, which binds the self-will of fantasy. In his inner being landscaped in this way, he builds himself a spiritual church, like heaven, in which he strains to remain attentive, in the presence of God, Angels and saints. From within, the same order passes on to the outside, to help the inner. Here all things are transformed in meaning, cut off or covered with some kind of spiritual cover, according to which accidental glances at them or intentional looking at them do not entertain, do not deviate from the intended, but create and keep in it. In addition to this, he is surrounded by Angels and the prayers of saints, which, like rays, are directed towards him, and thus lives in a certain spiritual, luminous and Divine atmosphere, which contributes to his speedy formation of a Christian character. It cannot be said that their imagination did not run wild. But if this happens, it is not by their consent, but against their will. From the very first days they themselves begin a struggle with thoughts that is difficult, varied, and continuous. One might say that all their attention is drawn to their thoughts and then does not leave them until the very end. Hence, which of those who strive does not know the deceit of thoughts? And what an extensive depiction of them and ways to overcome them can be found in every ascetic who has written! However, work and time finally subdue the imagination, and peace and silence, light, as if from the sun rising after the scattering of the clouds, are established in the inner world. The basis for this lies in the conversion itself, for it inserts a person into his rank, into his place, returns him to reality, at the same time the self-will of fantasy, or dream, loses its basis. Further, constantly productive activities take away food from her, and she becomes exhausted, like a drying tree. A third of life passes in sleep. It is impossible that he did not have deep meaning for her. In the natural order, they renew their strength and form the human being – mental and physical. Therefore, it is impossible not to be in relation to him a great difference in people who live according to the spirit of Christ and are contrary to him. Although self-activity does not participate in it, the grace-filled change concerns being itself, and therefore also that which is outside the realm of freedom. This is not a matter of body sleep, but of dreams. Dreams are spontaneous movements of the imagination in the sleep of the body, with a lack of self-awareness and spontaneous activity of the will. In the course of dreams, three degrees are distinguished: delirium, during dozing, the actual dream or sleepy reverie, during the perfect sleep of the body, and secret sleep, unremembered, during the dead sleep of the body. In their production, the life of the heart with images dominates. When the power of the soul over itself is lost, then images of the imagination, as if escaping from some rivets, fill the entire area of ​​the soul. Here, images of different times and places, present and past, bad and good, are mixed and combined according to laws that there is no way to know. The personality of the dreamer himself is lost: he is inserted into the dramas imagined by the imagination, as an outsider, and undergoes strange transformations: he now rejoices, now he suffers, now he is promoted, now he is put to shame, and so on. Since the soul loses its spontaneous activity in a dream, it is even more strongly exposed to the influence of another world than in reality, and the good one is influenced by the good, and the bad one by the evil. In the drama itself, however, he considers himself the person who thinks, wishes, decides for good or evil. This participation sometimes extends to the point that, upon waking up, the dreamer grieves or rejoices, is ashamed or approves of himself for how he acted there. Among these dreams, three types are distinguished: some are disordered, about which Sirach writes: as if you hold on to a wall, or drive away the winds, so you eat faith with a dream (cf.: Sirach 34:2). Other intelligible ones, which are implanted in a person who begins to regain consciousness by God or the Guardian Angel. Job says about them that, during sleep and in visions at night, when sleep overtakes a person, when he sleeps on his bed, God opens his ear and, having taught it, seals it in order to lead a person away from evil deeds, in order to remove pride from him and in order to keep his soul from the grave (see: Job 33, 15-18). Third, finally, there are special dreams - Divine, prophetic. God Himself speaks about them: if there be a prophet among you, I will be known to him in a vision, and I will speak to him in a dream (cf. Num. 12:6). Dreams are as the heart is. They can for the most part be considered witnesses to our moral state, which is not always visible in the waking state. In a careless person, devoted to passions, they are always unclean, passionate: the soul there becomes a playground of sin. For a person who has converted and is zealous for the purification of his heart, they are sometimes good, sometimes bad, depending on what will prevail, and sometimes - how he will fall asleep. Here he is subjected to frequent attacks by demons, who sometimes strongly seduce the inexperienced, as Saint Climacus notes. This forces a caring person, when going to sleep, according to the instructions of the Church, to cry out to God and the Guardian Angel, so that his sleep is preserved free from all devilish dreams and that through sleep he himself becomes even more strengthened in goodness. As the heart is purified, dreams are also purified, so that for saints and perfect people they are like a continuation of their waking activity. Doesn't it even extend to preserving independent activity and self-government? From this consideration of cognitive abilities, it is revealed that a person who does not follow the right path and does not accept restorative forces is separated from the spiritual, invisible world, and does not know it as he should; he knows the visible world superficially, and only if he is engaged in this recognition; for the most part he only sees and observes him. Imagination predominates in him, amid whose activity he lives as if in a fog, in a crowd of ghosts, and is often subject to the close influence of evil spirits. For a person who lives according to the spirit of Christ, everything is different: the lower abilities, especially the imagination, are tamed and turn into instrumental forces that no longer dominate, as they should; on the contrary, the higher abilities act in full force. His mind is a treasure of the mysteries of God, for it directly enters into communication with the invisible world and directly experiences it with his spirit. At the same time, he acquires the ability to gain insight into the secrets of creation and industry to the point that, although many still lack data and although the mind has not yet made the proper preparations for analyzing the visible structure of things or the course of events, this does not prevent him from unraveling their inner, eternal meaning. Although reason is not always enriched with much information, it always returns to its place and, jealous of the fulfillment of its inherent virtues, with the passage of time acquires sanity, which knows how to give judgment to everything in its circle, and often, slowly, thoroughly discusses third-party things. 2) About the active forces of man, or about the state of the active forces The second class of qualitative forces in us is the totality of active forces. They too are in three degrees, corresponding to cognitive powers. Above all stands conscience, which conveys the will of God to consciousness - a higher, detached power. Then comes the will, which deals with the arrangement of our temporary life and our temporary relationships. Below all is the ability of lower desires. Just as reason is appointed to open to man another, spiritual, most perfect world and to let him know about its structure and properties, so conscience is appointed to form a person into a citizen of the world where he must subsequently move. For this purpose, she announces to him the laws there, obliges him to fulfill them, judges him according to them, rewards or punishes him. Conscience is called practical consciousness. In this regard, we can say that it is the power of the spirit, which, conscious of law and freedom, determines their mutual relationship. By occupation or action, conscience is seen as a legislator, a witness, or a judge, and a rewarder. In all these aspects of her, great differences are visible in her in a good Christian and in a sinner who has fallen away from God. By the very fact that the sinner has separated from God, it should be expected that his conscience cannot be correct; for if she is the voice of God in the soul (legislator), then His eye (witness), then the vicegerent of His justice (judge and rewarder): then when we fall away from Him, all these Divine, so to speak, influxes upon us through the spirit must weaken and decrease in number and strength. Moreover, conscience does not act alone, separately, but takes other forces as intermediaries and instruments: reason, will, and the power of feeling. If these are upset in their ways, then one cannot expect right activity from conscience. There are involuntary, unintentional, so to speak, deviations of conscience from the paths of truth, as if errors, and there are intentional distortions or damage to conscience from opposing it, in favor of vices and passions. These two sides are now represented in all three acts of conscience. So: 1) the business of conscience, as a legislator, is to show the laws according to which a rationally free being should act, and to incline his will to this by the power of his obligation. How little power conscience has to induce the will to fulfill its instructions, even clearly conscious ones, there is nothing to say about that. She can still do this somehow if she does not encounter any passion or inclination, but as soon as there is such a collision, her voice is not heard, and by the power of it alone a person cannot overcome himself. Therefore, a person often sins due to the impotence of conscience, knows many virtues only by ear, many of them he only enjoys, just as he does not like other vices only in words and - until time and occasion. Legislation itself, it seems, the easiest thing to do, is sent to the conscience incorrectly. The dictates of conscience are recognized in the form of demands. Since other needs, natural or instilled later, also make their demands, it is not surprising that a person, in the confusion that reigns in him after the fall, sometimes cannot make out what to obey. Thus, regarding the main principle in moral activity, or where all attention should be directed and all thoughts directed, conscience for the most part is almost completely silent; That is why a person must sometimes ask: what have I done, will I inherit eternal life? - and when he is approached with such a question, he becomes embarrassed and is forced to admit ignorance, and if sometimes he offers something in response, he offers perverse principles, composed by a perverted mind in conspiracy with inclinations, like those of the Pharisees, Sadducees 150, Stoics and others. But when the main principle is unknown, then not only is the thread of mutual subordination and correlation of particular laws lost, and some rise above others without reasonable grounds, due to random circumstances, but also much is included in the law that should not be law. So, for example, one places civil service above all else, another places worship above all else, another puts the office studies of a scientist above all else. Regarding particular cases, when, that is, conscience must immediately determine how someone should act in a certain case, there is even more uncertainty, short-sightedness and confusion. Here, for the most part, she either leaves a person to himself, which is why he often ignores good things and does bad things out of sheer ignorance of evil; or hesitates between yes and no, leaves a person indecisive as to whether what he is doing is good; or calls bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, and this is even among the legislators who dealt with this, people experienced in life. In general, conscience leaves a person to act at random, according to circumstances, without inner confidence and approval. It is clear from everything that this legislator has been removed from his office, deprived of his dominance, and has become so weak that he does not stand up for his rights; on the contrary, some other force seems to be acting - for conscience. The legislative conscience is subjected to even greater damage and distortion if it encounters egoism and submits to it. Here, at first its laws are reinterpreted, then distorted and finally replaced by completely different ones, arbitrary and even contrary to the true laws. We willingly believe what we love, and we strongly desire that the truth be on the side of our loved one. Therefore, if we happen to hear the voice of conscience with a commandment that is contrary to our inclination, then it has less conviction for us than the demands of the heart. In such circumstances, bewilderment immediately arises regarding the true meaning of the commandment: we ask with doubt: is this how it should be understood? Is this what the law requires? does he go to everyone? does it suit me and my situation? During this reflection, matters are mostly only put aside and left in doubt until another time; but soon thoughts are presented to please the heart, the law is reinterpreted, and we remove ourselves from fulfilling it under various pretexts. Thus, under the pretext of maintaining health, they withdraw from fasting and abstinence, and under the pretext of maintaining family well-being and needs, they refuse to do charity; in the form of righteous retribution they take growth 151; defending honor, they go out to duels and so on. All this, however, is half-detrimental if it goes too far, concerns individual cases, and, moreover, for one person, but long-term activity in one kind, with a reinterpretation of the meaning of the law, leads to the fact that it is completely distorted in the conscience, and a wrong rule is put in its place. That is why stinginess is considered frugality, extravagance - generosity, anger - a feeling of noble indignation, indulgence - condescension, cruelty - jealousy of the truth, flattery - flexibility of character, cunning - prudence, pride - a sense of dignity. If someone happens to be in a circle where the above-mentioned opinions are accepted and contained as rules that determine the external behavior of a person in all his positions, what is surprising if he accepts these rules as decisive legislation of conscience, and begins to consider satisfaction with them as both the first thing and a virtue, just as, on the contrary, he begins to condemn life or actions not according to them not only with his tongue, but also with his sense of conscience; 2) conscience, as a witness and judge, is aware of how a person treated the law prescribed by it, and, subsuming the action under it with all the circumstances, both internal and external, determines whether the person is right or wrong. The court of a conscientious court, as they say, is incorruptible. This happens, but not always. One can expect infidelity in a court of conscience in all those cases where the legislation of conscience is incorrect, for then there is no beginning for the court. Moreover, for the justice of the court, it is necessary to notice the action in all parts, especially the internal, former dispositions; in a sinner, with constant plundering of the mind, much can be omitted from attention. Therefore, he has no conscience to apply judgment to. Finally, not the least important thing in this regard is jealousy for what is right, in order to relentlessly pursue everything criminal, for without this much of what is noticed can be ignored; This is also the basis for the sinner’s conscience to be unfaithful, for he is a sinner because he has no zeal for the truth. From this it follows that conscience should act like this: jealous of the truth, carefully monitor a person’s affairs and, if there is any malfunction, immediately bring him to court and judge him, without hypocrisy. But such actions are not in the conscience of a sinner. How can one expect faithful judgment from such a conscience! Its unreliability is already evident from the fact that it makes every person seem better to himself than he actually is. Except in decisive cases and important sins, everyone is ready to say: what have I done? Therefore, God-fearing judges of themselves say to themselves: cleanse me from my secrets (Ps. 18:13). Conscience in a fallen state is a broken mirror. Like a broken mirror, and now she does not represent our affairs and us as she should. Such is conscience, as a witness and judge, if passion is not mixed with it; in this case, its scales tilt even more to the wrong side, and the court is distorted. When conscience itself judges particular cases, then its judgment is still not incorrect at times; but, since one must judge one’s passionate deeds, the judgment of conscience is always crooked. Such is the judgment of an ambitious man for ambition, of a miser for stinginess, and so on, while in other matters the same conscience is not asleep. A significant sign of distortion of conscience is the evasion of judgment from oneself to others. Conscience was given to us to judge ourselves; If she judges others, it must be said that she did not do her job. This condemnation of others can now be looked at as an indication of what our judgment should be on ourselves, and as a denunciation of the constant infidelity of this latter. Thus, in judging others, judgment is usually quick, instantaneous, whereas with oneself it is slow, delayed, and the opposite is true. Judgment about others can be inexorably strict, while judgment about oneself is always covered with condescension, and it should be the other way around. This trial almost always ends: I am not like other people... How strictly a merchant judges the affairs of a lawyer, a secular person judges spiritual matters, and so on! While others are constantly being condemned from the heart, we love to cover ourselves with justification. Self-justification is almost a common sin. They expose weakness, ignorance, circumstances, temptations, examples, the number of participants and somehow do not justify themselves! If we finally fail, we will stubbornly stand up for ourselves. Persistent unconsciousness is the fruit of great damage to conscience and, together, strong egoism. The person inside says in spite of himself: not guilty, - empty, - nothing! - and at the same time, various twists and turns are used, mainly regarding the judged act, trying to fit it into cases in which such acts are excusable; 3) conscience as a bribe-giver. As soon as judgment is pronounced, and a person recognizes in himself that he is guilty, grief, pain, annoyance with himself, reproaches, torment or torment of conscience begin. Such feelings are the essence of retribution for sins from conscience, just as, on the contrary, the joyful feelings of conscientious justification are the essence of retribution for truth. What this is and how strong it can be is shown by the persecution to which great criminals are subjected from their conscience, when it frightens them both internally with torment and externally with ghosts, both in reality and in their dreams. But again, how much injustice she has on this side too! There is only one reason for them - in the infidelity of the first two actions, legislation and court, for why should an innocent person be tormented? The other is in the state of the heart: the heart is hardened and indifferent, no matter how much you blame it. Because of this, the consciousness of one’s guilt for the most part remains in the mind, without disturbing the heart, and a person often says: guilty, but what is it? - and remains a cold spectator of his sins, often considerable. The circumstances of time and place are of considerable importance. So, the recent crime is still quite disturbing, but over time it turns into a simple reminder; The crime scene is also very disturbing, and away from it we are at peace. Fearfulness (scrupulousness) often attacks the conscience, according to which, considering almost every deed to be a sin, it worries and eats a person for everything. The state of one who is subjected to such a judgment is painful, and therefore it is a painful, unnatural state. But all this happens by itself, without our malicious participation. Where intent enters, we either distort conscientious retribution or force it to remain silent. This is done in different ways to lull the conscience. This lull comes naturally from the increasing frequency of falls, for it is known that the second fall hurts less, the third even less, and so on less and less, and finally the conscience becomes completely numb: do what you want. Out of fear that a lulled conscience might somehow awaken again, they resort to various tricks. These are: choosing a lenient confessor for yourself, false confession, false reassurance of yourself with permission, limiting further correction to appearance alone, or external acts of piety alone, and excessive hope in the Lord’s mercy; or, even worse, convincing oneself that torments of conscience are superstitious fears passed down from inexperienced childhood; deliberate removal of oneself from persons and places, even from objects of reflection that can disturb the conscience, deliberate entertainment or indulgence in vain, stupefying, strong impressions and, finally, the end of it all - boasting of one’s sins. In these ways, little by little, they manage to completely drown out the conscience, and it remains silent for a time. And so conscience in a sinful state, according to legislation, according to judgment and retribution, is either itself incorrect, or is deliberately distorted for the sake of passions. Because of this, some freely indulge in all the overflow of passions and sinful life, for when the conscience is reconciled with the passions, who will bring them to reason? Others live in cold carelessness, for better or worse. For both of them, obviously, their activity is perverted, and it will remain so until conscience awakens. The measure of corruption determines what happens to a person. For others, although after a strong and painful turning point, return to true life; others, on the contrary, with the awakening of conscience, give in to despair and finish the bitter cup of iniquity, so that later they can drink to the bottom the cup of God’s wrath. In a person who has turned to God and restored grace-filled communion with Him, the erring conscience is brought to reason, distorted, and corrected in all three of its functions. The first ray of grace falls on the conscience and with its Divine fire purifies it, like gold in a furnace. When conversion is accomplished and communion with God is restored, then all the original strength returns to the conscience. Then what will prevent the voice of God - the law of conscience - from penetrating to the depths of the soul? What will prevent the ray from the eye of God - the judgment of conscience - from falling on the deeds and intentions of man and illuminating them? Or why couldn’t the soul be warmed by the warmth of God’s anticipated favor or shudder with the fear of God’s wrath? Between God and conscience, the mediastinum has been destroyed, the instrumental forces for conscience have been restored, therefore, conscience has all the means for proper action: 1) this is how it is made operational in legislation. It is the consciousness of the Divine laws that awakens the sinner from sleep, but it subsequently does not diminish, but rises. This is facilitated by grace itself, which, like anointing, teaches everyone how to act (cf. 1 John 2:27), and guides him on all paths of life, secretly and openly. This is facilitated by a thirst for the word of God, from which the converted sinner does not lag behind, but seeks to either hear or read it, drinks it in, feeds on it, and transforms everything drawn from it in the depths of his heart into rules and principles, and thereby illuminates his conscience. Life itself contributes to this. Feeling determined to be in the will of God, he carefully examines the will of God for himself and in all cases concerning him, and always in relation to sin, he says to himself: how I will commit this evil verb and sin before God - and for good: my heart is ready, ready! In this way, he learns to live a legal life in his circle and no longer has the need to consult the book of laws, but knows them directly, like an experienced lawyer. As for attacks from the depraved will, although they are felt, their voice is suppressed at the same time; even if it were still heard, legal activity is not abandoned in defiance of them, for it is determined to walk in the will of God without self-pity, with all donations, in the midst of all bitterness, both internal and external; 2) it is serviceable in legal proceedings. A vigilant and sober eye, fixed on itself, notices all the shades of internal and external affairs. When, at the same time, on the other side there is a clear mirror of conscience, what prevents the matter from being reflected in this mirror in its true form and therefore the judgment of conscience from being true? A judgment is the application of a principle to a particular case. If both exist, it cannot fail to happen, and if both are true, it cannot be false. The perfection of this action of conscience is further promoted by what is considered the greatest sin - to condemn another, and when this happens accidentally, it is cleansed by strong repentance. But when the entire judgment is directed towards oneself, then here it is carried out without concealment, without false condescension, with all detail and completeness, touching not only deeds and words, but also intentions and thoughts. To warn against errors in this matter, a third-party judge is elected (a confessor or an experienced elder to whom everything is revealed), who decides the matter and whose decision is accepted as the decision of God. Here you will not encounter crude self-justification and lack of consciousness, for almost all of life is spent in self-condemnation and feelings of repentance; one’s deeds are not considered perfect and complete, and one’s face is not considered worthy of favors. How fruitful are such arrangements! They first bring peace to the soul, not disturbed by any external troubles, for the guilty person feels worthy of all executions; then purity in life, for the more cases or parties in cases are condemned, the more perfect they should become, if such a review is carried out with the goal of achieving perfection; 3) she is also good in retribution. The petrified insensibility was driven away when God's grace melted the whole being of man; There is also a constant prayer for deliverance from him in the end. Therefore, just as in a barometer a slight fluctuation in the atmosphere is immediately reflected, so in the one who converts, either the sting of a conscience-stricken accusation immediately leaves a wound of painful contrition, or the oil of justification anoints the soul with the anointing of peace and fills it with a pleasing fragrance of joy. At the same time, it should be noted that the torment of conscience here has a completely different shade than what it has for an unconverted person. They are joyfully tender, do not become bitter, do not tear away, do not burn. Perhaps this is because after conversion, with zeal for pleasing God, only a few, accidental, unintentional sins occur. True, past deeds are not ignored and, when necessary, they are actively reproduced, explained with all the circumstances, with all the consequences, and are submitted to internal judgment, as if the hour of death, the judgment of God and the final sentence has arrived, and in the heart thus opened, everything done contrary to the will of God is washed with tears; but again this does not suppress their spirit with hopelessness. There is a breakdown in the spirit from comparing the past with the future, but it always ends in joyful peace in God: sinner, but Your creation, I turn to You, Thy will be done! - and in this burning of conscience they save themselves from the fire of the future. The peace of conscience of the saints did not exclude such a collapse of the spirit, but on the contrary, many spent all their time in tears - others were dry because, as they said, they constantly remembered the fire of Gehenna, which scorched them incessantly (see: Macarius the Great). This state of conscience, on the one hand, brought them refreshing and encouraging sobriety, on the other hand, in relation to God and the entire character of their life, it filled them with sweet peace, inexplicable joy, and all-encompassing blessedness. The peace of God, surpassing all understanding, overshadowed them (see: Phil. 4:7). In this state, they received irresistible inspiration for deeds pleasing to God. The Apostle Paul valued the testimony of his conscience most dearly and for its sake he went to all troubles. Others felt the same (see: Job 27:6). This is joyful manna, strengthening heavenly food, brought by Angels from heaven. This is the joy of the Holy Spirit, or the power by which one can, following the Apostle, rejoice unceasingly. The fruits of such a state of conscience are: first of all, boldness before God, according to which they unabashedly and undoubtedly turn to God, like innocent children to their father; then - living, strong and quick activity, for a clear conscience attracts Divine power, which, filling the whole soul, imparts to it tirelessness, unceasing work, insurmountability to obstacles, which is what freedom of spirit inherent in man actually consists of; finally, the will merges with conscience and all rebellion within ceases: a person enters into a state where the law does not lie to him, because he himself is completely filled with the law. Below conscience, among the active forces, stands the will, which owns the structure of our earthly temporary life: enterprises, plans, morals, actions, behavior - in general, everything with which a person expresses himself from the outside from the inside. It can be called the ability of aspirations and dispositions. Its main subject is good. The types of its actions are desire and aversion: turning away from evil, striving for good - this is the whole of life. A person cannot desire evil and turn away from good, but can only consider evil as good, and good as ungood and, through deception, desire the former under the guise of good, and not desire the latter, imagining it as ungood. Inevitability or the basis and source of aspirations and desires is the incompleteness of our being. The feeling of this incompleteness forces a person to look for objects to replenish himself. In this respect, man is a thirsty earth or a sponge; the number of needs is the number of its holes. An object in which a person expects to find satisfaction of his need is considered a good, which, the more comprehensive, the higher. It is obvious that the supreme good of a person can only be that which completely calms him down. Such goodness is only God. If, further, the strength of aspiration is determined by the quality of the expected good, then the desire for God should be our highest and strongest desire. This is also what we should expect, and here’s why: desire is a reflection of need, and need is a reflection of the structure of our being. Since man was created in the image of God, his main need, followed by his aspiration, should be the thirst for God and Divine things. Whatever I have in heaven, and whatever I desire on earth from You, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever (cf. Ps. 72:25-26). In man, in an innocent state, there was this rightness in the heart or will, but through the fall a transformation had to happen in him and did happen. Where did his will go? As can be seen from the circumstances of the fall, to yourself. Instead of God, man loved himself with infinite love, set himself as the exclusive goal, and everything else as a means. From this it is clear that the main disposition nesting in the very depths of the soul of a person who has fallen and has not yet risen is pride, or egoism. This disposition is so natural, universal, strong, irresistible that Aristotle 152 (pagan) wrote in his moral teaching: “even a good person does everything for himself, therefore he should love himself.” That is why it is commanded at the very beginning of a good life in Christ Jesus to deny oneself, then throughout the continuation of walking in the footsteps of Christ not to please oneself (Rom. 15:1), not to seek one’s own (cf. Phil. 2:4). When Macarius the Great advises to go deep inside yourself and kill the nesting serpent at the very bottom of the heart, by this serpent he means self-love 153 . All vicious dispositions or all moral evil flow from pride, as Theodore, Bishop of Edessa says: “Pride is the mother of indescribable evils. Whoever is conquered by it enters into union with all other passions” 154. It is not difficult, however, to notice that among these passions there are the most basic and inaccurate ones, standing at the head of others, themselves melted by being self-love. These first generation of selfhood are: pride or, in general, the thirst for exaltation, greed, or covetousness, and carnality, or, more fully, the thirst for all-round pleasures and pleasures. This is confirmed by experience and simple guidance that, no matter what passion you take, always, going back to the source, you will come to one of the initial passions shown. Therefore, Saint Maximus the Confessor says: “Keep yourself from the mother of evil - self-love. From this, the first three passionate thoughts are born - gluttony, love of money and vanity, from which the entire evil council is then born" 155 (the same in Theodore of Edessa 156, Gregory of Sinai 157 in the Philokalia). The world is materialized self-love, or is the totality of its creations in persons and actions, for Saint John the Theologian divides everything in the world into three classes: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (see: 1 John 2:16), that is, that everything there moves according to the action of these three passions. It is the field where the activity of the sinful will develops in all its breadth. Each of these initial passions in turn is revealed by many others, filled with its spirit and character. They put their stamp both on all the powers of a person and on all his activities and thereby complicate his passion and multiply passions: 1) the lust of the flesh is an insatiable desire for pleasure or a continuous search for objects that can delight the internal and external feelings of the soul. It forces one to set one’s own pleasure as the only goal or to live for one’s own pleasure, and to direct everything one encounters and everything one undertakes toward this goal. The variety of private inclinations arising from it depends both on the objects of pleasure and on the organs with which it is tasted. Thus, from the pleasures of the taste are born voluptuousness, drunkenness, and gluttony; of sexual passions - debauchery in various forms; from the organs of movement - absent-mindedness or laziness; from spiritual feelings - vicious love and dreamy voluptuousness through imagination and so on. Its main products are: gluttony, fornication, laziness, fun and joy. Whoever possesses this passion, it forces him to act everywhere according to his quality and imprints his spirit on everything. Thus, in relation to religion, in the knowledge of God, sensualists, due to their characteristic frivolity and almost exclusive conversion to the world, do not take the truths of God deeply to their hearts, from which these truths not only, as having no root, remain fruitless, but are also subject to strong attacks within from inclinations turned to a different order, and this last circumstance of a person devoted to pleasures, or inevitably puts him in a state of indifference to the truths of faith, or, even worse, casts doubt about them. In worshiping God, they need a pleasant sacred act, and in churches they seek not the glory and honor of God, but the pleasure of hearing and sight. In the innermost reverence for God, one primarily seeks sweet movements of the heart and evokes them with effort, which is why in times of adversity they fall away (Luke 8:13), when for the sake of the truth it is necessary to experience sorrows, whether internal or external. They are the enemies of the cross; God is their womb (cf. Phil. 3:18–19). In relation to yourself. The sensualist is completely occupied with pleasures, and only real ones, saying to himself: Yes, pits and drinks, we will die in the morning (cf. Isa. 22:13; 56:12; 1 Cor. 15:32; Wis. 2:6); He does not even think about the future and therefore does not care about the consequences of his life, even those that are about to begin, even when he suddenly encounters illness, poverty, and disgrace. His soul is in contempt; one body is fed extensively (see: Tit. 1, 12; 1 Tim. 5, 6). Because of this, you will not find in him either precise and worthwhile concepts, or firm rules of life. Both in his actions and in his thoughts he blows like dust in the wind. He is alien to solid, constant, intense, long-term occupations - that is why he cannot imagine anything on his own behalf that could survive him. And in relation to others he is no better. True, he is reluctant to personally offend others, because this may be accompanied by troubles. But anyone who is dissimilar to him in character, who is not ready to share his affairs with him, is not only a stranger to him, but also an enemy. At the same time, if there is only a need, he is ready for all sorts of injustices: deception, failure to keep his word, false promises, cunning tricks. He has a penchant for friendship, but usually his friends are not chosen according to their true merit and are short-lived. In the address there is a desire to show politeness, but then there are barbs, witticisms, ridicule, and sometimes impudence. Little good comes from such people both in everyday life and in civil life. Actually, they are neither able to command nor to obey properly. The sensualist is a father, a husband, a master, a boss - the worst of all. Children, wife, family, trusted ones die. The reason for everything is the negligence associated with it and false meekness or indulgence, because discipline is often accompanied by trouble. Among the lower ones in all forms there is no outrageous resistance, but there is almost always murmuring, slowness, laziness; in general, they are more hearers than creators of the law (cf. James 1:22); 2) self-interest is an insatiable desire to have, or the search and acquisition of things under the guise of benefit, then only to say about them: mine. There are many objects of this passion: a house with all its parts, fields, servants, and most importantly - money, because you can get everything with it. Others, however, are exclusively addicted to silver and gold. Because of this, this passion can be seen primarily in two forms: love of money and covetousness, or acquisitiveness. Judging by its use, under the influence of vanity it is pomp, from pride and lust for power - worldwide resourcefulness, seeking to seize all trade into its own hands, and from madness - stinginess. This passion is constantly accompanied by tormenting care, envy, fears, sadness and sorrow. A title appropriate to the person who possesses it is interesting, 158 because he will not take a step without it bringing him benefit, and everything that his hand, word, thought touches, all bears its tribute to him. Then, when the thing arrived in his area, he says: mine forever... This exclusivity of ownership is decisive, heartfelt, like a fence around his things and cuts off all others. In relation to religion. He has no time to know God; therefore, he contains faith as he heard and accepted and as he can imagine with a soul cluttered with sensory things. He is most prone to superstition, anthropomorphism 159, and idolatry. A strong and exclusive love for things makes his internal worship of God suspicious, for, as the Lord says, God and mammon cannot work (cf. Matt. 6:24). Therefore, he is directly called an idolater (see: Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5; Matt. 19:22; Job 31:24). He seems to honor God, but not with his heart, but with something external, and, moreover, not otherwise than in anticipation of an increase in profits or out of fear of losing and the desire to preserve what he has. Therefore, he is inclined to external worship of God and loves wealth and splendor in it. The passion for acquisition, with a lack of direct paths, sometimes leads him to magic and other absurdities (see: 1 Tim. 6:9). In relation to yourself. For the covetous, the appearance of certain virtues is striking. He seems to be thrifty, and yet stingy; his labor and vigilance are only for self-interest; abstaining from pleasures and pleasures only so as not to waste yourself. He actually has no concern for either soul or body: he sacrifices himself to things. Care does not give him time to enjoy his acquisitions, and therefore there is no peace in his soul. If a misfortune occurs, he is ready to fall into despair, easily loses his mind and becomes crazy, and sometimes commits suicide. In relation to others, he is inhuman, envious, treacherous, treacherous, and a litigator; he does not like to do good for nothing, unless his vanity overcomes him; does not know short friendships. There is no untruth that a selfish person would not decide to commit, as Judas showed himself (see: Matt. 26:15). From him comes theft, sacrilege (see: Joshua 7:1; Acts 5:1-2), murder, betrayal. A selfish person is an unworthy member of the home, society and the Church (see: Proverbs 15:27; 29:4; 1 Samuel 8:3; 2 Tim. 3:3; Phil. 2:20-21; 1 Pet. 5:2). The lowest of them are usually submissive, thrifty and work to somehow save a penny; but they are inclined to deceive the master or boss - somehow steal for themselves and hide the ends; and they immediately leave them if they are in some kind of trouble. Higher ones or those in charge in some form - there is nothing worse, due to negligence and carelessness about others. They have no need for anyone, neither for the truth, nor for people. They don’t like a boss like that, because he always wants to grab a penny; Therefore, they are unfaithful to him and are trying in every possible way to outwit him. In the house he poorly supports everyone, as well as himself, neglects the children and the whole family. Rudeness and ignorance reign there; 3) pride is an insatiable desire for elevation, or an intense search for objects through which one could become higher than all others. Self-love is most obvious here. It’s here, as it were, with its own face, because here all the concern is about one’s self. The first product of internal pride is conceit, according to which all others are considered inferior to us; even those who are highly superior to us are not very important in comparison with us. Making its way out, it is already looking for uplifting objects and, judging by them, it itself is changing. Dwelling on insignificant objects, for example, on the strength of the body, beauty, clothing, kinship and other things, it is vanity; referring to the degrees of honor and glory, it is love of power and ambition; enjoying the rumors, talk and attention of people, it is love of popularity. In all of these forms, however, except perhaps conceit, pride is also accompanied by self-will, disobedience, self-confidence, arrogance, pretentiousness, contempt for others, ingratitude, envy, anger to the point of revenge and rancor. However, its main branches can be considered envy with hatred and anger with rancor. In the word of God, the proud are also called high-minded (see: Rom. 11:20, 12:16; 1 Tim. 6:17; Isa. 14:13), pompous (cf.: 2 Tim. 3:4), high-hearted (see: Deut. 8:14, 17:20; 2 Kings 14:10; Ezek. 28:2), disdainful (see: Luke 18:9, 11; Gal. 3:26). Exalting himself above everyone in his heart: – in relation to religion, in the knowledge of God, he is the most dangerous person. He is capable of falling into the very abyss of wickedness. Due to his inclination to stand out from others, he either invents himself or easily accepts invented new opinions, distinguished by a certain loftiness and strangeness. Often, in order to show his difference from the common people, he rejects the most obvious truths, such as: the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, etc. Therefore, they are rightly considered the inventors of heresies (see: 1 Tim. 6, 3-3). In general, his characteristic argumentativeness and stubbornness in accepted opinions are very unfavorable to the truth. In external worship of God he loves stiffness, brilliance, artificiality, in internal - tension, height, abstraction, in prayer - verbosity from above, in the manifestation of piety - whimsicality: everything in its own way, not like others; he can also accept all types of worship for glory and vanity and turn them into means to satisfy his lust for power, like Jeroboam (see: 1 Kings 12, 28–29). Temperance, work, frugality, patience, constancy give him the appearance of a strict performer of duties in relation to himself, but - only an appearance, for all these are means-to-value virtues, not essential, and therefore their price depends on the spirit with which they are accepted and maintained. It is fair that he cares more about the education of his soul, but for what and in what spirit? Then, in order to show off, or also in order to support the glory of science or the glory of one’s own and one’s title, and so on; because of this he is more engaged in what is famous in his time. But he is angry, perky and does not give himself peace; As a result, he soon exhausts his strength and develops illnesses. - in relation to others, he is the most unjust person: he attributes everything to himself, but attributes nothing to others; he is a hunter of always commanding and never obeying. Others, in his thoughts, should be means for his goals, and, indeed, he acts on them this way either through violence, when he is already strong, or through cunning, when he is not yet strong. He is a politician, therefore pretentious; Don’t expect gratitude from him, because he acquires the right to accept services from others as tribute. On occasion, he is not averse to insulting, committing violence, showing contempt, or intimidating. He wants to be feared more than loved. His friendship lasts until it meets his goals. - in everyday life and civil life, all the disorder is from such people. The lower ones with this character do not want to obey, do not tolerate the bonds of duty that lie on them, which is why they are always ready for indignation. The higher ones are self-willed, hard-hearted; they punish unmercifully, forgive reluctantly; they want to rule by word and look, and not by conviction (see: 1 Pet. 5, 3). They like to set the tone in their address, but they are respectful to rare people, and sincere - to no one. Therefore, they are intolerant in society, hated by people and God, who opposes them and often humiliates them for admonition (see: Matt. 23:12; 1 Pet. 5:5; James 4:6; Job 9:13, 40:6–7; Matt. 11:23). There is no peace in their family, but fights and quarrels; children become rude; the servants are self-willed; wives either grieve or get used to perseverance. These are the closest products of self-love: the lust of the flesh, the lust of desire and worldly pride, with the passions that arise from them. There are, however, according to the remark of the saints, the Father, and among those who descend from them there are also the most basic, as if necessary and everlasting companions. Five are recognized as such: anger, fornication, sadness, laziness, vanity. Their origin from the first is very simple. Thus, voluptuousness appears primarily in two passions: gluttony and fornication - and is accompanied by relaxation and laziness; The love of money is always associated with sadness and envy, and with pride - anger and vanity. These three derivatives are placed with the first ones, according to their strength and multiplicity, in one category, so that the most basic, or inaccurate, ones are counted directly as eight or seven, for other vanities cannot be separated from pride. See about this Theodore of Edessa 160; St. Neil 161 about various thoughts 162; Orthodox Confession 163. See the same thing in Climacus in Chapters about these passions 164. In these articles, the characteristics of each vice are defined with sufficient completeness and the passions derived from them - with sufficient detail. A special path to the development of passions was chosen by Saint Gregory of Sinai 165. He divides them into mental and physical, and spiritual again according to three abilities: thinking, appetitive and irritable. But it is not difficult to notice that he does not depart from the general division, but only solves the question: how is three-part self-love reflected in the parts of the human being and its abilities? That is why the passions produced, for example, from mental power, some have the qualities of pride, others - amorousness, and still others - voluptuousness. At the very least, organizing and developing passions in this way is possible and can bring undoubted benefits in life. Here you can see the meaning of each passion, and from their meaning scientifically deduce remedies against them, although these will be the same ones that are now proposed according to the experiences of the God-wise Fathers. But it goes without saying that such a matter requires both close acquaintance with the writings of the Holy Fathers and deep knowledge of human beings. But who is happy with this? Peter of Damascus, having collected the names of passions from the Divine Scriptures, numbering 298, without any order, adds: “This is what I found in the Scriptures; but I could not arrange them according to rank, I don’t even dare to attempt this, for, according to the words of the holy Climacus, you will look for knowledge in evil, that is, their rational concept and explanation, and you will not find it” 166 . As for these passions in their application to every person, it is impossible to comprehend how diverse and sometimes ugly their combination is in one person. Every person who works against sin always has a self with its three generations and with some of the five passions, only one predominates in one, and the other in another. Together with them, there is also a whole tribe of passions in him according to the character and spirit of their ancestor, which diversifies in people according to the influence of gender, age, and condition. A detailed indication of possible combinations would be a very good guide to self-knowledge, for a person must know both his main passion and its entire family within himself. In this combination, they sometimes strengthen one another or limit one another, which is why there are many apparent virtues with which people usually deceive themselves. How one's passions vary is best explained by his story. Everyone is born damaged, with selfhood, or the seed of all possible passions. That in one person this seed develops predominantly in one direction, in another in the other, this depends first of all on the temperament received from parents, then on upbringing, and most of all on imitation, which is nourished by existing examples, customs, treatment or community. Like a young tree, a person, amid these circumstances, involuntarily leans to one side, and then, having entered the path of life and acting in the same direction, a habit is established in him, which becomes a second nature, as they say. And thus a person became qualified by the passion that possessed him or became tempered in it, and his whole nature was imbued with it. He who has established himself in this direction sits as if in a prison, in chains, and cannot get out of there on his own. Those passions, or bad moods of the will, themselves constitute an impenetrable cover or strong fence that does not allow the saving light of God to reach him. And, firstly, for each passion there is a circle of objects that satisfy it, which a person considers to be good and the possession of which is his ultimate goal. As with goods, he dissolves with them with his soul, as if chemically, and lives in them; therefore, he cannot look 167 at himself until another beginning comes, dissolves with his heart and distracts him from them. Secondly, having become accustomed to dealing with only objects, a person, of necessity, seems to attack certain thoughts that indulge his passions and hide them from the eye of conscience. From such thoughts special sinful principles are formed, which can rightly be called prejudices of the heart or will. Thus, pride keeps in a person’s head the constant thought that he is better than others, brightens up his shortcomings and always seems to himself to be good. Pleasure assures us that pleasures are so natural to us that it is impossible to live without them; because why deny yourself them when nature itself has disposed you towards them? And absent-mindedness and frivolity do not allow one to delve into and understand where the strength lies. The love of money has so many rights! You can’t live - take care of a rainy day, the house is a hole, etc., and yet care drives everything forward and forward. Pride says: who should take these or those positions? If everyone refuses, then what? already placed on such a road, what can you do?.. And then some good-looking properties, also supported by passion, jump out at you. In the demonstrated co-dissolution of the heart with visible goods and in the depraved principles that justify passion, although apparently they are of a prejudiced nature, lies the most solid barrier to the action of grace on the heart of a sinner and his conversion. Due to the influence of these reasons, not one of those possessing passions considers himself bad, does not see the need for correction, does not see what to correct. On whom, however, grace influences, a significant change occurs in the mood of the will. This change, as we saw (in “On the Beginning of the Christian Life”), occurs when the self is crushed by the crushing action of repentance, and a person, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, ascending to the trustworthiness of salvation and deciding to work for the Lord to the point of life, for the sake of this, in the Sacrament of Baptism or Repentance, incomprehensibly reunites through the Lord Jesus Christ with God and becomes a partaker of the Divine nature. Just as before, having fallen away from God, he stopped on himself and for his own sake clung to the corruptible, so now, after conversion, having rejected himself and all created things, he clings to God with his heart. Hence, the main dispositions of the will of a Christian are: self-sacrifice and zeal for being in communication with God, or love: 1) self-sacrifice is the denial of self-love. It pursues everything that bears the stamp of selfhood, hates it and turns away from all things that feed it; puts all temporary, physical, external advantages at nothing; removes his heart from all created things. In the latter respect, it consists, in fact, not in the lack of or abandonment of things, but in the removal of the heart from them, or in such a state, according to which they are all considered as if alien, outside, not occupying the soul and not tying to oneself; therefore it is unambiguous with impartiality or dispassion, when everything except God is alien to the heart. Being by its nature a rejection of self-love, it bears fruit or gives rise to dispositions in us that are completely opposite to those that selfhood produces; exactly: - instead of pride, the selfless person has humility - such an attitude that he considers himself the most insignificant creature, worthy of all contempt and humiliation; attributing only sins to himself, he attributes everything good to the source of all good - God; he does not assimilate any advantages over others, but considers everyone superior to himself. This is self-abasement combined with a feeling of one’s poverty and weakness; - instead of selfishness, he has not only selflessness and non-covetousness, but also a sense of wandering. He does not call anything his own, but everything is God’s, and he calls himself only an accessory to God’s property, which is why he freely communicates with everyone who has no property. He considers everything that he has only to be entrusted to him for a while, including the house, the lands, and the village. In the feeling of his heart he has no place dwelling here, but seeks the city to come, which is why he sends everything to his heavenly fatherland; - instead of lusts and pleasures - self-mortification and self-bitterness. There is no sorrow, no matter how much he considers himself worthy. Therefore, just as someone living in sin feels sorry for himself and treats himself as if he were a sore spot; Thus, one who turns to God becomes angry with himself and is ready to torture himself; starving himself, not sleeping, working; he is glad when he is insulted or struck, and is insatiable when he is angry with himself; 2) love for God, or the thirst for being in communion with God as the supreme good, and peace in Him, or the consciousness of bliss in His communion, is poured into the heart of one who turns to God by the Holy Spirit and directs his entire being to God. This love is a real taste of God's bliss, and not mental or imaginary. Therefore, anyone who is perplexed about how one can renounce everything must be told: to renounce everything created in order to unite with the Creator means to change an imaginary good for a true one. Love is a necessary complement to self-sacrifice or renunciation of everything. He who has tasted sweet does not want bitter; and he who has tasted God will want nothing but Him. Consequently, true self-sacrifice is contemporary with communion with God. From this love or thirst for the Divine, according to its nature, the following permanent dispositions develop or are installed in the heart, constituting the positive beginning of Christian activity: a) walking with God. He sees God before him, before His face he acts, as if under a guarantee from Him. He is riveted to God, along with his heart, and his attention does not take his eyes off Him. Therefore it is said that his belly is hidden in God. Gregory the Theologian says that “it is better to breathe less than to remember God” 168. Therefore, some tried to tie this memory to breathing 169; b) zeal for pleasing God, or constant, diligent, sincere fulfillment of every known will of God, without hiding from oneself and without any relaxation, even if it costs life. It is accompanied by a careful recognition of this will and a quick start to its implementation through all obstacles. The Apostle Paul expresses this disposition with the word: I persecute; c) sadness for God, for which, on the one hand, he wants to be resolved in order to be with Christ, so that the Kingdom of God will come to him sooner, on the other hand, he laments about the incompleteness of the glory of God in himself and others, which is why he sheds tears in almost continuous feelings of repentance. Such is the quality of a lover that he wants to be in the presence of his beloved; That is why it is sorrowful if, while living in the body, one departs from the Lord; 3) from here it is self-evident that the order of life of a Christian person, or the way of his activity, must correspond to these two fundamental directions - self-sacrifice and love. It is so, according to the image of the saints. Thus, a Christian always has: a) self-resistance and self-coercion, that is, he constantly resists himself in evil and inclines himself towards good. Bad movements occur - you need to stop them; you need to do good, but your heart doesn’t lie - you need to persuade yourself to do it. This is the continuous struggle of a person with himself. By constant exercise in it, he finally forms within himself a kind, willingly acting person, extinguishes evil and transforms the activity of forces into good 170; b) since evil is not suddenly destroyed, but still remains in the converted person, then he is commanded or characterized by continuous vigilance, sobriety, so as not to miss anything harmful through inattention and not to fall. He is a watchful guard over himself, one who remains in constant anticipation of an attack and immediately sees with a perspicacious thought the approaching enemy; c) he is also characterized by constant tension of strength, driving away any relaxation. One cannot say: enough tension; for others, after spending five or six years in peace, became indignant and fell 171. Therefore, a true Christian is always just beginning, he still thinks that he has not worked, he is still standing on the threshold, he has not achieved. The thought of relaxing yourself is the most deadly. Therefore, they say: determine yourself to work and exploits for the rest of your life. It is obvious that these last dispositions: struggle, sobriety and tension without relaxation, as combining self-sacrifice and love, can be called central or initial and therefore inaccurate. Through them, both dispositions resulting from self-sacrifice and dispositions arising from love develop, and all together culminate in perfect self-sacrifice and perfect love. This, one might say, characterizes asceticism, or indicates to it the true path and, at the same time, the true meaning in Christian life. Everything that has been said so far concerns the directions of the will, which constitute its material side. But just as the understanding, in addition to the material, also has formal activity, so the will also has a kind of formal activity. Let's define it briefly. The activity of the will is directly based on wishes. Her job is to put indefinite and, so to speak, still unqualified desires in order, to agree with her goals, needs and the existing order, to establish human actions and undertakings and to outline a whole system of rules for the order of her social and domestic activities. It is the same in activity as reason is in knowledge. In this activity of the will, three parts are distinguished: choice, determination and the deed itself. When choosing, they look for what to stop at; in determination, the fluctuation of desires is affirmed on a single one, which, after the discovery of means, is carried out in practice. In all these moments there are new significant differences between the sinner and the seeker of truth: 1) choice. What is elected and how? You need to know that the types of objects have already been predetermined. They are indicated by the main character of life. Just as one turns only to what feeds self-love, that is, either to pleasures, or to interests, or to differences: so, on the contrary, for another, all intentions are directed solely and exclusively towards the pleasure of God; only what is true and honest, if there is any virtue and praise, this he thinks (cf. Phil. 4:8). We can say that the sum of deeds in all types of the first is all passionate and selfish, while the deeds of the other are all imbued with a selfless striving for God. Exceptions are very rare, and then, perhaps, only in appearance. But here is the basis of the difference in the form of election; for, while one chooses between two objects, of which both are pleasing, chooses without tension and dispute with himself, the other, on the contrary, chooses not only one good out of two, but also in defiance of rebellious passionate wishes and thoughts; therefore, his choice is always the fruit of struggle and victory or is accompanied by them to a greater or lesser extent. Moreover, the former often does not need to choose, because he acts according to the established order, in which there is no need to stop, think and reason; the latter cannot have a routine, but on the contrary, ordinary affairs require all internal activity, as if they were performed for the first time. He often gives in to the pull of desire and does what his will falls on itself. This one always rushes forward with vigilant thought and selects from what is presented only that on which he sees the reflection of the will of God. He, out of self-confidence and arrogance, often allows himself to act at random, expecting that everything that will be said and done on his behalf will be good and worthy of universal approval. This one does not allow himself to make mistakes for a minute and with all attention and conscientiousness examines every, even small, circumstance and does not proceed to the task otherwise than with a clear consciousness of the will of God for it. He often chooses only because he wants, out of waywardness and corruption of his will, when he should obey calculations and the instructions of reason in everything. This one has a constant direction that is hostile to its own will, which is why it suppresses its uprisings at the first occurrence. From this, just as he cultivates self-will and disobedience through his choices or lack of choice, so this one forms in himself reasonable obedience and willing submission to the will of God; 2) determination is an instantaneous internal act of will, measured by the steadfastness of desire, and not by duration or direction; why it is the same, one might say, no matter what type of case it relates to. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between some actions preceding and accompanying it. It is known that after a choice, at the transition to determination, the heart and will incline towards the subject. But for one, this inclination often precedes the choice, always almost decides it, at least, it only waits for its end in order to be expelled from the heart, which is why it never involves difficulties, does not require special tension and almost does not constitute a special act. For another, the disposition of the heart towards an object is not so natural, at least in the first experiments, it cannot be instantaneous, there is a task that is not easy, sometimes not short-lived, there is a special act that requires all the attention and tension. Therefore, here they often do things without having time to incline their hearts, both in defiance of him and with his illness. This obedience and flexibility of the heart is acquired by prolonged sweating. One measure of desire is the measure of hope. It seems to him that the plan is already in hand. The vital activity stimulated by the movement of blood leads to the opinion that one’s strength is sufficient to carry out one’s undertakings without outside help; therefore, here things are done as much with greed as with self-confidence. The other one doesn't have it that way. Without the fogging heat of desire, with a cold intention, according to a reasonable choice, with the expectation of obstacles and dangers inside and outside, sedately, without arrogance, they begin to work, straining all their strength, but expecting success solely from the help and blessing of the Most High. Until now, it seems that all the benefits are on the side of the first, but from this point, that is, from an act of determination, a turn begins. Determination is an instantaneous, internal act, but it has different degrees of strength and firmness. This firmness cannot be determined by the measure of previous desire. It is the fruit of complete strength of spirit, and not the ebullience of one force - will or heart. If the former does not have integrity of spirit, then his determination cannot reach the strength at which it always stands with the latter. It can be said affirmatively that the former’s resolve is always wavering, while the latter’s, on the contrary, is unshakable, for why else does the former, both in general and in particular, have timidity and instability, especially when in fulfilling a requirement or undertaking it is necessary to disturb his most sensitive sides. The latter goes courageously before kings and rulers, to torment and death - why? From firm determination, for he has unshakable strength. After this, to whom should patience in business be attributed to the highest degree? The last one. The first one is weak himself and attempts to conduct his affairs more by someone else's hands; 3) business is the natural fruit of choice and determination. But before that, means are still chosen, and the matter is taken into account with the ordinary order of life, where one’s own person and other persons and things are taken into account. In carrying out these activities, the first does not hesitate to use both legal and illegal, the second - only legal; he also resorts to cunning, the latter always acts openly and sincerely; This one's attention is paid more to external relations, while this one's - to internal ones; This one has politics, this one has spiritual wisdom; he defends more than himself, this one defends the glory of God, holy faith and eternal salvation; he has only business in mind, and he has fruitfulness; For one, the means are only positive, obvious, for another, often mysterious, inspired by faith; that one is fearful, doubtful, - this one, trusting, walks 172 and so on. The work itself is characterized by an object, a goal and means, but even in its production considerable differences can be hidden. Thus, for the former, the most necessary deeds are considered to be those that tend to satisfy passions, for the latter – deeds of salvation; in relation to these last matters, he suffers from procrastination, this one hurries towards them with uncontrollable zeal; If he allows them, then only outwardly, this one always puts his heart into them. Their entire behavior from morning to evening is opposite, if we compare it at the same hours. The first case is only superficial, the second case is thorough and prolific. Consequences of deeds: for the first, all joy and joy ends with the deed; for the latter, it either begins here or rises; there, the work done instills a passion or skill for similar things, here it strengthens the intention without binding freedom; there, the deed is often followed by external approval with internal shame, here - often external troubles with internal approval; there the good consequences are assimilated to oneself, the bad ones to others, here the bad ones are attributed to oneself, the good ones to others; there they tear out their hair for failure, here they surrender everything to God, from whom everything was expected. Frequent affairs of the same kind form inclinations, or permanent dispositions. What it is like for both has already been shown. Finally, there are many differences in the lower desires of people who work for God and those who are devoted to sin. We have needs. There are few of them, and they flow from the structure of our being. There can be many items for each need, for example, to satisfy the need for nutrition, how many foods and different types of drinks? Once an object is known, it becomes an object of desire, whenever a need arises. Frequent satisfaction of the same desire forms an addiction. And so wishes stand at the transition from needs to inclinations. Therefore, although they seem insignificant, they nevertheless have great power in life. They can be defined as follows: these are inclinations of the will towards one or another object, under the guise of something pleasant, according to the imagination of the senses and imagination. Here you can now see the points of difference between the good and the bad. Both because desires turn more to the sensually pleasing, which, as we saw before, are seated in the body, and because they are aroused by feelings, this ability in some has become mired in sensuality, has become carnal, animal (see: 2 Pet. 2:12-13), representing the most obvious evidence of the humiliation and corruption of man. For others, who, instead of pleasure, have a thirst for self-harm and self-embarrassment, these desires in necessary cases are inserted into the most necessary limits, in unnecessary cases they are suppressed, in permissible, or, as they say, in innocent pleasures, even if they are sometimes relaxed, as Anthony the Great showed with the example of the onion, 173 then they are immediately strictly observed and used no longer for pleasure, but for deception, so to speak, of the body and sensuality. In general, here they are distracted from sensuality and accustom themselves to spiritual objects, for the creation of the spirit, and not for the destruction. For some, this sacrifice of the carnal for the spiritual reaches the point where, instead of the inherent pleasantness from the sensual, one feels disgust and hostility towards it, even, for example, towards sleep and nutrition. Therefore, if the lower will is found in two actions: desire and aversion, then they are contained in an inverse ratio in the good and the bad. Where the desire of one is, there is the disgust of another, and where the disgust of one is, there is the desire of another. Other differences depend on the connection between wishes and imagination. The image of an object evokes desire the more vividly, the more vividly it is imagined. Due to this, so to speak, conspiracy of wishes with the imagination, some of the properties of the latter naturally transfer to the former. And here is the difference. Thus, the former’s imagination constantly plays with images, and just as his latter are countless, varied, confused, changeable, his wishes are infinitely varied, for the most part confused, like a dream, and changeable to the point of whimsicality and whimsicality. His imagination moves by itself, according to the laws of the concatenation of images; and his wishes stretch out in a certain familiar sequence, mechanically, as if without knowledge, and they themselves cause one another, cut off one another. His imagination rules, and he lives in it or in its world, as if in some elemental composition, and is unable to free himself from its charms. He is a slave to his wishes. They crush him continuously and keep him in some kind of snare. From this he passes only from desire to pleasure and from pleasure again to desires. For the other, on the contrary, all this evil is cut off, along with putting the imagination in order. First, a struggle is established with wishes, as with thoughts, and is waged with difficulty and sorrow, but not without success. Finally, the wishes are pacified. Therefore, here you will not find their wayward confusion, nor dominion over freedom, nor mechanical movement. They are subordinate to a higher authority and are ruled by it. One can even say that they are born already at the direction of this power, but without that they are silent or lie in their hidden rivets. Here is another point of difference. Wishes stand at the transition from needs to inclinations and condition their formation. For the first one, this is inevitable. But if inclination does violence to the need, shackling it in a certain form, and distorts it or gives it an incorrect, unnatural direction, then we must conclude that the former’s needs and nature are in violent enslavement. On the contrary, in the latter, with the taming of desires, the transition to inclinations is stopped. Therefore, the latter must naturally weaken and become exhausted, and from this the need comes to a natural state. By taming desires, nature is freed from the bonds that constrain it and brought to its rank. So, briefly: the active forces or the active, desirable side of our spirit in those who remain at a distance from God and indulge in sin, deviated from the higher, spiritual world, whose laws revealed in the conscience are sometimes obscured, sometimes distorted, then took on various egoistic dispositions or turned into passions and finally surrendered to the dominion of confused, discordant, illusory desires. In a person who has turned to God, Divine grace heals this degradation. She imprints the Divine laws on the conscience, then, in accordance with them, changes and transforms the dispositions of the will; lower wishes are pacified or even suppressed, but, in any case, subordinated and given to the disposal of the person himself. 3) About the powers of feeling, or the heart While a person wants to collect everything into himself with his mind, and express himself externally by will, or to bring out the wealth of his inner acquisition in deeds, the heart remains in itself and rotates inside, without coming out. It can be seen that it lies deeper than those active forces and forms for them, as it were, a lining or foundation. However, in this situation it is not the same for them as the stage is for the persons acting on it, but itself takes a living part in their movements. They are reflected by their activity in the heart, and, conversely, the heart reflects itself in them. Therefore, it is rightly revered as the root of the human being, the focus of all its spiritual, mental and animal-physical powers. Having such a meaning in a person, it must also have an exceptional meaning in relation to everything that is outside of him, for a person is in connection with everything that exists. This connection cannot be established as in the center of his being, just as the connection in a clock is established in the relationship between the centers of all its wheels. If the center of the human being is the heart, then through it it enters into connection with everything that exists. In these two respects, it is necessary to define different states of the heart, that is: b) as a center of forces and: a) as a point of contact with everything that exists outside of us. a) About the heart as a point of contact or seat of sympathy With whom we have a living union, it is pleasant for us to be together; in that circle we are as if in our element; otherwise, we have a living sympathy for that person. If everything that is outside a person and with which he can have a living union is God and the Divine order of things, the spiritual world and the material world: then they constitute, as it were, three areas in which it should be pleasant for a person to stay, with which he should have sympathy. What is it like? Delight in God and sympathy with the Divine world are muffled and perverted in the sinner. Here are some signs of this: God embraces a person, carries him with His strength, feeds him with the bounties of His goodness, but he does not feel it. Consequently, his heart for the Divine is numb, frozen, does not accept impressions from it; if he does not accept impressions and does not taste it, then he cannot have an attraction to it, as to the unknown, he cannot discover that it is sweet for him to stay in it, that it sympathizes with him, for it is impossible for a person to say that he finds pleasure in being in this or that place, among these or other things and persons, when he has not been there and has not seen them. That there is ignorance or voiceless sympathy is obvious, for it is almost everywhere. For sinners, the Divine is an unknown land, and when asked, they cannot say whether it is good or bad, unless someone else presumably says that, without conviction and force; but whether anyone will say how good it is there, there’s no need to ask about that. This is the first one. Secondly, whoever tastes sweet will not want bitter. What is sweeter than the Divine? Therefore, shouldn’t it absorb the whole person, drowning out all other sensations? A necessary consequence of a living union with God should be dispassion for everything else. The heart is a vessel: if it is filled with everything with the Divine, where is the place for anything else? If now there is a heart with strong predilections for something not Divine, then it must be said about it that it has lost sympathy for this world, is separated from it. The heart of a sinner is always partial to something, because it is passionate. It generally loves to enjoy the sensual, the sinful; but there is always one object in it, into which it includes everything, in which it dwells day and night, which colors in many different ways in day dreams and night dreams; there is, that is, something that replaces God and, like an idol, stands in the depths of the heart, in its most intimate and secret folds, so that one can admire it. Anyone who is passionate is, essentially, an idolater. Finally, if the Divine is unknown, but on the contrary, the other, the opposite, is sweet, then, when meeting images of the Divine, a sinner must either be indifferent to them, as to foreign objects, or feel uneasy from their presence, feel as if out of place here, turn away and run away. Why does a sinner not want to participate in sacred ceremonies, be in church, hear singing, look at holy images, listen to the word of God, read spiritual books or prayers? All these are unpleasant objects for him, alienating him from himself; they are not to his heart, they are not accepted by him, they do not nourish him, but torment him. The heart has the property of elastic bodies. Just as these, when pressed from the outside, repel objects, so it tears away the Divine from itself even more and itself renounces it, when it comes into violent contact with it. Just as water spews out a stick vertically immersed in it, so it hurries to free itself from what enters it from the outside - from another world. A person who has turned to God and received Divine grace, at the same time perceives his affinity with the Divine, as born of God, abides in God and the Divine world, being, as Macarius the Great says, raptured into this age. Having tasted how many good things the Lord has, he also knew the sweetness inherent in Divine things. At the very first turn to God, he takes the decisive intention to suppress and eradicate in himself any addiction and to this he turns all his inner power and all the strength received from God. First there is a struggle, and then the light of dispassion or the earthly sky appears in it or rises upon it, as Saint Climacus says. But this is already in the last degrees of perfection. In order to cultivate such a disposition, right after conversion, he surrounds himself with objects that reflect the Divine, and prescribes activities that can nourish spiritual feelings - such as: prayer, contemplation of God, worship, reading the word of God, etc. Having separated himself with them from everything earthly and suppressing earthly feelings inside with the power of the spirit, he little by little manages to renounce everything and learns to taste the Divine and in it to anticipate eternal bliss. This is what should be kept in mind when forming the heart in the spirit of Christian life - to revive sympathy with the Divine, to make it pleasant for a person to deal with the world, so that he is in it as in his element. Otherwise, it will cause suffering, not bliss. For a sinner and in heaven, the torment is unbearable. Now about sympathy with the spiritual world, that is, with Angels and people (for what is the body in a person?). What does fear mean when the holy Angels appear, crushing, painful fear? This is more than if they were alien to us or were of a completely different nature. Where is the affinity and sympathy? And this is also true among people, as experiments show (in the Old Testament), although they are brought up in carnal principles, but according to God’s dispensation. One might say, they do not appear to sinful people because they cannot bear their presence. Another, even greater sign of alienation is disbelief in their existence. If the thought of them does not fit among thoughts, then what can we say about the heart, which is even deeper than thoughts? What someone does not believe, he rejects with hostility, it is not to his heart. Shouldn’t it therefore be the case that in sinners, at least some of the main ones, there must be enmity and hostility towards the angelic world, and not just a lack of sympathy? And in relation to people, the fact that at first glance almost everyone seems like a stranger to us, that from him to us and from us to him there is a coldness and then afterwards indifference to him remains in us all the time - doesn’t this mean a loss of sympathy? Rare exceptions to this do not contradict the general conclusion, but on the contrary, they further demonstrate the perversion of sympathy. There is instant sympathy and kinship with some persons, without preliminary relations; but, besides the fact that great mistakes are often hidden here, even to the death of a person, it is almost always the fruit of the reflection of like in like. Indifference is not universal, for some are partial; but it also breathes untruth and always leads to untruth. Beyond what antipathy and hatred mean, for which some, without any reason, others, as a result of mutual relations, cannot appear to each other; What else does this atrocity mean, why they take pleasure in the destruction of others, if not a decisive perversion of sympathy for people? Having thus separated from his fellow brothers, what does a person admire? Where do you enjoy spending time? among what can he dwell sweetly? He is there only in his element, where he sees the reflection of his face, with its iridescent glow, whether in things or persons, for example, among the works of his mind and activity, or among vain things with which he can attract the eyes of people, or among people through whom his complacency and so on can be nourished. It is clear that he has returned to himself from others and sympathizes with himself alone. In a person who has turned to God, grace also heals this illness. In self-sacrifice lies the seed of hatred for everything that bears a trace of our self; and this does not attract, but drives the self-sacrificing person away from himself. At first it is not so easy and is done more with violence, and then it turns into a natural feeling. Further, the measure of the repayment of passions is the measure of his affinity with humanity and the Angels. At first he strains to think and feel that there is no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no freedom, no male or female (cf. Col. 3:11), and finally he comes to the point that, like Macarius the Great, he would like to embrace all of humanity with a single embrace and consider the last man in the world as his kin. As for his relationship to the angelic world, he lives, as it were, in it: it happens that he often sees Angels, feeds on them, sees them in front of others, hears them singing, and all this with such admiration and joy that it is even a rule to distinguish demons who have been transformed into an Angel of Light (see: 2 Cor. 11:14) from true Angels - by the joy and peace that remains with this in the soul. From this it is clear that sympathy with the spiritual world by Divine grace is completely restored in a person who leaves sin and turns to God. Sympathy with the material world is very vividly recognized by everyone; It happens especially strongly during spring and summer, both with all nature, and more so with living, organic creatures. But even here, from the first time, doesn’t it at least show that its wrong direction is that it alone is strong among the others, whereas it should be weaker than the others. Again, what does the enslavement of living creatures mean for the benefit of our animal economy, when they are subjected to torment and torment without any pity? Or what does it mean for a person to be attached exclusively to one place and climate, when, according to his destiny, he could happily live everywhere? These are distortions of this sympathy, and the fact that he sometimes has no feelings in relation to nature testifies to his numbness. It doesn’t matter if people who please God continue to experience similar phenomena. However, almost everywhere, without difficulty, as can be seen from experience, the torment of animals stops, and precisely because of sympathy; one can see, without fear for life, a readiness to dwell in any place on earth (see: Basil the Great), the ability to feel peace in cold and heat, all the more so - the need to live and breathe nature not to please the flesh (see: Anthony the Great), to rejoice in the creations of God, to walk among them with joy and admiration. All of these are the most obvious signs of the return or healing of sympathy for the material world. With all this, again, this feature is not such that one could regret it, even if it did not exist. For the main thing in a person is the spirit, and it can absorb the flesh with all its plausible movements; Moreover, in nature itself now not everything is as it should be. b) About the heart as the center of power of the human being All the forces of the human being at all their degrees are reflected in the heart by their activity. Consequently, it must have feelings: aa) spiritual, bb) mental and: c) animal-sensual, which, however, both in the manner of their origin and in their properties differ so much that the very ability to feel must be considered in three types. aa) The heart as a friend and receptacle of spiritual feelings Such spiritual feelings are those changes in the heart that occur in it from contemplation or exposure to objects from the spiritual world. The totality of them can be called religious feelings. Since the sinful soul is separated from God and the Divine world, religious feelings in their true form cannot exist in it. There are almost none. This is best seen from a comparison of the state of these feelings in a sinner and a true Christian. Thus, the inaccurate sense of dependence on God in the first one is in different degrees of weakness until complete disappearance or even rejection: get away from us; and for another it is so strong that he feels the hand of God on himself, feels how He holds him with His strength. And faith is a feeling. The first presumably knows about the existence of objects of faith, if he has not yet become mired in unbelief; the other lives by faith and establishes her kingdom as his own existence. And further, various feelings poured into the heart by faith, from a sense of goodness, justice, power, providence, such as: fear, reverence, devotion to the will of God, hope, love and others - for this very reason they cannot either exist at all or be in force in the first one, that there is a lack of faith in him - their source. For him they are only thoughts and ideas, not sensations. The same should be said about thanksgiving, doxology, and even prayer. And for the second, all these feelings constitute, one might say, the natural element in which he lives. His whole life is made up of the transition from one of these feelings to another. It is common for someone who lives in God to be full of feelings flowing from His action on the soul. What can we say about the feelings that, in continuation of the change for the better, occur in the soul and constitute its natural composition and consequence, such as: the consciousness of one’s guilt before God, shame before Him, repentance, the heat of zeal for pleasing God, the feeling of mercy in Christ Jesus our Lord and salvation for His sake? This is the exclusive property of people who have turned to God and who work for God. Who can feel the sweetness of something that has not been accepted or tasted? But, as the most obvious feature, the following circumstances should be pointed out: 1) it cannot be said that the sinner does not have any religious feelings; but their main tone is a feeling of fading fear, a somewhat painful, restless feeling, as a result of which they do not want or are even afraid to lift their mental eyes to heaven to God and walk, as if under the cover of some impenetrable vault, in dark oblivion. In those who work for God, on the contrary, the main feeling is the feeling of sonship to God, a feeling that cleaves, sweet, delights the whole person to God and plunges him into the bosom of His infinite goodness. The Apostles repeatedly and at length instill this feeling, for they were predominantly filled with it; 2) then, the whole life of the first one passes in some hopeless fearfulness or indecisiveness in business. He trusts only in the obvious, that is, in direct methods that are delivered by his own forces and the help of others; he does not trust in God at all, but in something outside of God. And this, in addition to the fact that it means a perversion of his inner religiosity, keeps him surrounded by languid doubts and fears. The other, on the contrary, walks with confidence. He also does not refuse natural means, but their strength, according to him, depends on God, and if there is any deficiency in them, he does not linger in activity, but undoubtedly asks and receives. The Lord is near, who said: whatever you ask in faith, you will receive (Matthew 21:22). This property is especially revealed by Saint Isaac the Syrian in his Words on the Three Degrees of Reason 176. bb) The heart as a container of emotional feelings Mental feelings are those movements of the heart that occur in it as a result of changes occurring in the soul, from its inherent activity. They are divided into theoretical, practical and aesthetic, because, that is, they arise from the influence of reason and will or are the consequences of the rotation of the heart in itself, or in its area. Theoretical feelings are born from the attitude of the heart to knowable truths. Here, by the need to know, the mind is aroused to activity, and then, at the end of its labors, its fruit is deposited in the heart. The first is curiosity, the last is a sense of truth in varying degrees. This includes different degrees of conviction and different types of unconviction, such as: certainty, doubt, probability, disbelief, rejection, bewilderment, etc. Already from the first time the differences in this regard are visible, for who is tormented by unbelief or doubt or persists in rejecting the truth? A person who has fallen away from God, Who is the truth. Moreover, is it possible for him to know the truth when he is surrounded by vanities? This, even if he works on science, one can suspect - is his curiosity sincere? Does he do everything out of love for the truth, or ex officio 177 and for some extraneous motives? How little, moreover, he has a taste for truth, the ability and desire to enjoy it, is evident from his characteristic laziness, the rush of mental labor, the dominance of imagination, and frivolity in him. It is especially necessary to pay attention to the power of conviction in the truth. Conviction is a consequence of the penetration of the heart with truth. A heart that is in a lie will not allow the truth into itself. So, does a sinner have undoubted convictions in the truth? No; at least, looking at repeated experiments, how the same one easily moves from one beginning to another, one can suspect him of that. Moreover, where is the fruit of conviction, if it exists? And again, what does it mean that a person who has strayed from the good path he was on immediately loses many convictions from his heart and he cannot reproduce them in himself until he returns to his previous path? Also, the lack of zeal to stand for the truth is due to what else, if not from weakness of conviction? From such facts one can generally draw the conclusion that sinners have few or no undoubted convictions. It is completely different for those who, from the darkness of sin, turned to the light of God. The thirst for truth, one might say, is their first thirst; they have the word of God constantly in their mouths and thoughts. Who knows the sweetness of truth if not they, when they live in the truth? They do not have the offspring of unbelief and doubt, but on the contrary, the power of conviction merges with their being, which is why what they know immediately turns into action, and they are ready to give their very life for the truth, and they give it when necessary. Let's add one more note. The sense of truth - the ability with the heart, without outside help, to recognize the true order of things, their true properties - inherent in human nature - is an amazing ability, in the first it is completely suppressed, but in the second it comes to life, intensifies and finally appears in all its strength. So, by instinct alone they recognize a brother, an enemy, a friend, sons, the right person and what to do in what case. Practical feelings are those movements of the heart that are in essential connection with the activity of the will and either excite it or follow it themselves. They can be said to be of two kinds: feelings of self (egoistic), pleasant and unpleasant, and different types of disposition towards people, kind and unkind (sympathetic feelings). The first kind is: self-satisfaction or self-contempt, self-exaltation, self-abasement, arrogance, arrogance, etc. Second: indifference, from which, on the one hand, - respect, competition, joy, condolences, regret, gratitude, friendship, etc., on the other - envy, gloating, revenge, hatred, enmity, contempt, condemnation, etc. However, any permanent mood of the spirit leaves a deep imprint on the soul, which is why it responds in the heart with a feeling of approval if the mood is good, disapproval if it is bad. Now, from the first time, it is already clear what these feelings should be like among good Christians and among unkind sinners. The first should have all good feelings from the very beginning of their path, if not in all perfection, then in seed. Through work and feat, they free good feelings from the bonds of egoism, purify and plant them in the heart. The Apostle says to them: put on the womb of generosity, kindness, mercy, meekness (cf. Col. 3:12) and so on. The clothing of the spirit is the feeling that overshadows it. As for egoistic feelings, it cannot be said that they did not arise, especially at first; but they are not given strength, opposition to them is established, means are taken to expel them, and, indeed, they are expelled from the soul every time they arise. Deeds, labors, prayers finally suppress them and in their place are imprinted by feelings opposite to them. The whole point is to instill good feelings in the heart, for what is in the heart is before God. The careless sinner has no such division. As he devoted his life to the ordinary course, his feelings, both good and evil, develop and take root in his heart together, without his knowledge, and sometimes make up a very strange mixture. They are torn out of his heart on occasion by themselves, without rank or order. Since he has no jealousy about the purity of heartfelt feelings, he does not strain to give precedence to good feelings, but leaves them to themselves and for the most part distorts them with addictions and passions. Judging by this, their moral value is insignificant. On the contrary, his egoistic feelings lie deep in his heart and there they make a permanent home for themselves. One can say that there is not a moment in which he does not have complacency in his soul, or, if he has no food, annoyance with himself, etc. It is an accident if they are ever drowned out in the heart, which, however, mostly happens from a surge of natural sympathetic feelings towards family and friends. Between practical feelings there is also a special ability, on the one hand, to feel the sweetness of obvious goodness, on the other hand, to recognize the innermost kindness with the heart, without external aids. Both, since they mean perfection of the spirit, cannot exist in their purity in a sinful heart, but perhaps only in weak shades or light accompaniments of the law. In a good Christian this ability is in full force. Who better than he can perceive the beauty of virtue? He often recognizes the kindness and badness of the actions and hearts of others by direct spiritual touch. Aesthetic feelings are those movements of the heart that occur in it from the action of a special kind of objects on it, called graceful or beautiful. Here the heart enjoys an object only because it is good in itself, likes and delights without any special relationship to our personal interests. The force underlying these feelings is called taste. The variety of feelings in it depends on the properties of objects, but it is very difficult to define them and distinguish one from another; Therefore, they receive their names from objects and are the essence of feelings of grace, loftiness, and so on. Again, there are nuances in the sense of beauty of a painting, statue, etc. In general, graceful is the successful and striking expression in sensual form of something spiritual, that is, thoughts, feelings, virtues, passions. It is obvious that the external is of little importance here and the main thing is the internal, what is expressed. According to the difference in this internal content, tastes should also be distinguished. There are two types of them: one is true, loving the proper content of the elegant, the other is false and perverted, loving its improper content. Now the question is: what is the proper and what is not the proper content of the graceful? What is the idea or feeling of grace? It is either a memory of a lost paradise, or a premonition of the future Kingdom of Heaven. If elegant objects are built under the guidance of this feeling, then here is the source of content for them! Depict heavenly, holy, heavenly. Transform this deplorable land into the threshold of heaven with your art. If a person is surrounded everywhere by earthly objects, for the sake of which he can forget about heaven - his fatherland; then surround him with such artificial works that would remind him of him, just as others, living in a foreign country, surround themselves with images of their city, home, parents and other things. The world, God’s creation, is filled with reflections of Divine properties, but there they are in such breadth and immensity: collect them in a small volume and present them to the intelligent gaze of a weak person in a picture or music. Again, what should a person form in his soul in this life? Holy and heavenly dispositions. Give him the external face of these dispositions to help him, so that he can introduce them into himself all the more successfully. From all this it is clear that the main content of the elegant should be objects of the spiritual world. It goes without saying that the external form must correspond to them. If passions are now depicted, and mainly carnal ones, they are depicted in their characteristic shamelessness and alluring forms, or if good objects are also depicted, but in forms unworthy of them: in this case, the graceful is perverted. Now it is easy to judge true and false taste: true taste enjoys objects that express the spiritual, moral, Divine world; perverted taste loves to enjoy objects that depict passions or are generally shaded by passion and feed it. How, now, the taste of a sinner must be perverted, is evident from the mood of his soul, which in him is filled with passions and given over to lusts. He will not find beauty in the spiritual. Not without pleasure, he sometimes looks at spiritual pictures, but only if they are shaded according to his spirit, just as he is ready to listen to church singing, but only if it contains passionate prayers. He is bored everywhere where he does not meet objects of the same spirit as him. And on the contrary, how intact is the taste of one who lives according to the spirit of Christ! Both within himself and without, he does not like to see even the shadow of passions, he pursues them and abhors them. On the other hand, just as he strains inside to feel holy, so on the outside he loves to look only at holy objects and, as soon as he encounters them, he almost knows how to appreciate all their dignity and all their perfection. Thus, sin perverts both elegant objects and taste itself; on the contrary, Christianity restores the graceful and heals taste. Just as, in knowledge, a bad direction of the intellect perverts the mind, a bad direction of the will distorts the conscience, so here a bad direction of taste perverts spiritual feelings. cv) About the lower, sensual-animal feelings Feelings at the lowest level include rapid disturbances or affections of the heart (affectus 178), extinguishing the spontaneous activity of the mind and will and accompanied by special changes in the body. For the most part, these disturbances, occurring in the lower part, are the consequences of an unexpected disturbance of egoistic love of life, under circumstances favorable or unfavorable to it. Therefore, sometimes they are all attributed to the animal-sensual part of man. They are divided according to their destructive actions on the higher powers of man. So, some extinguish the clarity of consciousness, such as: surprise, amazement, fascination with attention, fear; others undermine the will, such as: fear, anger, zeal; still others, finally, torment the very heart, which sometimes rejoices and is merry, sometimes bored, grieves, annoyed and envious, sometimes hopes and despairs, sometimes is ashamed and repents, or even is in vain restless with suspiciousness. You can judge by their names alone what kind of villains they are for people; the more they should be recognized as such, judging by their actions. They are elevated to the account of the actual human properties - consciousness and initiative, and as a result they almost always have an unnatural state of the body. These are painful shocks to the entire human being. This alone should suggest that they have a good place only in a sinner. Diseases should be taken to where the source of diseases is. And indeed, while in a sinner the highest spiritual feelings are drowned out and the spiritual ones are perverted, the lower ones rage in him in all their strength. This is facilitated by the loss of power over oneself, surrendering oneself to the general pull of circumstances, lack of control over one’s outer or inner self, which constitute a constant characteristic of a sinful person. In addition, the upset state of mind and will, already weak, easily exposes them to the power of these unexpected defeats and unrest. Finally, the dominion of a wild imagination, disturbing attention, disturbing desires, easily excites the heart. The sinner is inevitably in constant anxiety. There is no power in him that would protect him from their evil influence. Now fear, now joy, now melancholy, now shame, now grief, now envy or something else that continuously troubles and wounds his soul. The life of a sinner is a path along thorny thorns, despite the outer bright environment. It is in vain that they come up with some mechanical means against passions or talk about a safe middle. There is no salvation from them without healing the entire human spirit, for they are evidence and consequences of the disorder of our being. Return integrity to the being, and evil passions will cease. In true Christianity this wholeness returns through the action of God’s grace, which, having come, extinguishes passions. A Christian who follows his path as he should finally achieves sweet peace and undisturbed, firm peace, which is not shaken by the storm of passions. There is sadness here too, but not that kind; there is also joy, but of a different kind; there is anger, and fear, and shame, and other movements similar in name to passions, but their essence is completely different, their source is different; they even come from another force, for they are reflected in the heart from the spirit, and not from the animal part. It is in vain that it is said this way: one should not eradicate passions, but should only moderate them. This is the same as saying: there is no need to hit the heart with a poisonous arrow through and through, but only on the surface. No: a zealous lover of moral purity, with the help of God's grace, fights against these incarnations of evil, suppresses them and finally manages to completely extinguish them. This is evidenced by the rules of those who labored and the depiction of the state of the perfect, which can be found among the saints. This is how it should be, for in self-sacrifice the self is extinguished and the intention is to extinguish animality. Consequently, the supports of passions are undermined at the very beginning. How can the passions themselves endure? They say: if so, then your soul will remain cold lifelessness, a wild desert. So - in the soul of some Stoic, but not a blessed Christian. To such people one can say: just drown out the passions in the Christian way, and you will find out for yourself what will happen; but know that it will not be a desert. Thus, in the sensory powers, a true Christian and a sinner are completely opposite. He has the highest feelings in full force; spiritual feelings serve as a continuation of them or an application to real life; the lower ones are repaid. In the latter, on the contrary, the latter are in force, the higher ones are extinguished, the middle ones are perverted. The same, therefore, is true in all the forces of our inner world. Where one has a head, another has legs. One is all in God and lives in spirit, with the mortification of the lower part and the subordination of the middle; the other is outside of God, in the sensory-animal world, lives in fantasy, is troubled by desires, overwhelmed by passions, with the extinguishing of the spirit and the degradation of mental activity. The sharpest, most obvious and most visible difference between a true Christian and a person given over to sin is expressed in how they act with their body. Take the life of any saint, and you will find that the beginning of his appeal to God or the first actions of pleasing God are signified by torment, exhaustion and exhaustion of the flesh. A person living in sin extensively nourishes and warms his flesh and cannot take the courage to deny it anything or to embitter it in any way. This is the general attitude towards the body of both. In the full picture it is like this. The body is the closest instrument of the soul and the only way to discover it outside in the real world. This is its original purpose. Therefore, by its very structure it is completely adapted to the forces of the soul. With all this, however, the body is still something external to the soul, something that it must separate from itself and, considering it its own, not merge with itself. When man fell, the soul weakened, lost power over itself, fell into the flesh and merged with it, merged to the point that it seemed to become conscious of itself only in the flesh and through the flesh. When such a merging of consciousness with the flesh occurred, the inevitable consequence of this was the consciousness of one’s own and all the needs of the body, or all the instinctual drives that arise in animal life, and at the same time, oblivion of the needs of the spirit, for the flesh and carnal things are more tangible. As soon as the needs of the body were considered one’s own, they had to be satisfied with care, without worrying about the spirit. Frequent satisfaction gave rise to carnal inclination and extinguished the corresponding perfection of the spirit. Since we have as many instinctual drives as there are functions in the body, and these latter can be counted mainly as five, namely: functions of the senses, movement, words, nutrition and sexual organs; then the very inclinations that are formed in the soul from the unreasonable satisfaction of their demands can be ranked according to the latter. So: – sense organs provide the instinct or need to use them. Satisfaction of this need gives rise to the following inclinations: thirst for impressions, ogling, pleasure of the senses, absent-mindedness. These inclinations, having become stronger, destroy attention and self-collection in the spirit; – from the organs of movement the need for movement develops, and from it then – an inclination towards independent activity, a desire for external freedom, self-will, and riotousness. They take away freedom from the spirit; - the organs of speech have a need to be set in motion or irritated. Hence - talkativeness, laughter, idle talk, jokes. They impose silence on the inner word of the spirit - prayer; - from the instinct of nutrition develop voluptuousness, bliss, gluttony, laziness, idleness. This takes away all movement of spiritual activity; – as a result of undue satisfaction of sexual functions, the desire to please, panache, red tape and the very passions of dishonor occur. They take away the purity and dispassion characteristic of the spirit. All this will immediately be found and recognized by every impartial observer of himself, especially by a person who has turned his attention to himself under the influence of God’s grace. He clearly sees and feels that he is surrounded, as if by bonds, by carnal passions and inclinations, which do not give freedom to his spirit to act in accordance with its nature, and penetrating closer, we find that they are from the flesh, and precisely from the unreasonable satisfaction of its needs. Having decided to correct himself in everything and, therefore, to restore the freedom characteristic of the spirit, he would like to limit these needs to a prudent measure of their satisfaction, for example, moderate food, sleep, and so on; but the formed inclinations have become so closely related or have come into such a sensitive connection with their organs that the slight movement of these organs brings into force the inclination and harms the spirit; for example, from a slight movement of feelings - plundering of thoughts and loss of self-collection, from eating enough food - coldness of spirit and lethargy, and so on. Therefore, from the first time, he considers it a law for himself to bind the organs of the body, so that the inclinations formed through them are not excited by them, and the spirit has the freedom to restore its inherent perfections. This is how bonds are made: - on the senses through solitude, in order to establish and maintain attention and self-collection, in which the strength of the spirit; – to move – through regular work and obedience in order to restore freedom in the spirit; - on the organs of the word - through silence, in order to resurrect the inner word, or the elevation of the mind to God - in prayer; - on the nutritional organs - by fasting, not sleeping, lying down for long periods of time, in order to maintain liveliness in the spirit; – on the genital organs – by chastity and celibacy, in order to establish dispassion in oneself. This is the reason why the saints of God, without exception, lived a cruel life! Without this, it is impossible to purify the spirit, it is impossible to restore it and reveal it in all its inherent power. This is a necessary path to his freedom. Only as the flesh becomes exhausted is it released from it. Therefore, whoever flatters himself with the hope of achieving perfection in the spirit without harsh treatment of the body is like someone who would like to carry water with a sieve, or catch the wind with his hands, or write words on water. This is vain and unreasonable labor, in which what one acquires one minute is squandered the next. Among the saints of God, the body truly became an instrument for higher purposes. They rubbed away the numb spirit through body friction. It is remarkable in this regard that they considered the body, or animal life, as if an outsider, which is why, going to sleep, they said: go away... this means that their body was separated from their personality and the co-dissolution of consciousness with it ceased. How obvious now is the need for a narrow, sorrowful and cross path to salvation! We meet it at all levels of our lives. The body must be constrained by bodily exploits: otherwise, all labors are useless. The activity of imagination, desires and passions that follows inside, this restless, disorderly activity, must be suppressed by inner intense vigilance. The activity of spiritual forces that stands above this must be corrected by spiritual labors: reading and reasoning, good deeds and worship. Finally, the spirit must be restored or educated through contemplation of God, prayer, and the participation of the Sacraments. These are all hard, sweaty activities! Consequently, the integral character of a true Christian life is labor, asceticism, sweaty and intense work. This is a review of the beginnings of Christian life and activity. Now it is obvious that the natural principles of moral life, weakened and weakened in the fall, are restored by Divine grace in the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this gracious action, man is divided into himself, or light is separated from darkness in man. As time goes on, the darkness weakens, the light grows and rises, and as it intensifies, it drives away the darkness, which can shrink the area into a barely noticeable volume. A person comes to the measure of the age of fulfillment of Christ (Eph. 4:13). Therefore I say and obey about the Lord, who is not for you to walk, just as other tongues walk in the vanity of their minds - darkened in meaning, alienated from the life of God, for the ignorance that exists in them, for the petrification of their hearts. Those who, in despair, have given themselves over to the practice of doing all kinds of uncleanness in covetousness. But this is not how you come to know Christ: if you have heard Him, and have learned of Him, as is the truth about Jesus: after your first life, put aside for you the old man, which is corrupting in the lusts of deceitful desires: be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and excellence of the truth (cf. Eph. 4, 17–24 ). Saint Tikhon, Bishop of Voronezh, Wonderworker of Zadonsk (1783) - Russian theologian and church writer. - Ed. This “Admonition” was nailed to churches throughout the diocese (see: St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. Works. St. Petersburg, 1825. T. 1. pp. 103–105). Scrupulosa - lat. Scrupulosus – extremely thorough, precise to the smallest detail. – Ed. Overdue – here: to be. – Ed. To turn back - here: to turn back, to be distracted. - Ed. Boil - here: melt, melt. - Ed. This article is attached at the end: see Appendix A. I will take it out - always, incessantly. - Ed. Present – ​​present, upcoming. – Ed. Saint John Chrysostom (407) – Father of the Church. – Ed. See: Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. Flesh and spirit, or a collection of some moral teachings from the Holy Scripture and its interpreter, Saint Chrysostom, with reasoning in favor of the spiritual // Works. T. 2. P. 171. Brief teachings on the most important saving tenets of faith. February 6. About the fruits of prayer. Saint Macarius. Venerable Macarius the Great, Egyptian (390–391) – teacher of the Church. – Ed. See: Brief teachings... February 4. About perfect prayer and its fruits. Saint Macarius; November 26. How to prepare yourself for a virtuous life. Saint Macarius. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 6, about love, 30. See: Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 7, about freedom of mind, 8. See: Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Conversation 10,1,4. Title – here: sign, image, property. – Ed. To worry – to worry, to rush around. – Ed. The main thing of the law is the most important thing in the law. – Ed. Strain – strain. – Ed. Transform – pervert, destroy. – Ed. Quality – here: bring quality, manifest, subordinate. – Ed. Glazing – here: idle curiosity. – Ed. Inde – here: anywhere. – Ed. Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite (96) – Father of the Church. – Ed. See end of Appendix A). Buddy - storage. - Ed. Martyr Justin the Philosopher (166) – teacher of the Church. – Ed. Stoics are adherents of Stoicism (IV BC – II AD) - a philosophical movement of the era of Antiquity.-Ed. Kokosh is a hen, a hen. – Ed. The wave is here: order, arrangement, sign. – Ed. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. About true Christianity //Works. T. 4. P. 290. Blessed Diadochos of Photiki (c. 474) - Byzantine theologian. - Ed. See: Blessed Diadochos of Photiki. Fasting words. 89//Slavic Philokalia. Part 4. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Conversation 40, 1. Venerable Isaac the Syrian (VI) – teacher of the Church. – Ed. Venerable Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic words. 83. See: Venerable Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic words. 26–28. Venerable John Climacus (649) - Teacher of the Church. – Ed. Saint Theodore of Edessa (IX) – teacher of the Church. – Ed. (see: St. Theodore of Edessa. One hundred very soulful chapters // Christian reading. 1825. Part 17. pp. 123–177; A speculative word // Slavic Philokalia. Part 4). Expromtu – lat. expromptus – ready; here: impromptu, without preparation. – Ed. Sincere – close, close, related. – Ed. To take refuge - here: to take shelter, to abide. - Ed. Painful – here: zealous, full of love. – Ed. Saint Theophan the Recluse. Word on the consecration of the church in the Sukhotinsky Mother of God Monastery for women // Christian Reading. 1859. October. pp. 305–311. See: Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East. Part 3, question 3. Sacrificed - sacrificed Himself. - Ed. Impatient – ​​here: impatiently. – Ed. Quietists (Molinists) are adherents of a special movement in the Catholic Church (c. XVII - c. XVIII). Quakers are adherents of one of the movements in Protestantism. – Ed. 3dati – here: act, create, build. – Ed. See: Venerable John Letvichnik. Ladder. 26, 1. See: Venerable John Letvichnik. Ladder. 26, 16. Seyatva is the time of sowing. – Ed. See: Venerable John Letvichnik. Ladder. 26, 17. See: Venerable John Letvichnik. Ladder. 26, 18. See: Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Conversation 8, 4. St. Ephraim the Syrian (373–379) – teacher of the Church.– Ed. Venerable John Climacus. Ladder. 29, 8. See: Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. About true Christianity//Works. T. 9. pp. 119–135 Complacent - here: indulgent, conniving, indulgent. - Ed. See: Orthodox Confession... Part 3, issue. 16. Contempt – contempt, disdain, disobedience. – Ed. Pick up – here: pick up, choose, find. – Ed. Negligence – here: neglect. – Ed. 147 See: Philotheus of Sinai. Forty chapters about sobriety // Christian reading. 1827. Part 27. pp. 163–165 Philotheus of Sinai (IX-X) – Byzantine theologian. – Ed. To creep in – here: to come, to creep in. – Ed. Attack – attack. – Ed. Rejected – rejected, rejected. – Ed. See: Orthodox Confession... Part 3, issue. 18–42. Saint John Chrysostom. Discourses on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. 7, 7. The temple is a pagan altar. – Ed. See: Orthodox Confession... Part 3, issue. 18–40. Seat – here: base. – Ed. See: Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. About true Christianity//Works. T. 5. pp. 40–85. This is a controversial subject, although it is all about words. For those who do not want to distinguish between spirit and soul, we can suggest that by the word: spirit they understand the highest side of our incorporeal side, and by the word: soul they mean its lower actions and directions. Anthony the Great (see: St. Anthony the Great. Exhortations. 166//Slavic Philokalia. Part 1 [Reverend Anthony the Great (356) – founder of desert living. – Ed.]) says that there are creatures gifted only with life (plants), there are others gifted with life and soul (animals), and there are also gifted with life and soul and mind. This is a man. What is meant here by the word: mind, we express by the word: spirit. Isaac the Syrian also posits three parts, and many of the Holy Fathers allowed spirit, soul and body... Three parts are mentioned in the word of God: your spirit and soul are all perfect, and your body is blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf.: 1 Thess. 5:23). In another place, the spirit and soul in us are sharply distinguished when it is said that the word of God, living and active, passes to the division of soul and spirit (cf. Heb. 4:12). Philotheus of Sinai. Forty chapters about sobriety. pp. 132–133. Not knowing is unknown, unknown. – Ed. Quality – manifesting, ruling. – Ed. Saint Basil the Great (379) – Father of the Church. – Ed. Saint Basil the Great. Conversation about the fact that God is not the author of evil // Christian reading. 1824. Part 13. pp. 261–262, 264. See: Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Message. Saint John Chrysostom. Discourses on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. 13, 3. Saint Gregory the Theologian (389) – Father of the Church. – Ed. See: Saint Gregory the Theologian. Word 38//Creations. M., 1844. Part 3. P. 243; also: It's him. Word 17//Creations. Part 2. P. 96. Saint Theodore of Edessa. Speculative word // Christian reading. 1823. Part 17. P. 190. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Conversation 46, 6, 3. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Message. See: Saint Demetrius of Rostov. Spiritual healing for confusion of thoughts, briefly collected from various books of the Fathers // Works. M., 1827. pp. 130–131 (St. Demetrius of Rostov (1709) - Russian theologian and church writer - Ed.). Saint John Chrysostom. Conversation on the words: and we saw His glory... (John 1:14)//Christian reading. 1835. Part 2. P. 33. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Conversation 46, 5. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. About true Christianity//Works. T. 9. P. 160. See: Brief teachings... November 6. As if virtue is innate to a person. Margaret. Saint Basil the Great. Moral rules // Christian reading. 1823. Part 10. P. 5. See: Blessed Diadochos of Photiki. Ascetic word//Christian reading. 1827. Part 28. P. 70. See: Message of the Patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Church on the Orthodox Faith. Member 14. To arise – here: to become free. – Ed. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. About true Christianity//Works. T. 7. P. 12, 14–15, 18–19. Venerable John of Damascus (c. 780) – Father of the Church. – Ed. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. About true Christianity//Works. T. 7. pp. 26–27. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. About true Christianity//Works. T. 7. pp. 38–39. See: Saint John Chrysostom. Discourses on the Epistle to the Romans. 11, 1. Everything that is learned here through Holy Baptism also works in the Sacrament of Repentance on those who come to the Lord from sins after Baptism. The mode of action of grace that precedes and abides in a person, with their difference, the latter’s attitude to arbitrariness and sin that tempts a person, is depicted in detail by the blessed Diadochos, Bishop of Photiki (see: Blessed Diadochos of Photiki. Ascetic word. pp. 69–91). The same in the “Brief teachings on the most important saving dogmas of the faith” (see: Brief teachings... June 19. The grace of the Holy Spirit produces in us perfect advancement in virtues. St. Macarius; June 20. About the actions of grace. St. Macarius; June 21. How the Holy Spirit acts in the soul of a person praying. St. Macarius; June 22. For salvation we need the assistance of Saint Macarius; June 23. From the teachings of the Holy Spirit. But nowhere is this subject more fully revealed than in the Conversations and Words of Macarius the Great. Plato (428/427–348/347 BC) – ancient Greek philosopher. – Ed. Epicurus (341–270 BC) – ancient Greek philosopher. – Ed. Origen (253/254) – Christian theologian and philosopher. – Ed. Complacent - indulgent. - Ed. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 5, on the elevation of the mind, 18. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 6, about love, 5. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 7, on freedom of mind, 27. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 7, on freedom of mind, 29. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 7, on freedom of mind, 12. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 5, on the elevation of the mind, 13. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 6, about love, 17. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 6, about love, 23. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 7, on freedom of mind, 21. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 7, on freedom of mind, 23. Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 6, about love, 13. See: Blessed Jerome. A study useful to every Christian // Christian reading. 1821. Part 2. pp. 123–131 (Blessed Jerome of Stridon (420) – teacher of the Church. – Ed.). Guidance – reasoning. – Ed. Apodictic – convincing, demonstrative. – Ed. Scholastics are adherents of Western medieval theology and teaching. – Ed. Sophists are adherents of sophistry (V-IV BC) - a philosophical movement of the era of Antiquity. – Ed. 3stand – here: protect. – Ed. St. Maximus the Confessor (602) – teacher of the Church. – Ed. Venerable Maximus the Confessor. About theology and the incarnation of the Son of God // Christian reading. 1835. Part 1. P. 15. Blessed Augustine of Hippo (430) – teacher of the Church. – Ed. Image – here: image, imagination. – Ed. To be in a state of confusion - to become confused. - Ed. Search - here: undermining, accusation, exposure.-Ed. 3 rivet – shutter, conclusion. – Ed. Pharisees, Sadducees - adherents of socio-religious movements in Judea (II BC - II AD). - Ed. Taking growth means engaging in usury.-Ed. Aristotle (384–322 BC) – ancient Greek philosopher. – Ed. See: Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Word 1, about guarding the heart, 1. Saint Theodore of Edessa. The chapters are detailed. 91–92//Slavic Philokalia. Part 4. Venerable Maximus the Confessor. About love. See: Saint Theodore of Edessa. The chapters are detailed. 61–62. See: St. Gregory of Sinaite. The chapters are very useful. 91//Slavic Philokalia. Part 1. (Reverend Gregory of Sinai (XIV) - Byzantine theologian. - Ed.). Interesan is a selfish person. – Ed. Anthropomorphism – here: endowing natural phenomena and objects with human properties. – Ed. Saint Theodore of Edessa. One hundred very soulful chapters. pp. 127–128, 128–152. Venerable Neil the Faster, Sinai (V) – teacher of the Church. – Ed. See: Rev. Neil the Faster. About various evil thoughts//Christian reading. 1827. Part 27. pp. 43–48, 77–80. See: Orthodox Confession... Part 3, issue. 23 ff. See: Venerable John Climacus. Ladder. 8; 13; 15; 22 and others. See: St. Gregory of Sinaite. Very useful chapters on various spiritual subjects // Christian reading. 1824. Part 16. pp. 143–144. Peter Damascene. Expression of passions // Slavic Philokalia. Part 3 (Peter of Damascus (XII) - Byzantine theologian - Ed.). Look around - here: look back, see yourself from the outside. - Ed. Saint Gregory the Theologian. Word 27//Creations. Part 3. P. 8. We are talking about hesychasm - an ethical ascetic and mystical teaching in Byzantium (IV-XIV). - Ed. See: Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 1, about guarding the heart, 12–13; Homily 7, on freedom of mind, 18. See: Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Homily 5, on the elevation of the mind, 3, 14. See: Ancient Patericon, set out in chapters. 10, 3. Charm – here: charm, power. – Ed. Inuds - in another place. - Ed. Ex officio - lat. ex officio – ex officio, ex officio – Ed. Affectus - lat. affectus – emotional excitement, passion. – Ed. Istnivatisya – here: to be crushed into dust. – Ed. You might be interested in: