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The loving Lord is here, how can I allow even a shadow of malice into my heart? May all malice die within me completely, may my heart be anointed with the fragrance of kindness. May the love of God conquer you, evil Satan, inciting us evil-willed to evil. Anger is extremely deadly for the soul and body: it scorches, crushes, torments. Let no one bound by malice dare to approach the throne of the God of love (6). You cannot cope with yourself, with your tongue, with one member of your body. Judge by this what kind of One is He who rules the whole world, Who keeps it in such amazing order, Who rules the entire human race, evil, corrupt, always ready to destroy each other and yet more prosperous under His power than poor. How omnipotent and wise He is in managing such a heterogeneous multitude! Rely on Him completely (6). Every sin is from the spirit of malice: he who is in sin is a slave of sin, tormented by sin, therefore, do not treat the sinner too harshly and without malice, knowing the common weakness. Pity the sinner as someone who is sick, or lost, walking in darkness, or as someone bound with iron shackles, or as mentally damaged, for all these qualities can be attributed to someone who sins or is under the influence of passion. We must take care of a person in every possible way so that the fire of sin does not burn him, does not darken him, does not bind him, does not plunge him into illness, does not destroy him (6). You are angry with your neighbor, you despise him, you don’t want to talk to him peacefully and lovingly because he has something rude, abrupt, careless, unpleasant to you in his character, in his speech, in his manners, because he is aware of his dignity, perhaps more than proper, or that he is somewhat proud and disrespectful; but you are more guilty than he, physician and teacher of your neighbor: physician, heal yourself (Luke 4:23); teacher, learn for yourself. Your malice is the worst evil of all evil; Is it possible to correct evil with anger? Having a log, is it possible to take a knitting needle from someone else? Evil and shortcomings are corrected with goodness, love, affection, meekness, humility, and patience. Recognize yourself as the first of the sinners who seem to you to be sinners or who are actually sinners, consider yourself worse and lower than everyone else; purge all pride and anger towards your neighbor, impatience and rage, and then heal others. Otherwise, cover the sins of others with condescending love. If you see all the iniquities in your neighbor, what will happen? Eternal enmity and disorder, for who is without sin? For this reason we are commanded to leave debts to our debtors; for if the Lord sees our iniquities, which of us will stand before His righteousness? “If you forgive people their sins, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Matthew 6:14). At the meal of love we are with Love Himself embodied, but we have no love for each other. Strange thing! And there is no concern about this. And love itself, without our zeal and effort and activity, will not come (6). Avoid flattery, insolence and arbitrariness. Our soul has a passion for this, when others do something not according to us or do not do what we would like. Be patient; think what would happen if others took revenge on you immediately because you did something not according to their will or did not do something that you could have done and should do? Man is duty personified. Here we must remember that our heart is extremely capricious, evil and stupid: we don’t like another person very much for no reason at all, as they say, and we harbor malice towards him in our hearts and would be ready to insult him for nothing. We must despise the natural and causeless malice of the heart and pray to God to drive out this stench of the hellish abyss from the heart. Let us remember what we are commanded: this I command you, that you love one another (John 15:17) (6). Do not be embarrassed by the anger roaring in you and the bitterness rushing to pour out in words, but command it to be silent in you, to freeze. Otherwise, having become accustomed to seeing your obedience and flowing from your tongue, she will overcome you. Just as the water standing behind an earthen dam, having found a well, erodes it more and more and seeps through it, if we do not fasten it or weakly fasten it, and finally, with increasing relaxation on our part and with frequent breakthroughs, the water breaks through strongly, and the further it goes, the stronger and stronger, so that finally it becomes very difficult, even impossible, to block it - so with the malice hiding in the heart of man: if we give it break through once, and twice, and three times, it will flow out more and more and, finally, it can break completely and flood your dam. Know that there are waters of evil in the soul, as the psalmist says: “the waters have reached [my] soul” (Ps. 68:2) (6). There is no reason for a Christian to have any malice in his heart against anyone; malice as malice is the work of the devil; a Christian should have only love in his heart; and since love does not think evil, it should not think any evil regarding others, for example: I should not think about another without an obvious reason, that he is angry, proud, etc., or if I, for example, show him respect, he will become proud, if I forgive the offense, he will again harm me and laugh at me. It is necessary that evil does not nest within us under any form, and evil usually comes in too many forms (6). Malice or any other passion, settling in the heart, strives, according to the indispensable law of evil, to pour out. That is why they usually talk about an angry or angry person, that he took out his anger on this or that or took out his anger on that. The trouble with evil is that it does not remain only in the heart, but tries to spread outward. From this it is already clear that the author of evil is himself great and has a vast area in which he reigns. “The whole world lies in evil” (1 John 5:19). Just as vapors or gases, having accumulated in abundance in a locked place, tend to burst out, so passions, like the breath of the spirit of malice, having filled the human heart, also strive from one person to spill out onto others and infect the souls of others with their stench (6). Do not succumb to gloomy, angry dispositions of the heart towards your neighbor, but master them and eradicate them with the power of faith, in the light of a sound mind - and you will be complacent. I walked in my gentleness (Ps. 25:1). Such locations often appear deep in the heart. He who has not learned to master them will often be gloomy, thoughtful, and heavy with himself and others. When they come, force yourself to be cheerful, cheerful, and innocent jokes - and they will dissipate like smoke (6). Do not allow the devil to plant anger and enmity towards your neighbor in your heart, do not allow it to nest in your heart in any way; otherwise your malice, although not expressed in words, but expressed only in your gaze, can infect your brother through his sight and soul (for nothing is as contagious as malice, especially it conveniently infects those who have an excess of undormant malice in their hearts), fanning the spark of malice in him into a whole flame. Be careful: “with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2). “There is nothing hidden that will not be made manifest, nor hidden that will not be made known and not revealed” (Luke 8:17) (6). When anger flares up in your heart against someone, then believe with all your heart that it is the work of the devil working in your heart; hate him and his offspring, and she will leave you. (Do not recognize her as something of your own, do not sympathize with her). Tested. The trouble is that the devil hides behind us, hides his head and his tail, hides, and we are blind and think that only we ourselves are doing this, we stand for the devil’s work as for something of our own, as for something just, although every thought about any justice of our passion is purely false, ungodly, destructive. Be guided by the same in relation to others; when you see that someone is angry with you, do not consider his anger to be his direct work; no, he is only a passive instrument of the all-evil enemy, he has not yet fully learned his flattery and is being deceived by him. Pray that the enemy will leave him and that the Lord will enlighten the eyes of his heart, darkened by the poisonous, corrupting breath of the spirit of malice. We must sincerely pray to God for all people subject to passions: the enemy is active in them (6). Fear anger like fire; Do not allow it to reach your heart for any plausible pretext, especially because of something unpleasant to you: malice is always malice, always a fiend of the devil. Malice sometimes comes to the heart under the pretext of zeal for the glory of God or for the good of others; Do not believe your jealousy in this case: it is a lie or jealousy not according to reason; be jealous that there is no malice in you. God is glorified by nothing so much as love, which endures everything, and by nothing is dishonored and insulted so much as by malice, no matter how it is covered up by appearances. Under the guise of caring for the poor, Judas, hiding his anger at his Lord, betrayed Him for 30 pieces of silver. Remember that the enemy is vigilantly seeking your destruction and attacks you when you least expect him. His anger is endless. Do not be bound by pride and lust, lest they conveniently captivate you (7). The loving Lord is here - how can I allow even a shadow of malice into my heart? May all malice die within me completely, may my heart be anointed with the fragrance of kindness. May the love of God conquer you, evil Satan, inciting us evil-willed to evil. Anger is extremely deadly for the soul and body: it scorches, crushes, torments. Let no one bound by malice dare to approach the throne of the God of love (11). No, no matter what you say, sometimes a person is too irritable and angry, not on his own, but with the most diligent help of the devil. Just watch yourself or others during times of irritability and anger, when you or someone else would like to destroy a person who is hostile to you, truly or imaginary; compare what follows after this (sometimes soon - according to the action of the Guardian Angel) calmness, meekness and kindness of the character of yours or the person you are observing with the past opposite state, and you will say to yourself: no, this seems to be not at all the same person who was angry and enraged shortly before - this is a person from whom the demons have left, sitting at the feet of Jesus (meek and humble), clothed and in his right mind (Lk. 8:35). There is not even a shadow of the former anger and the former senselessness in him! Some deny the existence of evil spirits, but such phenomena in people's lives can clearly indicate their existence. If every phenomenon has a corresponding cause and the tree is known from its fruit, then who will not see in a madly angry person an evil spirit operating within him, which cannot manifest itself except in a manner worthy of itself! Who, in the outpouring of human malice, will not see the chief of malice? In addition, a person prone to irritability and breathing malice very clearly senses the presence of a hostile, evil force in his chest. It produces in the soul something completely opposite to what the Savior says about His presence: “My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). In that presence, you feel terribly thin and heavy - both mentally and physically (11). From the very time when people, through sin, surrendered to the chief of evil - the devil, he built a solid nest in their hearts, planting his hellish anger in it, which he has since shown very often in very rude, violent forms. Biblical and civil history and the diaries of our time are full of examples of this malice and hard-heartedness of people because of self-interest, because of the desire to take predatory advantage of their neighbor’s property, or because of offended pride, because of wild whim, because of unsatisfied animal love. Many, and very often, do not think about plunging a knife into the heart or throat of a neighbor or otherwise taking his life in any way, not to mention quarrels, disputes, curses, trials and other expressions of human malice (9). You might be interested in: