БОРЬБА С ГРЕХОМ

Conquer, man, your passions, so that you may earn the crown of righteousness. The struggle with sin and passions is inevitable in this life. If you give in to victory over yourself to the devil, the flesh or the world without a fight, you are to blame, you are your own enemy, you will not see the Kingdom of Heaven if you do not try to win. And in order to defeat your enemies, you need to practice fighting and be smart in finding the means to win. Nothing comes for free (2). It's a wonderful thing. The same person who reveres the Creator and sees His creation in a beautiful, delightful form and is full of surprise, love and reverence for Him, is also capable of low, unclean, sinful, evil thoughts and carnal feelings and can imagine in his mind the most unclean bestial lusts and pleasures and become deeply defiled in his thoughts and feelings. What a contradiction you are! What a yearning for sin is in you! How sin, in the form of all uncleanness, strives to realize itself in practice and defile you. What a spiritual feat is constantly ahead for you - to fight the impurity within you and win back your nobility of spirit and purity of soul and body! Otherwise, you will corrupt and desecrate your nature - soul and body. Truly, “The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and those who use force take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). “To him who overcomes I will give to sit with Me on My throne, just as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Rev. 3:21). A constant war against sin is necessary as long as we are on earth; You cannot sit idly by, otherwise sin will overcome and conquer and subject you to eternal captivity, shame and torment (4). The Kingdom of Heaven, that is, holiness, purity, righteousness, abstinence, prayer, chastity, love for God and neighbor, is taken by force (Matthew 11:12), that is, by the power of God’s gracious help and their own zeal, and those who use force delight it. The flesh resists the spirit, that is, all virtue, so that we do not do what we want, for the sake of God and the salvation of the soul and for the good of our neighbors. What is required is human resistance to all evil, all passion of the flesh and spirit, all lust and learning, the assimilation of all virtue (4). You fell into the devil's captivity through inattention, ingratitude, and pride: try to free yourself from this captivity with the help of the all-powerful Warrior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who defeated our common enemy and adversary; That is why all Divine powers have been given to you. Look at the example of the struggle of the apostles, saints, martyrs and all the saints and imitate them, and they always help those who call on them with faith (4). We need an urgent, continuous struggle with all the passions that live and are rooted in us. Tell me, what passion did you overcome and kill? Aren't they all still alive in you and don't they hurt you and confuse you? Rise up and overcome all passions, these mental Amaliki 13 living in you and getting along with you. “What fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? What does light have in common with darkness? What agreement is there between Christ and Belial? 14 (2 Cor. 6:14, 15) (4). The Lord wants you to grow spiritually and reach maturity, like an ear of grain, or to prosper and be fragrant before God with every spiritual virtue, like the beautiful flower of the fields and valleys. This is your purpose, man. But at the same time, the Lord wants you to avoid every stench of sin through repentance and tears, abstinence and constant vigilance over yourself, through the struggle with thoughts and sinful inclinations and passions, for “the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it away” (Matthew 11:12) (4). Real life is a spiritual school, a struggle, a feat, a battle with sin or the spirits of wickedness in high places, fighting us for evil. Everyone needs to learn to overcome sin within themselves with the help of God, for without God all the Divine powers for life and piety are given to the threshold and from God; you just need to not be lazy to use them. Do you want to learn how to delight the Kingdom of Heaven with power? Learn from the saints how they labored, how they exerted every effort on themselves, what selflessness they had, what dispassion for wealth, for worldly honor and glory, for carnal pleasures; what abstinence they had, what zeal for God; what constant prayer; what work, what virtues! And how faithfully they reached the Kingdom of God. None of them were put to shame, all received incorruptible life and eternal glory, eternal bliss and are beyond any fear of losing the acquired Kingdom of Heaven. Imitate them too, each according to his own strength, read, listen to the Word of God, listen, understand, strive tirelessly for the goal of your life - and you will receive eternal bliss. After all, you worked one way or another for earthly prosperity; work especially to obtain eternal life: “Seek... first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things, all earthly blessings, will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33) (4). Oh, how many misfortunes, many difficulties, how difficult earthly life is! From morning to evening, every day we must wage a difficult battle against the passions of the flesh, warring against the soul, against the principalities, rulers and rulers of the darkness of this world, the spirits of wickedness in high places (see Eph. 6:12), whose wickedness and deceit are immeasurably vicious, infernally skillful, and never slumbering! Oh, our Sweetest Savior, calling all those who labor and are burdened to Himself for peace! Behold, You see: our heart and our womb are exhausted from daily struggle and sorrow, we are exhausted, weakened, we walk like shadows. Our evil enemies constantly gain our souls and are trying by all means to drag us into the abyss of despair. Stretch, O Lord, Your high arm and deliver us from the machinations of the ancient dragon, the murderer. “If anyone wants to come after Me,” You said, “let him deny himself, take up his cross every day, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). But who is the daily culprit of our cross, our sorrows and hardships? The carnal, our old man and the devil with his continuous wiles (6). Looking to the Lord when struggling with any passion or after committing any sin and repentance pacifies our restless heart and wonderfully brightens our face. You have given joy to my heart; The light of Your countenance, O Lord, has been imprinted upon us (Ps. 4:7, 8) (6). Do not be afraid of the struggle and do not run away from it: where there is no struggle, there is no virtue; where there is no temptation of fidelity and love, it is unknown whether there is fidelity and love for the Lord. Our faith, hope and love are known in adversity, that is, in difficult and difficult circumstances, external or internal: in illness, in sorrow, in deprivation (7). Now we stand and fall (in faith and virtue), but we hope for such a time and such a state in which we will no longer be able to fall, we will come to a state of complete safety from falling, like the Angels, who are now adamant to evil, and will forever be established in holiness. Fight sin and hope that the time of complete victory over sin and over death, its offspring, will finally come. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26) (7). It takes thousands of experiences of struggle with various vicious inclinations of one’s heart in order to finally emerge victorious from this struggle with the help of God’s grace, and it is this stubborn and sorrowful internal war that makes the words of the Apostle quite understandable to us, “that through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Exactly, many sorrows! (8) If we always diligently fight against sin, then, despite all the suffering and sorrow, we will have peace in our souls and joy in the Holy Spirit and will be true slaves and warriors of Christ, but if we do not fight sin, fight passions and eradicate them, not wanting to endure sorrows and wanting to follow the treaded path of the world, then sin will take us captive and will be in us the source of constant destructive warfare with ourselves and with others us as people, as both Scripture and experience testify: “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:34) (8). Who does not see the blindness, recklessness, shame, madness, absurdity, and destruction of sin? And if he is like that, then why do we continue to sin? Why do we do lawlessness? Our duty and direct benefit is to fight sin in every possible way, diligently calling on God’s help, without which it is unthinkable to overcome any sin, for it is said: “without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Our duty is to know the usual cunning, charm, falsehood of sin, the obvious destruction that we have experienced over ourselves and over countless people; on the other hand, truth, beauty, vitality, freedom, glory, peace, joy, the triumph of a virtuous soul, health and strength of a body that does not succumb to sin, success in all everyday affairs of a virtuous person, clarity of understanding of everyone and everything around him; For a virtuous person it is always day, just as for a sinner all life is a dark night, for passions blind a person (10). Fight sin constantly with the help of God: the Lord, our Helper and our Intercessor, is always closer to us than sin, than the devil, although this one is always close because of our slavery to him, because of his nesting in the depths of our souls... But he must certainly be driven out of his inner nests and beat the thief, swindler, shamer, murderer mercilessly, in whatever form he appears to violate us. So mercilessly beat your pride, vanity, pride, greed, selfishness, stinginess, hard-heartedness, anger, irritation, disobedience, superstition, despondency, murmuring and other sins (10). Remember often what our Lord has done and is doing for our salvation, what strength he has given and continues to give to those who fight against sin, how gloriously he crowns the conquerors of sin; Under such an all-powerful Leader, should we doze, be lazy and fall? And if you fall due to weakness, sinful skill or inexperience, immediately get up and fight again, become wise in spiritual warfare and win; You can’t always be a slave to destructive sin—you have to go free, to the freedom of God (10). Amalek, or Amalekites, are a people who put up strong resistance to the Jews when they entered their land of Israel. In a figurative sense - rebellious, enemies. Belial is the biblical name for a dark force that personifies evil. You might be interested in: