БЛАГА ЗЕМНЫЕ И НЕБЕСНЫЕ

What does God want from man if He does not need our sacrifices, because they consist of materials taken from His own treasury? Here's what: thank God for His countless gifts to you, glorify Him for His goodness. Offer a sacrifice of praise to God. Confess that all your blessings are His gifts, and pray to Him so that He does not deprive you of them and go ahead: fulfill your vows before the Almighty. And when He visits you with the deprivation of some good and you are in sorrow, then call on Him - and He will deliver you, and you glorify Him again: “and call on Me in the day of your sorrow, and I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me” (Ps. 49:14, 15) (2). It is impossible to give more than what God has given you, for He gave you Himself, or His Flesh and Blood, united with His Divinity, He made you His son (see Rom. 8:16), when you were a child of wrath (see Eph. 2:3) and curse; He gave you everything you needed from external goods, even excess, and He did not give you more from external goods because they would be harmful to you, to your soul and your body. If now you are already receiving severe harm from these external blessings, clinging to them and suffering misfortunes and wounds from addiction, falling away from love for God and neighbor and from striving for things above and falling into things below, then what would happen if you had even more of these blessings? You would be mired in sensuality (6). From the all-good and generously gifted God, through the prayer of faith, one can receive all spiritual and necessary material benefits, if only the desire for these benefits is sincere and the prayer is fervent. And what prayers the Church puts into our mouths! Such that they can conveniently incline the Lord for every kind of mercy towards us, for every good gift. The enemy, knowing the goodness of God and the power of prayers, tries in every possible way to turn us away from prayer or during prayer to scatter our minds, to trip us up with various worldly passions and addictions or haste, embarrassment, etc. (6). A person with a hard heart, who looks with arrogance at poor people and does not give them anything from his excesses, will not ascend into the Kingdom of Heaven. How will one ascend to Heaven who works all his life in the vanity of life, who daily languishes with a burning thirst for earthly pleasures, who gave his heart to them, clung to them, but has not developed the slightest taste for spiritual, heavenly blessings; I don’t say - it hasn’t strengthened, it doesn’t have; who worked for wealth and not for God? Take him, perhaps, at least as an example, if it were allowed, to the mountain villages - he will be bored there, because there is not the same as here: there are no favorite objects, no earthly treasures with which he cherished and pleased his heart here. How can the generous, generous and merciful Lord allow a hard-hearted miser into His Heavenly Kingdom? No: “God is not mocked” (Gal. 6:7). The Generous and Merciful One will accept into fellowship with Him only those who are generous and merciful to their brothers (8). As soon as the soul begins to become addicted to earthly goods, or, more accurately, to shiny or beautiful corruption - whether it be a beautiful woman's face, shiny metal, mineral, shiny clothing or a head adornment - a secret falling away from God, the Source of life, begins, cooling, indifference to Him, humiliation and insult begin, and the soul begins to feel confusion, sorrow, oppression, death. And as soon as she sincerely and deeply realizes her madness in this addiction and the corruption of all earthly beauty, all splendor, all earthly glory and is convinced that our life is in the One God, that He is the only true good, that all heart desire and all love should be directed towards Him alone as for the eternal good of life, as for the first and unfading, eternal holy beauty, then she will come to life, will feel peace, freedom, boldness and complete spiritual satisfaction. What exists in heaven for me? and without You, what do I want on earth? My heart and my flesh are faint. God of my heart and my portion, God, forever! (Ps. 72:25, 26) (10) If someone harms your external well-being, without in the least harming the well-being of your soul, and if you begin to worry at the same time, indulge in the movement of anger or other passion, then say to yourself: I am a strange person! Why do I get upset at such little things? People only touch, so to speak, my bark; the core (heart) is beyond their reach. Why do I touch my heart because of them and cause it pain with my foolishness? (10) You might be interested in: